Mayor Tedeschi on Council's Budget Plans: 'I Don't Think There's Anybody Left to Lay Off'

Laying off more borough employees is not the solution to what should be another strained budget for Fair Lawn in 2011, Mayor Joseph Tedeschi said.

The council began to prepare next year's budget during Tuesday night's worksession. Tedeschi said he expects a decrease of about $500,000 in state for Fair Lawn this year, and that the borough will have to pay out between $1.5 to $2 million to residents who filed tax appeals. Additionally, Fair Lawn owes $620,000 more than what it paid last year to the state pension system, he said.

Tedeschi said all of those factors add up a second straight challenging budget process–last year's involved issuing 14 unpaid furlough days to all borough employees (except police) and 18 to library staff. However, because of their impact on the services provided to residents, the mayor said that "Layoffs, to me, I don't know how they can be an option."

"I don't think there's anybody left to lay off," Tedeschi said.

"We will have to find a way to deliver service a little better and a little cheaper," he said.

The council agreed to have Borough Manager Timothy Stafford research a number of possible cost-cutting measures and revisit them at a meeting in about a month, including outsourcing the borough's recycling and park maintenance services; reviewing the schedules of the council and other committees; third party billing for those who are served by the ambulance corps; shared animal control services with other municipalities and the county; fees for those who use the community center to teach private courses; modifying the borough's leaf collection system; upgrading the borough's computers and network; and participating in Bergen County's police dispatch program.

Tedeschi stressed that the council was simply deciding to explore these measures and was not deciding to implement any of them yet.

"We are not taking action here, we are saying 'This is something we have to consider,'" Tedeschi said.

"We have to look at every opportunity we have, and this council has to decide: Do we want to look at these things?" he said.

Councilmember Jeanne Baratta said she was open to looking at all of the measures, but echoed Tedeschi's sentiment that the customer service Fair Lawn provides to residents should not be damaged in the process.

"I don't want to lose what Fair Lawn is known for," Baratta said.

One of the items centered on the borough having a timely administrative response in the budget process, and to that end, councilmember Ed Trawinski suggested that the council should think twice about putting any non-budget items on its meeting agenda from now until the end of the year. Tedeschi agreed.

"Where have to make sure the borough administration is working on the major issues, which [right now] is, budget," Tedeschi said.

"We don't want to do the 'C' items when the 'A' items need to be done," he said.

Deputy Mayor Steve Weinstein said the borough should see if committees need to all meet once a month. Perhaps committees can meet twice a month or quarterly, he said, because paid consultants often attend the meetings. Borough council meetings can also be consolidated in a way that schedules "worksessions" and "meetings" on the same Tuesday, rather than having a worksession one Tuesday and a meeting the next Tuesday, several members said.

Tedeschi explained that unlike most private instructors who need to rent out space for their classes, those who teach a variety of courses at the Fair Lawn Community Center use the space for free–but at the borough's expense. The instructors keep all the revenue from their classes while the borough pays the overhead costs of opening the rooms, a system the mayor said needs to change.

"We are providing them with a place to run their business," Tedeschi said. "We can't afford to give away free space, and time, and air conditioning and everything else."

Regarding the possibility of more furlough days for borough employees next year, Weinstein said if furloughs are in fact issued, employees must be notified in a timely manner so they can prepare for the impact on their personal cashflow–unlike this year's 14 furlough days, which were spread over six months rather than the entire year. 

"If we're going to do it, we've got to let everyone know in advance," Weinstein said.

Councilmembers agreed that upgrading the borough's computer system will allow departments to run more efficiently, leading to more timely decisions and signficant savings in the long run, but acknowledged that transferring old data to a new system is costly.

Tedeschi said the borough's police dispatching costs have increased 11.5 percent per year since 2004. The mayor said there's no guarantee that participating in county dispatching will provide equal or better service–in fact Trawinski said it likely would not–but like other items on the budget agenda, the possibility at least needs to be explored.

"We don't have a choice, we have to look," Tedeschi said.