April 5 - Town of Falmouth

ourselves in a problem with when the revenues begin to decline are the
costs of the labor. It’s a very much labor intensive organization that we
have. The costs of the employee benefits that are associated with that
labor, and also the debt service that we have inside Proposition 2 ½ that if
it gets too high can compete with the costs that we need to actually provide
the services.
I want to point out we’re working very closely with our Town’s
entire work force on proposals that are out there to use some furloughs in
the short term to help lower labor costs and avoid layoffs that would have a
tremendously negative effect on reducing all of our services levels.
We’ve also eliminated a great many positions in the Town’s
budgets, especially over the last three years. It does put a lot of stress on
the Town’s services, but you have to eliminate these structural issues that
plague the budget and make it so that you run deficits.
We’ve also, on the employee benefit side, another structural
problem that we’ve had, we’ve identified some very specific ways to control
health insurance costs while also preserving the comprehensive benefit
levels that we enjoy, and we’re rolling out these programs; there’s a
tremendous amount of negotiations and discussions that we need to
provide health insurance that is sustainable moving forward, but we have
the programs and we have the discussions in place and that I think is
some specific examples of how we’re going about addressing some of the
Tinkham Reporting
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