Fiscal Year 2013-2015 Special Budget Meeting

HONORABLE MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL Subject: Proposed FY 13-15 Proposed Policy Budget Date: May 13, 2013 Page 10 term structural solutions that enable the City to responsibly structure its financial position to promote long-term fiscal sustainability. 17) In the Administration's Budget Balancing Principles (located in the Budget Highlights section of the Proposed Budget), it states in item 10 "as a goal, analyze all existing services and target service consolidations, reductions, or eliminations in areas where service is less essential." Has there been staff work to identify these less essential service areas? And, if there has been staff work; what criteria and how developed was that criteria as to deeming one service area less essential than another? Please make this analysis available and the criteria so that it could be reviewed and utilized in the budget preparations. As a beginning point in developing a Proposed Budget, the City Administrator in fall 2012 issued instructions to Departments to prioritize their services based on the following hierarchy: 1. Legal mandates; 2. Local requirements; 3. ^ Services that create high risk if discontinued; 4. Programs or services that leverage outside resources, directly generate City revenue, or create measurable economic growth; and, 5. Other essential, high priority services that your department can still afford to provide. Departments conducted this analysis, which was vetted by the City Administrator. This information informed the Mayor and City Administrator as they crafted the proposed budget, as did their own professional assessments of prioritizing service delivery areas. 18) Both Neighborhood Investment and the Department of Housing & Community Development have average fully budgeted costs per FTE that far exceed other departments even inclusive of OPD with their expense and budget loads. What is driving iip the fully budgeted loaded FTE costs of these former RDA departments? Please provide categorical breakdowns that show salaries, benefits, retirement, overhead, and then the unique or departmental costs that ride in both so that decisions can be evaluated. The driving factors in higher average costs in Office of Neighborhood Investment (ONI) and Housing and Community Development (HCD) can be attributed to a classification's representation type and overhead costs. The salary base is higher in ONI and HCD due to the type and composition of classifications; ONI and HCD have a low % of Part-Time (PT) classifications (4% and 2%, respectively) while 54% of the Office of Parks and Recreation (OPR) PTEs are PT. Fringe and Retirement rates for PT employees are significantly lower as compared to Regular representation units resulting in lower benefit and supplemental costs for more PT-heavy departments such as OPR. In addition, ONI and HCD both pay Central