Budget, day one

The SCVWD Board started its budget workshop today. This morning was taken up by a financial overview, presented by Peter Ng. Here are the highlights.

The Board was pretty accepting of these numbers, although there were questions about the ability of the District to spend the unprecedented capital budget proposed this year.

After lunch, the tone changed. The draft budget asks for $2.4 million in overtime. There was, to put it mildly, strong sentiment among the directors that the number of hours of overtime requested is excessive, especially given some of the justifications for overtime offered by staff: covering for employees on vacation, evening public meetings, and covering for unfilled positions. Several directors made the point that vacations should be planned well in advance, including coverage; that attendance at public meetings are part of the job. Director Estremera made a motion to cut overtime in half, which passed with two noes, from Directors Judge and Wilson.

The question of using overtime to make up for unfilled positions led to an equally heated discussion of why it takes so long to fill positions at the District. Each Director stated that it is unacceptable that it takes six months to hire a new staff member. Discussion of temporary employees led to a recommendation that successful temps be allowed to compete equally with regular employees for open positions at the District.

When staff was questioned on these issues, the HR person repeatedly said that the bargaining units would have to be consulted before any changes were made. The Board did not respond to this directly, and I think that what was really going on is a philosophical conflict between most of the Board and the represented employees.

The discussion then turned to the amount requested for consultants. Despite the much larger sums involved ($17.3 million for operations and $24.9 million for capital projects) the rhetoric was less heated, although $17.3 million for consultants for operations raised eyebrows. The lists of consultant projects are at the end of the PDF, but not ordered by either project or cost. The Board asked for more information on Thursday.

Finally, the travel budget for employees not only was significantly higher than previous years, but it also came out that it was calculated by multiplying the number of employees by $1,200, giving every employee the chance to attend a conference or a class. The Board sent this idea right back.