Finding city workers a few dollars

Danville City Manager Joe King wants raises for city workers included in the budget that’s now being developed. King is concerned that the city government, as the employer of close to 1,000 people, will lose some of its best and brightest if they don’t get a raise.

"We can’t depend on family ties or love for Danville to keep them here," King said of police officers. "And, often, they can commute to higher-paying jobs."

King said police officers with several years experience can transfer to another department. That’s a problem, of course, because good police officers only get better with time. Their experience makes them worth more to the community than a rookie just hitting the streets for the first time.

Of course, police officers are the cornerstone of one of the most vital functions of any government — public safety. But the desire to give police officers raises this year doesn’t relieve King or the nine members of Danville City Council from answering the real question: How much government can Danville afford?

Hiding behind underpaid police officers isn’t going to be enough to raise taxes this year — or next. Danville’s homeowners know their property isn’t worth as much as it was before the recession.

When King talks about the need to give the city’s workers their first raise since 2008, he’s speaking like a manager who wants to keep his best workers.

That said, it’s time to manage.

For King, that means if he wants to be able to offer city workers a raise this year, he’s going to have to develop a budget that spends existing tax revenues. Raises for city workers should be found in cuts to departments, services and people. Once that’s done, the city should offer raises to its remaining employees based on merit.

It’s amazing that Danville’s government is still struggling with the concept of merit raises.

"I’d like to see a full definition of the plan and know more about what he plans to do," Mayor Sherman Saunders said. "But if the city can find a way to do it, it should."

It should? Mr. Mayor, why hasn’t Danville’s government been offering merit raises all along? Private companies can’t afford to give all their employees the same raise every year. Raises are rewards for the best employees, not something that everyone who punches the clock automatically receives.

Why hasn’t Danville tried to do the same thing before now? Why did it take a "budget crisis" to institute something as basic as merit raises?

The answer to that question and other like it — such as "How much government can Danville afford?" — will go a long way toward measuring how Danvillians will really feel about the upcoming city budget. Let’s hope nobody downtown thinks the taxpayers are in the mood for another year of what they did last year.

If you work at city hall and you know people that got laid off last year and you haven’t had a raise since 2008, then what’s coming is going to be a "tough, brutal budget."

If you’re a city resident and you know people who have lost their job, their home or both in the last year — and you haven’t had a raise since 2008 — you need to see a city government that’s willing to cut its own budget deeply before it tries to cut your family’s budget with higher taxes.