Impact of Hollister pay cuts remains unclear

Hollister City Council members recently approved pay cuts for employees, but did so without having financial figures attached to the reductions.
Council members late last month were unanimous in their approval of the negotiated cuts for various city employee groups. They OK’d those reductions despite having no budget numbers associated with the moves.
The approved reductions were comprised largely of an additional furlough day – from 12 to 13 per year, per person – for all of the employees except for the police and fire departments, the workers of which will absorb the reduction as a standard cut to their pay without the days off. On top of the furlough, employees would accept direct reductions to their pay of between 2 and 4 percent.
Those cuts were the result of negotiations between city administration and employee groups, but officials on the night of the approval did not review the amount of money Hollister will save. City Manager Clint Quilter on Monday said those numbers still are not available and that officials might present them to council members at their first meeting in January.
Asked if he could provide a ballpark figure, and Quilter responded, “Not off the top of my head.”
The recent pay cuts for employees were intended to equal – in percentage terms – the pay increases that were awarded to workers about four years ago after voter approval of the 1 percent Measure T sales tax hike, Quilter said. He explained that some employee groups at the time received higher pay increases than others, and that they took larger decreases this time around.
It all comes on the heels of behind-the-scenes work to prepare for asking voters to extend the Measure T sales tax, in a city with immense fiscal problems and facing multimillion-dollar deficits each year. The 1 percent tax hike is expected to raise $3.3 million this fiscal year, as part of a $14 million general fund, about 73 percent of which goes toward employee compensation.
“I’m sure the council’s going to want to put Measure T back on the ballot,” Quilter said.
Quilter acknowledged that some staff members are starting to work on “how we go about doing that” upcoming campaign to extend the tax, which expires in the spring of 2013.
Voters in November 2007 approved Measure T – in the wake of pleas from employee groups about then lacking pay increases and concerns about decreased service levels leading to problems such as more gang crime – but it was just a year removed from a rejection to a similar proposal on the ballot.
It might be too early to tell how voters might respond on the ballot, potentially sometime next year, but at least one councilman isn’t overly optimistic about its chances for approval.
“What they’re really banking on is that Measure T extension,” Councilman Robert Scattini said. “I just don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Scattini expects council members will discuss the prospective Measure T extension at a special meeting, a traditional retreat format, planned for 10 a.m. Wednesday at Hollister City Hall.
With his belief that voters might not approve the tax-hike extension, Scattini also contended that the recent pay reductions don’t go far enough, with the city inching closer to deflating its entire general fund reserve.
“I don’t think that’s going to be enough – I really don’t,” he said.