$53 MILLION BUDGET GOES BEFORE CAPE CITY COUNCIL TONIGHT

City Manager Michael Miller characterizes the budget the Cape Girardeau City Council is expected to adopt tonight as boring because it has few changes from the current one. Still, there are two potential areas of controversy: pay for firefighters and whether the city's sales tax revenues will meet projections.

The new budget year begins July 1.

Firefighters contend that a new way of figuring vacation pay could cost firefighters hundreds of dollars a year. They also say that although the city has guaranteed that every city employee will receive pay raises, the proposed 1997-98 salary schedule would mean that future firefighters and police officers will actually make less money than current firefighters and police officers with the same job classifications and experience make now.

The current way of figuring vacation pay includes credit for overtime pay while the proposed change does not. Scott Altenthal, a captain in the fire department and vice president of Local 1084 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said the change would cost him as much as $580 a year. He said it would cancel out all but $119 of his proposed annual pay raise of $699.

The City Council has agreed to raise city employees' salaries to the average pay of four comparable cities -- Jefferson City, Joplin, St. Joseph and Sedalia -- over the next three years.

For example, on the proposed schedule a fifth-year firefighter's pay is $22,597, while on the current schedule it is $22,800 for a drop of just less than 1 percent.

Daniel Ward, the city's personnel director, said the changes in the salary schedule are temporary glitches that will correct themselves after the next two years' increases go into effect.

Ward said the formula for figuring vacation pay is so complicated that no one really knows whether firefighters will be hurt by the change.

Fire Chief Dan White promised to deliver the City Council a report on the overtime/vacation-pay situation at tonight's meeting.

Local 1084 President Chuck Denson said that if the new salary schedule is adopted as part of the budget tonight, his union will press for "adjustments" later.

Complicating the salary raises and everything else in the budget is sales tax revenue. Expected sales tax revenues pay for 47.1 percent of the 1997-98 budget. The city staff drew up a budget based on a 2 percent increase in sales tax revenues over current projections for this year's revenues. With one month's sales tax revenues still to come in, sales taxes are down about 1 1/2 percent from last year at this time.