During Wednesday night's City Council meeting, City Administrator Greg Eason said nothing was set in stone.
Mayor Dayne Walling says the latest layoffs will help the city close an $8 million budget gap.
Over the next few days, approximately 60 workers will receive indefinite layoff notices. Walling says they layoffs will be spread over most of the city's non-public safety departments and will take affect Tuesday.
Perhaps the first place residents will notice the cuts will come from the sanitation department. Walling says the city will start collecting garbage every other week instead of once a week.
He says the layoffs will save the city close to $1 million in this year's budget that ends July 1. These layoffs come a week after the city rescinded 12 unpaid layoff days for AFSME 1600 workers. The union challenged the layoff days saying they never agreed to them.
In response, the mayor said he had to resort to old-fashioned layoffs to make up the money.
When asked if the workers should expect to be called back, Walling said it was unlikely.
Walling wasn't at Wednesday night's City Council meeting when Councilman Sheldon Neely questioned City Administrator Greg Eason.
"It's a proposal of options that the city may be pursuing," Eason told Neely during the meeting.
"There are a lot of other different things that have to go into consideration with this. I think that's what the mayor was saying. I was trying to be specific about it," Eason said.
Eason told council members the numbers are purely an estimate and that nothing is set in stone.
Council President Delrico Loyd said he heard about the layoffs and changes to garbage collection, but like others on council, he is conflicted by the new information. "I don't care what it is, those guys need to make up there minds."
"I heard and saw what the city administrator said, but I did not hear what the mayor said," Councilwoman Jackie Poplar said.
"To send mixed signals between the mayor and city administrator is not responsible in my opinion," added Councilman Sheldon Neely.
The director of communications for the city said the the changes are going to happen.
According to Walling, the layoff notices will take effect next Tuesday.
