Three-day furlough for city workers

Furloughs, which have become a fact of life for many businesses struggling to survive the economic slump, have come to Yuma City Hall as it responds to a sharp drop in revenue for the first quarter of the new fiscal year.

"We're doing it in a way to least affect public safety," said city spokesman Greg Hyland.

Each employee, with the exception of public safety staff, will be taking 24 hours of unpaid time off between now and March 1, he said. That time can be taken however they want and is coordinated with their supervisor - whether it means an extra three days off over the holiday season or a half-day here and there.

The furlough even applies to City Administrator Mark Watson.

The public safety departments - police, firefighters and dispatchers - have committed to contributing their share of the cost-saving measure through reducing overtime, Hyland said. The police and fire chiefs have identified cost savings of about $533,000 in the upcoming months as a result.

It could have been worse.

"We were looking at 10 days per employee," said Hyland, adding that the city's executive team has been exploring various options for several weeks in anticipation of the revenue shortfall.

Through various cost-cutting measures such as delaying certain projects and the nearly half-million dollars in anticipated savings from overtime reductions, the furloughs were pared to three days instead of 10.

This is all being done to avoid layoffs, Hyland said.

The potential for furloughs has been shared with employees through a series of forums held over the past month, he said. The response from them was to do what needed to be done so no one lost their job, he said.

To date, 100 positions have been vacated, mostly through attrition, he said. However, a couple of positions were eliminated where the workload was reduced as a result of the construction slowdown.

During furloughs, Hyland said, "people will still get the same service but you may not get it as fast. One thing that will happen is that the salaried people will be working longer hours to take on added duties.

"You may have to wait in line longer to pay your water bill. And you may stand in line longer to register your kid for soccer as some desks will be empty. It may take us 48 hours to handle your graffiti call instead of 24."

He said the furloughs are in response to the city's revenue being down 17 percent for the first three months of the fiscal year that began July 1. That's on top of a drop of 13 percent in revenue last year.

"In the history of the sales tax in Yuma, there's only been one down period in the last 50 years," he said. "This time it's been down for three years. And we already know our revenue from the state income tax will be down for the next two years."

Hyland said the sales tax is a large part of the city's revenue and he urged residents to shop locally - or at least spend their money in Arizona.

"When they shop on the Internet or their money goes into California, that doesn't help us."