WESTMINSTER : Last Year’s Budget Gets Final Cleanup

The City Council has amended the city’s $26-million general-fund budget for fiscal 1993-94 to reflect expenses that were not anticipated.

The city spent $1.7 million more than it budgeted, according to Finance Director Brian Mayhew, including $1 million in payments for unused sick leave and vacation time that employees have converted to cash.

In addition, the Fire Department exceeded its overtime budget by nearly $670,000, and the city manager’s office incurred an additional $35,000 expense, Mayhew said.

Those expenses must be reflected in the “final numbers” for the 1993-94 fiscal year, which ended Thursday, Mayhew said.

“Except for the size, this is fairly routine,” Mayhew said of the council action last week, adding that the budget is always “cleaned up” before the start of a new fiscal year.

He said that in adopting the 1993-94 budget, city officials assumed that medical expenses for employees would be reduced and that employees would not be allowed to convert unused sick leave to cash.

Also, city officials said overtime expenses in the Fire Department would be reduced by 95% after the council approved the department’s reorganization in July.

Contract negotiations with employee groups about changes in benefits are still going on, officials said, and a lawsuit by the firefighters union delayed a Fire Department reorganization.

Although a Superior Court judge ruled against the firefighters union, the delay caused overtime expenses at the Fire Department to soar above the budgeted $75,000, officials said.

Acting City Manager Robert J. Huntley said that city efforts to put limits on how much unused sick leave and vacation time that employees can convert to cash had the opposite effect.

“People who had a whole bunch of stuff accumulated through the years were converting them” to cash, Huntley said.

He said that city officials hope to set limits on the current practice of unlimited cash payments for unused sick leave and vacation time as part of the effort to control city expenses.