By Eleni Himaras
Special to the View
Bee Cave City Council members voted to lay off employees at last week’s meeting to combat their falling revenues, which come predominately from the sales tax that has been extremely low because of the slumped economy.

“We have to authorize our administration tonight to approve a staff realignment plan,” said Councilman Mike Murphy. “Any new projects have to be stopped… we have to still down to only those things that are necessary.”
The city gave 30 days’ notice to the Chief Technology Officer, the City Engineer and the Criminal Justice Office Manager. They also eliminated four vacant positions; two patrol officer positions and two part-time library positions.
“Total savings of all of those jobs is $420,000, including those we are not refilling,” City Administrator Frank Salvato said.
Based on the initial budget projections, using a flat sales tax rate, this would have given the city a $170,000 cushion in the budget, but in addition to authorizing the reduction in force, the council asked Salvato to create a budget assuming that the sales tax would go down by 5 percent in the coming year.
This means that even with the $420,000 in savings, city administration will still be looking to cut another $156,000 from the budget.
“We are currently going back through the budget and we plan on [Aug. 28] to have an item on the agenda,” Salvato said.
He said at the moment, nothing is off the table to be cut from the budget and that he’d be bringing more options before the council. At last week’s budget meeting, he gave them four initial options for both reducing the shortfall in the current year’s budget and balancing next year’s budget: raising the property tax, over forecasting the sales tax, drawing from reserves, or a reduction in staff.
Mayor Pro Tem Jack McCool was the only councilperson willing to discuss raising the property tax.
“I think we need a combination of increasing the tax and reducing the budget,” McCool said.
Everyone else on the council, aside from Councilman Chad Bockius who came in towards the end of the 5 p.m. budget session but before the 6 p.m. council meeting, said a property tax increase was out of the question.
While no action was taken in the budget workshop, all council members agreed to a reduction in force. After a discussion about the police department budget and how it is the most heavily funded department in the city, they all agreed that no department in the city should be immune, referring predominately to the police department.
In the short minutes between the budget workshop and the regularly scheduled council meeting at 6 p.m., Salvato handed the council a copy of his plan for a reduction in force, so that when they voted on it under the agenda item, they’d know what the plan was.
“I never like doing that type of stuff, it affects people and people’s families and it’s not good but it is something that had to be done,” Salvato said.
Under the city’s reduction in force plan, the staff members got 30 days of notice and the city will do whatever it can to help them find new jobs.
“We will provide them with anything they need,” Salvato said. “We will give either verbal or written recommendations for a new job, whatever it takes.”