City parks, library face largest budget cuts

Reductions based on Pawlenty's original

proposal to cut LGA

By RON LARSEN

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- A "worst-case" $1.7 million budget-cutting scenario was laid out for City Council members during an informational meeting Tuesday afternoon.

According to the scenario, about $600,000 would be cut from the current budget and $1.1 million would come out of the 2004 budget.

City staff used Gov. Tim Pawlenty's original proposal for cutting local government aid because it's the only proposal on the table. It also doesn't consider use of unrestricted reserves and fund balances to ease the bite.

The Park and Recreation Department and the Public Library are the big losers in this scenario. Park and Rec would take cuts amounting to nearly 25 percent of its $2.1 million 2003 budget and another 26.5 percent cut in 2004. The library's cuts would amount to 19 percent of its $635,615 2003 budget and near 25 percent of its projected $654,683 2004 budget.

"The reason the cuts are so large," City Manager Brian Gramentz explained, "is that the state doesn't consider parks and library to be essential services."

While the council decided to consider the matter again in a meeting preceding its April 15 meeting, both Park and Rec Director Dave Bechtold and Library Director Carolyn Baird urged the council not to wait until the Legislature finally decides what the actual cut will be.

Under this scenario, Park and Rec would have to drop its summer programs including community (Monday night) concerts, Puppet Wagon, Children's Theater, arts and crafts, playgrounds, day camps, track and field, preschool sports, K.I.D.S.S. program and teen club.

Youth volleyball, youth flag football, youth archery and arts and crafts also would be dropped, Bechtold said.

"We need to protect our full-time staff, and we will get the job done even though it means losing our part-time staff," Bechtold said.

Baird said the proposed cuts in her budget would result in losing part-timers, too. It would also result in reduction in services and reduction in the number of hours the library would be open.

She said the library now is open 63 hours a week.

"I really don't want to have fewer than four on duty at a time because it just isn't safe. We need two persons in circulation alone," she said.

The Police Department would take a cut averaging about 2.9 percent each year. That envisions extracting $50,000 from its $1,680,200 2003 budget and another $50,000 from its 2004 budget. The Fire Department's cuts would average about 4.5 percent over the two years. It would lose $13,050 from its $284,786 2003 budget and the same amount from the 2004 budget.

Council President Dan Beranek said the budget for the city's 150th anniversary next year is $50,000. He suggested the council consider making cuts in that budget at the next meeting because "after all it is just a party."