WAILUKU — Mayor Charmaine Tavares said today that county employees are not facing layoffs or cutbacks as her administration puts the finishing touches on its budget proposal for fiscal 2010.

"I just want to make it very, very clear that my budget has no layoffs, no furloughs and no position cuts. There are zero. None," she said.

Her comments came in reaction to police Chief Tom Phillips' concern that budget restrictions would leave the Maui Police Department without dozens of positions and lead to a reduction in public safety services.

Tavares said that when people hear about a department cutting positions, they think about employees being laid off. But the cutbacks affect vacant positions only, she said.

"Historically, the Police Department has had about 30 vacant positions every year," she said.

As of March 1, the Police Department had 328 sworn officers and 116 civilian personnel. There also were 39 vacant officer positions and 27 unfilled civilian positions.

Phillips acknowledged that police officers and civilians currently working face no layoffs.

But, to maintain the department's current funding, its administrators needed to reduce overtime by $2 million and cut funding for 37 unfilled positions to accommodate negotiated police pay raises that go into effect July 1, Phillips said today.

The loss of funding for the unfilled positions would lead to the department being unable to pay officers' overtime for services such as school resource officers and crime prevention programs, the chief said.

The department has been short-handed for more than a decade, and overtime is routinely used to provide police services, he said. Also, when officers' base pay increases go into effect July 1, that will deplete overtime more rapidly than it is at current levels of pay.

Without the money from vacant positions, there's "no cushion, no extra money" to supplement overtime, Phillips said.

If the department continues at the same level of service next fiscal year, it will "run out of money," he said. And that would lead to cutbacks in services, beginning with crime prevention programs.