Special City Council meeting planned to address pay freezes

North Las Vegas City Council members tabled consideration of a multimillion city pay freeze this month, putting off action on roughly $12 million in long-suspended employee raises and benefits until a special City Council meeting set for June 18.

The freeze, first adopted to help city officials avert a $33 million “fiscal emergency” this time last year, suspended millions in raises owed to union police, firefighters and Teamsters per collective bargaining agreements signed in the mid-2000s.

The unanimous June 5 decision not to revisit those forced concessions came two days after passage of Assembly Bill 503, Assembly Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick’s controversial effort to ensure the city’s solvency.

The bill, derided by opponents as a bailout, allows city leaders to dip into a $31 million sewer repair fund to restore police, fire and other public safety services while picking up part of the tab on once browned-out libraries and recreation centers.

It also has a lot to do with City Council members’ earlier decision to push back a vote on last year’s union pay freezes, according to City Manager Tim Hacker.

“As we were working with (state) legislators, there was a concern raised about the appearance of having that on the agenda the first week in June while we were still working to get AB503 passed,” Hacker said. “They just asked if there was still time to review the item, and there is.”

Kirkpatrick, D-North Las Vegas, has called AB503 the city’s “last chance” to avert a state takeover of city finances.

Hacker was a little more cautious.

“I don’t see it that way, because there’s so many different triggers that come into play to justify the state coming in,” he said. “It’s a limited pot, and they only gave us four years to use these additional dollars, and we have to go back in two years to show how we’re using it.

Council members face an estimated $19 million deficit in fiscal year 2014, with city employee salaries accounting for more than two-thirds of overall expenses.

City officials now look set to pay down a chunk of this year’s $14.5 million general fund deficit using sewer repair funds, leaving a combined $4 million in red ink in the city’s library and public safety funds.

With city reserves exhausted — and steep declines in property tax revenue expected to outlive a four-year sunset provision written into AB503 — city leaders may be looking for another budget life raft as soon as 2017.

That means Hacker and others will still seek an urgent return to the bargaining table.

“We are functioning very well having redeployed our resources and using our manpower in a more efficient way,” outgoing Mayor Shari Buck said last month.

“In an ideal world, we’d be able to restaff, but with the way our budget looks right now, a lot depends on if (the unions) want to offer concessions.”

North Las Vegas City Council members plan to revisit the city’s fiscal emergency pay suspensions at 6 p.m. June 18 in the City Council chambers, 2250 Las Vegas Blvd. North.

City leaders look to reconvene for a regularly scheduled meeting at the same time June 19.

Contact Centennial and North Las Vegas View reporter James DeHaven at jdehaven@viewnews.com or 702-477-3839.