By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
A member of city staff went to bat for fellow employees during Tuesday’s city council meeting, urging the council to reconsider proposed staff reductions in next year’s budget.
Scot Carcasi, who currently serves as the city’s operations and compliance manager and who formerly worked as a member of the Del Rio Fire Department, spoke to city council members during a public hearing on the city’s proposed Fiscal Year 2025-2026 budget.
During the public hearing, the council heard from citizens who wished to comment on the proposed budget.
Carcasi spoke about an earlier recommendation by City Manager Shawna Burkhart to cut 24 full-time and four part-time employees from the city’s budget next year. Later during the same meeting at which Carcasi spoke, Burkhart told council she is now revising that recommendation to cutting 22 full-time and four part-time positions in the budget.
Carcasi told the council, “I was asked by a group of employees if I would speak up for them; some are in divisions I supervise, regarding the cuts to the staff. As I’ve explained to Ms. Burkhart, I’m not for the cuts. I’m a labor guy. I grew up in the city, working for the city. I retired from the fire department and decided to come back, because it’s such a great place to work. And now I supervise an awesome group of guys and gals, and some of them are going to be deeply affected by these cuts.
“One division is pretty much going away, and that’s going to be hard. It’s going to be hard to provide those services that we used to do. I’m working with Ms. Burkhart to try to come up with a plan on how we can mitigate that to have the least impact. But I did tell my guys, my employees – they told me they’re not good speakers, so I said I would do it for them – so that’s why I’m up here,” Carcasi said.
He told the council they will see several versions of the proposed budget, with at least one, called “Draft 5,” that omits the earlier proposed personnel cuts.
Carcasi said the version of the budget known as “Draft 4” gives “a net operating for the general fund of negative $2,314,200.”
He said Draft 5, with no personnel cuts, “gives us a net operating of negative $2,867,150.”
Carcasi said, “The difference between the two is $552,950.”
Carcasi also said he would like for council members to remember there are currently 15 vacancies in positions funded by the city’s general fund.
He said, “Most of those positions are already frozen, so we’re operating currently without them, and I’d like to see if we could propose sticking with those 15, and then look at our revenues coming up in the new year to give us a little bit of time to see if we have any more vacancies pop up that we could freeze.”
Carcasi said he recently observed the police department’s collective bargaining session and noted the officers involved agreed to a freeze on four positions in the department for one year so the rest of the officers could receive an increased stipend next year from $1,200 to $3,500.
Carcasi also suggested the council could find savings other than cutting the positions, starting with travel expenses for employee training.
Carcasi said, “We currently have $100,000 for travel for employees; if we could reduce that, because most of the trainings we have to attend, we can do online. I know there’s some conferences and mandatory classes for certain employees that they have to travel to, so obviously we’re going to have to keep some travel. I’m not saying to delete the whole thing, and I’m only using this as an example because it was easy for me to find.”
“So I just want to finish up with the cuts, especially to the divisions that I supervise, are going to be really detrimental to service, and it’s service we may not see as forward-facing directly to the public, but it will be, because it’s our buildings. It’s the cleanliness of our buildings. It’s programs we provide to the public that will be impacted, and so, I just wanted to voice that,” Carcasi finished.
Council members made no statements following the comments made during the public hearing.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com .
