Iola council eyes ways to trim spending

Iola City Council members will continue to look for potential budget saving measures, with two big ticket items — cutting manpower, and altering the city’s consultant contract with a federal lobbying group — garnering most of the attention.
The measures were brought to the table Monday by City Administrator Carl Slaugh.
The subsequent discussion showed how difficult some cuts may be.
Because such a large portion of the city’s budget goes toward salaries, any significant cuts in funding would obviously require fewer employees.
Slaugh noted the city already has cut staff in the past. For example, the city had 119 employees in 2004, a number which dropped six out of the next eight years.
Even with the Fire Department’s recent expansion — necessary to operate a countywide ambulance service — they still have 12 fewer employees now than 11 years ago, Slaugh said.
The city also has changed full-time positions to part-time for seasonal work in the Parks Department and water and electric departments.
“You’re trying to keep enough employees to do work in summer, without having so many you don’t know what to do with them in the winter,” Slaugh said.
The explanation didn’t hold water for Councilman Gene Myrick, who said he’d like to see each department cut its budget by 3 percent.
“School districts across the state are having to save money,” Myrick said. “There’s going to come a time when cities and municipalities will have to do the same thing. I think 3 percent is a workable number.”
“If you’re a department that already cut your own department down, it may be harder for you to make those savings,” Councilman Jon Wells responded. “I hate to manage blanket statements like that.
“Our electric and water departments have fixed costs,” Wells said. “It’s a bit hard to reduce 3 percent of your electric department when you have those fixed costs.”
Councilman Steve French, meanwhile, was leery of winter furloughs for seasonal employees because of the high demand for jobs elsewhere.
“We’ll be very hard-pressed to find trained individuals to work with us in the summer, and it may be even more costly,” he said.

MEANWHILE, Slaugh urged the council to end its consultant contract with Van Scoyoc Associates. The city has hired Van Scoyoc as its lobbying firm since 2007.
The initial fee of $60,000 annually was cut to $45,000 in 2013.
Slaugh said that money can be spent elsewhere now that federal earmark funds have largely been eliminated.
“It’s time to cut the losses and move on,” he said. “To me, it’s a waste of money.”
French disagreed, noting Van Scoyoc was integral in Allen County Regional Hospital’s recent pact to provide a sleep study clinic for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
“The next step is pursue a full VA clinic at Allen County,” French said.
He said Van Scoyoc has continued to work behind the scenes in finding housing grants.
“This is just a tidbit,” French said. “If anything, we should use them more. We haven’t been apprised very well of their involvement.”
Mayor Joel Wicoff asked for a representative to give the council a rundown of Van Scoyoc’s work.
“That would help everybody understand,” he said.

SLAUGH touched on other options.
— Outsourcing some duties, such as operating the city’s swimming pool, has been tried recently by Humboldt, but was poorly received by the public.
“Where I’ve seen other cities turn that over to a private company, it’s where they’ve had numerous problems and don’t feel like they can get qualified staff,” Slaugh said. “Generally, it’s better to run it yourself.”
Likewise, Slaugh said the city occasionally fields an offer from a private company to operate Iola’s utility services.
“I have not seen one that would put us in a better position than by doing it ourselves,” he said.

“WE’RE still making efforts to cross-train our employees,” Slaugh said. “A number of cases where, depending on what’s going on, we share our workload, which helps us get things done.”
For example, electric department employees assisted with installation of the recently completed sidewalk along North State Street.
As far as delaying routine maintenance, sometimes you can do that effectively,” Slaugh said. “You can delay vehicle purchases if they’ve been maintained well.”