Most of the city of Toledo's nonunion employees will start 36-hour workweeks today, Mayor Carty Finkbeiner announced yesterday.
The reduced schedule will mean a 10 percent pay cut for about 100 general fund employees.
Mr. Finkbeiner said it will save the city's general fund $500,000.
Last month he proposed a combination of cutbacks and new revenue to balance the city's 2009 deficit.
The mayor last week said the shortfall is $15 million, but Clerk of Council Gerry Dendinger on Saturday said he calculated the deficit to be $16.9 million.
The mayor's original plan for exempt employees was to save $530,000 by switching 150 employees to a 36-hour, four-day workweek.Toledo City Council on March 3 postponed authorizing a change to the Toledo Municipal Code that would have allowed that plan.
So instead, the mayor is shifting the employees to 36-hour workweeks over five days, his spokesman Jason Webber said.
Mr. Webber said each city department would devise a schedule to make sure city services are not impacted.
"These economically challenging times require all of us to make sacrifices," Mr. Finkbeiner said in a statement.
"The city of Toledo's exempt employees understand the severity of our budget crisis, and I thank them for their cooperation."
The mayor said the city has two choices: "each person sacrifice a bit, so that most of our employees are able to continue to work, or lay off a significant number of employees."
Councilman D. Michael Collins had suggested the city offer those employees the alternative of choosing to pay for all of their share of their pension plan costs rather than take the 10 percent pay cut.
"It seems rather strange that the mayor is calling out for the cooperation of council and coming to consensus as to how best deal with the fiscal dilemma and yet with the same breath he unilaterally imposes things absent any consensus," Mr. Collins said.
The city expects to collect $145 million from income taxes - a sharp drop from the $169.6 million the city collected in 2007.
That's in part because the city is reeling from increasing unemployment.
Last week, Mayor Finkbeiner said he would lay off 75 Toledo police officers to help close the deficit.
But the Finkbeiner administration is hoping for a federal bailout in the form of a $34 million "Cops Hiring Grant."
The mayor said that not only would prevent the layoffs but also would allow the city to hire 75 more police officers.
Mayor Finkbeiner placed some of the fault for the planned layoffs on council because it rejected his plan to generate $5.2 million through the end of 2009 by cutting 50 percent of the income tax credit for the 19,200 residents employed in other cities.
The mayor's proposal met with strong opposition from Toledoans who work in the suburbs and elsewhere at a recent council meeting.
Council last weekend agreed that the city must decrease its burden of covering pension payments for employees - which will cost the city about $9.2 million this year.
Contact Ignazio Messina at:
imessina@theblade.com
or 419-724-6171.
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