San Diego

San Diego City Manager John Lockwood on Monday unveiled a $795.7-million city budget for fiscal year 1989 that devotes sizable amounts of revenue to keeping up with San Diego’s population increase.

Lockwood’s budget includes an $8.9-million increase to keep up with garbage collection demands and to maintain the city police force at its ratio of 1.62 officers per 1,000 residents. Another $3.2 million would be spent to staff city facilities opening during the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The budget includes cuts of $500,000 to after-school recreation programs, $200,000 to night lifeguard staffing at city beaches and $200,000 for the city’s brush-clearing program. But Mayor Maureen O’Connor, who fought to establish the after-school program, quickly served notice that she will try to restore the reductions.

Compelled by a council decision last November to spend $25 million on improvements to Mission Bay Park, Lockwood was forced to devote virtually all of the city’s “discretionary” capital improvements funds for the next four years to the aquatic park. Balboa Park, which is also badly in need of money to shore up crumbling buildings along its historic Prado, receives nothing under Lockwood’s spending plan.

Officials noted that the city’s budget situation would have been far worse if voters had not narrowly approved a waiver of the city’s Gann spending limit in November. Lockwood would have had to cut about $45 million from the budget without voters’ permission to spend the money, said Patricia Frazier, director of financial management.

Release of the city manager’s budget figures is the first step in the city’s lengthy budget-adoption process. Council members will now begin studying and debating the budget and may make sizable changes in the blueprint.