Announcements of planned layoffs were given Monday to around 15 Pacific Grove city employees, including department managers, by City Manager Jim Colangelo.
Employees received e-mails Friday asking them to meet with Colangelo on Monday, when they received the news, said Recreation Director John Miller, one of those who got notice.
Three positions would be permanently eliminated, Colangelo said, while others affected will be offered other jobs with the city, “admittedly at a lower pay rate.” The layoffs and reorganization should save the city around $500,000, he said.
Tag Archives: Jim Colangelo
Auditors Find No Fraud, But Trouble None The Less
A routine audit of Pacific Grove’s books found that the city failed to document transactions and reconcile account balances last year which could affect the city’s ability to borrow money and issue bonds, city officials said.
The city’s finances have been in a tangle as a result of poor bookkeeping and overspending since at least 2000, said city officials and members of the city’s ad hoc budget and finance committee.
In December, Colangelo told the council that an inaccurate record keeping had caused the city to work with inflated numbers for six years in planning the budget. As a result, the city had overspent about $500,000 each year since 2000, including $1.9 million of reserve funds. Now, the city is considering putting tax measures on the ballot to bring in revenue to refill the depleted coffers.
Aquarium’s Landlord Wants To Raise The Rent
Pacific Grove thinks the Monterey Bay Aquarium should pay more than $1 a year to lease the slice of city land the world-class facility occupies, drawing more than a million visitors annually.
Cash-strapped Pacific Grove wants the aquarium to pay more rent or help the city improve its services, including running the Museum of Natural History or fixing its storm water problems, said City Manager Jim Colangelo.
“Given our financial situation, we think we need to get more from that kind of an asset,” Colangelo said.
An aquarium representative said that while the nonprofit is sympathetic to the city’s financial situation, its money is better spent reinvesting in the exhibits and programs that draw tourists to its facility and to Pacific Grove’s hotels and shops.
Dangerous Trees To Be Chopped Down
City Manager Jim Colangelo said West Coast Arborists will remove the trees in December at a cost of $65,000. The firm will focus on trees that need to be cut down using cranes, while city employees will focus on less expensive tree-cutting, he said.
Residents who were originally critical of the plan to cut down 200 trees said on Wednesday that they were happy with the process and that the council members went to look at the trees.
Jean Anton, chairwoman of the city’s beautification and natural resources committee, praised the council members for going to the park. In her four years on the committee, she’s never seen that happen.
P.G. Financial Problems More Serious Than Thought
Pacific Grove’s financial problems are more serious than originally thought, said the city manager, who added that services and city jobs might have to be cut to fix the problem.
City Manager Jim Colangelo initially projected that the general fund would fall short by about $700,000 in the 2007-08 fiscal year. But he said late last week that the city will run out of money during the second half of this fiscal year if cuts aren’t made soon.
Colangelo said he will soon recommend new sources of revenues, possibly including funds from sales tax initiatives, increasing hotel or property transfer taxes and more parking meters.
City Manager Jim Colangelo Right At Home
Many Pacific Grove residents tell City Manager Jim Colangelo they don’t want the city to change. But what they don’t realize is the city already has, Colangelo said.
“It’s not the way it was in the 1980s and early ’90s,” said Colangelo. “Pacific Grove was an affordable place to live. It was a place that had a lot of working families; the schools were full of kids. Now, school enrollment is dropping like crazy because young families can’t afford to live here.”
It is that obvious, but no one did anything about it. Schenk brought up creating worker housing at Fort Ord. Oh that’s great, separate the classes. If people wanted to live in C-Side they would move there.