Maurice Holmes came in from the rain Monday to watch Sparks Mayor Geno Martini give his State of the City speech.

After Martini pled with the crowd for patience and participation as the city operates on a leaner budget, Holmes, a city public works utility worker, said he didn’t really hear anything new.

“It was about what I expected,” Holmes said.

Since January, the public works department has been operating on a leaner staff after the city was forced to eliminate 11 positions.

“We do what we can … with fewer people,” Holmes said. “They are re-engineering some stuff right now on that.”

As Martini addressed the city’s faltering budget in his morning speech, he asked citizens to lend the city their volunteer hours and their patience.

“I am making a plea to all our citizens to please understand if it takes a little while longer to repair our streets or approve building plans and building inspections or cut the grass and trim the landscaping at our parks,” Martini said. “These are not easy times. In fact, they are unprecedented times in the modern-day history of our state and nation. We need your help. If you care about Sparks, if you care about the future of your city, we need your input and you must get involved.”

Martini said that the police department needs 54 new officers today in order to fall in line with national law enforcement coverage averages. He encouraged residents to volunteer to patrol the Sparks Marina and downtown Victorian Square as well as start their own Neighborhood Watch programs.

He also urged residents to take greater responsibility for their neighborhood parks by picking up trash and cleaning up graffiti.

“It is imperative that our citizens work together to clean up graffiti on private property,” Martini said. “I encourage civic and volunteer groups to help us tackle this problem.”

Martini’s discussion of the city’s budget woes over the past year began by pointing a finger at a faltering housing market. According to Martini, one out of every 134 homes was in the foreclosure process last year in Washoe County.

“It will be a great year if we hit an economic bottom,” Martini said, while in the next breath anticipating possible economic recovery sometime in 2010.

“I believe that our state’s economy will recover behind the national economy,” Martini told the crowd of almost 100 people.

So far this fiscal year, the city has cut its budget by about $8 million.

Martini cited the Sparks Fire Department’s recent $500,000 reduction in overtime expenditures alongside the city’s cut programs and staff.

Martini’s comments also took a stance against the State Legislature, stating that while the state does need to find additional revenue, they should not look to the cities for that funding.

“I believe that our state government must find additional revenue sources, but must not burden local governments like Sparks or our educational institutions,” Martini said. “To do so would cripple the fundamental foundations of our government, the services we provide and would force educated members of our workforce to leave the state in search of greater opportunities.”

Since March 2008, Martini said that the city has laid off 58 workers.

Holmes said that he is feeling the pinch in his department and that Martini didn’t say anything that he already hadn’t heard as he and other workers chatted around the job site.

“Did he say anything that I didn’t already know? No,” Holmes said. “But you gotta be an optimist. Being otherwise doesn’t help anything.”

A Sparks facility maintenance worker is now responsible for 246,869 square feet of public facility space, which falls in the bottom third of the industry average for staff/facility square footage maintenance. In 1985, the same worker was responsible for 55,424 square feet.