News - Local News

POSTED: Friday, Feb. 27, 2009

Bellingham slashes budget again as revenues slide

BELLINGHAM - The city's budget has been slashed for a fourth time since the last quarter of 2008, but no layoffs are happening.

City officials announced Wednesday, Feb. 25, they're cutting about $2.52 million from the 2009 general fund budget due to further-slumping revenues.

While no layoffs are happening, nine positions are being eliminated. The positions are vacant, held by people who are retiring and won't be replaced or the people in them will be shifted to other work, officials said.

Year to date, sales tax revenues are 15 percent below what came in during January and February 2008, said City Finance Director John Carter. If that trend continues for the entire year, the city would come in at $1.3 million less in sales tax than 2008.

The city is preparing to see revenues for this year overall at $2 million to $3 million less than what came in for all of 2008, Carter added.

The Bellingham Police Department will lose five positions. The new four-person neighborhood anti-crime team that was included by officials in this year's budget will now be staffed with current staff rather than new hires, Chief Administrative Officer David Webster said.

It hasn't been determined which BPD officers will staff the anti-crime team, so it's unclear what police work will be cut back.

The cuts, which include everything from a $21,000 reduction to purchase night vision equipment for police to $180,000 in cuts for sidewalk repair and replacements, amount to about a 2.75 percent slash in the city's $72 million general fund budget.

Slashing the budget keeps the city's deficit at about $5 million. It's covered by tapping into the estimated $12 million to $13 million in reserves carried over from last year, Carter said. Without the cuts, the deficit would be $7.5 million to $8.5 million, he said.

Cuts are coming in the form of "administrative freezes" because the money already has been budgeted. It simply will not be spent as of now, Webster said.

In late March, the administration intends to bring a revised 2009 budget to the council that would permanently remove the $2.52 million, Webster added.

Mayor Dan Pike had announced earlier in the year that he had asked department heads to offer up what 3 percent to 5 percent in cuts would look like. Then the administration would put together the plan on how those cuts would be implemented, not necessarily all at once.

That mid-January announcement came at the same time that officials cut nine positions in the city's permit center. Due to shifting positions around, the cuts amounted to five people laid off.

Webster said Wednesday that the administration has the information on cuts up to 5 percent, and a plan has been prepared from that in case revenues continue to decline.

That would mean actual layoffs, Webster said, with personnel losses in the double digits.

Taking the rest of the cuts would mean residents would finally start to see a reduction in services, Webster said. Though he didn't go into specifics, he indicated that a reduction in open hours is one possibility.