Friday, November 21, 2008
By RYAN DEZEMBER, Staff Reporter
ORANGE BEACH — This morning, 23 municipal employees will lose their jobs and many others in the weeks to come will see their pay slashed as city officials scramble to make up a $3 million budget shortfall.
Specifics of the firings won't be released until after Mayor Tony Kennon tells affected employees, but they amount to a little more than 8 percent of the city's current 275-person workforce. Overall, Orange Beach is cutting more than 13 percent of its jobs via the layoffs and the elimination of 15 positions that have been vacant since summer.
Over the last decade Orange Beach has thrived as one of the wealthiest cities in Alabama. City officials spent feverishly to add park land, build roads, provide amenities and generally get ready for a forecast population boom.
But sky-rocketing property insurance rates and tightening credit markets conspired to slow the area's booming real estate market and the onrush never came. Developers of more than 4,200 high-end condo units and hotel rooms that were approved in recent years never applied for building permits and construction of at least 3,400 more have been permitted but not started, city records show.
"We're cleaning up the mess from someone else's party," said Kennon, who took office earlier this month. "It's not a fun thing to do, but I've committed to run this city like a business and that's what we're going to do."
Kennon's counterpart in neighboring Gulf Shores, Mayor Robert Craft, said his city will also probably have to part with some of its nearly 300 employees. Gulf Shores isn't facing the immediate shortfall that Orange Beach is, but Craft said that city financial planners are anticipating that tax revenue will be about $3 million, or 10 percent, less than it was in 2008.
Mobile Press-Register
