Wichita mayor Whipple, council clash on proposal to aid workers idled by coronavirus

Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple is calling on the City Council to dip into its lunch and travel funds to help soften the blow on city workers as the budget faces a multi-million-dollar shortfall caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

But some of Whipple’s fellow council members are upset that he’s gone public with his ideas before the council has a meeting Tuesday to discuss the city’s entire budget. The city is projected to lose around $8 million of its $624.5 million budget, based on early staff estimates.

Whipple’s proposal came in response to City Manager Robert Layton’s decision last week to furlough 290 city employees for 30 days as Wichita grapples with the fallout from coronavirus disease COVID-19.

The bulk of the furloughed workers are in departments that are no longer open or are operating in a limited capacity, such as Library (102), Parks and Recreation (75) and Municipal Court (40). Other furloughed employees are in the following: Law (23), Finance (17), City Manager’s Office (15), Housing (9), Transit (6), Fire (1), Public Works and Utilities (1) and Human Resources (1).

The workers will be paid through unused sick and vacation time and donated leave time from other city employees.

Layton said the furloughs will result in “limited short term savings.” But the furloughs could be extended and other cuts to the city’s budget will almost certainly be coming.

Whipple said he’s frustrated that a decision to furlough nearly 10% of the city’s 3,200 employees was made without City Council approval.

In the future, he said, the first place City Hall should look for additional money to retain its workers is the council’s own office budget.

Whipple is proposing that the council give up whatever’s left for this year in the following budget lines:

▪ Council travel: $47,000. Pays for transportation, lodging and meals.

▪ Commodities: $23,000. Pays for lunches, snacks and council office supplies.

▪ Other: A $200,000 discretionary fund that has recently been tapped to fund charities.

“We (the council) should be taking the lead on this,” Whipple said. “Or I should say following those workers who have already sacrificed their vacations to make sure their colleagues get paid during this pandemic.

“Wichita’s working families are getting hit really hard right now, including our city employees. The City Council should have no problem packing their own lunches, not traveling for the rest of the year.”

Whipple floated his proposal in a letter to the editor of The Wichita Eagle challenging his council colleagues to join him in cutting their office budget.

City Council ‘blindsided’

Whipple’s request didn’t sit well with council member Bryan Frye, who said he felt like he was “blindsided” by the proposal.

“I’m disappointed that he chose to share with the media and not with the rest of the council first,” Frye said. “That would have been the right thing to do.”

“This is a personnel matter, it should be discussed in executive (closed) session and not in the public media,” he added.

He said he wasn’t even sure there’s a need for any further aid to furloughed workers.

It’s unclear how the furloughs will save the city money because the workers are still being paid, and the city hasn’t released its estimated savings.

“I was under the understanding that all of the furloughed salaries were covered right now and that there wasn’t any need to take any other action at this current furlough,” Frye said.

Whipple fired back at Frye’s assertion that anything about his proposal would need to be discussed behind closed doors or shared with the rest of council first.

“Why wouldn’t this be public?” he said. “We furloughed almost 300 people. That is public. I disagree with that, and I think that our employees shouldn’t be the only ones sacrificing.

“The employees sacrificing their vacation days, that’s also public. Why not be public with how the mayor views this? I think we can offer up parts of our public budget — that I don’t think we need, that I don’t think we’ll be using — to help our employees who need that a lot more than we do. And if (other council members) are not on board, they can vote no.”

Council member Jeff Blubaugh said he wasn’t put off by Whipple’s recommendations, but they won’t be nearly enough.

“I have no problem bringing in a sack lunch to the City Council meetings,” he said. “I really appreciate what he’s trying to do, and he’s trying to think outside of the box, and it’s definitely great to have that outside vision, but there is pretty good tribal knowledge within the council.

“I’m in full agreement we could do all those things (that Whipple’s suggesting) but we’ve got to look at some of the bigger picture stuff.”

He said the fate of the funds Whipple’s targeting should be part of a larger discussion of how the city rights itself after the financial blow it’s taken to sales tax, user fees and other revenue.

“We’re estimating an $8 million shortfall right now,” Blubaugh said.

And the city can’t make it up with fee increases for businesses “because they’re obviously going through a very difficult time as well.”

Blubaugh suggested that the council needs to revisit some ordinances it passed last year, including one earmarking 2% of spending on public projects for public art and 1% for cultural arts.

“Whenever we take those percentages of our total budget it doesn’t give us a lot of maneuvering room when we have crisis situations like we’re in right now,” he said.

‘It’s just a little different’

Vice Mayor Cindy Claycomb called Whipple’s approach “haphazard” and “piecemeal” and said she thinks any discussion about the budget should be a team effort that includes Layton.

“I think that we need to look at the budget in a very comprehensive manner and not really in a haphazard manner,” she said. “We have a really big budget and these are really serious, big-ticket decisions we have to make as a council.”

Council member Brandon Johnson said he thinks Whipple “definitely has some good ideas” but that he’s not used to these conversations playing out in public before the city has a formal meeting.

“These are conversations that we tend to have at the retreat,” Johnson said. “We all comb through the budget … and then we try to make the best decisions there. This tends to be a conversation that the council has in public and with our one employee, the city manager, so I guess this is just a little different for me.”

The important thing, Johnson said, is that the furloughed workers are getting paid for 30 days.

City Council member James Clendenin said he met with the city manager and was told employees had given feedback that they were pleased they could use their accrued time off or donate time to others to supplement the lost paychecks.

“Our furloughed workers, it sounds like, are very happy,” Clendenin said. “Obviously nobody’s happy about being furloughed, but they’re happy with how the city has stepped up to help at this point.”

Clendenin said he’d have no problem giving up the free lunch that council members get in the city cafeteria after meetings, or during if it runs long.

“I definitely pack my lunch the rest of the week and I’m happy to do it one more day,” he said.

He did have some reservations about Whipple’s proposal for the “other” budget.

The “other” line gives the council discretionary money to boost local charities.

In the past year, the council has tapped the fund for $75,000 each for Passageways, a group that provides housing for military veterans, and KVC Health Systems, which provides mental-health and substance abuse services for children.

Clendenin said he’d have to study that part of Whipple’s proposal further before making any decisions on it.

City Council member Becky Tuttle said she doesn’t have a problem with the cuts Whipple proposed, but added that she thinks he should have waited until Tuesday.

“Those are the kind of items that I already have on my list for next week when we have a budget retreat,” Tuttle said. “It was a little pre-emptive to throw items randomly out like that when we’re going to be looking at the whole city and the big picture of the budget overall.

“In these unprecedented times, we’re going to have to look at everything we do and not just little piecemeal, one or two items that can be eliminated, which I don’t think anyone out of the council would have disagreed with.”

As for office perks, Tuttle said under normal circumstances, council members only get three lunches a month on meeting days and the office snacks are things like crackers or snack mix. “It’s nothing extravagant.”

“We haven’t had a lunch since this (coronavirus threat) all started,” she said. “We have asked that no more snacks are offered. Regarding travel, obviously no one is traveling now and I think we would all agree that (cutting it out of the budget) would be something prudent to do.”

Whipple said that’s the point of offering up the money designated for the council’s use.

“I want to offer our budget to the city manager to be used to help out,” he said. “Basically, what I’m saying (to the manager) is ‘Feel free to raid this if you need it, because the council doesn’t.’”

Whipple said he thinks some council members’ irritation could be a holdover from the way city hall has functioned under previous mayors.

“This should be less about how things used to be, and how things are now,” he said. “They can be mad at me all they want. I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to make sure that we’re doing the right thing.”

This story was originally published April 2, 2020 at 5:01 AM.