48 Jobs Added in $26.1-Million Corona Budget

Forty-eight jobs --including 11 police personnel and nine parks employees--were added to the municipal payroll when the City Council approved a 1985-86 budget Wednesday night.

The positions will be paid for with increased revenue from subdivision and building-permit fees and property and sales taxes, under the council action.

City Manager Jim Wheaton characterized 13 of the jobs created in the $26.1-million spending plan as “catch-up” positions--that is, they came with the restoration of parks, animal control and public works services that had been cut back in previous budgets.

Largest of the catch-up allocations is to the Parks Department, which will hire eight maintenance workers at $12,780 a year and a supervisor at $22,014 a year. Their work will include tasks previously done by crews of state prisoners from the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco and from the California Institution for Women in San Bernardino County.

The City Council suspended the use of prisoners last December and voted in April to make the moratorium permanent. Council members said at the time that residents were afraid to have prisoners in their parks and near their homes.

The budget for the fiscal year that began Monday shows significant increases in growth-related revenues, Wheaton said. “Subdivision fees, for example, have gone from a total of $180,000 anticipated in the (1984-85) budget to $1.05 million” for the 1985-86 budget.

That increase, he manager said, is the largest of many resulting from Corona’s efforts to increase city fees to more closely reflect actual costs. “The taxpayer is being relieved of the subsidy to special service users,” he said, so “more can be done to provide service.”

The budget projects an 11% increase in property-tax revenue, a 15% increase in sales-tax revenue, and a 147% increase in building-permit income. “The fee hasn’t changed,” Wheaton said of the increase, “just the number of units.”

Reflecting that growth in the western Riverside County city of 40,000, the addition 11 police personnel will maintain manpower at a level of 1.5 sworn officers per thousand residents, Wheaton noted.

The council also voted Wednesday to increase monthly sewer bills by $4. One-fourth of the increase is needed to balance the sewer system’s operating budget, Wheaton said, and the remaining $3 per household per month will be set aside to upgrade the city sewer system and to replace equipment.