ML hopes financial recovery continues

Recent upswing in city revenue a positive, but nothing certain yet

MOSES LAKE — City Manager Joe Gavinski and Financial Services Director Ron Cone believe the city is, in a word, recovering.

Not completely at full strength, but not as bad as it was two years ago or last year, and better off than many other cities throughout the state.

Both Cone and Gavinski agreed that the economy got better starting at the last half of 2004. The sales tax revenues rose and construction numbers rose, as well. Still, it's not a sure sign of a total recovery.

"Six months don't make a trend," Gavinski said. "I would not go jumping for joy yet."

There is reason for a moderate optimism, however, especially considering the last three years the city has endured. Cone has been with the city for 16 years, Gavinski for 25 and they both say that the period from 2002-2004 was the roughest they had seen since they had been in Moses Lake.

Not even having the city ankle-deep in ash compares.

"This was much tougher than 1981," Gavinski said, referring to the year after Mount St. Helens erupted.

In 1981, the city did not have reserves, so it had to lay off employees in order to rebound. The eruption came and went and the rough times were over in a year.

This time around, the city had reserves and they used them, hoping things would get better the next year. They didn't.

Initiatives restricted growth at levels lower than inflation and did away with the motor vehicle excise tax all cities had been used to counting on. Interest rates dropped and sales tax revenues deflated.

"It all came at the same time," Gavinski said.

After three years, the city was at the same position it was in 1981, having to consider lay-offs.

"Every year we would look at it and say, it's going to get better and it didn't," Cone remembers. The stress of that time has not erased itself from their memories.

"How would you like to sit down and have to say you are going to have to lay off people?" Cone asked. "These are people you know, we are not that big a city."

Using a mixture of voluntary retirements, reduced hours, employees leaving for greener pastures and as few lay-offs as possible, the city rolled with the tough times, reducing expenditures to the basics, spending only as much as they were receiving.

Then, in mid-2004, the sales tax revenue started picking up. And then the month after that, and the month after that. And so has been for the past six months.

"We have our fingers crossed," Cone said.

Gavinski agreed, adding that he feels a lot better sitting at the helm of the city than he did last year. However, he will probably be much more certain of the strength of the economy by mid-May of this year.

Until then, caution is the word, hoping that the extra revenue is not a fluke.

"We will be careful adding additional expenditures," Gavinski said. "We want to make sure that we can afford to continue to keep them."