‘Belt-Tightening’ Lawndale Adds $24,000 to Budget

Proclaiming that Lawndale should adopt a lean budget, a three-member City Council majority cut requests for City Hall staffing and support for the Chamber of Commerce but decided to beef up police protection and spend at least $24,000 more than the city manager recommended.

Saying that Lawndale must tighten its belt in the aftermath of last year’s disastrous $1.86-million investment loss, Councilmen Harold E. Hofmann, Larry Rudolph and Dan McKenzie on Monday eliminated a number of staffing and program proposals in a $7-million budget drafted by the new city manager, Daniel P. Joseph.

Hofmann, Rudolph and McKenzie defended the added police expenditures as necessary for public safety in Lawndale.

Rudolph noted that his son was accosted recently by several youths within blocks of City Hall. “If we are going to spend money on anything, it should be on police protection,” he said. “There is no point in increasing programs at City Hall if people are afraid to come out and attend them.”

Mayor Sarann Kruse and Councilwoman Carol Norman fought the cutbacks but were consistently overruled by the three-member majority.

The council approved the changes Monday and will vote on the budget next Thursday. The council appropriated $200,000 to pay salaries and keep the city running in the meantime. The city’s fiscal year began July 1 and ends June 30.

In an interview Tuesday, Kruse said she questions the wisdom of the City Hall cutbacks, which, in effect, provided funds for increased protection by sheriff’s deputies.

She said that by adding about $120,000 to the 1988-89 budget for sheriff’s services and community safety, the three councilmen acted without the benefit of a professional study about how the city might best be protected. The added law enforcement perhaps could be provided by existing sheriff’s personnel, she said.

“I haven’t had the sheriff’s department coming to me and saying they need more people (to protect Lawndale),” she said. The city instead should determine whatever law enforcement problems it has and ask the sheriff’s department to propose ways to solve them, the mayor said.

Kruse and Norman said the budget actions of Hofmann, Rudolph and McKenzie were an “overreaction” to last year’s financial loss, which occurred when a speculative securities investment went sour in the spring. The city treasurer was fired, and the city is suing the brokerage companies and individual brokers who handled the investment.

The council majority, citing a need to recoup from the loss, decided on numerous cutbacks, including the elimination of $103,000 for a proposed reorganization of the public works department. They also cut by $8,690 the salary for a secretary to the city manager, eliminated $4,530 in overtime pay for the city clerk’s office and cut $5,000 for employee training.

“Now when you talk about Lawndale City Hall it’s going to be, ‘The lights are on but nobody’s home,’ ” Norman said.

As well as cuts at City Hall, the entire $45,000 for the Chamber of Commerce was deleted. The chamber will have to come back to the council if it wants to negotiate a new contract to put on city events, including the Miss Lawndale contest, Youth Day, the Santa’s Sleigh holiday program and the Man and Woman of the Year competitions.

Hofmann said he wants control over spending for each event and feared that if the money were left in the budget it would be spent without council supervision.

But Kruse said she believes the cut represented an “anti-business” bias by the council majority and eventually will have a negative impact on the city’s economic climate and revenue base. “What they’re forgetting is that this community cannot survive without the business community,” she said. “Every time they slap the business community in the face, they are going to drive people out,” which will reduce the sales tax revenues the city depends on.

After a grueling, line-by-line cutback on City Hall requests, the council majority added $101,000 to the budget for Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department services, $5,000 for a juvenile diversion program and $14,000 for a community safety program. Also added to the budget are public works and engineering services to be performed by the county rather than the city public works department as Joseph had planned.

$24,000 Cost Increase

At the close of Monday’s 4 1/2-hour budget session, Joseph estimated that the changes would cost the city $15,000 to $20,000 more than his proposed budget of $7,016,340.

But a closer inspection Tuesday and Wednesday showed the net effect of the changes was an increase of at least $24,110, to an estimated $7,040,450, according to city finance director Paula Cone.

The budget may grow even larger when the city determines the exact cost of engineering and other services to be performed by the county, she said.

After Monday’s meeting, Hofmann said the cutbacks were needed because the city staff is “top heavy” with too many highly paid administrators.

But, at the meeting, Joseph pointed out that his proposed budget called for 65 full-time employees, seven fewer than the 72 in last year’s budget.

Kruse and Norman said the budget cuts made by the council majority will tie the hands of the new city manager and demoralize staff.

In the interview, Kruse said the council majority has reduced the city manager to “a messenger” who would merely deliver to the city staff the news of council decisions on hirings and firings. She said the council should set policy and let the city manager carry it out. “But that’s not the way it’s happening,” she said.

Joseph at one point urged the council to give him direction on how much money it wanted spent and then to let him determine how best to align the staff to achieve that goal.

‘A Step Backward’

Norman, a housing administrator for the city of Hawthorne, said she fears that the Lawndale council is “taking a step backward” in its personnel policies and that this will hurt morale. “You can’t have an effective staff by cutting out the very heart of it,” she said. “The city manager has presented us with a balanced budget . . . and we are acting as if it is not balanced.”

When the council majority eliminated overtime pay for the city clerk’s office, Joseph reminded the council that that the city is required to pay overtime when an employee works more than 40 hours. City Clerk Neil K. Roth said the council ban on overtime may force him to close the city clerk’s office during office hours to make up for attendance at night council meetings, which take place at least twice a month.

During a break in the meeting, Roth told a reporter that he will ask the council to find other methods of obtaining minutes of the council meetings. Roth attends meetings and records the proceedings on tape, but a deputy takes minutes for the council. “Let the city manager delegate one of his 65 people to take minutes,” Roth said. “I don’t have the budget for it.”