Joanne Putzier, an employee with the Burlington Parks, Recreation & Waterfront Department, was months away from a planned retirement to cap her 43-year career with the city.
But Thursday, she and 17 other city employees were laid off, part of a cost-saving measure by the city to close an $8 million gap in next year’s budget.
The affected employees were offered 60 days’ pay and health insurance through the end of July, city officials said. But Putzier and others attending Monday night’s City Council meeting decried the process as “degrading.”
“After 43 years, on Thursday, I was met with, ‘Hand in your stuff, you’re done,'” she said.
Melissa Cate, a fellow parks employee with more than 30 years of service who was also laid off, said at Monday’s council meeting that the process felt “disrespectful, insulting and humiliating for those of us who have so loyally served this city and who love our jobs.”
Progressive Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, one year into her three-year term, has been tasked with managing a painful financial situation. This budget season marks the second straight year the first-term mayor is responding to a multimillion-dollar budget gap.
The city last year closed a $14.2 million budget gap in part by increasing existing taxes and fees and using nearly $4 million in one-time funds. That was not an option this year.
“I do say this with great honesty and humility that this has been the hardest week of being the mayor of the city of Burlington,” Mulvaney-Stanak told city councilors Monday night. “A lot of things have kind of come to the head about how our structural budget challenges, as a city, for many years now, have led us to this point of making very difficult decisions.”
During a Monday morning press conference, Mulvaney-Stanak said the city had added nearly 100 positions to the general fund over a 10-year period, including 37 positions created with one-time funding sources through federal or state grants or pandemic relief funding.
The city’s financial situation required officials to reduce programs, services and staffing, she said. Continuing to rely on municipal property tax rate increases to fund these would be unsustainable.
“It is not good for taxpayers, it is not good for the employees holding that position, and it overpromises what we’re able to afford as a city,” Mulvaney-Stanak said at Monday morning’s press conference.
The mayor’s budget proposal, presented to the City Council on Monday night, would close next fiscal year’s $8 million gap in part through job cuts, department mergers and other cost-saving measures, without significantly raising taxes, officials said.
Of the 25 positions eliminated, seven were currently vacant. There were 12 American Federation of State, County and Municipal union positions and 13 non-union positions eliminated in total.
The city’s parks department was the most impacted, with eight employees and two division directors laid off.
“Our recreation division was decimated,” Cate, the now-former division director of recreational facilities for the parks department, said at the meeting.
The city cut positions in several other departments, such as the Community & Economic Development Office and in the Business & Workforce Development department. Five vacant, non-officer positions, as well as the public information officer position, were cut from the Burlington Police Department.
The city is slashing spending by merging the Community & Economic Development Office and Business & Workforce Development. On Monday morning, the mayor said one department head position had been eliminated as part of that merger, but she did not disclose which department head.
Kara Alnasrawi, the Business & Workforce Development director, was present at the Monday morning press conference, while Brian Pine, the CEDO director, was absent. Pine did not return a voicemail seeking comment.
Rightsizing
Altogether, the jobs, mergers and other cuts amounted to $3.9 million in savings, officials said. Absent the cuts, a property owner of a $500,000 home would have paid $325 more per year in property taxes.
Instead, the $108.3 million budget comes with “modest” tax increases for the city’s public safety, parks and highway taxes, according to Katherine Schad, the city’s chief administrative officer. As a result, the same owner of a $500,000 property would pay $35 more in municipal property tax per year.
City property taxes increased by 6% in fiscal years 2023 and 2024, and by 11% last year — translating to a $190, $220 and $401 increase on a hypothetical $500,000 home.
“We’ve worked hard to try and stabilize that, understanding that affordability is critical to the residents of Burlington,” Schad said.
The city did make some investments in next year’s budget. A new “senior advisor” position was created to “help the city create an innovative strategy around housing production of all types,” Mulvaney-Stanak said.
Funding for 10 more police officers was included, as well as an investment into the Howard Center’s Street Outreach Team.
But Mulvaney-Stanak’s budget proposal was not without criticism. Some, including Ward 7 City Councilor Evan Litwin, questioned whether the city was cutting enough.
“As difficult as it is to say, we need to actually work harder to reduce this budget, and I’m not sure we are necessarily rightsizing the government at this moment,” Litwin said.
Litwin, along with Council President Ben Traverse and Councilor Mark Barlow, expressed their disappointment in the timeliness of the proposal, saying councilors had been left in the dark.
“I find it frustrating these decisions were made before the City Council has reviewed and given any feedback,” Barlow said. “It’s hard for the City Council to be a good partner in this work if information is not made available as it’s ready, and if we are not asked for our input before decisions are made.”
The city will be on a tight timeline to sift through the budget proposal. The mayor will have until June 15 to present a final budget, and the council will have to pass a budget before the fiscal year begins in July.
Other councilors questioned how the mayor and her staff gave notice to the 18 affected employees. Ward 6 City Councilor Becca Brown McKnight said she was taken aback by comments made by the former parks department employees.
“To hear them talk about what they went through, it felt like I was listening to somebody who worked at Walmart or something, where people are not valued and where 40-year employees are walked out the door,” McKnight said. “That is just straight up not right. That was really troubling, and it brings up a lot of questions.”
Mulvaney-Stanak defended the process by noting it was uncharted territory for the city. Thursday marked the first time in recent memory that the city was forced to conduct mass layoffs.
The city, she said, had little policy guidance to navigate a formal reduction-in-force process, making it “extremely difficult to have to navigate this very stressful, impactful moment in the city’s history without a roadmap about how to do this as an organization.”
Colby Delaire, president of the local American Federation of State, County and Municipal union, said at the meeting he was appreciative that the mayor and her staff limited the number of job cuts being proposed.
Still, he said, “even one cut is too many for us.”
“Really, the only thing for us is looking for some sort of commitment that in the future we will not do this again,” he said. “We need to be adamant that we do not do this again.”
