Calumet City Mayor Thaddeus Jones announced Friday the immediate layoffs of 46 employees, excluding public safety workers, as he said the city faces “profound fiscal challenges” including a multimillion dollar budget shortfall for the rest of the year.
The mayor provided an emailed statement after the Daily Southtown obtained a letter stating 13 employees who are members of International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 would be laid off June 1. The letter said city also planned to lay off an unspecified number of nonunion, part-time employees “due to an overwhelming budget deficit.”
“Our revenues are flat, and there was zero growth in revenue last year,” Jones said. “Our plan is to decrease costs of city operations and look at options to generate revenue potential revenue enhancements.”
Jones said the city is struggling to meet the demands of high health insurance costs, late Cook County tax revenues and a backlog of bills to vendors while facing a decrease in property tax collections and high inflation.
The layoffs are coupled with a citywide hiring freeze, which the City Council approved 6-0 during a special meeting Jan. 31.
“We have a structural problem that we will solve,” Jones said. “City government needed to be downsized with more services going online and cuts to agencies through consolidation. We will be steadfast in our quest to overcome this challenge and achieve our fiscal goals all while continuing to perform our government operations in a spirit of excellence.”
But Kristine Kavanagh, communications director for Local 150, said in an email Friday the way the layoffs were handled disappointing and deeply concerning.
Kavanagh said the 13 union employees represented one-third of the city’s Public Works Department, staff who “perform essential jobs that are often difficult, demanding, and largely unnoticed until they are no longer being done.”
She questioned the financial struggles cited by the city, concerns she said “did not creep up overnight.”
“They should have known this was coming; and we question whether this was properly discussed at council meetings,” Kavanagh said. “The city is attempting to solve a problem at the expense of critical public services. That is not the level of communication or respect employees deserve, especially heading into a holiday weekend.”
City Council Finance Committee Chair and 4th Ward Ald. Ramonde Williams said the layoffs came as a surprise Friday, though aldermen had recently discussed they would likely be necessary.
“I think the ones that got laid off, those are mostly part-time employees that had just been recently hired, but I can only assume that things were done properly and that the order of doing things was to start from the bottom and work your way up,” Williams said.
He said he wasn’t sure if the mayor plans to lay off more people, as he was not made aware of the plan to dismiss staff ahead of time.
Second Ward Ald. Monet Wilson in a statement expressed sympathy for the city employees affected during uncertain economic conditions. She also emphasized past concerns raised about the city’s financial direction “including the need to limit excessive events, address unauthorized mayoral spending, and implement stronger fiscal controls.”
Aldermen raised concerns about Jones’ recent spending via a municipal credit card that came to a head when they found the mayor spent $44,000 in September, much of which was during the Congressional Black Caucus’ 54th annual legislative conference in Washington.
They voted to lower the credit card limit from $50,000 to $5,000 but have continued to report difficulties receiving financial information from city staff, despite hiring their own legal counsel in December.
The Chicago Tribune has reported that Jones, who is also a state representative, is under federal investigation for tax issues involving his campaign funds, with the mayor and state representative paying tens of thousands of dollars in the first quarter of this year to a law firm that specializes in criminal defense, according to his campaign finance filings.
“These decisions matter because behind every layoff is a family facing uncertainty during already difficult national economic times,” Wilson said.
“Our responsibility as elected officials is not only to govern for today, but to protect the long-term stability of our city and the employees who help keep it running,” she said. “Calumet City must move forward with transparency, acountability, and financial discipline so we can prevent more hardworking families from carrying the burden of avoidable fiscal strain.”
ostevens@chicagotribune.com
