The Mayor and City Council made perhaps the most difficult decision Monday night, enacting a freeze on all salary increases for the town government's general workforce. The freeze covers about 600 workers, but does not include Police Department salaries, which come under a contract with the Fraternal Order of Police. A town hiring freeze is already in effect.
Only last week, City Manager Dennis Dare had telegraphed that he might ask city workers to forgo their annual three percent cost-of-living adjustments. But it was only a suggestion.
Monday night, Dare recommended that step and merit pay increases for city workers should be frozen as well, along with cost-of-living adjustments.
Dare added a note of regret: City workers deserve their raises, he said, because they improve their skills with experience year by year.
But he told the City Council: "In this recession that we're in, that's not something that we're going to be able to afford this year."
The council, which has made clear that it wants an austerity budget, did not hesitate to accept Dare's recommendation. The six members at the meeting voted unanimously to approve the salary freeze for the 2010 budget.
The freeze will mean a budget savings of about $800,000 total, Dare said after the meeting, approximately $400,000 for step and merit increases, and $400,000 for cost-of-living increases. The city manager did not rule out the possibility of seeking additional salary savings in the police budget.
Pay increases were not the only freeze enacted Monday night. The council also voted unanimously to freeze town water and wastewater rates for fiscal year 2010. A study will be conducted during 2010 on the rate structure for 2011 and future years.
When the town began its campaign to trim government spending last fall, its first action was to suspend most hiring. Since then, 26 positions have become vacant, but only two have been filled, Dare reported at a council work session last week. He noted that the Public Works Department is down by six employees, and needs help from part-time workers at times.
The Police Department also has a freeze on hiring, Police Chief Bernadette DiPino reported last week. And the Police Department is testing reducing the command staff from four captains to three.
In addition to the hiring freeze, Dare outlined last week a laundry list of cost-cutting steps the town has taken since October. The town has:
- Eliminated a planned renovation of the median strip on Coastal Highway between 74th Street and 85th Street.
- Reduced the season for operating boardwalk trams and park-and-ride buses.
- Reduced the frequency of trash collections during the winter months.
- Terminated the contract for washing city vehicles.
- Changed cell phone plans.
"We've been through just about all the cuts," Dare told the council last week. With those austerity measures, Ocean City has realized about $2.5 million savings in the current fiscal year.
During February, Dare said, he will be concentrating on seeking savings in the budget to be enacted in the spring. "We will go through every dollar with every department head," he said.
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it would be nice if all town salaried employees would agree to a reduction in their salaries by 5% for 2009. i am sure the paid police and fire departments could trim the number of their employees by at least 5%. i do not think that a union contract prevents lay offs and not filling vacant positions. the citizen taxpayers have given pay raises and lucrative benefits to the town employees during the "good" years, now it is time for the employees to recipracate in the "lean" years.
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