Roselle employees to take furloughs

As a $1 million revenue shortfall forces Roselle leaders to make budget cuts, residents will find that village hall is open to them one fewer day each month.

The Roselle board of trustees on Monday approved a measure that will require all 44 nonunion village employees to take one unpaid furlough day per month for the next 15 months starting Oct. 1, and will eliminate their cost of living increase for 2010.

The measure also will include a moratorium on Roselle's annual sick leave buyback program and eliminate management bonuses and increases for workers who have reached the top of their pay grade.

"Our goal is to provide the same level of service and try to have no more job cuts," said Village President Gayle Smolinski before the meeting. "To do that, everybody has to share the pain and take somewhat of a reduction."

While more than a dozen residents and village employees attended Monday's meeting to learn how their jobs would be affected, but none spoke publicly during proceedings.

Smolinski and Village Administrator Jeff O'Dell said the next step will be to approach union leaders and try to negotiate similar cuts for union employees in the village, since payroll accounts for 75 percent of Roselle's general operating fund.

"The unions have the right to collectively bargain over that," O'Dell said. "But if we can't get some concessions, we're going to have to do something. The board is prepared to make tougher decisions and that is staffing."

Residents already have seen some changes as Roselle suffers from falling revenue sources like sales tax, state shared income tax, building permits, and hotel and motel taxes. To help compensate this year, the village has delayed several capital purchases, maintained its Fourth of July fireworks but eliminated entertainment, and stopped offering brush pickup.

In July, Roselle also joined DuComm, or DuPage Public Safety Communications, switching all its 911 calls and emergency dispatches from village operations to the regional service. Officials said the move will save roughly $250,000 annually and improve service for Roselle but also required laying off eight union telecommunicators.

In total, Roselle has reduced its full-time work force from 116 to 104 employees. In addition to dismissing the telecommunicators, officials earlier this year laid off one employee while reorganizing the community development and finance departments; opted not to fill an open police sergeant position; and downsized the building inspector post to part-time after the full-time inspector retired in June.

"We went from being a lean machine to a bare-bones machine," Smolinski said at the meeting. But the cuts are meant to be temporary, she added.

"We are hoping we can all work through this together and get through this difficult time," Smolinski said.

To help curb revenue losses in the future, village officials said they will explore long-term solutions in meetings next month, like becoming a home-rule community that is exempt from Illinois tax increase caps, or putting a tax increase request on a future ballot. Smolinski and O'Dell both said it is too soon to elaborate on these options, since the board has not yet discussed them.

"There need to be compelling reasons to change your status to home rule, but I think this is a very compelling reason," Smolinski said.

Furloughs: Village also has reduced work force