The future in Gilroy
– shutting down City Hall the first and third Fridays every
month – is a simplistic and undesirable way to deal with the
current budget mess.
The future in Gilroy – shutting down City Hall the first and third Fridays every month – is a simplistic and undesirable way to deal with the current budget mess.
Closing the doors at City Hall for all operations except those involved with emergency and public safety may or may not achieve the bottom-line budget goal. Time will tell. What is certain is that this approach, chosen by the mayor and a majority of City Council members – will be a major inconvenience for any resident or organization that does business with the city.
The good news is that jobs have been saved. The bad news is that lengthy, forced furloughs, which is essentially the method the city has adopted, can end up being a detriment to morale. There’s clearly already a morale problem. The rancor caused by the mayor and City Council’s ultra-silent rejection of cutting their own health benefits is evidence enough to support that reality.
Moreover, furloughs preclude any judgment about productivity by treating the best performers equally with the low performers.
A combination effort involving layoffs and pay cuts, while keeping the doors at City Hall open five days per week every week except for holiday weeks, would have been a preferable approach for long-term morale. Perhaps, a plan to shut down entirely for an extra week around the Christmas holidays would have made sense, too.
But the Council stamped the simple option.
There’s another negative budget factor, of course. The benefit packages for employees remain intact. So premiums for health insurance, for example, have to be paid as do other benefits. Thus, reducing fixed employee costs do not become a part of the savings.
Just making layoffs, though it is a single event, might not have been the best option either. But a hybrid plan, though more complicated, could have left morale in better shape, cut fixed benefits costs and retained the more productive employees at City Hall.
Now that the decision has been made, the City Council should keep a close eye on how things are going at City Hall. Are residents receiving timely responses to inquiries on shut-down weeks? How are businesses which must interact with City Hall being impacted? And, most importantly as the city works through these recessionary times, are the projected cost savings actually coming to fruition regardless of what revenues are doing?
Hopefully, the employees will appreciate the fact that the Council opted to save as many jobs as possible. Hopefully, extended furloughs were the right decision. Again, time will tell. Meanwhile, it’s wise to keep a close eye on City Hall.
