Marietta City Council members accepted a performance audit and discussed ways to reduce costs in light of the audit during the council meeting Thursday evening.

The audit was performed by the Ohio Auditor’s Office upon the request of the city and stated the city’s general fund could be depleted by 2025 due to a recent trend of negative operating results and cash depletion. Resolution 7 (24-25) was read for a third time and then it passed unanimously. The resolution was to accept and endorse the performance audit and to agree to implement recommendations in the audit.

During the miscellaneous business portion of the meeting, Councilmember At-Large Cassidi Shoaf said next week there will be meetings with department heads about possible staff cuts.

“Monday night we’re having meetings where we are asking the department heads to come in to start discussing the possible potential staffing cuts that are going to need to take place in order to remain solvent for the city and the hope is that we as legislators do not have imminent knowledge on how operations work best, so we don’t know exactly which decisions have the least amount of impact to services,” Shoaf said.

Shoaf hopes that council will be able to work with the department heads to figure out where financial cuts need to be made so that the city can still maintain as good a set of services as it can for Marietta citizens.

“So that process is going to start on Monday and hopefully legislation will be on the next meeting (agenda) for those changes,” Shoaf said.

When asked if there will be staff cuts in response to the audit, Mayor Josh Schlicher said, “I’m not sure about staff reductions.”

Schlicher said the city is bringing in the department heads to talk about department operations and changes that can be made to reduce costs and not services.

“That could mean personnel,” he said, but added he thinks the main intention of the meetings is to talk about operational cuts from the perspective of department heads.

“I don’t anticipate them bringing up employee reduction,” he said about the meetings.

Schlicher acknowledged that “if (the council members) want to follow the recommendations of the performance audit … what they’re recommending are staff cuts.”

Schlicher said he is not sure what is going to be decided as far as cost reducing measures and he doesn’t know the full extent of the overall planned cost reductions yet.

Council also enacted an ordinance that will save the city money when it comes to insurance. The first reading of Ordinance No. 40 (24-25) was held at the meeting. The ordinance amends Municipal Code Section 161.04 Health Insurance Benefits and repeals Ordinance No. 373 (22-23).

According to Shoaf, who sponsored the ordinance, each Marietta employee has their own health insurance policy but if their spouse works for the city too, then they are each covered on their spouses health insurance plan too, so it is like being insured twice.

She said there are three married couples, six people in total, who work for the city that would be affected by the ordinance.

Earlier in the meeting two Marietta employees spoke out against the ordinance, Marietta Public Works Superintendent Christopher B. Hess and Marietta Police Department Inspector Alan J. Linscott expressed their opposition to the ordinance.

“I understand that that benefit is going to be taken away from me,” he said. “My biggest concern is I have never been talked to about this. It’s never been brought to me.”

He said that while this is one way to save money, it isn’t the only way.

Linscott accused the council of discriminating against employees, since there are employees who have a second insurance policy from an employer that is not the City of Marietta and they are not losing their Marietta health insurance policy. He said that the ordinance was not on the agenda when it was made available at 12:51 p.m. and it was added last minute and that makes it look like the ordinance was trying to be forced through with no employee discussion.

A motion to suspend the rules for a second and third reading passed unanimously. Shoaf addressed the concerns of the employees losing their insurance after the motion to suspend passed.

She said that the Ohio Revised Code does not require that an ordinance be listed on a meeting agenda prior to the meeting and that she let Linscott know on March 5 that the ordinance would be on the agenda. She also said that the same ordinance was considered last year and tabled due to union contracts negotiations and there were multiple meetings about it last year and every employee and citizen was welcome to attend them.

She said the ordinance would save the city $45,000 through the end of the year and about $1,000 a week.

The ordinance passed unanimously.

Michelle Dillon can be reached at mdillon@newsandsentinel.com