If new City Manager Mark Palesh's first week at Auburn City Hall is any sign of what is to come, city employees and taxpayers may be happier than they were destined to be this coming spring with what was likely to be proposed for the 2007-08 budget that needs to be adopted by July 1.

One of the comments made several times over the elongated search process for a new manager was to get some one into the job who could “hit the ground running.” What the city may have, at least temporarily, is someone who is “hitting the ground and assessing.”

It is no secret that Auburn is looking at major financial difficulties as it prepares for a new fiscal year. Based on its own mid-year financial analysis, released late last month, the city's current 2006-07 budget may have a $500,000 shortfall. Taking into account a 10 percent increase in health insurance rates (next to energy, one of the largest and most difficult variables for the city to control) and a 2 to 3 percent tax increase, the city is looking, again based on its own estimates, at a budget process for 2007-08, that starts with a roughly $1.2 million gap.

With that in mind, it was interesting to note that one of Palesh's first acts was to pull a resolution from last week's agenda to hire two new police officers. Forget for a moment whether the hirings are needed (a justified case can be made that they are), but that the new city manager, knowing the scope of the fiscal problems the city faces, wants to put a hold on “hiring and spending as usual,” at least for now.

No matter what the importance of hirings, new projects and spending requests, Palesh seems to want to get the lay of the financial landscape before moving forward on requests. Of little note last week, according to one member of the city council, he was also looking at expenses for filing cabinets and, more financially consequential, the city's vehicle fleet.

On the latter, he not only wants to know what is on the road but what is just sitting around, either unused or unusable. Not a bad move in a city that back in the early 1990s, through a state comptroller's audit, found that it “lost” a large truck, that couldn't be accounted for.

From a management point of view, this is the right time for the new manager to look, with fresh eyes, at everything. While he should not have to look at every request to purchase paper clips, he is right, to look at what financial minefields exist, in hopes of presenting a budget in a couple of months that does not look at major layoffs and trauma for both the city's workforce and more importantly taxpayers, as last spring's did.

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be e-mailed at cozguytho@aol.com