Durham city manager Tom Bonfield joined Barry and me at WXDU for this week's edition of "Shooting the Bull." Thanks to the always-busy manager for taking time to share his thoughts on a variety of municipal topics -- including the forthcoming budget, a topic we should expect to hear much more about in the coming weeks.
Among the notable quotables from Thursday's show: Bonfield confirmed that layoffs are a certainty in the coming year's city budget, stating that decisions will be released early this coming week to employees in advance of a release to the general public.
"Quite frankly, when you think about our organization, an over $200 million general fund budget, of which over 70% is personnel services, you can't make up $20 and $30 million gaps without having some impact on employees," Bonfield said.
"In some cases, that is going to impact employees who will continue to be with us. In some cases, it's going to impact jobs," he continued -- though noting that one intended benefit of the hiring freeze instituted earlier this year was the existence of open, unfilled positions in City government into which some layoff candidates can be re-slotted.
The new city manager also highlighted the current state of DATA as an area of interest, noting that he has concerns about "how efficiently we are operating the DATA system."
"I'm not convinced that it's where it needs to be," Bonfield said, adding that if not for Federal stimulus monies helping to offset some of DATA's "we would have probably had to make some pretty significant, very unpopular decisions about transit."
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