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Employees: A Luxury Cities Can't Afford

Employees: A Luxury Cities Can't Afford image
Parent Issue
Day
25
Month
April
Year
1975
OCR Text

Can cities survive inflation?

That question is haunting a number of municipalities across the country, as New York teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, Detroit moves to lay off 1,500 employees, and even Ann Arbor is faced with cutbacks in services and employee layoffs.

Last week, Detroit Mayor Coleman Young announced the city was forced to layoff employees, including approximately 800 police officers as of May 1.

Disgruntled police officers claim the city will need those laid-off cops, particularly as summer approaches with little hope that the Detroit unemployment problem will lighten. Officials in the department have said emergency services will come first, and other lower priority areas will suffer.

Mayor Young, in announcing the layoffs, requested help from the federal government. Only with such assistance can cities solve their problems, he said.

In Ann Arbor, the layoffs are fewer, but the problems are basically the same. City Administrator Sylvester Murray presented City Council with a budget which calls for 43 employee layoffs as of July 1 in order to balance the 1975-76 city budget.

"For four straight years the administration has urged proposals for tax increases - property or income - to meet the costs of quality municipal government needs," said Murray. "Each year voters defeated the proposals. These defeats, in essence, set a policy to reduce services because economic inflationary costs exceeded the normal budget increases."

Among those increasing costs are utilities (gas, electric and phones), with rate increases raising costs over 10 percent.

"Council, of course, has the decision for determining final cuts," said Murray. "You (the Council members) have the obligation to modify this budget to reflect your opinions and priorities if they differ from that of the administrator."

The big question that remains is which party's priorities will prevail over city spending. If Stephenson remains in the mayor's seat, the city is likely to see the budget adopted in its present form. That includes a higher priority for police than for such departments as Human Rights or Building and Safety (both of which have cuts under the administrators budget.) The party which ends up with the mayor's scat in the coming month will have the final say in which programs get funded.