Lawndale Delays Decision on City Hall Layoffs

The jobs of six Lawndale city employees are on the line this week as the City Council attempts to cut $418,592 from the 1989-90 budget to hire additional law enforcement workers to fight crime.

Councilmen Larry Rudolph and Harold E. Hofmann pressed for a council vote on the layoffs Thursday night, but Mayor Sarann Kruse was able to muster three votes to postpone a decision until the council meets in budget workshops this week. Sessions are scheduled at 7 p.m. Monday and Thursday at City Hall.

Kruse said Friday that layoffs should be considered only as a last resort. “You just don’t cut jobs until you have tried everything else,” she said.

Voting with Kruse were Councilwoman Carol Norman, who works for the city of Hawthorne and is generally supportive of Lawndale’s city staff, and Councilman Dan McKenzie, a retired pipe fitter and union negotiator who sometimes is critical of the staff. He said jobs should be the last thing to go in budget cuts.

Many residents and city employees attended the emotional 5 1/2-hour meeting.

In a rare appearance before the council, elected City Clerk Neil K. Roth challenged the proposed staff cuts, asking whether spending an additional $400,000 more a year would make the city a safer place.

Plea Against Layoffs

“If I didn’t think the city of Lawndale was safe today, I’d be looking for another place to live,” he said.

James Belmore of the Lawndale Professional Mid-Management Employees Assn. pleaded with the council not to impose the layoffs. “If you go to the grocery store and you don’t have enough money for all the things you want to buy, you don’t go home and kill the kids,” he said, adding that city workers with as much as 17 years’ experience should be treated with “respect and consideration.”

Rudolph said Friday he was disappointed that the decision was put off. “If we want to stick to what we said about hiring more deputies, we are going to have to make some hard-core cuts,” he said. “Nobody really wants to have to do it, but the longer you wait the harder it gets.”

The council on May 4 voted 4-1, with Norman dissenting, to ask for a staff analysis of what cuts could be made in the $7.8 million 1989-90 budget to contract for additional services from the Sheriff’s Department, which patrols Lawndale under contract with the city. It would cost $418,592 in the fiscal year starting July to add two one-man patrol cars and two civilian workers, who would take crime reports and perform other tasks to free uniformed officers for crime control. The proposed budget includes $1.9 million to maintain the current level of sheriff’s services.

On Thursday, Kruse had presented a less costly plan that would provide six or eight more civilian workers, instead of the two additional deputies and two civilian workers. The Sheriff’s Department is evaluating that plan, including the amount of savings.

But Kruse’s plan faces opposition from Rudolph, who said Friday he believes gun-carrying, uniformed officers are needed to deal with Lawndale’s crime and gang problems.

Lawndale residents and businessmen have been complaining to the council about a recent increase in graffiti, which indicates gang activity is on the upswing in Lawndale, according to Sheriff’s Capt. Walt Lanier.

He said in a recent interview that Lawndale’s problem is not as serious as in East Los Angeles or South-Central Los Angeles, but said action now could prevent gangs from becoming entrenched in Lawndale.

A contingent of city employees, including most of those whose jobs are in jeopardy, were in the audience Thursday as the council debated the layoffs. The heated discussion went on for about an hour, with residents speaking on both sides. Then, the council voted 3-2 to delay the decision until this week. Later in the night, the council members returned to discuss Kruse’s less costly proposal.

Layoff Targets

The targeted employees are administrative analysts Marsha Schutte and Grace-Marie Johnston, both 12-year employees; community safety officer Paul Jordan, 17 years; community information officer Ken Huthmaker, eight years; assistant planner Lola Unger, about two years, and one of the two administrative assistants in the community development department, Valerie Armstrong or Vivian Smith. Armstrong reportedly has quit already. The city, with a population of about 26,000, has just under 60 employees.

Some residents and businessmen urged the council to make whatever staff cuts are necessary to beef up the city’s police protection. Jonathan Stein, a local developer, said that a number of employees at City Hall perform “peripheral” functions that could be eliminated.

“Do we owe a livelihood to these people at the expense of the whole town? I think not,” Stein said. “If we don’t have safety in Lawndale, you don’t have anything.”

Several Lawndale residents, including activists Nancy Marthens and Steve Mino, said they do not want more deputies to be hired at the expense of city workers.

Pam Sturgeon, saying she was one of those who appealed for more deputies at a meeting a few weeks ago, asked the council not to impose layoffs but cut programs, as recommended by Assistant City Manager Paula J. Cone.

Reserve Fund

Cone reported that, by making program cuts and using its expected $200,000 reserve, the city could without any layoffs, come up with all but about $32,000 of the $418,592.

But Acting City Manager Jim Arnold, in a subsequent report recommending the six layoffs, said it would be “completely unsound fiscally” to leave the city without a reserve fund. “I have no choice other than to recommend to the City Council specific program and personnel cuts to accomplish the council mandate of increased law enforcement services.”

Ordeal of Public Debate

In an interview Friday, Kruse was critical of Arnold for making public his layoff recommendation. He should have given the council a confidential memo rather than put the six staff members through the ordeal of a public debate on their jobs Thursday night, she said.

In an interview last week, Arnold said he is only following the direction the council has given. “I’m cast as the big villain, but I’m not the one that voted $419,000 for more cops,” he said.

Kruse said the proposed cuts have been devastating to an already short-staffed and overworked city staff.

2 1/2-Hour Closed Session

“I’m surprised more people haven’t walked out the door,” she said. “You’re going to see a very big turnover at City Hall. Those people are going to leave, and I think we are going to be hard-pressed to replace them. People are going to be very leery about coming to work for Lawndale.”

After midnight, the council went into a 2 1/2-hour closed session, where it discussed problems in the Planning Department that had been the subject of an emergency meeting Tuesday. Hofmann, Rudolph and McKenzie have charged that planning staff is doing a poor job and has issued building permits for projects that do not meet city codes.

After Tuesday’s meeting, Rudolph said: “We should fire the whole Planning Department.”