City to Reconsider 10 Proposed Layoffs

The City Council will reconsider its decision to lay off 10 city employees--including three community workers who try to steer youths away from gangs--after encountering stiff opposition this week from residents and union officials.

Mayor Mike Mendez said the council will consider alternative spending cuts to balance its budget for the current fiscal year, which began July 1. The layoffs would save the city about $550,000 a year. Without the layoffs or other cuts, the city would be forced to dip into its $10-million reserve.

The City Council will begin final deliberations on the proposed 1991-92 budget next Tuesday.

In the meantime, the 10 employees already had been told that they would be laid off at the end of the month, and formal layoff notices are being sent out this week, said Assistant City Manager Sanford M. Groves. City officials said they could not remember another time when financial problems forced layoffs.

In addition to the layoffs, 24 vacant positions will remain unfilled for a savings of about $750,000.

Groves said the cutbacks are necessary to make up for lower-than-expected sales tax revenues and other income shortfalls because of the recession.

The 10 layoffs would be spread among various city departments. In addition to the three anti-gang community workers, they are a public works inspector, an accountant auditor, a cable television management assistant, a park ranger, a community services information officer and two clerk-typists.

Groves said the layoffs would not eliminate any city programs. But the loss of the 10 employees from the city’s 228-member work force will be felt. The city’s 2-year-old anti-gang program will be the hardest hit.

The five community workers who make up the program work with parents and youths to combat gang membership and violence.

About 30 residents attended the council meeting to urge the council to keep the community workers.

Esperanza Macias lives with her five children in a poor, gang-plagued area of Norwalk that is called “The One-Ways” because streets in the neighborhood are restricted to one-way traffic. Macias urged the council to keep the anti-gang program at full strength and to find other ways to cut spending.

“(The community workers) worked very hard for the community,” Macias said.

The cuts would come at a time when gang crime in Norwalk is on the rise. There have been five gang-related homicides in each of the last two years, and the number of gang-related robberies, felony assaults and drive-by shootings has increased to 230 this year from 175 in 1990, said Kevin Gano, the city’s public safety officer.

William F. Clark, president of the Norwalk City Employees Assn., told the council that the decision would create hardships for employees who are laid off.

Another union representative told the council that the spending cuts might have been avoided if the city had not spent so much money recently on landscaping, among other things.

“We can’t allow layoffs to be a safety valve,” said Tom Plell, district president of the International Assn. of Machinists. The Norwalk City Employees Assn. is part of the union.

Last year, the council boosted spending to maintain public landscaping from about $290,000 a year to $670,000. City officials plan to reduce that spending by at least $70,000 this year, Groves said.