Council member’s proposal: Cut police, fire salaries

Josh Laubach, who wasn’t re-elected to his second term earlier this month, proposed what he called a “sustainable alternative” budget at Tuesday night’s council meeting. Laubach told council that based on increased expenditures and reduced revenue, the city could be bankrupt by 2016.

He said it was time the city got off the fiscal “roller coaster.”

Based on projects, he said, the city would have an ending balance of negative $1.7 million by 2015, and that number would jump to $4.9 million by 2016. He said under the current trajectory, cost of the city’s “most valuable services,” police and fire, will increase up to $26 million a year in the next decade and that would consume nearly 95 percent of today’s general fund revenues.

He said a moderate tax levy and economic growth would not be enough to offset the rise in personnel costs.

Laubach said the city needs to balance its budget annually, and maintain public safety within a 65-68 percent window of total general fund expenditures.

Based on his alternative proposed budget, Laubach said the city could avoid layoffs to the police and fire departments, add five patrol officer positions, add two full-time and five part-time positions in the fire department and maintain a 15-percent balance for long-term stability.

To reach this goal, he said the average cost of a police officer would have to drop from $107,000 to $92,000 and the average cost of a fire fighter from $104,000 to $87,000. The average cost of all other city employees would remain at $83,000, he said.

The unions that represent those in public safety would have to rework their contracts. City Manager Judy Gilleland had said earlier the unions refused to renegotiate the contracts.

Vice mayor Dan Picard, a vocal supporter of public safety, which he credited for his re-election, doubted whether Middletown could attract police and fire fighters to work in the city if the wages were significantly lower than surrounding communities.

Laubach argued they’d work in Middletown if they knew the city was on solid financial footing.

Mayor Larry Mulligan said he thought the budget proposal was “worth pursuing.”

Laubach then was critical of Picard for supporting public safety, but never proposing ways to financially support the police and fire departments. By the end of the 2 1/2-hour meeting, Picard and Laubach, who sit next to each other, rarely made eye contact.

Council approved the 2014 budget, and said it would consider Laubach’s proposal and discuss further at the next meeting, Dec. 3. Picard tried unsuccessfully to get the overtime money from the police and fire departments removed from the budget and he wanted Gilleland to reapply for public safety grants, but no one on council would second his motions.

The city is considering eliminating as many as 22 public safety positions, 15 from the fire department and seven from the police department, by 2015. City officials say budget projections won’t allow the city to sustain its workforce, and since 70 percent of the general fund is earmarked to public safety, that’s where the majority of cuts must come.

Cris Kelly, president of the FOP Local 36, and Chris Klug, vice president of IAFF Local 336, have said they don’t want the cuts to come out of the public safety budget.

Gilleland said she’d like to reduce the size of the city’s fire department from 79 positions to 64 by the end of 2014, which would include nine firefighters and six grant-funded positions. No positions can be lost until the grant terminates in September 2014, she said.

She’d also like for the city to reduce the size of the police department by seven, the four police officers whose salaries are funded through grants and not fill the three vacant positions: two dispatchers and one corrections officer.

She said $2.25 million needs to be reduced in general fund expenditures over the next two to three years and those cuts are set to be split proportionally among police, fire and non-public safety.