City Layoffs Update

While we’ve been easing back into 2012, the City and its employees have been hard at work pinching pennies, pruning budgets, shuffling positions and making other sacrifices to save jobs.

Last we heard, the City was forecasting 67 layoffs from non public safety positions, effective this week. Now it’s looking like they’ve pared that back to 15 to 20 actual “layoffs” (although the number of City employees not returning to work next week will be larger than that, due to retirement buy-outs, etc). The positions set for elimination will indeed be eliminated, but the dust hasn’t settled quite yet on the musical chairs game of retirement buy-outs, seniority/bumping rights, and reorganization of duties to departments less affected by the current budget situation.

The latest from the City is that 39 non public safety employees (along with nine police and 10 firefighters) have accepted an early retirement incentive, helping some of their co-workers avoid the chopping block. It’s sounding right now like the best case scenario will still leave 10 to 15 City employees without jobs, and others may end up taking demotions. Saving the jobs is the good news, but there will still be individuals and families in tough places, and our sympathy goes out to them. Sometime later today is probably the earliest we could know solid information on the layoffs, and it could be longer.

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