With a hiring freeze in place and a promise to eliminate 49 positions by April, Greensboro City Manager Mitchell Johnson indicated on Tuesday that the economic downturn foretells some tough decisions on the provision of city services.
District 2 Councilwoman Goldie Wells proposed lifting the hiring freeze, seconded by District 1 Councilwoman Dianne Bellamy-Small. After at-large Councilman Robbie Perkins suggested hearing a report from Johnson first, the council moved on without taking a vote on the matter.
“The morale is down,” Wells said of city employees. “People are feeling very badly about the fact that they don’t know whether they’re going to have their jobs or not.”
Perkins, who leads the Triad’s largest real-estate development company, provided some grim numbers that set apart Greensboro in a generally clouded national picture.
“I got some interesting statistics from one of our large local developers,” he said. “It’s a comparison of the large metropolitan areas in North and South Carolina as it relates to industrial space. And they’ve related population, jobs and gross domestic product. In the Triad area the scariest statistic was if you look at job growth. The Triad area is going to be growing at a .58 percent with Greensboro at .40 and Winston-Salem at 1. The national average on growth is .9. And so we’re under half the national average. But comparing that to Raleigh at 2.70, Durham at 3.10, Charlotte at 2.70 and Greenville, South Carolina at 2.5 percent we’ve got a ways to go.”
He continued: “The numbers are similarly mediocre in gross domestic product and population. We’re showing a 1.3 percent growth rate in population. Durham’s at 1.9. Raleigh’s at 3.8. Charlotte’s at 2.6. And that whole Greensboro [SIC]-Spartanburg area’s at 1.4. We’re really not where we need to be.” [This would seem to contradict a statement (scroll down to 8:10 p.m. in the meeting report) by Perkins earlier this month indicating that Greensboro’s outlook is healthy.]
Assistant City Manager Bob Morgan noted that the city has frozen hiring to free up funding to allow the police department additional resources to address a recent uptick in crime.
“We believe that if we maintain the current number of vacancies within the department we will reach our target necessary to support the police department,” he said. “However, this level of vacancy is not sustainable beyond six months. These vacancies have an additional effect of adding stress to the organization and inconvenience to the general public. At this time, however, I must complement the city staff for stepping up and carrying extra workload and providing service to the public with a smile. They’re doing a good job even though they don’t have all the resources that they might like to have.”
District 4 Councilman Mike Barber, a lean government proponent, insisted that the city has the ability to trim fat without affecting essential services.
“I know in our organization there are at least 1 percent underperforming,” he said. “This is not a big number.”
Johnson countered Barber by saying that eliminating the 49 positions will have an effect.
“I’m very confident based on what I’ve looked at that we will see some impact from these positions,” he said. “At the same time, if you consider what Councilman Perkins talked about, which had to do with the economic growth of our community, we have to be realistic and understand that the growth of the community is not going to sustain continued large tax increases. So it’s a tough job. We’re all going to have to do it together, and look at what are the best ways to reduce the costs and still provide the services that we need, understanding that in some cases it may reduce the level of service that we’re giving.”
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