Warren mayor: Budget hinges on health-care concessions

By Ed Runyan

WARREN — Mayor Michael O’Brien says the $24.7 million budget he and Auditor David Griffing have proposed to city council is $4 million less than the one passed last year and reduces the payroll by around 79 workers.

The budget will be balanced but only if workers agree to roughly $690,000 in health-care concessions, he said.

Those savings most likely could be produced by making changes to the health-care plan that do not involve employees’ paying a sizeable amount of the premium, O’Brien said.

The good news is that the spending plan calls for no layoffs in 2010, unlike 2009, when 20 police officers, 11 firefighters and nine other workers were laid off Jan. 1 and an additional 11 employees in the operations department — parks and W.D. Packard Music Hall employees — lost their jobs June 21 when they declined to accept wage and benefit concessions.

The city will lower its employment count further with the retirement of nine more firefighters, resignation of one firefighter, retirement of three to four police officers and retirement of about nine workers in other departments in 2010, O’Brien said.

The administration is proposing that none of the retiring workers be replaced.

O’Brien released the budget to council members Monday and answered questions about it Wednesday at a finance committee meeting.

Despite the savings from having fewer employees, the budget was still about $690,000 too high, Griffing said. To plug that hole, he proposed an adjustment in the health-care plan that would drop its cost by $690,000 — the amount of the increase being proposed by the city’s health-insurance carrier.

Personnel Director Gary Cicero said the city administration could have targeted other areas for savings of $690,000, but it seemed appropriate to make the cut in health care.

O’Brien said the administration does have a “Plan B” and a “Plan C” for how to eliminate the $690,000 deficit, but he cannot discuss those options publicly because they involve issues that have to be negotiated with the city’s unions.

The finance committee plans to discuss the budget proposal again at 4 p.m. Monday and to break down the budget into parts through committees of council.

The committees will discuss the various parts of the budget in some detail with department heads, said Robert Marchese, council president.

runyan@vindy.com