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AC Mayor Updates Residents On Efforts To Avert State Takeover

By David Madden

ATLANTIC CITY, NJ (CBS) -- Atlantic City has until early November to demonstrate it can right the financial course of city government, or the state of New Jersey takes over. Tuesday night, Mayor Don Guardian held the first in a series of public meetings to demonstrate what they're doing to comply with that mandate.

Don Guardian
Photo credit: KYW's David Madden

They're less than a month into an almost 5 month process. So there's not a lot of concrete progress to report. Guardian indicated changes made to date, including paring down the payroll a great deal.

"Departments are at about 30% of where they were<" Guardian told more than 100 people in attendance at the two hour meeting. "45 fewer cops. 25 fewer fire fighters. 75 fewer public works employees. If we want to provide these services, I'm hard pressed to reduce the number beyond that."

His administration is working on a new police contract. There's already regional talk of shared services. They're in the process of refinancing some 240 million dollars in long term debt and selling city assets, although he's reluctant to let go of the water company, insisting that might cost residents more than any deal might be worth.

"If you think someone is going to give us 100 million dollars and not get that back from you over 5, 10 or 15 years, I don't know. You've got to tell me why someone would do that," he said.

Bottom line, this is still very much a work in progress.

The next community meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, July 26th.

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