Council to discuss bonds, city pay cuts at budget meeting

The Maricopa City Council will look into ways to kick-start the construction of a recreation center while examining whether possible pay reductions for city staff are a viable cost-saving option as it continues to review next year’s proposed budget during a special meeting on Thursday.

After the council expressed a desire to put a teen center back on the budget, the city is considering issuing about $16 million in bonds to begin building a recreation and aquatics center in lieu of the previous plan to renovate the old library site for the teen center. The recreation and aquatics center is already part of Maricopa’s capital improvement plan with a start date of 2011, but the latest recommendation would accelerate its construction under the parks and recreation bond measure approved by voters in November.

During a budget and finance subcommittee meeting last Friday, Assistant City Manager Roger Kolman said a secondary property tax with a projected rate of 37 to 40 cents per $100 in assessed value – $37 for a house valued at $100,000 – would be required to service the bond debt.

Mayor Anthony Smith said he’s not fond of increasing residents’ tax burdens in an economic slump but the benefits of beginning construction on the recreation center this year may be too good to ignore.

“I certainly want to be sensitive to minimize the tax impact during this time, but I also want to move forward in the projects that are very important to the community and take advantage of lower land prices and lower construction cost,” he said. “We cannot miss an opportunity that we have at this time.”

The council will also mull whether pay reductions for city employees is a better route than furloughs to trim the budget. The suggestion of a four-hour-per-month furlough, which would effectively reduce city employees’ pay by 2.5 percent in fiscal year 2010 and save Maricopa about $360,000, was brought up two weeks ago, but council members have said they’d like to examine all options in an attempt to put $200,000 back in the budget for teen programs.

The task of trimming next year’s operating budget to $25.5 million is made more difficult by not knowing yet exactly what impact the state’s budget will have on Maricopa. Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a budget package that would strip cities of funds from vehicle license fees; Maricopa received about $800,000 in those fees for the current fiscal year.

The City Council will also finish reviewing the budget plan for each department at Thursday’s meeting, which starts at 6 p.m. at the Global Water Center.