CBAC PRESENTATION

CITIZENS BUDGET ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Recommendations for
Fiscal Year 2011

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 CBAC Members
Fiscal Year 2011
 Lisa Casey
 Jeanette Criscione
 Lisa Cright-Bryant
 Delores Decameron
 Robert Darden
 Shari Effman
 Will Gill
 Susan Kilduff, Chair FY11
 Jan Massey
 Charles L. McCrae
 Advisors to the Advisory Committee:
 Alan Goldstein
 Lilas Borsa Donahu
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 Introduction
The Citizens Budget Advisory Committee is convened by the Plainfield
City Council.
Members are selected by the Council from a pool of applicants and
typically serve a two year term.
Each ward should be represented by a committee member .

The Committee makes non partisan recommendations on issues that

directly impact the city’s annual revenue and expense operating
budget.
To formulate its recommendations, the Committee
 attends budget hearings,

 communicates with the city’s fiscal representatives on specific

questions,
 reviews budget and financial documents,

 gathers information from a variety of sources.

The Committee surfaces issues that may be controversial but are at

the root of the City’s high taxes.

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
 This Year’s Focus
 Broad actions to reduce costs now and preplanning in anticipation
of continued economic pressures in FY12.
 Right-sizing Public Safety to achieve cost reductions without
compromising coverage or service.
 Demanding performance improvements in areas that are well
funded but provide a questionable return to the public, such as
Recreation and Economic Development.
 Improving administrative processes to eliminate waste and work
smarter, specifically in areas like Purchasing.
 Suspending City budget support to programs that are not typically
funded by other municipalities, such as the Bilingual Day Care Program.
 Questioning the City’s ability to manage its financial and
administrative operations with the prolonged absence of two key
financial positions.
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 Recommendations
Reduce the city’s $1 million overtime budget.
Eliminate overtime in every area but Public Safety and Public Works.
Demand reductions in OT in Public Safety.
Freeze salary increases in bargaining units.
Offer time off in lieu of raises in FY11; structure a plan to make it workable in FY12.

Implement furloughs to control FY11 salary expense.

Furloughs are only a stop gap measure.
Serious planning is required to achieve permanent expense reductions.
Require increased contributions from employees to benefit plans.
A 2% increase in employee premium contribution could yield $500K in annual cost
savings.
Plan now for possible FY12 labor force reduction plan to avoid salary
expense spill over.
Enact a plan that can go into effect at the start not the middle of the fiscal year.
Revisit shared services.
The city will have to take a serious and long term approach to shared services in any

area of city operation. Opportunities are limited. 5

 Recommendations
Demand efficiency and productivity .
Require higher accountability from the Purchasing Department.
Survey existing office equipment for efficiency and replacement.
Perform legitimate cost benefit analyses -
Especially before committing to multiple year agreements that may cost over
$99,000 per year.
Increase competitive bidding to lower cost.
Consider outsourcing Inspections; this office should cover costs.
Generate inspection income equal to 50% of its cost within one year, and
100% in subsequent years.
Change the reporting line for Information Technology
To be successful, IT must have a clear and appropriate reporting line. A
legitimate funding plan is required to produce any substantive improvements in
media or technology services.
Challenge the Economic Development Division
To quantify improvements in the City’s economy resulting from this Division.
Review the issues that result in a failure to produce sustained improvements.

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 Recommendations
The 800 pound Gorilla in the room -
Address Public Safety and its 70% slice of the city’s compensation budget.

Reduce the number of senior officers.

Increase civilians for the 911 dispatch department, replace police officer/manager.

Require employee contribution to benefits.

Slash Overtime in Fire and Police budget – up to $650,000 in FY11.

Restructure the Recreation Department.

Eliminate the full time director’s position.

Implement a model using a recreation commission and part time director.

Analyze the $500K “seasonal worker” budget for effectiveness and compliance.
Stop subsidizing some nonprofit programs; restructure others.

Eliminate the city subsidy to Bilingual Daycare, PAS and WIC.

Restructure the Senior services program.

This program must increase the population that it regularly serves and
aggressively seek external funding.
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 Recommendations
Implement revenue opportunities open to the City.
Public Works Parking Bureau should cost out and plan for parking pay stations
Expand parking meter times for high traffic after hours lots.

False Alarms - charge residents and non profit entities for repeat false
alarm calls.

In FY10 nearly ½ the alarms responded to were recorded as false alarms.

Implement a $100 fee at the 3rd “false alarm”.

If even 1/3 of the false alarms recorded in 2010 were assessed a fee of $100,
$40,000 would have been generated.

Increase the fee based on the number of false calls to location. More than 3?
Assess a $500 fee.

Charge nonprofit entities a rate higher than the residents pay.

Increase fees for certificates issued and health inspections conducted by Health
Services. The fee structure has not changed in decades.
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 Recommendations

Implement revenue opportunities open to the City.

Recreation programs are not an entitlement.

Establish or increase fees for recreation programs.
Consider program specific registration fees, pool fees, seasonal use and
“membership” fees.

Increase grants proposal applications and awards .

Establish an annual city-wide revenue from grants target.
Charge divisions to meet a target.

Preserve important City assets – restore funding to the Library.

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 Conclusion
 Final report to be submitted by the end of November to the Council.
 Report and expanded Power Point presentation will be posted online for the
community.
 Questions and comments are welcome and can be directed to the CBAC
blog at http://www.plainfieldcbac.bogspot.com.

Special thanks to: Council President Annie McWilliams, to Councilmen

Adrian Mapp and Cory Storch of the Council’s Finance Committee, to Ms.
Bibi Taylor, City Administrator, the Plainfield Public Library, Lisa Casey,
Jeannette Criscione and Jan Massey for establishing and maintaining the
CBAC Blog.

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End of presentation

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Rationalization
POLICE – The 800 pound Gorilla in the room -

 70% of the city’s compensation budget is spent in Public Safety.

There is no direct correlation between police pay and safety. In fact,
in cities where the police budgets have been cut and layoffs have
occurred, the police departments have become more efficient and
serious crime levels have fallen.

 The FY11 Plainfield budget includes 650K in OT, a 30% increase over
FY11. We believe this is caused, in part, by so may officers at the high
end of the pay scale
 Request a state audit by the Division of Local Government Services to
determine whether or not there are too many superior officers. Eliminating
2 sergeant positions would result in a cost reduction of a quarter of a
million dollars

 Restructure Dispatch Services by making dispatch entirely a civilian

service
 Hire civilians to replace all police dispatch personnel
 Establish a Manager of Civilian Services to perform those duties currently
managed by a Police Sergeant. This would result in an immediate
expense reduction.
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Rationalization
Police – continued

Negotiate Police Contracts in line with economic conditions.

• Contributions to medical benefits, a 2% contribution could
save the city 350K. Demand at least a 1.5% contribution
this year from police and fire. Increase this to 2% in year 2
and 3% in subsequent years.
• Follow the lead of municipalities across the country who are
successfully negotiating significant concessions in both police
and fire contracts. Failure to do so now will guarantee Public
Safety layoffs in future fiscal years.
FIRE
 Overtime budget in FY’11 is nearly double that of FY’10
 Eliminate overtime by restructuring shift assignments.
 Acting pay is budgeted at nearly half a million dollars. This
needs to be reduced, but more importantly, analyzed as the
efficiency of overtime delegation. 13
Rationalization
INSPECTIONS
 The Inspections Department works Monday through Friday which
precludes citing many violations such as illegal multiple dwellings
 Inspections needs to aggressively inform the public about the need for
inspections and the importance of compliance. This will mitigate any
surprises when homeowners / businesses are issued summonses which
will bring it revenue. It is imperative that the Citizens of Plainfield be
held accountable for the appearance of this city.
PUBLIC WORKS
 Public Works has outlined a plan which has the ability to increase
parking revenues.
 Cost out and plan to implement parking pay stations in FY 12.
 Increase meter times in parking lots outlined by the Director of Public
Works to increase parking revenues for high use after hours parking
lots.

 Relocate the Parking Bureau from their free standing building to existing
office space to reduce costs associated with building maintenance

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Rationalization
RECREATION
We recommend restructuring the Recreation Department based on
the following information:

 Recreation is unable to provide a complete and verifiable

accounting of costs associated with its programs and activities.
This is a 700K budget without demonstrable effectiveness.
The consensus of the committee is that this division is poorly
managed and offers an inadequate level of service to
Plainfield’s citizens.

 To date the Director has not produced information that would

confirm that Recreation is regularly serving any more than 5%
of the city’s population with its programs.

 There is no complete accounting for 465K in seasonal

workers, how they are recruited, who they are, how they are
paid and or how they are qualified.
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Rationalization

BILINGUAL DAYCARE
After researching other diverse cities in New Jersey, we found that
Plainfield is the only city that subsidizes day care. All other cities
have daycare programs that are either non-profit or for profit.
Based on that we recommend eliminating the city subsidy to
bilingual daycare, a reduction in cost of 325K.
 This million dollar program services only a small portion of the
city’s children. Cost per child serviced is over 14K per
year.
 The City should pay no portion of this program’s expenses.
WIC PROGRAM
 This should be a completely self-sustaining program; there
should be no city cost for salary, benefits, or facilities’ costs.
Identify a nonprofit organization to host Plainfield WIC such as
the Elizabeth model.
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Rationalization

PAS
PAS costs to the city is 292K per year (after grants) and the estimated
number of people serviced is just 225. Costs cannot be justified by the
number of people serviced.
Eliminate duplication of services provided by PAS; establish partnerships with
nonprofit entities already in the city that are providing the same or
comparable services, such as food banks.
SENIOR SERVICES
Costs estimates for this program before grant support is 575K. The
program states that it services 140 people daily but the majority are
repeat visitors.
 The program needs to revamp its programming and reach a
significantly higher number of Plainfield citizens to justify expenditures
in personnel and facilities costs.
 Significant additional grant funding should be identified or the
program should reduce employee costs by 30%

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Rationalization

PURCHASING
 There needs to be more accountability from the Purchasing
Manager and an audit of activity and productivity in purchasing
is recommended.
 Increase the number of RFP, RFQ and sealed bids
 Audit copier leases, use and cost

LIBRARY
 Library has demonstrated a consistent, thoughtful and creative
approach to cost containment.
 Integrate library resources with City Hall where appropriate to
increase efficiency and reduce overall costs. Example of this is
using library staff expertise to help train City Hall employees in
technology applications
 The public library is a critical and cost effective element in the
city’s quality of life.
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Rationalization
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
This division continues to not be able to provide sustained improvements in
the city’s economy.
 A review of this entire division, its staffing, its “performance measurements”
and its plan for the next three years is required.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

IT is vital to helping with efficiency in City Hall. It can also aid in increasing a
city’s bond rating. Its ability to perform successfully is hindered by the
following issues:
 It has an unclear or inappropriate reporting line
 It has an inadequate budget to undertake any substantive
improvements in media or technology services.

 An adequate budget must be provided to IT in order to:

 Upgrade administrative systems,
 Redesign and maintain the City’s website.
 Establish deliverable goals and a timetable for roll-out.
 Structure a workable financial plan that has a possibility of being
funded.
 Partner with universities to establish paying student internships.

Quarterly reports of progress are recommended 19

Revenue generation summary
Fees and approaches
 Charge residents for false alarm calls by police and fire.
 In FY10 half the alarms responded to by fire were false alarms
 Implement a $100 fee at the 3rd “false alarm”. If even 1/3 of the false
alarms recorded in 2010 were assessed a fee of $100, $40K would
have been generated.
 Increase the fee based on the number of false calls to location. More
than 3? Assess a $500 fee.
 Charge nonprofit entities, for false alarms calls
 Charge a rate higher than the private residence rate,
 Increase fees for certificates issued and health inspections
conducted by Health Services.
 Recreation programs are not an entitlement.
 Establish or increase fees for recreation programs
 Consider program specific registration fees, pool fees, seasonal use
and “membership” fees.
Establish a revenue from grants target.

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