Danville City Council members have voted to place a proposed new budget on public display, but talks continue on how cuts will be made in the fire department. Assistant Chief Tom Pruitt says a team consisting of fire and city representatives have tentatively identified where more than the necessary $708-thousand dollars in cuts can be made.
‘’The $708-thousand dollars that the mayor asked us to find – we found closer to $900-thousand dollars in potential and cuts that we can make to save lay-offs in the Fire Division,’’ said Pruitt at Tuesday night’s city council meeting. ‘’Now let me explain that this is not a $900-thousand dollar savings every year. I’m going to step right up front and I’m going to tell you that. All this is – is a bridge to get us to the 18-19 (fiscal year) budget.’’
Mayor Scott Eisenhauer says discussions with the firefighters will be continuing. ‘’We will continue to meet with the fire personnel regularly to come to a resolution as quickly as possible. We will set an internal deadline as to when that needs to be accomplished so that all are comfortable working within a box of a time frame as to when all of it needs to be accomplished. But I’m very happy with the way discussions are going right now, and think at the end of the day it will be very fruitful – not just in determining what this budget looks like, but what the next few budgets will look like as well,’’ added Mayor Eisenhauer during an interview with VermilionCountyFirst.com News.
The mayor had earlier proposed cutting 16 firefighters. Pruitt says as the talks continue he remains strongly opposed to cutting any firefighters.
[Posted at 1;30 a.m. April 5, 2017.]
