Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2008

Columbia, Lexington mull deep budget cuts

Public safety, youth sports among city targets

Columbia officials would eliminate some youth sports teams, remove community safety officers from neighborhoods and stop neighborhood street sweeping if forced to cut the budget by 5 percent this year.

South Carolina’s largest city would have to freeze vacant positions — they have already frozen many — and lay off workers to trim $3 million from the rest of this year’s general fund budget. Sixty-seven percent of the city’s general fund budget is for workers’ salaries and benefits.

The proposed cuts will be presented to City Council members at 9 a.m. today in a memo from the city’s interim finance director. Council members asked staff for a proposal, but do not plan to vote on it yet because they want to wait and see if tax collections are down in January.

But the cuts offer a glimpse of what the city would look like should the economy force the city’s hand, and the proposal is sure to spark a discussion of priorities for a council that has repeatedly made public commitments to public safety.

“We wanted to at least be looking at what we may have to do as far as our budget goes for next year,” Councilwoman Tameika Isaac Devine said. “Some areas are going to have to justify their spending.”

Public safety makes up 54 percent of the $101 million general fund budget, city manager Charles Austin said. And those departments not under the umbrella of public safety — like planning and development, parks and recreation and special projects — impact the city’s public safety.

For example, parks and recreation would have to cut its overtime budget, which means employees would not staff some of the larger parks, including Finlay and Riverfront, on holidays.

Public Works would have to stop removing graffiti.

And community safety officers would have to leave their neighborhood patrols to guard the water plant.

“It does make it a challenge,” Austin said. “When I talk with my department heads, each of them considers what they do to be significant to the success of the city.”

Missy Caughman, Columbia’s interim finance director, does not recommend making the cuts this year. She says:

• City officials planned for a smaller budget this year, which has helped them absorb about $100,000 in state budget cuts.

• Property tax collections are stable. The one area that could be impacted by the economic downturn — local options sales tax, the penny on the dollar sales tax that goes toward property tax relief — is still on schedule.

• Assessed property values, which determine how much the city collects on property taxes, have increased by nearly 30 percent over the past five years. This includes new property tax money from buildings in the Vista, where the special tax district was dissolved last year.

“Where we have the most concern (is) with revenues for the next budget year when we will likely see the most significant impact of changes in the economy,” Caughman wrote in a memo to City Council and Columbia’s executive staff.

But some City Council members want to start preparing for next year now, and they want to start with the city’s top leadership.

“Before we move to cut any jobs at the bottom of the pyramid, we need to make sure our management structure is tight and that everybody who is making the big salaries at the city are involved in mission critical work,” Councilman Kirkman Finlay said.

Columbia has about 18 people who make more than $100,000 a year, most of them department heads.

City manager Austin said the city’s management structure is already tight.

“Each of them are fulfilling roles that are critical to the mission of the city,” Austin said. “I believe in those instances where you are trying to recruit the best that is available, it requires that we have to have salaries that are competitive.”

Reach Beam at (803) 771-8405.