Kansas City Council members OK long list of budget cuts. Here’s how they affect you
Kansas City Council members took steps Wednesday to deepen a hiring freeze at City Hall, furlough workers and cut more than $23 million from this year’s budget.
The cuts, which are subject to full council approval, could mean fewer sidewalks get repaired and maintenance projects are postponed. The legislation would make cuts to police and fire and increase what the city charges for ambulance services. Council members put off a discussion over diminishing the city’s recycling program and mowing of vacant lots.
The Finance Governance and Public Safety Committee debated potential cost-cutting measures for more than an hour before voting unanimously in favor of $23.6 million in budget cuts that represent a 4.5% cut for most departments and smaller cuts for public safety. They also voted to freeze hiring for all positions making more than $15 per hour. That minimum was previously $20 per hour.
Committee members also directed city staff to come back next week with a plan to implement one-week furloughs for most non-public safety city employees.
All three issues are expected to be debated by the full council Thursday.
The cuts are meant to respond to a precipitous drop in some city revenues brought on by the spread of coronavirus, or COVID-19. But even with proposed cuts to most departments, the city expected to face a $202 million hole by the end of April 2026 if it didn’t make cuts to police and fire budgets, furlough workers and further restrict hiring. The city’s fiscal years run from May 1 to April 30.
In a memo to council members and the mayor’s office last week, the city’s Finance Department said those steps would be necessary to keep the city in the black over the coming years.
The cuts council members voted on Wednesday originated earlier this summer when City Manager Earnest Rouse asked the departments to each propose 4.5% cuts.
The cuts the committee endorsed Wednesday included $2 million from the Fire Department. But the department will get that money from other sources instead: about $2.2 million from charging users more for ambulance services and from the 1/4-cent sales tax voters passed in June. That tax, expected to generate $315 million over 15 years, is intended for capital expenditures.
Under the legislation, the Kansas City Police Department would lose $5.4 million, or a 2.25% cut.
In June, Deputy Chief Karen True told the Board of Police Commissioners that if the department had to cut 4.5%, it would need to eliminate 212 positions, 89 of which are vacant. The department plans to comply with the smaller cut but has not yet released a plan.
Council committee members also voted to cut vacant positions and customer service positions, halt truly nonessential travel and reduce capital maintenance projects.
The city was already saving money from canceled conventions, water parks and other events — which helped limit other cuts.
The city’s finance director, Tammy Queen, told the committee that staff would look at having employees take a day or hours of furlough at a time rather than losing half of one of their biweekly paychecks.
The city’s head of solid waste, Michael Shaw, called it “unconscionable” to furlough trash and recycling collectors and lower-wage city workers.
“These men and women have not taken a day off, and to ask them to take five days off without pay — they live check-to-check now,” Shaw said. “It blows my mind, it breaks my heart that I’m hearing this on behalf of my staff.”
Council members decided to delay voting on two of the more divisive cuts: whether to go from weekly to biweekly recycling pickup and eliminate mowing services at vacant lots and houses owned by the Land Bank of Kansas City.
Those cuts were suggested by the Neighborhoods and Housing Services Department.
Councilwoman Melissa Robinson, 3rd District, pushed her colleagues not to cut mowing at those properties, noting that they lie disproportionately in her East Side district. She said that letting those lots get overgrown would attract rodents and that blight is directly linked to the city’s violent crime problem.
“I’m just asking my colleagues to understand that the livable conditions in the 3rd District should also be considered as it relates to health and safety,” Robinson said.
Others worried about the potential for adding recyclables to fast-filling landfills in the area.
Shaw said he didn’t believe cutting recycling would save as much as the city believed because the city’s contract with private haulers requires four months’ notice before cutting service. Since the city started its curbside recycling program in 2004, he said, it has diverted 70,000 tons of waste from landfills.
To cut it, he said, would be “kicking the can down the street.”
Councilwoman Heather Hall, 1st District, pushed the committee to consider more creative alternatives, such as renting out extra building space the city owned and moving departments that work offsite into vacant space in City Hall.
“Why are we only cutting the things that hurt our citizens the most?” Hall said. “They’re still paying their earnings taxes. They’re still paying their property taxes. And we’re taking away all the things that benefit them.”
Terrence Nash, a resident of South Kansas City and former City Council candidate, spoke in opposition to the legislation. He said the city’s budget problem isn’t anything new and called the cuts “outrageous,” noting they would affect essential city services.
“This perpetuates Kansas City’s regressive tax policies and their no-developer-left-behind program at the expense of the citizens of Kansas City,” Nash said.
This story was originally published August 12, 2020 at 3:41 PM.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly included a money-saving proposal the city decided not to pursue. The city will not sell off park lands.
