Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker announces layoffs, other cuts to offset $18.8M budget shortfall

SALT LAKE CITY — With the lingering effects of a recession ravaging the city's coffers, Mayor Ralph Becker on Tuesday proposed a host of fee hikes, service cuts and layoffs to close an $18.8 million budget gap for the 2010-11 fiscal year.

"We need to accept this is our new reality; this is the new normal," Becker said as he unveiled his proposal at City Hall. "We cannot simply look at these lean years as an aberration while we wait for the flush years to return."

Resolved to avoid a general tax increase, Becker packed his budget with cuts, "and since most of our budget is personnel, that means layoffs."

The mayor's plan calls for cutting 67 of the city's roughly 3,000 full-time positions, though 42 of those positions are currently vacant.

After taking a 1.5 percent cut in pay last year, Salt Lake City employees would see their salaries and merit raises restored. But employees also would have to shoulder a larger share of their health care premiums and co-payments under Becker's plan.

"I cannot begin to express how difficult these decisions were for me, my department directors and my budget team," Becker said. "I express my heartfelt appreciation to all employees of Salt Lake City and know this is a difficult time. Department directors have anguished over the decisions to be made."

When city leaders were faced last year with cutting $12 million from its $200 million general fund, Becker called it "the most difficult financial challenge in many decades."

A year later, the city's general fund has seen another drop — down 11.5 percent since 2009 — and city officials were forced into even tougher decisions for the still-strapped city.

Public services could lose six positions and see a reduction in seasonal workers, which Becker says would lead to less frequent watering and grass cutting and city workers not planting flowers next year.

A response team that handles after-hours calls also would be dismantled.

To make up for cuts in service, some needs could fall on the shoulders of community volunteers. For instance, Becker said, soccer teams might be left to paint lines on fields using city equipment.

"We're going to be asking people to do more," the mayor said.