Budget Proposals Could Mean Salary Cuts, Job Loss for City Employees

By Kirsten McIntyre, NEWS 9

OKLAHOMA CITY – Oklahoma City leaders are trying to decide how to deal with an almost $20 million decline in sales tax revenue as they continue their work on next year's budget.

Oklahoma City leaders learned Tuesday how much money they have to work with for the upcoming fiscal year as the city manager presented budget proposals to the city council. Sales tax revenue is down $19.5 million, almost 10 percent from last year.

Due to the drop in revenue, the city has put together two budget options. The first option, which the city leaders said they preferred, requires approval from the fire, police and the employees unions.

Download the budget proposals on the city's Web site.

The first option adds 20 police officers and 10 firefighters but reduces 21 non-uniformed positions and reduces salaries for city employees.

"It could range from police take home vehicles to overtime in the fire department to percentage of pension that we pay health insurance incentive pay uniform allowance. It could be anything across the board," said Oklahoma City City Manager Jim Couch.

The second budget proposal does not require salary concessions but eliminates the positions of 100 city employees, including 22 police officers, 29 firefighters and 49 non-uniformed positions.

"It's not a matter of trying to put pressure on unions. We really don't' have any other way to do it," Couch said.

If the city successfully negotiates salary concessions with the unions, then money collected from the MAPS 3 Use Tax will be used to create new fire and police positions.

If the city ends up going with the second budget proposal, the MAPS 3 Use Tax funds will be used to save fire and police positions that were going to be eliminated.

"We've never seen a decline in revenues like this before. Right now, we're in almost a 10 percent decline in sales tax revenue and we haven't seen that. We looked back 30 years and didn't see a single fiscal year where the decline was so significant, so it created a budget situation that has been the most challenging, the most difficult and forced us to look at some different options that we haven't looked at," said Craig Freeman, the Oklahoma City Budget Director.

A spokesperson for the fire union said says he hopes the tax revenue bounces back and the cuts won't be necessary.

MAPS 3 Use Tax will be used to fund fire and police.

Since a hiring freeze was placed on city positions in March of last year, of the 100 positions that could be cut through option two, only 25 people would actually lose their jobs.

Negotiations with unions will begin in the next several weeks in hopes of passing the first budget option. The new budget will be passed by June 15 and in place by July 1.