Councilmember Jerry Allen and I have been working with the rest of the council to develop a set of cuts to the council budget.  Last week, eleven councilmembers signed a memo to Mary Suhm proposing the following cuts to the council budget.  Here’s the text of the memo:

With the severe cuts needed to balance our city budget, every department will have to make sacrifices. That includes the budget for the Mayor and City Council offices.  In order to reduce our impact on the budget, we propose the following cuts, which will save nearly half a million dollars in the 2009-10 budget:

BUDGET ITEM	TOTAL SAVINGS
Eliminate paper agendas	$148,000
Reduce Councilmembers’ office budgets by 25%	$57,880
Reduce meals by 30%	$9,600
Eliminate hand-delivery of packets	$6,024
Eliminate hard-copies of interoffice memos (email only)	$5,850
Reduce Councilmembers’ travel budgets by 15%	$8,600
Eliminate two secretarial positions for Council offices	$103,200
Postpone hiring of one Council office assistant for 3 mos.	$17,500
Reduce Mayor’s office budget	$70,000
TOTAL SAVINGS:	$426,654

The memo was signed by myself, and Councilmembers Jerry Allen, Ann Margolin, Linda Koop, Ron Natinsky, Delia Jasso, Carolyn Davis, Steve Salazar, Tennell Atkins, Pauline Medrano, and Dwaine Caraway.

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