Seattle City Council wants Nickels to freeze city hiring

Seattle City Council members Monday called on Mayor Greg Nickels to quickly put a hiring freeze in place for city workers and take other action to stem the economic problems facing the city in the next year.

The city is projecting up to a $30 million shortfall by the end of 2009. Weakening retail sales and the slumping real-estate market are mostly to blame.

The city, which has a general-fund budget of $910 million, has about $31 million in its rainy-day fund.

A Nickels spokesman said the mayor already has taken action to address the shortfall. Early last month, the mayor asked departments to propose cuts to their budgets of 1.5 to 3 percent — a $17 million reduction for the first half of this year.

"A hiring freeze at this point does not make sense," Nickels spokesman Alex Fryer wrote in an e-mail. "It's a bureaucratic process that can have unintended consequences, such as higher overtime costs."

The city is scheduled to adjust its budget in early April. More details should emerge about cuts the council might consider.

In the meantime, Councilmember Sally Clark said she worries the city will be so slow and deliberate that the budget situation will deteriorate further during the process.

Councilmember Jan Drago agreed: "It seems to me that time is of the essence." "There's all kinds of things the city could be doing, and we should be doing them immediately," said member Tim Burgess, who said last week he's considering running against Nickels as he seeks a third term this fall. "At homes all across Seattle, people are cutting back significantly. City government needs to be doing exactly the same thing."

The city isn't the only government to face shortfalls as part of a deepening national recession. King County was forced to cut $93 million from its 2009 budget, and the state recently announced an $8 billion shortfall over the next two years.

After hearing the forecasts for its budget, the City Council discussed how best to position itself for money promised in the federal economic-stimulus package signed into law last week.

But that money is unlikely to help the council with its general-fund woes. The city will compete for money to pay for specific projects that create jobs.

The city's finance director, Dwight Dively, also told the council Monday that December's nearly $2 million in snowstorm costs would be absorbed by existing emergency funds, mainly in the Seattle Department of Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities.

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com