Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez announced 5 percent salary cuts along with benefit decreases for all non-union employees, following county commissioners' move earlier this week to impose similar reductions on three unions.

But county leaders are hardly out of the woods when it comes to resolving the ongoing budget crunch.

The non-union employees under Alvarez's control amount to less than 10 percent of the county's workforce, and labor contracts for the most powerful unions, including police and fire, are unresolved.

The cuts announced Friday by Alvarez, which take effect Monday for most non-union workers affected, are one step in a process that likely won't be concluded until early next year at the soonest.

``We're not done yet, we still have five unions that must come to the table,'' Alvarez said.

In September, county commissioners voted to close a $444 million budget deficit through a range of spending cuts. The single biggest reduction: slashing employee compensation by $208 million.

But none of the compensation cuts have actually been imposed even though Miami-Dade's fiscal year began Oct. 1, resulting in the county losing $4 million every week.

INEVITABLE

The delay means further pay cuts or layoffs than currently proposed are nearly inevitable in order to balance the budget by fiscal year's end.

On Monday, vacillating commissioners voted to give three unions -- aviation, solid waste and general employees -- the option of accepting 5 percent pay cuts or the equivalent reduction in holiday pay.

Commissioners voted to impose the cuts Monday after two lengthy meetings that ended without a decision. The third meeting this week nearly ended again without a decision before commissioners voted 6-5 to impose the cuts. On the heels of the Miami-Dade commission vote, Alvarez announced an equivalent pay reduction for the 2,843 non-union employees controlled by the mayor's office. The group ranges from staffers in the executive office to department heads.

Recently, Alvarez has pushed commissioners to make a decision on salary cuts. Yet he didn't impose cuts on non-union staff either. On Friday, Alvarez said the reason he waited to impose the cuts, despite the fiscal year starting nearly a month ago, was to ``see where the commission was coming from'' in implementing trims.

Commissioners previously proposed a tiered salary reduction structure, so higher-paid executives would receive a larger percentage cut. The mayor, who came under fire this year for granting raises ranging from 11 to 54 percent to senior aides despite calling for shared sacrifice, favors uniform salary cuts.

A portion of the cuts announced Friday must still get approval from county commissioners Tuesday. If approved, the salary cuts to the three union and non-union groups amount to $85.4 million -- less than half the $208 million called for in the budget.

GROWING EACH DAY

That gap is growing each day as five other union contracts remain unresolved -- and means even deeper cuts to come. In a memo Friday, County Manager George Burgess wrote that every delay costs the government money as the deficit grows. ``We will not be able to close it . . . without further reducing our public services and, therefore, ordering additional layoffs,'' Burgess wrote. ``Every week that passes without resolution to our labor situation makes the horizon darker.''