Metro News Release
For immediate release: October 16, 2008
Metro holding line on spending to help local jurisdictions
100 vacant positions cut
Metro General Manager John Catoe has directed his finance office to tightly control spending in areas such as consultants, supplies and business travel and to look at other areas to cut to expenses except in critical safety areas or transit service levels. He also cut 100 positions that had been vacant for more than six months.
Metro, which relies heavily on jurisdictional subsidies to fund 40 percent of its annual operating budget, is doing what it can to control spending now to help local jurisdictions as they struggle to balance their budgets for next year.
“My goal is to present our Board with a recommendation for a balanced budget for the next fiscal year,” said Metro General Manager John Catoe.
“Like everyone else, I’ve been reading the newspapers and I’m aware of the current economic climate,” Catoe said. “We recognize that our jurisdictional partners are being forced to tighten their budget belts. The local economy and national economic pictures have changed, in great part due to the housing market’s decline. Prince George’s County and Montgomery County are considering furloughs, Fairfax County has cut hiring and travel, and Arlington County also has announced budget cuts. We are not immune to what is going on nationally and locally.”
Metro has a fully-funded budget through June 2009. “However the steps we’re taking now will reduce our budget needs for fiscal 2010 at a time when our local funding partners will, in all likelihood, be struggling to fund us,” Catoe said. “We need to be nimble and adjust to the situations of our financial partners.”
Last month Metro managers were asked to trim expenditures in the current budget year, which ends in June 2009.
Catoe said he sees the tight budget times as an opportunity to “take the next logical step in this organization’s transition from a construction agency to an operations agency by looking for ways to gain efficiencies in our operations.”
News release issued at 12:49 pm, October 16, 2008.