WHEREAS - Watsonville California

Service reductions.
There are no easy solutions to overcome the size of the $4.5 million
projected General Fund deficit for the year starting July 1, 2009. It
must result in the reduction of many of the services the Watsonville
community has come to depend on and expect.
Under the City Council’s direction, management built a strategy to
balance the 2009-10 budget through the following major objectives:
Meet with and agree to employee compensation concessions
Develop line item reductions where ever possible, including
contractual services
Develop service reductions starting with added value
programming and services and ending with core and essential
services
Consider and propose resource enhancement options
Evaluate new opportunities to change how services are
delivered
Employee group agreements. At the timing of this report, the City
has reached agreements with all but one of its bargaining units on
contract concessions (agreements were presented for approval
earlier in this May 26, 2009 meeting). The last unit, Fire, is still in
negotiations. Should this group remain unresolved much longer, the
City will be forced to implement an alternate operating reduction
proposal as part of the General Fund budget hearing scheduled for
June 2, 2009. This plan would include upwards of 5 fire department
layoffs.
The agreements reached with the other groups have been built into
the table 1 plan shown and have resulted in saving well over 40
permanent positions in the City, leaving only 8 permanent positions
as still tentative layoffs and restoring many programs and services.
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