By DONNA KENNY KIRWAN

PAWTUCKET — Facing the toughest financial outlook in recent memory, Mayor James Doyle and his administration are looking for help from the city’s unions in balancing the city budget without having to resort to a hefty tax increase.

In an executive session held late Friday afternoon, a group of city officials met to discuss these negotiations with the unions and to talk over a general strategy for dealing with the budget on both the city government and school side, according to Harvey Goulet, Doyle’s director of administration.
The meeting included members of the City Council, who called for the special session, as well as Goulet, Finance Director Ronald Wunschel, Personnel Director Angel Garcia, City Solicitor Margaret Lynch-Gadaleta, and Robert Brooks, an attorney who represents the city in its dealings with the unions.
Goulet said the purpose of the meeting was to discuss ways of reducing expenses, and as such, the potential tax increase that would be needed to balance the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. He also said the discussion also centered around salaries and benefits for municipal employees.
City leaders have said that the city is projecting a deficit of about $2.3 million and the School Department is anticipating a shortage of about $2.8 million. In addition, there is uncertainty about the amount of state aid the city can count on for the coming year and a shortfall in projected revenue, largely due to the downturn in the real estate market, coupled with expected increases in fuel, electricity, and other operational costs.
Goulet said that everything has been laid out on the table to union leaders, including the possibility of lay-offs, furloughs, increased co-payments for health insurance benefits, and freezes in the salary increases of contracts. “It comes down to, how much of this are we able to absorb?” noted Goulet, of the deficit that looms ahead.
Goulet noted that most of the employee contracts, with the exception of the teachers union, expired as of June 30, 2007 and are up for negotiation. The teachers union has two more years to go in its current contract, and Goulet said he is hoping they will be willing to open up the pact and help with the budget crisis. Likewise, he said that if school administrators are up for an increase, he is also hoping that they reconsider.
Goulet said that by freezing increases in salaries in either year-one or even year-two of the contracts would be “the least painful” because a year has already gone by since most of the contracts expired.
Several members of the city council have spoken out about the not wanting a tax increase. Goulet said, however, that while this is something the administration is trying to avoid, it might not be realistic. “Everyone wants to have a zero percent tax increase. But, we have to do the right thing, and the right thing means doing what is responsible,” noted Goulet. He added that cuts to areas such as sanitation, or school crossing guards, and other municipal services would not be popular with city residents either.
Goulet said that one of the money-saving measures being looked at is charging “user fees” for certain services” for certain municipal services such as trash pick-up or recreational facilities such as the Lynch Ice Arena. He said the philosophy is, “if you use it, you pay for it,” which would offer a more fair treatment to taxpayers. Goulet pointed out that the Lynch Ice Arena is considered to be one of the cheapest facilities in the state, but said that increased fees might be inevitable in the current budget situation.
Ronald Wunschel, the city’s Finance Director, also said that the city will be looking to the unions for concessions. Beyond this, he said, it is premature to say what the fiscal year 2009 budget will be or the accompanying property tax increase. He categorized the tax situation as “a moving target right now,” saying that a tax increase could be anywhere from zero to $1, or somewhere in the middle--depending on what concessions are made.”
Wunschel reiterated the seriousness of the city’s budget situation, especially in light of escalating gasoline and utility costs. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he stated.
On the schools side, the School Committee and school administrators recently met with the state auditor general in an executive session to come up with a spending plan to deal with their own budget woes. Schools Business manager Thomas Conlon said it was premature to discuss the details of the proposal at this time.