CITY BUDGET: All workers may lose 4 holidays; some may get furloughs, too

Colorado Springs police officers and firefighters, largely shielded from the proposed 2010 budget cuts, may have to take unpaid days off next year, too.

The City Council is now considering a proposal to reduce the number of paid holidays for the entire workforce in 2010 instead of ordering 10 days of furloughs for only civilian employees.

Under the proposal, first introduced by Councilman Tom Gallagher, the city would take away four of 10 paid holidays from all employees. However, all non-sworn employees would still have to take an additional five days of unpaid furloughs.

“I think that’s a reasonable compromise,” Mayor Lionel Rivera said Tuesday. “It spreads the sacrifice among more city employees.”

During a six-hour budget balancing session Monday, a majority of council members had settled on 10 days of furloughs for everyone but police, firefighters, dispatchers and other public-safety employees in supporting roles to help bridge the 2010 budget gap.

Gallagher, who got the idea of reducing the number of paid holidays for all employees from Ca§non City, said the proposal “spreads the pain” and doesn’t unfairly single out certain employees.

“Everybody in the city organization needs to share in the pain and suffering,” he said. “When it was 10 days of furloughs, that was being shouldered by the people who make the least amount of money in the city structure.”

Gallagher said the police and fire departments were largely unscathed by the budget cuts.

“We did a pretty good job of making them whole,” he said. “If we do get the change in holidays, they’ll be impacted by that and all city employees will shoulder an equal share of the load. This spreads the pain. Theoretically, that way it doesn’t hurt as much.”

Mike Smaldino, president of the firefighters’ union, said he hadn’t seen the proposal and didn’t know how it would affect the rank-and-file.

But Smaldino said the Fire Department did make sacrifices under the proposed budget. He said 11 positions won’t be filled next year and that four veteran firefighters are participating in an early retirement program to avert layoffs of younger firefighters.

“The Fire Department didn’t get through this without being touched,” he said. “We weren’t affected pay wise, but we did lose 15 people yesterday.”

Also on Tuesday, the city’s Public Communications Office issued a news release emphasizing that many of the “significant cuts” proposed by City Manager Penelope Culbreth-Graft in October were still part of the 2010 spending plan.

“Just because (the police and fire departments) were partially restored does NOT mean the other impacts have gone away,” city spokeswoman Sue Skiffington-Blumberg said in an e-mail. “It would be a disservice to the community to lead them to believe all is well, business as usual.”

For example, she said, the city still plans 125 layoffs and to close its swimming pools.

But some residents questioned whether city officials were being truthful about the budget situation while promoting issue 2C, a property tax increase, before the Nov. 3 election.

“I don’t know how you guys sleep at night,” businessman Ed Bircham said during Tuesday’s council meeting. “All of a sudden the sky (is) falling before the election and now we find out, Mr. Mayor and City Council, that we’ve been through this before.”

Read more about the City Council's initial proposal and local reaction to it.

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