Manteca is now chipping away at a $1 million deficit projected for the start of the next fiscal year on July 1.
Upwards of $100,000 a year could be saved under four municipal staff reorganizations approved by the Manteca City Council.
They involve:
• replacing fire marshal Randy Sutton when he retires in January with a non-sworn employee.
•combining the streets maintenance division with the building maintenance division to create a new facilities maintenance division.
• eliminating the recent vacated parks planning manager position and combining it with the current parks operations supervisor and park operations superintendent to create a park operation/landscape maintenance district manager.
• consolidating the administrative support for the wastewater treatment plant and the new facilities maintenance division. The wastewater treatment plant administrative assistant is taking advantage of an early retirement offer.
When asked by the council whether the public works changes would work, Public Works Director Mark Houghton simply replied, “We’ll make it work.”
The fire marshal switch will save the general fund upwards of $70,900 a year providing the city can fill it from the ranks of existing employees and in turn not replace that worker.
The plan is to limit recruitment to existing employees within the City of Manteca.
To make the field of potential applicants as wide as possible, if an existing city employee gets the job they will have 18 months after being appointed to secure fire prevention related certificates plus within three years to obtain a fire prevention specialist certificate. They must, however, have a long list of other skills in place at the time of being hired.
Sutton would continue to work on a part-time basis until the new fire marshal has completed the training necessary to serve effectively in the position.
The reorganization in public works is the latest in a series of steps that are being planned as the city moves toward consolidating its various corporation yards. In the past 10 years, the Manteca streets division has gone from 16 to 10 workers.
Early retirements already anticipated — including that of the administrative assistant — is being counted toward some of the savings in this year’s budget. Most savings, though, will occur starting July 1.
The council is hoping to have the jurisdiction to put cost recovery charges in place to help whittle down next year’s deficit.
The goal is to try and get through the 2010-11 fiscal year without further layoffs. That could happen if three things occur: sales tax continues to rebound, property tax receipts stabilize, and the state doesn’t take any more local revenue away from cities.
