Kelly Kenoyer
Sweet Home’s Library Board meeting on Dec. 10 was rife with tension, as City Manager Ray Towry attended to discuss the budget and recent furlough notices.
The board members in attendance, Eva Jurney, Kevin Hill, Charlene Adams and Don Hopkins, had tough questions for the city manager. City Councilors Greg Mahler, Diane Gerson and Susan Coleman also attended.
After Hill, the chair, opened the meeting for discussion, Towry said, “I’d like to start with an apology. We have kind of left the library board out on an island, at least during my tenure here.”
He added that he’d like to open up better communication between the board and the city moving forward.
But the board members had larger concerns than communication: Although furlough notices sent out to the part-time staff at the library were rescinded earlier this month, the board had questions about a recent cut to the staff’s paid hours.
Jurney said she was under the impression that part-time staff have fixed hours, in that they have .5 or .3 FTE scheduled. While Towry agreed that the staff are budgeted for those hours, he said the staffers operate under “flex” time, and can have their hours cut with five days of notice.
“I thought they were point positions, which indicated to me they were guaranteed certain hours per week,” Jurney said.
Towry responded: “The whole purpose of a part-time position is to allow you to flex with demand or budgetary needs.”
Said Jurney: “My experience with this has been totally different from what you’re describing. I thought they were guaranteed a certain number of hours per week, which is a good thing for the employees because you know what your income is.”
Towry said the city is “contracting” the number of hours because of COVID, and is basing the new hours around when the library is currently open.
Hopkins, who also serves on the board for the Sweet Home FIre and Ambulance DIstrict, asked whether funding was the problem: “Is the revenue not sufficient to cover what our expenses are?”
Towry: “As of today, the answer is no. As of three weeks ago the answer would have been yes.”
That’s because the tax revenue the city expected came in with a slight lag this year compared to previous years. The second week of November came in at just over a third of the previous year’s revenue for that week, which caused Towry to predict disaster: with low payments in that week, he expected a high delinquency rate and a large budgetary shortfall.
“I was seriously concerned about what we were looking at, and I based that on my previous experience in 2008 at previous jobs where we saw the bottoming out of the recession,” Towry said.
However, the rest of November came in higher than the second week, and actually totaled 7% more revenue than in 2019.
Regardless, Towry called for caution moving forward: he said the city should assume there will be a high delinquency rate until proven otherwise.
“We won’t know that until we see what the economy does,” he said. “”As of right now, I would say we look really good. Ask me again in two weeks and you might get another answer.”
Hill asked why Towry made such a drastic change when the library has more than $424,000 of overflow from previous years: a full year of operating budget at the previously set hours for staff.
“When we forecast out five years, it goes down to six months, and if we go to the sixth year it’s actually in the red,” he said of those reserves. The budgetary forecast for 2026 puts the library at a fund balance of $201,539, or 4.85 months of operating budget.
Towry told The New Era that that balance qualifies as “in the red” because it’s below the six-month operating budget the city requires as part of its budget mandate. The library would still have 6.04 months of budget in 2025 — better than the other tax-funded budgets that are under that same mandate. These numbers are all based on what was budgeted for this financial year, so they don’t account for Police Department vacancies or the reduced hours at the library.
It does include savings from the reduced position at City Hall, which was removed from the budget, Towry said.
The public safety budget, for instance, will be “in the red” by 2022, with only 4.86 months of operating budget, and will be in the negative in 2025.
Finance Director Brandon Neish has said the Budget Committee saw that shortfall during the budget process in the spring, but intentionally ignored it. The General Fund will be “in the red” by those metrics in 2025, at 5.53 months of operating budget, and will be down to 4.87 months in 2026: about the same at the library.
“We want to set ourselves up to be fiscally sound down the road,” Towry said.
Adams, who also serves on the SHFAD board and who is retired after serving as administrative assistant to former City Manager Craig Martin, said: “I’m confused why you’re concerned it will be in the red, instead of in the black in six years.”
She added that she doesn’t understand how a small amount of money could make “such a huge difference.”
“The only thing you proposed to cut was the library. I’m still confused why it hasn’t gone across the board,” she said.
Towry responded that the cuts “have been across the board since March.” he then outlined where several vacant positions across the city have remained unfilled: two to three positions at public works, a few positions at the police department, and a newly budgeted position at City Hall which was removed from the budget.
“The library is the only building that has no cuts other than the spending freeze,” he concluded.
Said Adams, who appeared frustrated: “Those positions have not been filled, I get that. But the only people who have actually been impacted is the library.”
She pointed out that Friends of the Library has filled significant gaps caused by the freeze to bring in new media for check-outs. And she again pointed to the large sitting balance the library has stockpiled.
“It’s just kind of hard, and maybe I’m missing the big picture, but it’s very hard to see, as an ordinary citizen, why the only people impacted are the part-time employees at the library.”
Towry responded that those in Public Works “would say they feel the weight of having to fill in those blanks,” and said similar for the Police Department. “The entire city has been adjusting and trying to accommodate for the unknown, because we just don’t know what the future holds.”
Jurney then asked how much the city was saving by cutting the hours for the library staff, and was told the savings are $2,500 a month.
“Is that worth it? Is that helpful for the overall budget of the city?” she asked.
“It’s a drop in the bucket,” Towry responded. “The reduction in the (staff) hours was related to the reduction in the library hours.”
Towry has told the New Era that the library’s open hours were reduced because the library staff couldn’t fill the full 36 hours. The current schedule is down to 26. Two of the staff had to reduce or change their availability to fill library hours because of their need to be home with their children after the schools shut down, Towry said.
He said that reduction was not his choice, but he did reduce the staff hours for the library a few weeks ago; around the same time as the layoffs. This came after one staffer requested five additional hours, which would have allowed the library to open back to its original 36 hours a week.
Towry said things may look better after the pandemic.
“As soon as we kind of clear through all of this, we’ll start to see an increase in the demand and the use and we will ramp up accordingly to what we can afford which right now looks very promising.”
He justified the move to cut hours by saying it’s a matter of perspective whether those cuts are worthwhile.
“There are a lot of members of the public who say we waste their tax dollars on a daily basis,” he said, adding that it’s “certainly not the popular decision, by any means.”
He said that the layoffs were part of a “managerial strategy” that would allow for negotiation. He also suggested that in six weeks, the city could reassess and “we’ll start moving into normal business.”
Adams told how her family business revenues would slow each February.
“In my mind, as the city manager or of finance, you have Nov. 1 coming up, you just had a levy pass. Money’s not coming in, money’s not coming in.”
You kind of got panicked, is that what happened?”
Towry said it’s not quite the same as that annual situation, because revenue has been low since July 1. He said he stopped being quite so concerned after the fourth property tax payment in November, which bumped revenues significantly higher.
Adams admonished him regardless. “It caused a lot of turmoil in people’s minds.”
Towry acknowledged that furloughs are “not a pleasant experience,” but said the city has been discussing layoffs since March, and that it developed systems to create a seamless transfer to state benefits in case staff were furloughed.
The city also funded each employee’s COVID leave bank at 100% of their salary as opposed to the 80% that was required by the Families First COVID Response Act, he said.
“We’re the only library that didn’t lay people off in the spring,” he said, adding that the staff hours were cut on the basis of a drop in revenues and a drop in user numbers. “The plan was not to lay everybody off, it was to have flexibility to negotiate moving forward.”
Hill said, “Circulation reduction becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when hours are reduced.”
He added that the community pushback came largely because shuttering the library would limit access to the internet and education for low-income people.
“I think it was perhaps an overreaction, or something that should have been delayed because of what’s going on with COVID,” he said.
Towry said he didn’t close the library; the freeze imposed by the governor was the only closure, and it was due to government mandate.
“We were the first library to do curbside,” he said. “We provided more service than any other community.”
Hill praised Library Director Rose Peda, who was absent from the meeting, as a boon for the Sweet Home Library.
“When Rose was hired the library was in the red, if I remember correctly. She’s done a good job of moving it into the black and being respectful of the funds,” he said. “I think people are still confused about what’s going on. They feel that something has been pulled out from under them that 73% of the community supported.”
Towry said the city “has been very supportive of (Peda’s) efforts” and supportive of the library, and Gerson said the council is similarly supportive.
“One misunderstanding is that levy money is tax money,” Gerson said. “If people don’t pay their taxes, then the levy money doesn’t come in.”
She added that she hopes for better communication between City Council, the Library Board, and the city.
“Thank you for supporting the library,” Hill said.