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Six Huntington firefighters were laid off Friday because of a budget shortfall, and Mayor Steve Updike said no plans were in place to make sure this shortfall wouldn’t happen again.
The layoffs, approved during a Board of Works and Public Safety meeting, will force closure of the city’s east-side fire station, leaving only two stations operating, said Wayne Huff, president of the Huntington Firefighters Association Local 680.
The layoffs will save the city $350,000, the mayor said. They come after six clerical employees from various city departments were let go this week, saving the city $200,000. The layoffs resulted from a budget shortfall due to an increased number of property tax refunds given to city taxpayers in 2008 and 2009.
Those refunds total about $1.7 million, Huntington County Auditor Kathy Juillerat said.
When residents’ properties are assessed, taxpayers can contest the assessments by filing an appeal with the county assessor’s office. If taxpayers can prove their property values were overassessed, they will be issued refund checks. Those checks are taken from the city’s budget, Juillerat said.
“Their city budget is based on assessed values,” she said. “It’s very unfortunate. It makes me sick that it’s happening.”
Updike declined to say Friday whether more layoffs could come or whether the firefighters would get their jobs back. At the mayor’s request, the Board of Works and Public Safety gave the OK to have an additional four firefighters and three police officers let go if needed.
“If I don’t lay off firefighters, … what good is it at the end of the year if I run out of money and don’t have money for anybody,” Updike said. “Either a few go or we all go.”
Updike said every unionized department in the city has unfilled positions. Updike asked for layoffs at the fire department, saying it was operating at full force. The fire department’s 41 firefighters are now reduced to 35.
“These levels that we have now in our fire department are down to levels we haven’t seen since 1969,” Huff said. “We’re leaving the whole east side of town unprotected.”
Updike said the taxpayer refunds were not factored into the city’s budget. He said he had no plans Friday to make sure the budget would not have a shortfall again.
Juillerat said it wasn’t until recently when she began crunching numbers that she realized how much money the city’s budget was losing from refund checks. Juillerat said she mentioned this during a conversation with the mayor’s wife, County Councilwoman Pam Updike, in early October.
Huntington County Assessor Terri Boone said her office received a surplus – about 700 – of property tax appeals after the city assessor’s office was dismantled in July 2008 because of new statewide mandates.
In 2006, property assessments were changed to reflect market values, Boone added. From 2008 to present, her office has been playing catch-up on appeals. Hard economic times may have also played a factor, with properties losing value because of area foreclosures, she said.
“That’s unusual that we had that many (appeals) in one year,” Boone said. “It’s this clean-up work that I had to address.”
