Picking hopefuls' brains on trimming city budget

The candidates competing for seats on the Colorado Springs City Council know more tough choices could be ahead after several rounds of budget cuts and layoffs.

If sales tax revenues continue to decline, city officials say they'll be seeking more cuts to the 2009 budget in May or June. That would follow about $10 million in cuts and $6.8 million in shifts the City Council approved Tuesday.

But candidates for the two contested races had more to say Wednesday about long-term plans for bringing in more money and possible big-ticket savings than about city services they're ready to slash or shield.

District 3

• Incumbent Jerry Heimlicher said that he wants to protect the police and fire departments from further cuts, but that he's not sure that will be possible.

"You cut into fat, then muscle, and then you get the bone. We're at the bone," Heimlicher said. "I'm afraid the bone represents public safety."

The strategy will be to limit how much public safety is affected, Heimlicher said. But he's hopeful an economic turnaround before the end of the year will make further cuts unnecessary. Early indications are that January sales tax revenue was close to what city officials predicted. If that becomes a trend, the city could avoid further cuts.

Heimlicher said his top goal for his final term is finding ways to make the city's tax revenues and spending sustainable. A part of that will involve attracting more visitors, who pay sales taxes that benefit people who live here, he said.

• Challenger Dave Gardner said he views city bus service as "sacred" and would oppose any further cuts to the transit system. Other top priorities to preserve funding are the police and fire departments, he said. If funding cuts are necessary, one target might be employee pay. The city's payroll last year was $122.8 million, but since then it's laid off 173 workers.

"Everybody would rather have a job that pays less than no job, so that would be where I would look next," Gardner said.

The bigger opportunities, in Gardner's view, are in reforming how the city treats economic development and population growth. Gardner cites plans to increase some youth sports fees by 20 percent, while development review fees went up only 3 percent to 5 percent.

"That just shows the insanity of the growth obsession, the growth addiction of this city," Gardner said. "If we'd been doing the right thing over the past 15 years we wouldn't be in this position to begin with."

District 4

• Bernie Herpin said preserving public safety is also a top priority, although he would consider some limited cuts there.

"After that, I don't know," he said. "There's so many tough choices to make that I don't know where to begin other than what we've already done with the 14.5 percent cuts, in parks, and transit took a big hit. I don't know how we can cut more and still provide adequate service."

A long-term solution, Herpin said, could be to decrease the city's sales tax rate and simultaneously increase its property tax rate. The city could end up getting the same amount of tax money under that plan, he said, but many experts view property tax as a more stable source of funding for government services. The change couldn't happen without an election, and the City Council is the most likely means to getting a measure on the ballot, perhaps in November.

"I would vote to give the citizens the right to vote on it," Herpin said. "We have to have a more stable revenue stream."

• Tony Carpenter said the city's cuts so far were unnecessary because many sources of potential savings are still untouched. He'd like to see the pay of city executives cut. He thinks the city could save up to $25 million by combining departments such as information technology, communications, payroll and finance with Colorado Springs Utilities. As it is, Colorado Springs Utilities operates as a separate business, but it shares certain operations.

"You're going to eliminate quite a few of the unnecessary jobs, and you're going to have one large department that's going to serve both the city and utilities," Carpenter said.

"They have taken out a lot of unnecessary positions already; they have come nowhere close to doing enough."

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Call Swanson at 636-0187