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Regular City Council Meeting Monday,August 22,2011 Page 16 City Hall traffic was directed to his department as well as the Parks and Recreation Department, both being logistically at the entrance to City Hall and in- terrupting work flow. Mr. Trudgeon noted that this also allowed that Receptionist position to do daily receipting or building permits and fees, rather than retaining those receipts for an additional day. Mr. Trudgeon opined that there was a lot of traffic through City Hall on a daily basis, and their ability to speak directly to a real person at the Receptionist desk provided improved customer service. Related to Councilmember Johnson's question on impacts of the loss of the FTE last year, Mr. Trudgeon advised that 2011 revenue through June had already sur- passed 2010 revenue; and development proposals were picking up and kept staff busy. Mr. Trudgeon advised that discussion were ongoing at a staff level on that staffing; and noted that the Sienna Green project and some preliminary Twin Lakes staff projects were coming to completion, hopefully freeing up some staff time. As far as upcoming discussions among staff and the City Council at their Septem- ber 19, 2011 meeting related to economic development, Mr. Trudgeon advised that future City Council direction may have some additional impacts, but for now, staff was maintaining. Finance Director Chris Miller Mr. Miller echoed previous staff comments related to staff cuts; opining that it was the right thing to do to reinstate staffing. Over the last decade, Mr. Miller advised that the City had seen thirteen (13) positions eliminated or downgraded; and it created difficulty in replacing their skill set. Mr. Miller opined that he thought the City had done a good job in cutting programs and services to-date that had little or no impact to the public, noting that those cuts were the "easy stuff." However, Mr. Miller opined that, moving forward, any new staff cuts would cause severe concerns; and further opined that current staff could simply not be asked to do more with less; that they had reached their maximum. Mr. Miller noted that there was currently a growing disparity with the City's compensation plan elements compared to other public sector jobs, with the disparity being even more significant in key positions. While recognizing the need for a lean operation during hard economic times, Mr. Miller opined that the City would lose good peoples; and suggested that staff compensation be a priority issue for discussions in 2013 for moving forward. Mr. Miller echoed the comments made by Mr. Schwartz about continuing to ab- sorb inflation, noting that the City had been doing that for some time now, and there were only so many ways to do so, creating impacts across the board; and asked that the City Council be mindful of that in looking toward a sustainable budget; recognizing that it was only sustainable for today, but did not address in- flationary impacts for 2013 and beyond. Mr. Miller suggested that the City