Minority cuts rankle Rocky

As part of an ongoing budget process, the Salt Lake City Council agreed Thursday to ax a Hispanic employee and, possibly, a black employee from the city's payroll — moves derided by Mayor Rocky Anderson.

The mayor, who says he has made great efforts to diversify the city's staff, was offended that the council would cut the Equal Employment Opportunity coordinator and an inspector's job in Community and Economic Development, especially because the two employees were ethnic minorities.

"We're doing everything to diversify city government, and they're talking about terminating these two highly placed employees from the minority community," Anderson said.

CED director Alison Weyher did convince the council to let her decide which inspector would be let go, a decision that could save the job of the black employee.

Council members said they weren't targeting the two minorities; they were just making cuts where they could.

"We looked at function and position. We did not look at individuals," councilman Dave Buhler said. "How would we even know who they were. If their function is not a high priority then we have to cut them. It's a lot easier, in an election year, to use fund balance (as Anderson proposes) than to make cuts."

Because they don't trust Anderson's revenue projections, the council is slashing about $4 million from the mayor's planned $164 million general fund budget. Including the two layoffs, they cut about $350,000 from the proposed general fund Thursday. Next they agreed to take $2.7 million from rainy-day reserves and will force the mayor to come up with another $1 million in cuts before they adopt the final budget June 24. Of course there might be more cuts coming, since the General Fund makes up only a small part of the city's entire $665 million budget.

There was some good news for the city Thursday. Library systems director Nancy Tessman informed the council that, due to a clarification of the city's property tax revenue projections, she will not have to close the Sprague and Day-Riverside branches on Sundays.

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