With the Española Fiesta winding down, the reality of furloughs for all city employees is sinking in.
Starting this week, all city employees are required to take 12 furlough days, one a month, in order to close the gap between the city’s planned expenditures and tax revenues in fiscal year 2012.
An initial budget presented to the City Council in April projected $372,120 more in expenditures than revenues. The furloughs are expected to cut the city’s spending during the fiscal year by $368,308.
“It’s an ugly reality right now,” city employees union president Joaquin Maestas said.
Maestas said he understands the city needs to cut from the budget the money it doesn’t plan on getting.
“It’s a significant amount of money,” Maestas said.
Mayor Alice Lucero said the City Council tried to get away from furloughs during budget talks in May, but the only other option was to cut jobs entirely.
“We cut a lot of expenditures,” she said. “We cut as much as possible.”
Española Public Safety Chief Leo Montoya said while he doesn’t know how the furloughs will affect his department until they begin, he thinks the department will be all right.
“The services will be there,” he said.
Montoya did voice concerns over how the lost wages will affect his officers.
“I have a feeling I’m going to lose some people,” he said. “That’s a lot of money.”
Montoya said he recently hired four new police officers and two new transport officers, who will drive city prisoners to and from the San Miguel County Jail.
Public Works Department Director Marvin Martinez said he’s scheduled his employees to take furloughs on Mondays and Fridays.
Martinez said if he isn’t able to meet manpower needs, then he’ll start pulling people from other areas within his department. Martinez oversees 41 employees, according to city salary information.
Both Martinez and Montoya said they’ve submitted furlough schedules to City Manager James Lujan, who did not return requests for comment.
Maestas said his first furlough day is Friday and from then on they’ll occur on the first Friday of every month. He questioned what the city is doing to abate the furloughs.
“I’m really more concerned about what are they’re doing,” he said. “What are we going to do to move forward to save money and cut the number of furlough days as we move along?”
Lucero said cutting the number of furlough days largely depends on tax revenue. She said she heard the state was reporting a significant increase in tax revenue.
“I’m hoping we see that same increase,” she said.
Monthly gross receipt tax reports from the state Taxation and Revenue Department show fluctuating revenues for the city.
The most recent reports available indicate the city received $579,228 in gross receipts tax revenue in April, slightly more than its $500,784 last April. In March the city brought in $618,721, less than the $666,523 received last April. And in February the city received $360,490, $150,000 less than its $500,784 in revenues last February. Lucero has attributed the low February 2011 figure to the effect of the natural gas outage on local businesses.
Lucero said the mandatory Los Alamos evacuation earlier this month brought a lot of people to the Valley, and she’s hoping the city sees a boost from increased spending activity.
Regardless, employees are just happy to have a job, and they’ll do what they need to do to keep the city running, Maestas said. He said city officials are always asking employees to do more with less.
“This is just another in a long line of that,” he said.