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Mayor Franklin’s veto over additional spending increasing in the 2005 Atlanta budget stands and that’s a good thing.  While Atlanta does need to pay its employees well and stay competitive, the city can’t live beyond its means.

Many will complain that fire-fighters and other city employees received the short end of the stick as they receive only a 1% pay increase while the police received a 4% pay increase.  However, the police did not get everything they want either.  Officers wanted 100 new officers to be added to the force.  Mayor Franklin’s veto also covered this proposal.

Let’s acknowledge a couple of things up front:

1) Everyone wants better paid and trained city employees.

2) Everyone wants more police officers.

Paying the police officers more is a marginal cost question.  The city loses police officers quickly.  Suburban counties and the state police skim the best officers and offer them safer conditions and better pay.  The rate of return in investing more money in police salaries is greater in keeping officers longer than in other city agencies.

This being the case, why did Mayor Franklin say no to more officers and lower raises for everyone else?  First are the policy reasons.  She doesn’t know how much money she’ll have.  The city is expecting a small surplus this year.  Some of that needs to be sacked away in rainy day funds.  Other funds need to go budget issues that could really use more money now.  That can include city salaries.

There are also some clear political benefits.  Holding the line on salaries indicates to the legislature and the business community that Mayor Franklin is trying to run a more efficient tighter ship;  she will make sure that even as more demands come into the city, she’ll run a government that uses its resources wisely.

She’s gambling that the state will give her less trouble (especially since both houses and the governor are in the hands of the party not hers) and businesses will see the signs and keep their folks in town and possibly add new jobs.

She also can look those who are paying high property taxes squarely in the eye and say “See?  I’m holding down costs!  Now help me pay for sewers and re-elect me!!!”

So what should the Fire Fighters do?  First, demonstrate how increasing their salaries will directly benefit property tax payers in the city.  Second, accept Mayor Franklin’s commitment and hold her to something reasonable.  If the budget surplus is $50 million ask for a salary increase that will take only $10 million.  Then indicate that this a part of a long term program to bring salaries in line with other similarly sized cities.

Mayor Franklin gets re-elected with eased relations to those who can add to city revenue and the fire-fighters get a long term commitment to bring up their salary level.  That’s the ticket.

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 7th, 2004 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Stupid Development Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.