Editor:
The issuance of layoff notices to Sweet Home library staff, and subsequent withdrawal of those notices deserves careful scrutiny, as the background could spell repeats of this action.
It is important to understand the history leading up to this event. In the recent history of the library and police levies (at least from 2000-19) all levy money was used exclusively by the library and police departments to fund and operate those departments (each from its own exclusive voter-approved levy).
Then, during the 2020 fiscal year budget process, the City of Sweet Home used an inventive definition for “library and police operations” to include city administrative and Finance Department services as a function of library and police operations.
This budget was approved in the spring on 2019 (I attended all but one of the budget committee meetings, and the public hearing on this issue).
Based on this new definition of “police and library operations” they created a fund (Internal Services Fund) that all departments had to pay into for the Administration and Finance departments of the city.
This action created a vehicle that the city felt would pass a legal test to use levy funds differently than they had done since before the year 2000.
After approving this money- appropriating “vehicle,” the city began charging the Library and Police departments for services provided them by the city Administration and Finance departments.
The city insisted it was only fair to force these two exclusively levy-funded departments to pay a percentage of their levy-derived funding to the city. So began a process whereby the levies were no longer “helping fund the police and library,” but instead are now “helping fund city administration.”
This is an important distinction.
The reasons stated for issuing the layoff notices was because of a two-month projected shortfall in library reserves being possible five years from now. Five years from now!
For the first time this century, the city took $47,343 from the library levy in FY 2020 for city finance and administrative “services.” They will take a similar amount for each of the next five years, totaling nearly $250,000.
The city said that the layoffs were a “last resort.” Well, it seems to me that the layoff notices were actually a first, and immediate resort from this so-called panic-led-decision.
A “first resort” should have been to consider if maybe the city might be taking too much of the library levy money for finance and administration funding, and to have reduced it by an amount to cover the feared projected shortfall of library reserves five years from now.
Budgets are road maps, and adjustments are made where needed, when needed. For the library and staff to be targeted in this manner was not justified by the evidence presented.
There were several avenues that could have been explored to address a projected future shortfall that clearly were not explored, including simply waiting until all property taxes were paid.
The city used the terms “fairness” and “best practices” to try to sell their actions of dipping into levy funds in 2019 and prospectively.
The layoff notices were neither “fair” nor a “best practice.” I suspect the notices were more of a trial balloon to see how much the voters will tolerate. Some Sweet Home city officials have been all too willing to bend state law and city code of conduct rules to achieve their goals (examples can be provided).
Make no mistake, the city manager does not operate independently and he does little without the tacit approval the majority of the City Council.
Thanks to every concerned citizen who contacted the city to protest the unfair targeting of the library and library staff, and to those who spoke out publicly and at City Council meetings.
And a special thank you to Library Director Rose Peda, and to Pastor Kevin Hill, a Library Advisory Board member, for their spot-on remarks regarding the city’s action, as was reported in the pages of The New Era.
Gary Jarvis
Sweet Home