Budget Concerns Force Unpaid Leave

About 240 city employees will have to take three days of unpaid furlough in coming months to help trim the city budget.

The group, composed of managers and professional workers such as engineers, fought City Manager Frank Benest for the right to take voluntary, rather than mandatory, unpaid leave.

But the number of volunteered days fell $38,000 short of the targeted savings of $327,000.

Some employees were unhappy with the council’s decision.

Leon Kaplan, the city’s director of arts and culture and one of the affected employees, said “$38,000 is not a lot of money.... In my view, it would have been a bigger gesture to recognize that a good faith effort was made.”