Police brass told Ansonia’s tax board Monday (March 10) that if the budget passed by Aldermen last month goes into effect later this year, they’ll have to lay off every crossing guard in the city.
The department would also lose a part-time records clerk, they said.
Police Chief Kevin Hale and Lt. Wayne Williams discussed the department’s budget proposal with members of the Board of Apportionment and Taxation for more than an hour during a workshop at City Hall.
And while it’s still two months until the tax board has to finalize a spending plan for 2014 – 2015, they told tax board members they need to close a $90,000 gap in their budget to keep crossing guards on the streets.
“Our bottom line is to not lay anybody off,” Hale told the tax board. “We don’t want anybody to lose their jobs.”
As it stands, though, Hale and Williams said they would have layoffs come the end of June if the city doesn’t find a way to move money around.
This year, Mayor David Cassetti asked most of the city’s departments to submit budget proposals that carried spending cuts of at least 4 percent.
Hale said that the police department did just that, planning to leave two officer positions vacant for a savings of about $150,000, and putting $35,000 less into a pension plan for retired officers.
The budget Cassetti recommended to Aldermen carried a cut of about $75,000 more than that, so police said they’d find the additional savings by cutting $15,000 out of the department’s $75,600 crossing guard budget, in addition to other adjustments.
The department also asked for “credit” in its budget for about $50,000 the city would save in health insurance costs by not filling the two officer positions the department plans to leave vacant.
The chief said the mayor’s office approved the credit, but the budget passed by Aldermen last month did not include it.
The police department would see a budget decrease of nearly 5 percent under Cassetti’s proposal — from $5,851,032 to $5,562,165.
But even if the police department received the $50,000 credit, the spending plan the Aldermen forwarded to BOAT would put the department behind the eight ball, the chief said.
“If we get credit for the $50,000, we would still have to lay off a part-time records clerk and four of the nine crossing guards,” Hale told BOAT members.
The chief said police haven’t yet decided which crossing guards would be axed, but if the budget outlook doesn’t get any rosier, “we’re going to have to look at what positions are going to go.”
The police need $40,000 to close the gap, Hale said.
And without the $50,000 “credit,” Hale and Williams said all of the city’s crossing guards would be on the chopping block.
City: We’re Working On It
Ansonia isn’t Mayberry, and the situations city police face aren’t always safe.
On Thursday, Chris Tymniak, the mayor’s chief administrative officer, said that the city is working on a number of cost-cutting efforts that might help close the hole in the department’s budget.
For example, Tymniak said, the city is still looking for cost savings by renegotiating several vendor contracts.
“There will be budget adjustments,” Tymniak said in an email. “The points Chief Hale made are points that we have discussed.”
“I expect there to be more savings that can be spread around to various departments that have holes that need to be filled,” he said.
Daniel King, the chairman of the Board of Apportionment and Taxation, said Thursday that tax board is crunching the numbers as best it can.
“What we’re trying to get is information to see what is absolutely necessary, what would be cut, and what we can and can’t do without,” he said. “Of course everyone would always like to have a little more in their budget. There’s things that they’d like to have and things that they need. We’re concentrating on things that they need first.”
