City-raises decision prudent at this time

The Pine Bluff City Council is on the verge of approving a $50 million budget for next year with one notable last-minute change: two different pay increases for city employees were removed from the spending proposal.

A resolution to give employees raises was passed in October, but at Mayor Shirley Washington’s urging, the extra pay was pulled back.

One raise was the result of a study done for the city that showed that city employees here were being paid below the average salaries of similar workers in other cities.

And then there was a 3% cost-of-living raise that was also put on hold.

Combined, the raises will cost the city $1.2 million in new money, which is to come from the city’s share of gambling revenue from Saracen Casino Resort.

One group that is still set to get a raise is firefighters. The city’s Ways and Means Committee approved raises of $2,750 per person for them, fulfilling a promise that was made last year when the Police Department received $2,776 per-person raises.

Speaking of last year, the city approved $1.7 million in raises that were put in place then. That money included 5% costof-living increases for police and fire department employees, on top of the per-person raises already mentioned, and 3% for all other employees. And all of that new spending was tied to the revenue from Saracen Casino Annex.

You can see a pattern developing here. With all of that spending tied to casino money, it’s a bit frightening to consider what would happen if there was a gambling hiccup, like a bad pandemic that might close the place down or keep people at home for fear of becoming infected.

That’s exactly why Mayor Shirley Washington has tapped the brakes on this new spending, and it is obviously a wise decision made by someone who is looking at very possible scenarios that would quickly put the city in a bind.

“In this covid environment, I think we would have been financially strapped if something happened,” Washington said. “This is not going away. We lost five people over the weekend.”

The council did make some modifications to ease the blow of not giving out the raises. Full-time employees were given $1,000 end-of-year bonuses and part-timers were given $500. That cost more than $400,000. And because health insurance is going up, the council approved a budget adjustment of about $55,000 to cover that increase.

Most of the council members took the proposal to hold back on the 2021 raises in stride. Alderman Bruce Lockett wanted more time to consider the other changes that have been made to the budget. That’s fine; the city has until the end of January to approve it.

One council member who went over the top was Ivan Whitfield, who said in a committee meeting that the city, because it was not giving raises to the Police Department in 2021, was “defunding” the police.

That term is politically charged and obviously has no place in this discussion, a point that was not lost on another council member.

“No, no, that’s not true,” said Alderman Glen Brown Jr., who went on to say: “The reason we’re doing this is we don’t know what revenues are going to look like in 2021. So we can’t stretch out and make these commitments and not be able to fulfill them. For you to say we’re trying to defund the police … that’s totally untrue.”

Inasmuch as the raises are concerned, we believe the city is acting in a prudent manner. The pandemic is bad and getting worse. Gov Asa Hutchinson renewed last week his declaration of a public health emergency, calling the pandemic the biggest health crisis “of our lifetime.”

Such an assessment of this dire situation does not bode well for an industry that thrives on people walking in the door to gamble. By extension, now is not the time to gamble on the city’s financial future.