Seven employees opt for severance package as city makes cutbacks
September 1, 2009
By Warren Kagarise
City officials will save nearly $600,000 because seven city employees have opted to accept severance packages. But the savings from the severance program will not be enough to remedy a $3.6 million budget shortfall for 2010 and a similar decline in city revenue for 2010.Finance Director Jim Blake said the city would save about $595,000 in 2010 as a result of the severance program. Though city officials have said employee layoffs and furloughs are other possible cost-saving measures, Blake and Mayor Ava Frisinger said last week that it would be too soon to say whether other positions would be eliminated.
“Any further staff reductions are still being discussed and a final decision is still a week or two away,” Blake wrote in an e-mail.
Frisinger said the employees who opted for the severance package — six full-time and one-part time — were nearing retirement.
“The program probably gave them a little more incentive to do that,” the mayor said.
Longtime Parks Manager Al Erickson chose the severance option. Part of the rationale, he said, was to help other city employees keep their jobs.
With positions unfilled, duties will be redistributed among other staffers. In the Parks & Recreation Department, for instance, Director Anne McGill, Recreation Manager Brian Berntsen and other employees will carve up tasks once handled by Erickson. No plans exist for replacing the employees who took the severance — for now.
“We, of course, will always hear from departments what their needs are and whether that’s possible in the context of the budget,” Frisinger said.
Employees who accepted the package will receive four months’ pay. Longtime employees will receive an additional month of pay for every 10 years they worked for the city, for a maximum of six months’ pay.
Frisinger said a severance package would not be offered to employees again.
Key sources of cash for the city — building permit fees and sales tax — have shrunk amid the recession. As a result, officials face a $3.6 million shortfall for 2009, and will need to cut a similar amount from the 2010 budget.
Officials deferred the purchase of supplies and equipment, suspended nonessential staff training and held off on filling vacant city positions. But the measures were not enough.
Frisinger said city officials need to cut about $7 million overall from the ’09 and ’10 budgets. Officials will tap a rainy day fund in order to cover the ’09 budget gap.
City Council members adopted a $109.5 million municipal budget last December. Council members will begin formulating the 2010 budget within the next few months.
Frisinger said employee labor groups are receptive to a proposal to defer employees’ cost-of-living increases and eliminate passing savings from the city’s Public Employees’ Retirement System to employees.
Frisinger said Issaquah is one of the last cities in the state to pass along PERS dollars to employees. She said other cities have phased out the program as a cost-saving measure.
Blake said in July that the cost-of-living and PERS reductions would help the city save about $400,000 combined.
Frisinger hosted a farewell reception Aug. 26 at City Hall for the employees who chose the severance package. Over cake and punch, staffers talked about retirement plans. Frisinger said the sendoff was festive, until she made a speech honoring the employees’ service and tears started to flow.
“I said it was bittersweet, because the people who are leaving will be doing the things they want to do,” she said. But, “that we would miss them.”
Opting out
City employees who the chose severance package:
Accountant Amy Beer (part-time employee)
Parks Manager Al Erickson
Administrative Assistant Doretta Levy
Executive Assistant Carolyn Lopez
Administrative Assistant Bonnie Morrow
Farmers Market Manager Dave Sao
Accountant Nancy Webby
Warren Kagarise: 392-6434, ext. 234, or wkagarise@isspress.com. Comment at www.issaquahpress.com.
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