CITY BUDGETS : A SPECIAL REPORT : A Balancing Act Between Less Money, Rising Costs

The Irvine City Council is considering new and increased fees, with concerts at Irvine Meadows and boxing at the Irvine Marriott among the targets for the levies. In Huntington Beach, some parking rates are going up. It’s the same story all over Orange County.

With few exceptions, cities wrestling with 1987-88 budgets that refuse to balance are being forced by reductions in anticipated sales and property tax revenues to hike fees and tap reserves--a sign that the county’s economy is slowing down.

Most of the county’s 26 cities still are expecting to take in more taxes in the 1987-88 fiscal year than in the current year--4% to 8% more, in most cases. But city officials say that that rate of growth is only about half of the previous year’s and is not enough to cover rapidly escalating expenses.

There are a few bright spots. Santa Ana, for example, has managed to find enough money to launch a new program to spruce up neighborhoods.

But, faced with a state law requiring balanced budgets, most city councils are struggling to maintain services at current levels.

Garden Grove Assistant City Manager Mike Fenderson summed up the situation described by many of his counterparts in other cities when he said: “We see the economy weakening . . . I see where serious problems will have to be addressed in the future.”

Here is a city-by-city look, in alphabetical order, at how the budget-balancing is going at city halls across the county.

Irvine Judicious Cost-Cutting Averts a Major Crisis

For a while, prosperous Irvine faced the prospect of a $6.4-million budget deficit.

According to a report prepared for the City Council in early April by Walter D. Kreutzen, director of administrative services, the projected deficit was the result of a slowdown in the city’s economy.

But the crisis has passed, and the council is to vote Tuesday on a new, $43.8-million budget. The solution was a formula of judicious municipal cost-cutting and modest revenue increases that is expected to tide the city over what Assistant City Manager Paul Brady Jr. hopes is only a “lull” in Irvine’s economic growth.

Under the new budget, spending would increase 9% over expenditures in the 1986-87 $42-million budget, Brady said. However, the city’s revenue is expected to be up only 4%--”the first time in our history it’s been below a double-digit figure,” Brady said.

After the April projections, the city’s financial planners were able to reduce the projected shortfall in revenue to $2.1 million without eliminating any programs or requiring any layoffs. Full-time city positions will be reduced from 596 to 565 through attrition and transfers, Brady said. Other savings will come from reducing participation in meetings and conferences, as well as some program service reductions and deferring maintenance.

City planners have proposed a series of revenue projects, including new and increased fees for landscaping, for live entertainment at Irvine Meadows and boxing at the Irvine Marriott, on nonresidential utilities and for business licenses.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Marcida Dodson, La Mont Jones Jr., Lanie Jones, Ray Perez, Mark I. Pinsky, David Reyes, Bob Schwartz, Nancy Wride and Jonathan Weisman.