Compton : $17.5-Million Budget Passed

In a rare Sunday morning session 48 hours before the July 1 start of a new fiscal year, the City Council adopted a $17.5-million general fund budget and decided not to renege on roughly $1 million in pay raises promised to members of three employee unions. The council had met two other times last week, but kept postponing its decision.

The 1986-87 budget, about $1.3 million less than last year’s expenditure, contains a variety of cutbacks brought on by the elimination of some federal programs and the overall belt-tightening demands of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law, which seeks to reduce the national debt.

A cut in federal revenue sharing, for example, will require the Police Department to lay off 14 of its 141 employees. No sworn officers are expected to be laid off, however.

If layoffs eventually become necessary in other municipal departments, as administrators predict, the council agreed that temporary and interim workers should be the first to leave. The council declined to build any future pay raises into the budget.