More with less

Believe it or not, Saratoga Springs could learn a lot from the ailing newspaper industry. The city is facing a grim economic outlook, much like the lumbering media giants did during the late 1990s, as a perfect storm of failure was swirling over their business model. Similarly, the city is trapped beneath a storm cone that formed as a result of their abject failure to predict an inevitable slowdown of municipal revenue streams.

The newspapers could have forecast their decline when the World Wide Web picked up steam during the mid-90s. Those publications that embraced the Internet have since staved off many of the cuts they needed to make when Craigslist and eBay hit the market several years later. Those who fell behind this learning curve were left with declining profits, an archaic business model and no way of sustaining their workforce.

Nearly all local newspapers have contracted their staff numbers through lay-offs or attrition. And it’s a good thing too, considering the present state of the economy. Today the motto in most newsrooms is doing more with less. It’s a sad fact of life for the media, which can no longer afford even a fraction of the amenities they once did during their heyday.

Newsrooms have since adjusted to these cuts, some more seamlessly than others. The overriding concept of these cuts is doing more with less. Consolidating departments, reducing bureaus and ensuring every last employee is giving 100 percent. Some say this has diminished the product at the newsstand and has furthered diminishing circulation numbers. But ask any publisher and they’ll tell you the only other alternative was to pack it all up and call it a day.

Pan to the city’s developing fiscal crisis. For nearly two decades, budget planners have had the luxury of nearly unprecedented economic development on their side. Vacant lots were being converted into high-rise condominiums; run-down row houses were being turned into an art district, the mansions on North Broadway more than tripled in value. At the apex of this renaissance, the city was showered with more than $3 million worth of windfall funding through the state’s video lottery terminal aid.

Most fiscal planners worth their salt would have urged an ounce of fiscal restraint at this point; perhaps squirrel this aid away into a rainy-day fund. But at the time, the decision was made to dump the VLT aid into the city’s general fund and keep on spending. And they did.

All of this culminated with the 8 percent increase in taxes shoved through under the mayoral administration of Valerie Keehn in 2007, just as the real estate ‘correction’ was beginning and Albany was threatening to hatchet all of the VLT aid. Some municipal groveling and a helping hand from lame-duck Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno saved the city from what could have easily been a 20 percent tax increase or what today’s commissioners might term ‘drastic cuts.’

The Republican-led city council hasn’t done much to right the ship so dreadfully steered off course by the two preceding councils; one led by democrats and the other by the GOP. Finance Commissioner Ken Ivins first talked a big game in cutting overtime to the police and public works departments, and even laying off nearly two dozen part- and full-time city workers.

Then miraculously these cuts were all restored. All it took was the state Department of Environmental Conservation to mail a $526,000 check for aid from the state’s ‘energy to ice’ program. Suddenly, Saratoga Springs was fat city again, more than able to sustain a workforce that was unsustainable during the first round of budget talks. There was lots of back slapping right up until the inevitable news from Albany came last week, indicating the governor is again wittling down the city’s VLT aid. This will leave the city with an estimated 5 percent budget shortfall.

At this point, most rational thinkers would deduce that it’s a bad idea to balance a budget deficit on aid derived from tenuous revenues. At the very least, they’d recognize the shrinking likelihood of the city being isolated from a nationwide recession.

The newsmen realized they were in a similar budgetary predicament a decade ago. Some tried to scurry out of it by consolidating their industry for quick-hit one-time gains. Others rolled with the punches and kept their newsrooms competitive while trying to realize new methods of earning revenue. In both cases, they realized the need to keep a lithe staff that is able to do more with fewer financial resources. It’s something the city should be thinking about as it slogs through the latest financial debacle. In this case, there is no other choice but to cut the burgeoning ranks of city personnel.

This starts with a hiring freeze and continues with retirement incentives. Overtime budgets should be slashed in half, even if it means at the behest of lessening the nearly weekly downtown street festivals. And if the hole continues to gape, then it’s time to start trimming workers, starting at the top and working down. Perhaps if the city had saved some of its boon-time revenues, they could have at least prolonged the cuts they will certainly face either this year or next. But they didn’t, and now it’s time to face the music.

When Ivins takes the floor this evening, his command to the commissioners should be to find at least three positions in each department that can be consolidated into one, with specific regards to the Public Safety and Public Works departments. If they can’t figure it out, then he should advertise the double digit tax increase, and then let residents figure it out with pitchforks and torches.