New city budget too dependent on employee sacrifice

Balancing a budget is tricky. Balancing a city budget is trickier. Balancing a city budget during a pandemic when no one can predict exact lost revenue is enough to make even the calmest person want to hyperventilate into a paper bag.

City council has asked city employees to consider taking reductions in pay. Hourly employees can reduce hours (and thus pay) while keeping full-time benefits. Salaried employees can volunteer to take pay cuts. Anyone who can is encouraged to retire now. To our understanding, employees who agree to reductions will receive extra sick and vacation time. We respect that our councilors are trying to find a solution that preserves as many jobs as possible, leaving lay-offs as a last resort.

That said, most people have little disposable income to begin with — if they aren’t living paycheck to paycheck — so it will be difficult to find volunteers for pay cuts. We hope those who can afford to work fewer hours, bring home a little less money or retire early will choose to do so to prevent job losses. And we hope the city will compensate them generously for their sacrifice.

While we applaud the city’s efforts to preserve jobs, we do have concerns. According to the amended budget approved on first reading Tuesday, council intends to spend $15,500 to hire a facilitator for a planning session and to increase Assistant City Manager Emily Muzzarelli’s pay from $50.97 to $59.17/hour to be interim city manager until a new city manager is found.

Fifteen grand is a hefty price tag for someone to facilitate a strategic planning session to lay out short- and long-term goals for Morgantown. Why does the city need to pay an outsider to monitor the meeting? We’d hope our councilors know Morgantown well enough to articulate concise goals for our city’s future. If a facilitator is necessary, postpone the meeting or negotiate a lower price.

We’re also concerned about Muzzarelli’s pay raise. We’re sure she deserves every penny, but it’s unfair to ask other employees to take pay cuts and reduce hours and then give someone already making almost $51/hour a raise. The difference between her base salary and her pay increase is $8.20/hour. For the price of her raise, the city could keep on a minimum-wage employee no trouble.

Alternatively, give Muzzarelli her much-deserved raise and promote her to city manager for a year. This would save the costs of searching for a new hire and prevent the unnecessary travel of people in and out of Morgantown, particularly from out of state, as the spread of COVID-19 remains a concern. Next year, after revenues have hopefully increased, give her the full city manager’s pay ($67.37/hour). In the meantime, the city will save $17,056 for the year and benefit from a city manager already familiar with Morgantown.

Theoretically, our above concerns are “cost neutral” and covered by the city manager’s budget. But why not save the money where we can instead of asking employees to sacrifice their pay and possibly their jobs? It just doesn’t seem fair.