Furlough Day for Dallas and Fort Worth

By BJ Austin, KERA News

Dallas, TX –

Both Dallas and Fort Worth City Halls are closed today. It's an unpaid furlough day for city workers. KERA's BJ Austin reports.

The furlough days planned in the cities' 2010 budgets help fill multi million dollar budget shortfalls. Frank Librio, with the city of Dallas, says this is the first of five unpaid furlough days this fiscal year.

Librio: Each furlough day saves the city approximately 800 thousand dollars to the general fund. The City Manager has put the furlough days up against holiday weekends, or weekends, to achieve some energy savings as well. We expect that each furlough day saves the city about 20 thousand dollars in energy savings.

In Fort Worth, Jason Lamers, says each furlough day saves about half a million dollars. There are 8 unpaid days-off this budget year for Fort Worth city workers. That amounts to about a 3% pay cut.

City Halls, libraries, rec centers are closed in both cities. The zoos are open, so are municipal golf courses. Sanitation, police and fire personnel remain on the job.

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