Welcome to my weekly blog about life here in the Durham Budget & Management Services Department! This budget adoption season Council made a variety of changes to the proposed budget. The department is currently working on updating the budget to align with their decisions.
City Council held a special Work Session on Thursday, because there were a variety of choices still to be made around the budget. This additional session was to make final decisions on two main items: 1) whether or not to add more police officers to DPD and 2) if part-time city workers not making the Durham livable wage of $15.46 an hour should have their pay increased over time or all at once. These discussions have been forcing me to think back on my time in class this past year. For example, in Public Administration Institutions & Values, we were constantly discussing where residents place their values, and how this will vary no matter where you work. The values of the Council members were obvious in these decisions, focusing more on equitable pay and less on policing, but it also calls into question the values of the community. Opinions on social media have shown that for many, this does not express their values, and folks appear to be frustrated with the decision.
This meeting was very special to me, as it was my first time appearing on the Durham local news, pretending to know what I’m doing. You can see the article for yourself here. As you can also see in the screen grab, a request to add 18 additional officers to the Police Department was denied by Council. The proposal was to add the officers so that the beat schedule would allow for shifts to be less lengthy, which would hopefully improve quality of life for officers. After it was clear that a majority of Council members did not support the positions, the Mayor attempted to offer a compromise and bring it to nine officers. However, this still was not what a majority of the Councilors wanted, and in turn four Council members voted to remove the 18 officers from the proposed budget. The impacts of this decision will be seen in the next fiscal year. In the article hyperlinked above, you can see the City Manager discussing how plans will likely be pivoted going forward around this subject.
After making this decision, the Council discussed whether or not the city’s part-time workers would have their hourly pay increased to $15.46 an hour. The Human Resources Department recommended steady increases over time, which would be about $180,000 this year. However, the Council decided to increase them all this year, which will cost an additional $650,000 for FY 20.
Although the budget process took up a large part of the week, there were several other projects I was able to work on. As many of you may know, there was a gas explosion in Durham about two months ago, and all of the departments related to the accident attended a session to discuss responses to this occurrence. One topic brought up was how online communications to constituents could be improved. As social media grows, more cities need to have plans for publishing information in emergency situations.
This upcoming week I will be working on a few different projects. One meeting I am looking forward to is with the Director of the Planning Department to discuss my dual degree. In my next blog I plan to dive further into the dual degree of Public Administration and City Planning, so stay tuned.