Quincy budget could mean 150 city layoffs
Approximately 150 Quincy city employees could lose their jobs if the fiscal year 2011 budget that Mayor Thomas P. Koch presented to the City Council last night is approved, city officials said.
Citing declining revenues and contractually obligated pay raises for city employees, Koch said he needed to cut about $12.3 million from the city’s overall budget of about $230 million.
“The growing cost of local government cannot be sustained,” Koch told the nine councilors and approximately 35 spectators gathered in the council’s chambers.
The proposed budget would cut nearly all of Quincy’s departments from their FY2010 budgets, including reductions of 3.6 percent to the schools, 3.7 percent to the police and fire departments, and 9 percent to the city’s libraries. The town employs roughly 1,900 people, said Nicholas Puleo, Quincy’s director of municipal finance.
Koch said it was “premature” to say which departments would see the most layoffs. But, because the schools comprise about 37 percent of the overall budget, and about $4.8 million of the city’s deficit is tied up in teacher pay raises, neither Koch nor the union’s president said they thought teacher layoffs could be avoided.
“The only question will be the extent of the layoffs,” said Paul Phillips, president of the Quincy Education Association, the teaches union .
Phillips said the union, which represents about 915 teachers, has made concessions that Koch said would be discussed at a closed-door session Friday afternoon between union officials and the mayor.
Other unions, including two of the police unions, have agreed to defer their pay raises, officials said.
While no police officers will lose their jobs, four crossing guards and two civilian employees will, said Police Chief Paul Keenan.
Keenan also said his department will not receive the 10 new cruisers it had requested.
“We’re trying to maintain the services as best we can, but it’s getting more difficult as the numbers dwindle,” Keenan said.
City councilors asked Puleo about the mayor’s proposal to charge a .75 percent tax on meals. The measure could raise $784,000 in fiscal 2011, which begins July 1, and $1 million in subsequent years, Puleo said. That potential revenue would only be used to pay the city’s debt and to increase its reserves, Koch said.
The budget will be debated and voted on by the City Council and the School Committee before the mayor can sign it.
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