Pomona Budget Crisis Cools as Administrator Takes Heat : Smaller Deficit After Long Austerity Lets City Officials See ‘Light at End of Tunnel’

Few cities would welcome a $846,000 deficit in their annual budget. But when Pomona officials sat down this week to grapple with the current year’s $39-million spending plan, such a shortfall was greeted warmly.

“It’s improving. It’s showing progress,” Mayor Donna Smith said. “We’re getting through it. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”

One year after raising taxes by about $3 million and making $1 million in cuts, officials in this financially pinched city say they have survived what was widely considered the worst fiscal crisis in Pomona’s history.

At all-day budget sessions on Monday, City Administrator Ora E. Lampman recommended that the current deficit be remedied by cutting roughly 2.8% from all department budgets.

“It’s going to be difficult to balance it, but not in my mind as difficult as we’ve had in past years,” Lampman said. “I think I really can say things are better.”

Some council members, however, objected to the across-the-board approach to making cuts and directed city staff to identify specific areas where reductions could be made. Smith said she wanted to avoid any cuts in police and fire services, which represent about 60% of all city expenditures.

“To me, the budget is a priority statement--or it should be,” she said. “We’re here to provide services people can’t provide for themselves, and they definitely can’t provide police and fire protection.”

But Vice Mayor E. J. (Jay) Gaulding said there was a “sense of fairness” in spreading the burden of the shortfall.

“I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is,” Gaulding said. “You have to live with what you’ve got.”

Although the 1987-88 budget was approved and balanced last year as part of two-year spending plan, council members were forced to re-examine it this week after the city failed to collect projected tax revenues, Lampman said.

The utility tax, which last year was raised from 7% to 11% to help balance the city’s budget, was expected to bring in $9.8 million but instead generated only $9.44 million, he said. Similarly, the sales tax, expected to bring in $7.85 million, generated only $7.54 million.

“We may have felt there was going to be a better total economic picture than what we had,” Lampman said. “Now we’re pulling back from it.”

Additionally, some of the city’s redevelopment projects, such as the Auto Center and the Buyer’s Club, did not develop as fast as projected, Lampman said. Had they been operating as early as originally projected, the impact of their revenues would have been significant, he said.

“Over the years, we’re getting closer to being able to develop a budget approach where the actual revenues coming into the city will be able to pay for services on a long-term, ongoing basis,” Lampman said. “That’s our goal. But it takes a long time to get to that, I guess.”

Besides $846,000 in cuts, council members are looking at funding five new employee positions, mostly to benefit management services, and retaining five-day-a-week helicopter patrols by the Police Department.

The council last winter authorized a one-time expenditure of $150,000 for the helicopter, whose operations had been trimmed to two nights a week during the fiscal crunch a year ago.