The 3-2 decision on Thursday afternoon by the Auburn City Council to cut the position of Human Resource Director is a decision that is likely to have significant negative effects on the city over the long term.

With a workforce of more than 300 employees, not having someone handling day to day personnel matters just doesn't make sense.

The city council took up a whole host of matters last week regarding the city's 2009-10 budget. In a mishmash of changes, the two most notable votes were restoring a part time records retention officer and cutting the HR director's position.

The argument that in these tight financial times require governments to cut would be more solid, except for three items. The first is that usually that argument is used when taxes are being raised #- but in this case, the city isn't raising property taxes. If it was, that usually is a signal to the council, especially in an election year, to make cuts. Oddly enough, it was the two members who are up for re-election who should be most sensitive to this issue, William Graney and Matthew Smith, but both wanted to keep the position. Just as important a missing piece is that the city contends that it has sizable surplus #- $6 million. If that is the case, then the fiscal necessity loses some of its potency. Finally, they cut one position but restored another.

The bigger question is doesn't the idea of a human resources director make sense? Doesn't the idea of having one person who is the city's point person, giving the same message to all employees make sense? Doesn't it make sense, when the city is facing several labor arbitrations and on the verge of negotiating several labor contracts to have one person to coordinate that work? Doesn't it make sense to have someone representing management and thus taxpayers, as the main focus of their workload? A bigger question that may not have been raised by this decision is who will pick up the workload? It is easy to say the city manager and city attorney, but at some point that means that they have to let other work priorities slip down the priority list.

There is a slight buzz that the problem with the position is not the position, but the person holding it, Karen Green. The flash in the pan controversy over her residency in late December (superseded by the larger DPW scandal) may be one of the unlisted reasons for this change. But if that was the case, the time to address that issue was then.

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