Palm Springs lays off 29 city employees
The city of Palm Springs has notified 29 city employees that they will be laid off, City Manager David Ready confirmed to News Channel 3 on Thursday. He said all departments have been affected.
Ready said about 19 people also accepted a program for early leave. Some were closer to retirement than others. The group was given the option to work until June 30 or December 30.
About 31 vacant positions were also frozen. The changes went into effect this week.
Although more than 2 dozen were put on notice, they will be able to obtain benefits.
"They're entitled to 2 months of severance pay, they will receive 26 weeks of unemployment, and 6 weeks of health insurance benefits," Ready said.
The city released this document, which breaks down which positions were on the chopping block.
The fire department saw one clerical assistant cut, while the police department cut 3 non-uniformed employees.
"Our core responsibility is to make sure our residents and visitors are safe. Obviously police, fire, paramedic-- that is of key importance," Ready said.
The city is dealing with a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall.
"We're looking at 47 million in new fiscal year which begins July 1, and we had approximately 30 million in prior fiscal year that we're just going to be ending," Ready said.
In April, the city declared a fiscal emergency. In May, it reached out to the federal government to seek financial support for losses in revenue directly brought on by COVID-19.
"So the key for us is going to be the reopening of our tourist economy. When people are able to travel again, come stay in hotels, eat at our restaurants, shop at our businesses, that is going to be the key thing," Ready said.
Ready said the city council will monitor the situation on a month-to-month basis, and will adopt a rolling budget.
"If the economy improves sooner we'll be able to potentially add services back in but conversely if we find that it's not, there may be additional reductions in the budget that we'll have to make," Ready said.
