Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

NORTH SMITHFIELD, R.I. -- Five municipal employees are being laid off through July 1 and three police officers may be joining them by tomorrow if the town and the police union can't come to terms on a budget-reducing agreement, Town Administrator Paulette Hamilton said.

The affected workers include two public works drivers, one mechanic, one laborer and one payroll clerk. She said she was waiting to hear from the town's police department union to try to avoid the layoff of three members of that department, Hamilton said.

If an agreement isn't reached Thursday, those three layoffs will take effect Friday, she said.

The plan for now is that the laid off workers will return to work on July 1, when the new fiscal year starts, Hamilton said, but that assumes the town will have enough money in the next fiscal year to pay them.

The layoffs are needed to close a $1.3 million deficit in the town's $33.9 million school-town budget. Hamilton said $556,000 of that shortfall is due to Governor Carcieri's plan to eliminate general revenue sharing aid for the state's cities and towns.

Hamilton said her original plan had been to seek $60,000 in concessions from the municipal and police union and the North Smithfield Fire and Rescue Services Inc, the private corporation that provides the town with fire and rescue services.

She said the fire and rescue service was able to cut its budget by $60,000. but proposals for 10-percent pay cuts through June 30, or reducing all town employees work week from 35 hours to 31 hours were rejected by the town government unions, she said.

"It has been unfortunate more than adversarial," she added, referring to the tenor of the talks. "If we'd had more time we might have been able to come to a better result."

 Tags  deficit economy layoffs

Leave a comment

Please be civil. Vicious comments, personal attacks and profanity won't be published. Name and email are required; email address will not publish.

Name:

Email:

URL:  

Remember personal info?

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.