Employee Cost Savings Suggestions

Thank you for your cost savings suggestions and ideas. Suggestions submitted multiple times, such as 4 day work week/10 hour days, have only been posted to this page one time. All ideas have been forwarded to appropriate staff. You may not see instant implementation of your ideas; however, these suggestions are helpful for Departments to consider for current and future budgets. Please continue to submit your suggestions.

Updates from September 23, 2008 City Council Meeting:

• $1.6 million in projects were postponed or cancelled.
• Mayor Chavez announced that the Councilmembers will participate in the furlough, and they will no longer have meals at Council meetings.

Updates from September 30, 2008 City Council Meeting:

• City Council approved furloughs to be implemented as each bargaining group agrees. Unrepresented/Confidential furlough deduction is effective with the October 7th pay check.
• City Council approved the proposed furlough calendar.

Updated November 6, 2008 - new items in bold:

• Employees pay for healthcare.

• Stop investing so much money downtown. It's not increasing revenue.

• Offer voluntary furlough or offer to let people work reduced hours for reduced pay.

• Eliminate unnecessary positions in the Administration Division of all departments.

• Follow the City of Tracy's example and work 80 hours in 9 days, closing every other Friday to save on overhead.

• Reduce number of deputy city managers.
  

• Reduce number of program managers or downgrade the position.
  

• No more City paid lunches/dinners for meetings.
  

• No more City paid coffee supplies.
  

• Do away with take home vehicles.
  

• Postpone move to WAMU or sell WAMU building.
  

• Stricter overtime rules and implementation.

• Stop having lunch at the taxpayer's expense to conduct ordinary business. Look at the payments to Angelina's and the Commercial Exchange.

• Stop providing meals to the City Council. It was okay when they didn't get paid, but now it is not necessary.

• Postpone education reimbursements, unless the employee is in the last semester, until the budget is in better shape.

• Stop providing expensive lunches for recruiting purposes.

• Mandatory furlough for (30) days for Mayor, City Manager, Chief of Police, each Department Head. Add the salary up for those few positions will result in savings.

• Make certain the cost of work not done during furlough days is not done later on overtime.

• Work four ten-hour days 7:00 am to 6:00 pm; close all City offices on Fridays. Provides increased customer access. The entire state of Utah did it successfully. It saves on electricity and vehicle fuel without reducing productivity.

• The furlough idea is worth it, if it will keep employees from being layed-off.

• Make certain that the people actually doing the work are not impacted by the lay-offs and furloughs.

• Work 4 day work week with 10 hour days. Have every other Friday off just like the City of Tracy. City can save on energy cost.

• Provide a lucrative golden hand shake that will encourage employees to retire early.

• Use City inspectors for inspection instead of subcontracting work out.

• Reduce energy use by powering down buildings when they are not occupied, i.e., furlough days and weekends.

• Close the Libraries, or, at least, reduce or limit hours.

• Ask employees to volunteer at events to save on overtime costs.

• If lay-offs become a necessity, start with non-revenue producing departments.

• Provide Police Department Community Service Officers with specific daily purposes. Driving around without specific duties or purposes is a waste of fuel.
  

• Surcharge employees that smoke. Let them pay a surcharge for their health insurance if they insist on smoking and increasing the cost incurred by all.

• Close the Weston Ranch Police substation.

• Look at the ratio of supervisory positions to staff in all departments to trim the top-heavy, higher-salary positions.

• Require medical retirements for ongoing workers compensation cases. Where full-time employees can no longer work a full-time schedule, and/or can no longer perform their duties as their job specifications require.

• Immediately eliminate the stipend to Paragary's.

• Temporarily suspend vehicle reimbursements for trips under 15 miles.

• Provide employees with one telephone, land line or cellular, not both.

• Telecommuting/hoteling to reduce the number of desks needed by allowing employees to share workspace. Improve employee morale by reducing the need to drive to and from work.

• Cross-train employees to allow shifting of resources.

• Eliminate the Chavez and Birthday Holidays.

• Take WAMU to "warm shell" status and halt any further actions related to moving until such time that we are fiscally able to complete the build-out and move in all departments.

• Reward those who do not use sick leave with some other incentive.

• Reduce cost of Code Enforcement certified mailings by using USPS electronic receipts.

• Make all Analysts and Accountant series exempt.

• Sell what is not immediately saving or making us money. Use the upper floors of the SEB and close City Hall.

• Close every other Friday and work longer hours to compensate.

• Eliminate food for elected and staff that is paid for by the city

• If there are any new car purchases on the horizon, freeze for now. Consider purchasing used cars.

• Eliminate Corp Yard Stores; shop at Costco or Wal-mart.

• Contract out CBM. Most handymen can fix minor building problems and big problems are farmed out to contractors anyway.

• Stop yard-services on heavy and light apparatus. This can be done at local dealerships and auto shops. When problems can’t be fixed at the yard, they already send the work out to local businesses.

• PD and FD should not lease vehicles from the yard. This is subsidizing a losing service.

• Sell the Civic Auditorium, Washington Mutual building, golf course, etc.

• Hold off on building the $20 million dollar marina.

• Reduce upper-level management: one city manager and one deputy city manager; one police chief and one assistant chief; and one fire chief and one deputy chief.

• Put all Police Officers on the street downtown, walking the beat. People feel safer, they spend money, and we are out of debt faster.

• Eliminate prevailing wage.

• Contractors, consultants and any other non-city worker should let go.

• Holidays are a time of year when it slows down anyway; a good time for furloughs.

• Change the classification all supervisors / managers to exempt.

• Suspend all pay raises.

• Market western events and rodeo well in advance for greater opportunity for success.

• Cancel the Asparagus Festival, as it costs the City too much in Police overtime and other support services.

• The City of Stockton is currently paying for the expertise of Randal Funding & Development, Inc. a company well known for finding and writing grants. Very few people know the service is available. This service is not being used to its full potential.

• Energy savings: eliminate multiple refrigeration units in one building, and designate only one refrigerator per building; turn off the air conditioner during winter months, turn down the heater during winter months and wear warmer clothing in the office during the winter months; eliminate vending machines for sodas and snacks; keep all office equipment that is not in constant use on a power strip, and have that power strip turned off when not in use; designate black screen savers for all PC's whenever they are not being used; unplug multiple pieces of office equipment that are not often simultaneously in use, such as copy machines and analog typewriters; share one copy machine/typewriter per office floor.

• Plan more furlough days for half the employees at a time, so that City Offices can remain open.

• Limit janitorial services to once a week. Have employees clean their own areas and throw personal garbage nightly into designated large bins.

• Increase fees for copying records, particularly for Police reports.

• For those that need a cell phone for the job, the City should provide a minimum allowance - $35. Any additional service wanted such as a blackberry, should be paid directly by the employee.

• Hold Council meetings every other week, instead of weekly. This would cut down on the amount of staff time needed each week to prepare an agenda, and would reduce errors.

• Review existing contracts to ensure compliance and that the City is receiving all payments.

• Starting with new employees, change the health care plan to provide for one employee and one dependent. If coverage is required for additional family members, the employee should pay.

• Suspend salary increases for those promoted after May 2008; rollback wages for those who have received increases.

• Reduce salaries for everyone who received a pay raise from the last salary survey, back to their pre-survey pay.

• If the furlough idea becomes mandatory, make it an inverse/proportional structure: The amount of unpaid days off is directly related to how many years of service each employee has accrued. The more seniority an employee has, the fewer unpaid days off they take, the less seniority an employee has, the more unpaid days off they must take, with a cap on the maximum.

• As part of the VSP package, offer early retirement with full medical benefits to employees that have been with the City more than 10 or 12 years instead of 15.

• Cut A, B managers and city council salary back to the year 2000.

• Change from a "spend it or lose it" concept to a more practical and logical type of fiscal responsibility that recognizes departments that make adjustments to save money.

• Institute a "profit sharing" concept with departments that save money without sacrificing quality of service. Departments that show fiscal responsibility should be rewarded while those that fail to remain within budget should be penalized or reprimanded in some fashion.

• Most of our Engineering work is contracted out and could be done in-house to save money, with the proper equipment and training.

• Offer voluntary furlough time, to be purchased in bulk (i.e.: 40 hr increments) and calculated and deducted over a 12 month span. Softening the financial impact to the employee and increasing interest and participation.

• Suspend spending on IT, as the technology proposed is not needed at this time. Money should be directed to hardest hit areas, such as Libraries and Recreation programs.

• Stop Sunday hours at the Library; close earlier on other days.

• Purchase office supplies from stores, such as Costco, Sam's Club and WalMart, instead of Office Depot.

• Buy more fuel efficient and dependable vehicles for the city.

• Discontinue the Library newsletter and quit printing flyers on glossy paper.

• Renegotiate Police and Fire contracts so that they get 2 percent.

• Look at the Fire Department budget to determine if staffing quotas can be adjusted to reduce overtime.

• Consider closing a Fire Station.

• Consider a long-term strategy to lower the percentage of Police management vs. officers on the street.

• Ask all departments to submit a plan for delaying non-essential budget purchases until the fiscal crisis has ended.

• Janitorial service during the day, instead of at night.

• Evaluate all Departments for appropriate staffing levels.

• Focus on preventing lawsuits and reduce number of Attorneys.

• Review all contracts to make sure we still need them and/or are making full use of them.

• Lowest bidder often leads numerous change orders, resulting in higher cost.

• Have Recreation staff manage all City facilities currently managed by IFG; end contract with IFG.

• Improve risk management program to reduce number of accidents.

• Delay the City move to WAMU.

• Hold off on implementing the telephone conversion to VOIP.

• Encourage electronic routing of documents.
  

• Extend existing lists promotion and jobs lists until the city gets back on its feet or the list is exhausted.

• Pay full medical costs for employee only. Charge a premium for each dependant or group of dependants covered (i.e., spouse, spouse + one, spouse + two).

• Allow employees to opt out of medical coverage if they have other coverage, and give them a small percent of the savings as an incentive.

• Freeze the wages of all employees at current level with no COLA or step increase for two or three years.

• Start Council meetings at 6pm to eliminate the need for providing food to the Council & staff, or, provide healthy finger foods/snacks which may be less costly.

• Purchase less costly water for city.

• Stop spending and construction of City facilities.

• Reduce the number of Directors and managers or leave positions vacant.

• Look at CALPERS medical/Lifetime Medical to see if it would be more cost effective. Saving could be less cost per employee/dependent and no or less cost for administration. These saving could be used to increase PERS to 2.5%. This may be enough incentive for more retirements, and even more saving to the General Fund.

• Back out of the purchase of Ralph White's property: Savings = $3 million

• Eliminate the Enterprise Zone, so Departments, such as business license and CDD, can get the revenues.

• Reinstate the mandatory requirement for City employees to live within 48 miles of the City to improve response time.

• Eliminate take home vehicles; it may be cheaper to reimburse employees when they are called in.

• Reassign the assembling of the City Council Agenda to the Clerk’s Office.

• Create plans for short-term and long-term projects. Clearly identify timelines and deliverables to avoid projects dragging on and issuing Change Orders.

• Re-evaluate the use of one-time funds (i.e., grants) to determine how will grant funded services and projects be funded in following years.

• Reduce printed materials.

• Negotiate purchases so that sellers cover shipping costs.

• Reduce walk-in customer service.

• Pay bills on-time so that no late charges are incurred.

• Discontinue the educational incentive pay where employees are paid for having a degree if their position doesn't require it.

• Save even the smallest amounts. At first glance, a single section within a department finding a way to cut a mere $25 from their operating budget may seem like a futile attempt, but if 40 sections could cut at least an additional $25, collectively the City could save more.

• The lowest paid employee affected by the proposed furlough would forfeit $900 of their pay to help the City reduce the $16+ million deficit.

• There should be an immediate freeze on all “new salaries and all related benefits, and any “out-of-class” pay created by the July 2008 re-organization implementation (all new positions and all the “back-fill” promotions created by the vacancy of any previous positions). The salaries should be frozen at their previous rates until such a time the City has a budget that can support this fiscally without any adverse impact to current personnel (on staff prior to July 1, 2008) and any City program or service.

• Investigate the CAL-PERS "Golden Handshake" option. Retiring top-step personnel and hiring at entry level pay would save money.

• Reverse the reorganization.

• Those employees thousands of hours of sick leave and less than 2 years from retirement: should be given the option to use 100 percent of their sick time and vacation time until their retirement date. During that time, the employee would not accrue any further sick leave, PERS time, vacation time or other leave, and only receive health benefits while they are exhausting accrued time. If under retirement age, they would freeze their PERS until they have the required age (providing their sick and vacation time covers them until that time - kind of like buying age). The City benefits by not having to pay one large sum of money when the employee leaves at normal retirement, no further sick time or vacation time, and not having to pay into PERS.

• Drop the "Class One" Fire Department status. This rating results in high staffing costs and very little savings on fire insurance.

• Give employees the option to take voluntary furlough days right now. Some of us would do it and it might make it easier for those who have a tighter budget by reducing the number of mandatory days in the future.

• Take home cars should not leave the city limits. Allow out of town employees to park at the nearest fire station.

• Eliminate Assistants where other managers can share in those responsibilities.

• Ask the City Council to take a salary reduction or no salary.

• Look into phasing out non-specialized Pool Cars and make an agreement with a 'carsharing' organization (i.e. Zipcars, et al) to provide that service to City staff, as well as the citizens of Stockton. Cars can be reserved via the internet and would only incur a cost when needed. Also, City would only be responsible for gas, not for maintenance.

• Look into phasing out non-specialized Pool Cars and make an agreement with a Car rental organization (i.e. Hertz - which is a few blocks from City Hall, et al) to provide that service to City staff. The City would be 'off the hook' for auto maintenance. Both of these suggestions could help people who use alternative commuting methods (carpool, bus, bike, etc.) - or are considering it - but find that traveling on city business makes it difficult for them.
  

• Postpone WAMU move to a better time.

• Ask employees if they are willing to go to a lower step in pay, with a commitment from the City to return them to former pay rate, when times are better.

• Eliminate positions where we have third party contracts in-place performing the same duties.

• Enact the Golden Handshake. The City already has a written contract with PERS to do so. It might cost money, but it is over a 20 year period instead of dishing out up to $50K right now to have people leave voluntarily. Many employees are signing up for the VSP in an attempt to save other jobs, and many have been long time dedicated city employees.
  

• Increase reserve police, fire and any other volunteers.

• The city should have followed the precedent set by our governor with the state budget crisis by laying off all part-time and temporary workers.

• Fire MOU says must maintain constant and minimum staffing - except for extraordinary circumstances. The current fiscal crisis should be adequate rational to lower the minimum staffing level.

• The annual funding that is provided to the Chamber of Commerce - Stockton Convention and Visitors Bureau should be eliminated. This would be a cost saving of $112,000. Also, the Sports Commission should be made a part of the Stockton CVB.

• If HR does not have an adequate budget to schedule enough classes for all city workers, including MUD, then why is Human Resources offering courses that are not skills required, example CPR/FA.

• Discontinue using PD CSOs to deliver Council packets each week.

• Now that the Council has given up its pre-meeting meal, when are the department heads/managers going to follow suit about lunch meetings on the City's tabs? When are "free coffee supplies" charged to the City's accounts going to be stopped?

• The Library recently hired a full time development officer. This position should be evaluated to see how much money the officer has generated for the library; it is not more than the total compensation package, the position should be eliminated

• For water and sewer bills, isolate or identify those that have signed up for automatic payments. DON'T send out return envelopes. We can save trees and reduce supplies costs.

• For all monthly city bills and monthly parking fees, provide capability of paying online. Add a link on the web page for bills/payments.

• Stop providing water, coffee, plates, cups, plastic utensils to employees.

• Offer a cafeteria plan for medical benefits.

• Close all city park bathrooms and replace as needed with port a-potties that are maintained by a private contractor. This would save on power, water, personnel hours in maintaining the bathrooms and repairs due to vandalism.

• Close Civic Auditorium, which will result in a significant savings in energy costs. If the Civic is closed, the CIP for improvements to the air conditioning and air conditioning controls would not be necessary. The VFW and the child day care centers could be moved into the vacant street level area of either the Stockton Hotel or the Arena parking garage along Fremont St.

• Close the following facilities: Oak Park Ice Arena, Bob Hope Theatre, Impact Teen Center, and give Philomathean back to the organization we got it from.

• Consider closing all or most of the community centers (mostly run by part time recreation staff).

• Eliminate flat rate mileage for department heads. Also, consider eliminating mileage reimbursement. If employee has a need to travel on City business, use a pool car from the Corp Yard.

• Revisit cell phone stipends and have audit done on those who receive $100 per month to ensure their actual usage deserves the amount. Department Heads receive these reimbursements based on their positions, not actually usage and/or need.

• Obtain updated Code Enforcement Software. This would reduce the huge amount of paper/printing costs.

• Service credit pins must now be paid for with an alternative source, or paid for by the recipient. With this in mind, does it make sense to pay $300-$500 for engraved retirement watch/bracelets being handed out at retirement? Pay for these items out of alternative source funds or have the recipient pay for them. They are currently paid for out of a fund that backs up the general fund

• Move the Asparagus Festival to the County Fairgrounds. Savings would be had by not using Police Department and Public Works staff.

• Hold Council Committee meetings and study sessions during regular business hours, 8a – 5p. This will reduce overtime and/or flex schedules for the staff supporting the meetings.

• Eliminate payment of meals for city staff and elected officials to attend events/presentations. If event coordinators would like city participation, request comp tickets.

• Use in-house HR staff for Department Head recruitments instead of head hunter.

• Use in-house PIO and Outreach staff instead of outside public relations agencies.

• Reduce number of Council meetings from 4 meetings to 2 meetings per month.

• Quit printing Council or board/commission newsletter packets and provide on disk or refer to web site.

• Suspend building any new City facilities, i.e., fire stations; use pre-fabricated buildings.

• Suspend car and cell phone allowances for Department Heads.

• Review management positions in all City Departments; many are top heavy.

• Management should consider not allowing employees to use City vehicles for personal activities, such as going home or to restaurants for lunch, driving to doctor's appointments, or running errands.

• Eliminate fleet maintenance. Use outside vendors for service to all city vehicles. This provides for more reliable service, and, when work is not properly completed, departments will not be charged twice for the same repair, as is done by Fleet. Outside vendors can be held accountable for poor or slow service.

• Have printing work done by Kinkos or other similar entity; this would eliminate the salaries for those employees and maintenance on in-house equipment.

• Change the City Travel Policy to only pay for overnight stays when the travel distance is beyond 140 miles (approximately the distance to Fresno). This means multi-day conferences in San Francisco would be multiple day trips and would not include overnight expenses paid by the City.

• Look into front loading PERS and PARS for MUD employees that are close to retirement, thus, creating an up front cost that would be minimal in comparison to substantial savings in the long run. This would also possibly create openings for transfer opportunities for personnel from other City Departments or entry level salaries and benefits.

• Review those who receive cell phone allowances to determine if allowance is appropriate. There have been changes in titles/jobs/duties among the recipients that may not make the allowance necessary. The amount of the allowance should also be reviewed for its appropriateness based on current conditions. Having an IPhone or BlackBerry should not automatically entitle someone to the highest allowance.

• Take home vehicles should be recalled. It's cheaper to reimburse an employee for mileage on a personal car when they are called back for emergencies.

• MUD is looking at purchasing a house hold wind turbine. Why are we spending $12,000 to install some thing that can only produce enough electricity to operate 3 street lights? The O&M cost will be more than any savings the wind turbine will generate. Why do we think small? If we are going to do something, lets spend funds to make and sell electric power.

• Allow the golf courses to be run as a business and charge appropriate green fees (increase them), which can then be used to improve the facilities and compete with private courses.

• Reduce number of City payroll runs to once a month.

• Eliminate flat rate mileage for department heads. Also consider eliminating mileage reimbursement. If an employee has need to travel on City business, use a pool car from the Corp Yard.

• Obtain updated Code Enforcement software. This would reduce the huge amount of paper/printing costs.

• Release/terminate all contracts with temporary agency staff employees.
  

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