The Reno City Council will meet again on January 8, 2010 at 1:30 PM in the Reno City Council chambers to discuss ways to shore up a projected shortfall of $3.6 million in the current Fiscal Year 2009-2010 budget. Another budget session is set for January 27, 2009 to deal with an anticipated bigger shortfall of $16 million in the following fiscal year, Fiscal Year 2010-2011.

In the first of what will be a series of budget workshops over the next several months, City Manager Donna Dreska and Finance Director Mary Ann Parrot told members of the Council today the projected shortfalls are the result of continued declines in revenues and that the City needs to implement long-term solutions to balance the budget in subsequent years.

Two of the topics to be discussed at the January 8, 2010 meeting are the continuing decline in development-generated revenues affecting the building department and the projected revenues for the Reno Redevelopment Agency based on numbers coming in from the assessor’s office.

Among the options presented today to balance the 2010-2011budget were a possible reduction in force and across-the-board pay cuts for City employees. To close the shortfall with a reduction in employees alone would involve from 160 to 180 positions citywide. The City has already reduced the number of positions by 200 over the past year and a half through attrition, early-out incentives, and freezing positions that become open. The current workforce has been reduced to 1,400 employees.

Council directed staff to continue talking with all employees, and to include the heads of the City’s bargaining units in future meetings on the City’s financial situation. The presentation provided by Dreska and Parrot noted the downturn in the economy is not temporary and any recovery could take a minimum of three or more years.