Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 17, 1991 TAG: 9104170457
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER MUNICIPAL WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The firefighters union opposes Herbert's proposal to shift firefighters from Station No. 1 on Church Avenue to the new station on U.S. 460 East.
The manager recommended the shift instead of hiring more firefighters, a move he said would save $329,809 a year.
Ed Crawford, president of the union, said Tuesday that the group was worried that the plan will lower the quality of downtown fire protection. He said the Fire Department was forced to cut its budget while many departments were not.
But Herbert and Fire Chief Rawleigh Quarles contended that fire protection will remain adequate in downtown and that response times will remain well below the four-minute citywide standard. Response time on most downtown calls is two minutes or less.
Quarles said a five-man fire ladder company will remain at the No. 1 station after the four-man pumper company is moved to the new station. Response times by a pumper company will increase by between 45 seconds and a minute on downtown calls, but the same amount of personnel and equipment will respond, he said.
Three pumper companies - from Stations 1, 2 and 3 - now respond to all downtown fires. Quarles said three companies will continue to answer downtown calls because other stations will fill in for Station 1, depending on the fire's location.
"We were told to cut our budget by 3 percent and we looked at several alternatives and this one had the least impact," Quarles said.
Herbert, meanwhile, said he doesn't think the city's hard budget times will last. He is betting the economy will rebound within a year and that better times will return in Roanoke.
If that happens, he believes his proposed $152.1 million budget will put the city in a good position to recover from the economic slump. That was part of the underlying strategy in his budget plan.
Although the city faces its worst financial crunch in 15 years, Herbert believes its financial woes reflect problems in the national and state economy, not a general decline in its economic structure.
Because of that, he said he focused on the future as much as the present in preparing the budget.
"I tried to . . . ask where do we want to be two years from now, for example," he said. "I didn't want to do anything in the interim that would cause long-term damage and derail a recovery or hurt the city's economic-development program."
The city manager had three basic options:
Provide no pay raises for city employees and teachers, but keep most services at their current level.
Make deep cuts in services, including layoffs, to free up $4 million for raises in the range of 6 percent.
Raise taxes to both provide pay raises and maintain the current level of services.
Herbert said he chose the first option because he wanted the city to remain in a position to regain its momentum when the economy returns to full strength. He wanted to avoid deep cuts in services because that could hurt the city's long-term economic health.
"You could literally begin to unravel what makes Roanoke competitive with other localities" if the quality of services is lowered, he said.
Raising taxes never was a realistic choice because City Council members publicly had said they were against a tax increase.
So Herbert proposed that the city forgo pay raises for its employees and teachers. About 80 jobs in the city work force of 1,937 will be vacant for varying periods in the next year, leaving other employees to take up the slack.
"We're asking our employees to work even harder to fill the void and extra workload caused by the unfilled positions," Herbert said. The jobs will be tougher because the demand for services increases during a recession, he said.
Police calls increase and more people seek welfare and other social services. Unlike in private industry, where the demand for products drops in a recession, the reverse occurs in local government, he said.
Herbert said he realizes the lack of pay raises will get the most attention, but he noted that no other local governments in the Roanoke Valley are giving raises to their employees. And many private companies won't provide increases, either, he said.
The city manager will meet with employees in small groups to explain why the city can't afford to give them raises. Several council members said they are troubled because there is no money for raises, but they won't vote to raise taxes.
by CNB