While Mayor Wendy Sugimura and Councilwoman Jo Bacon continue to work toward creating a new budget format to use in Mammoth’s future, Town Manager Rob Clark has been working with Town employees to try to salvage this year’s and next year’s budgets. The result of Clark’s and the employees’ efforts means that 13 positions that may have been cut, have been saved.

The two parties were able to come up with this scenario by having all employees take concessions in salaries and benefits in order to make up the money needed to keep more employees on payroll. The recent concessions amount to roughly $170,000 on top of the $253,000 in concessions made back in December 2008. Going forward into the 2009/10 budget, these concessions are expected to amount to roughly $1.5 million.

The concessions agreed upon include an additional furlough day per month for a total of two for all employees; no holiday pay for police officers; and no cost of living adjustments.

“I just wanted to point out that everyone has taken a small sacrifice so that 13 people can keep their jobs,” stated Mayor Sugimura. “This is a huge sacrifice for the employees.”

Councilman John Eastman then pointed out that the Town’s budget cuts are now equivalent to 34 layoffs.

Sugimura and Bacon plan to take their new budget concept to several service groups throughout the month of May in order to get the community familiar with the new template. Public hearings on the budget will also begin in May. Sugimura and Bacon hope the new format, which pulls away from a traditional line-item budget, will make the Town’s numbers more user-friendly for the general public.