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Just got back from a week of vacation. The post will start flowing again. We have significant budget decisions to make as the City Council meets in work session 5:45 this Tuesday. I have had a great deal of time to think through the financial issues we are facing and am ready with my recommendations to the council on future staff pay and health benefits - our health insurance premiums have increased 18% this year and the several other options we have explored so far have been more. We have two more options we are exploring to lower our health care cost.

We also will be starting negotiations with our Unions soon and this will have an impact going forward. It is my belief that we need to maintain our service levels but this will take shared sacrifice by everyone involved.