Tyrone lays off two highway employees

Oct 01, 2014 at 02:28 pm by Observer-Review


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Tyrone lays off two highway employees

TYRONE--The Tyrone town board unanimously voted Tuesday, Sept. 23 to eliminate two positions from the highway department. This comes as part of the latest effort for the town to reduce a recently discovered $55,000 deficit in the highway department budget. More than 40 Tyrone residents attended the meeting to voice their concerns about the town's financial issues.
"We need to cut this year's budget to get us through the rest of the year," Supervisor Jean Kosty said.
Kosty said last year when the town was doing the highway budget, they believed the budget allowed for $73,000 while it was actually only $18,000, leaving the town with a $55,000 deficit to overcome. She said the approximate net savings from laying off one highway employee would amount to $6,502 for the remainder of the current year and $41,474 the following year. Kosty said with the two layoffs, that number would double to $13,004 this year and $82,948 next year.
With the layoffs, the town's staff will be reduced from six members to four members. Kosty said the deficit came due to loans to the highway department from the town's general fund that were not paid back to the general fund. She said these loans were not taken into consideration when doing the current year's budget.
Several crowd members expressed their concern over a new $18,000 bulldozer purchased by the town for the highway department back in June even with the town's current financial concerns. Kosty said at the time the board agreed to purchase the bulldozer, they were unaware of the deficit, adding by they time they did know it was too late to stop the purchasing process.
"We wouldn't have purchased the dozer had we have known," Kosty said.

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