i'm not big on the fire unions either, but they only reason they started to ask for stuff because the cops were getting whatever they wanted. and the police union have bought and paid for every mayor since the late 90s.
Forecasts show rough budgets in Austin's future
Police and fire contracts are driving force, say city officials; dire warning comes as city and firefighters negotiating new contract
By Kate Alexander
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
When the city agreed to a new contract with police officers last year, extending their position as the highest-paid police officers in the state, City Manager Toby Futrell told City Council members that they would not need to raise taxes to pay for the police raises. That is, she said, during the five-year term of the contract.
At the end of that contract, however, the city will be staring into a chasm of its own making.
By 2009, the city's three public safety departments ? police, fire and emergency medical services ? will consume every last penny of new revenue and still have a nearly $1 million deficit if the current rate of spending continues. A decade from now, the city would have to cut about $50 million ? more than the combined budgets of the parks and library departments ? from the non-public safety departments in the city's general fund to accommodate the salary increases.
"Things are badly out of balance right now," said Council Member Brewster McCracken. "Since the problem is almost entirely with the unions' salary packages, we will have to slow the growth of those salary packages in the future." About 93 percent of public safety costs are salaries.
Now there is a general hue and cry but no concrete proposal for the fixing the situation.
The problem has developed over more than a decade, a function of the labor negotiations, annexations, homeland security burdens and the "halo effect" for public safety workers that followed the 2001 terrorist attacks, Futrell said.
The implications of that evolving financial situation are being highlighted just as the city is engulfed in negotiations with the fire union over a new contract.
"The timing of this is not coincidental," said Mike Martinez, president of the Austin Association of Professional Firefighters. The dire budget messages could help the city "if public sentiment can be shifted to believe that anything we ask for is just going to break the bank," Martinez said.
"The fact of the matter is, it's not the firefighters," Martinez said. "The lion's share is spent elsewhere."
The Fire Department constitutes 20 percent of the 2006 proposed general fund, compared with 40 percent for the Police Department. That same ratio is generally seen in Texas' five other major cities.
Mike Sheffield, president of the Austin Police Association, said the budget differences are justified.
"We're the number one department in the city that people think is there for a reason," Sheffield said, citing the city's annual community survey.
Mayor Will Wynn echoed that sentiment that public safety is a top priority for the community.
"If nothing else, the City of Austin should be in the business of saving and protecting lives," Wynn said.
During last year's negotiations, Futrell laid out what she said are the benefits of having the top-paid cops in the state as she presented the five-year police contract worth an additional $33.4 million in police salaries.
"The City of Austin, compared to those cities, has the very lowest ? not by a little, by a lot ? violent crime rate and the very lowest ? not by a little, by a lot ? property crime rate," Futrell said, according to a transcript of the March 2004 council meeting. "So our investment strategy in police is producing the very best outcome of any major city in Texas."
McCracken, who supported the police contract last year, now says the city overextended itself financially.
"We're not paying public safety folks enough, but we can't pay them more than we can afford," he said during a recent budget discussion.
Wynn disagreed that the city had overreached.
"That contract was very, very important to many of us because it delivered so many things," Wynn said. "It paid those civil service employees very well for doing a very good job."
The police contract could be opened for renegotiation starting in October, but both sides say they have no intention to do so at this point.
Has the rapid growth rate pushed Austin's public safety spending out of whack? It depends upon how you look at it.
Austin's police salaries outstrip those of Texas' five other major cities, but so does the median family income for the area. Fire salaries fall generally in line with the other cities' pay.
Public safety consumed a higher percentage of Austin's general fund ? which covers services such as parks and libraries as well as public safety and is supported in part by property and sales taxes ? than any of the other cities. In 2005, Austin spent 65 percent of its general fund on public safety. El Paso followed with almost 60 percent of its general fund dedicated to public safety, while Fort Worth picked up the rear with 47 percent.
Yet there is still another way to view the spending.
During last year's police contract discussions, Futrell used the per capita spending for Austin police as a critical indicator that Austin's contribution was commensurate. Austin ranks fourth among the group of six cities. The combined budgets of Austin's fire and EMS, however, topped the per capita list.
In the other cities reviewed, EMS is part of the Fire Department, while it is a stand-alone department in Austin. Futrell said the separate departments may contribute to the city's higher per capita spending; the city has also invested heavily in fire stations and firefighters' salaries, she said.
Unlike police and firefighters, the paramedics do not have negotiating rights. Their salary increases have largely mirrored those of the other non-civil service employees, though they started getting an additional 2 percent on top of performance-based raises in 2005, similar to police.
How the city avoids the impending budget problem is still being determined.
The first step will be to get the police and fire contracts on the same schedule to eliminate the "ratcheting effect" as each union uses the other contract to justify larger salary increases, Futrell said. That change would require the fire union to agree to a three-year contract in the current negotiations.
The aim in future negotiations will be to pick a goal in relation to what other cities spend and stick to it. Futrell also hopes to include provisions in future contracts that allow for flexibility in flagging economic conditions.
