Park, Pier, AIDS Patients to Benefit : City Council OKs $805-Million Budget

The San Diego City Council on Tuesday approved an annual budget of about $805 million for fiscal 1989, a 12.4% increase over the spending blueprint for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.

The 6-1 vote, with District 1 Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer dissenting, capped nearly six weeks of deliberations during which the council added about $10 million to the $795.7-million budget proposed in April by City Manager John Lockwood. Council members Ed Struiksma and Gloria McColl were absent for the vote.

The added revenue came from a 1% increase in the tax charged hotel-room occupants, funds left over from the fiscal 1988 budget and money from a Water Utilities Department reserve fund.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor commended her eight council colleagues for their efficient review of the budget and for avoiding the temptation to load up the spending plan with pork-barrel projects that benefit their districts.

“We haven’t agreed all the time,” O’Connor said. “It’s difficult to please nine people all of the time. The fact that we can come to closure today is a modern-day miracle.”

Wolfsheimer, who protested the council’s last-minute decision to delay a $395,000 expenditure intended to pay for the design of improvements to two Rancho Bernardo roads, said that her vote reflected a belief that the council could have cut deeper into the budget.

“I don’t think that the budget has been prudently arranged,” she said. “I don’t think we cared to cut the fat out of it so that we could do enough for the people.”

The 1989 spending plan devotes more than $4.3 million to renovations in Mission Bay Park and $835,000 to reconstruction of the Ocean Beach Pier, doubles city spending on social-service programs for AIDS patients to $150,000, preserves an after-school recreation program that Lockwood had hoped to eliminate and increases the Planning Department’s budget by about $1 million, to $10 million.

During a final two days of parceling out funds to previously unfunded projects, the council agreed to move an agency that acts as a liaison between San Diego and Tijuana from Lockwood’s office to O’Connor’s office and endorsed a call by District 2 council member Ron Roberts for a “czar” to oversee water reclamation projects.

The budget faces two days of public hearings July 18 and 19 before the council takes a final vote on adopting it.