123 of Akron's roughly 2,000 employees have accepted the buyout offers and will give up their jobs.
Departing workers will have one time payouts of 30% of their first 50 thousand dollars in salary, and 5% of any salary above that level.
The separations follow three rounds of city worker layoffs in a three week period this summer, most of them part-timers.
While the buyouts will save the city an estimated $7,000,000 in unpaid wages, it still leaves more than five million dollars of red ink on the books.
So as the mayor earlier promised....
MARK WILLIAMSON: "Layoffs are coming."
Mark Williamson is Akron's Communications Director.
Speaking for Mayor Don Plusquellic, he praised city workers who took buyouts... some of whom had worked for the city more thn 30 years.
But the city hoped about twice as many would volunteer to leave.
Three of the city's five major unions endorsed the buyout plan, but some also criticized it, saying the offer was not lucrative enough.
Exactly how many Akron workers will now be forced out.... isn't clear yet.
WILLIAMSON: "...the number of layoffs that he is forced to make is directly in line with the number of dollars we're able to cut, expenses we're able to cut, and buyouts that we were able to attain."
Final decisions on who gets cut will come by the end of September.
