Yesterday afternoon, Mayor Mike McGinn sent a memo to city department heads setting targets for reducing staff positions. In his first week in office, he announced that he would eliminate 200 "senior-level positions" in an effort to help close the city's budget gap, explaining that "estimates are that the City will face a general-fund budget deficit of at least $40 million in 2011." But some of the largest cuts he's targeted come from Seattle Public Utilities (43 positions) and Seattle City Light (46 positions), which get funding largely from utility fees, not the city's general fund. However, those departments also gained some of the most new high-level positions under the Nickels Administration. It will be interesting to see how many of these actually result in firings, and how many of the reductions involve not filling vacancies.

McGinn's memo is after the jump. These are the department-by-department staff cuts proposed by McGinn:

Allocation of Senior Position Review Targets
January 22, 2010

Between 2002 and 2009, City government has seen significant growth in the number of senior-level positions. This combined with an anticipated 2011 General Fund deficit in the $40 million range, as well as financial challenges in many of the City’s non-General Funds, resulted in Mayor McGinn calling for a review of senior management positions with the goal of eliminating or reclassifying 200 positions. As discussed in the January 21, 2010 memorandum from Acting Budget Director Beth Goldberg, the table below allocates the 200 senior-level position goal among the Executive branch departments. The senior-level position targets are allocated among Executive branch departments based on a combination
of three factors:

1) the number of senior-level positions created through the reclassification of vacant lower level positions to senior-level positions outside of the budget process;
2) the number of senior-level positions that were eliminated from departments as part of the 2010 adopted budget process;
3) the overall growth in the number of senior-level positions between 2002 and 2010

The total number of positions allocated among departments is 200. The 2010 adopted budget already abrogated 20 senior-level positions, meaning that the 200 positions allocated here exceeds the Mayor’s target by 20 positions. Additional positions are being allocated as part of this process to give the Mayor options as he makes decisions on how to eliminate or reclassify positions based on feedback and analysis from departments. Please refer to the January 21, 2010 memo for specific instructions about how to respond to the target allocations assigned above.

The targets reflected here are intended to be the starting point of a dialog between departments, the City Budget Office and the Mayor’s Office. These targets do not reflect final decisions. Discussions about these targets and the operational implications of reductions and/or reclassifications will take place over the next two months. Implementation decisions could occur in 2010 or as part of the 2011-2012 budget process. In addition to weighing the operational implications of decisions to reduce or reclassify senior level positions, the Mayor’s Office also intends on considering race and social justice issues as decisions are reached.