Deep Budget Cuts Proposed to Pay for More Police Officers

San Diego City Manager John Lockwood on Friday offered a list of deep, wide-ranging cuts in next year’s city budget, proposing to eliminate an after-school recreation program and the city attorney’s consumer fraud unit as part of an effort to put 140 new police officers on the streets by the fall of 1990.

Lockwood’s proposal would cut $21.8 million from an array of programs over the next two fiscal years, eliminating 75 to 100 jobs from the 8,695-member city work force.

“There will be some layoffs,” Lockwood said in an interview. “We won’t be able to accommodate everybody.”

Lockwood has separately proposed $14.9 million in reductions in capital improvement projects to fund construction of two police substations also desired by the City Council.

Secret Allocation

Meanwhile, as Lockwood prepared major budget cuts, the council voted secretly Monday to increase City Atty. John Witt’s budget next year by $1.96 million to pay for attorneys and consultants in the city’s battle to thwart the merger of San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison, The Times has learned.

Nearly $1 million of the money will be spent to pay the private Washington-based attorneys hired to stop the merger.

In a closed session, the council agreed to spend hotel tax funds, currently earmarked for construction of a pedestrian bridge over Harbor Drive in the next decade, on the attorneys and expert witnesses, according to Witt and Lockwood.

Witt said information about the vote was to be made public shortly, but he did not know exactly when. Assistant City Atty. Ron Johnson has previously defended secrecy about the exact amounts of such expenditures on the grounds that public disclosure would harm the city’s legal strategy.

Lockwood’s budget proposals are the outcome of a unanimous May 25 vote by the council ordering him to find the money in the fiscal 1990 budget for 140 new police officers and substations in Southeast San Diego and Mid-City.

‘State of Emergency’

The funds also would pay for 47 support personnel such as dispatchers, auto mechanics, personnel managers and payroll employees.

That directive came two days after the council, led by Mayor Maureen O’Connor, declared that drug- and gang-related shootings had created a “state of emergency” and asked Gov. George Deukmejian for a $34-million grant to help quell the violence.

If adopted in their entirety by the council--a highly unlikely prospect--Lockwood’s proposals would touch a host of city programs that directly affect many citizens. For example, he is suggesting complete elimination of the $198,000 program under which the city inspects privately owned canyon-rim property for brush that could create a fire hazard.

The manager also would remove $1 million over the next two fiscal years from the 44 social service programs now receiving city money. Decisions on which programs would be specifically affected will be made later, said Ross McCollum, director of community services.

The elimination of the consumer fraud prosecutors would save $532,000, but Witt said he will fight the move when it comes before the council.

In the Park and Recreation Department, Lockwood suggests reducing a senior citizen program by one-third to save $56,000, halving a disabled-services program to recoup $128,000 and completely eliminating after-school playground programs by cutting the remaining $481,000 that he had intended to leave in the budget. Lockwood’s original $931-million spending blueprint already included a $577,000 proposed cut in after-school recreation.

O’Connor, an ardent backer of after-school recreation, proposed Thursday to rescue the program by paying for it with profits from her three-week Soviet art festival scheduled for this October. Lockwood said Friday that he is confident the profits will be available.

He said that service levels in the Park and Recreation Department will be lower than they were 30 years ago if his cuts are implemented.

Lockwood’s proposal offers no specifics on the possibility of increasing revenue by demanding early repayment of loans advanced to the Centre City Development Corp., the city’s redevelopment arm, a prospect raised at Thursday’s budget session. The CCDC is scheduled to meet Monday to determine how much money is available.

Lockwood’s budget does show, however, that the council could raid a fund set aside for extension of the city’s trolley system, by allocating $3 million toward the substations.

Although council members differed with some of the suggested reductions, they remained committed to the goal of adding 140 police officers, or about that many, to the force. The officers would be added to the force over a 16-month period beginning July 1.

Despite the magnitude of the cuts, O’Connor “is committed to public safety and increasing the number of officers on the street, and getting new substations,” said Paul Downey, her spokesman.

Councilman Bob Filner, who has repeatedly called for more police, said he will again suggest a tax increase to fund the initiative. He said cuts in social services, park and recreation employees and city attorneys may actually decrease the city’s level of public safety.

“Clearly the cuts are painful and cut into the public safety, if you define that broadly,” he said.

Although council members reiterated their support for a substation near the high-crime intersection of 29th Street and Imperial Avenue, some were wavering about funding a second one in Mid-City.

Councilman Ron Roberts said he was encouraged by Lockwood’s idea of building the Southeast San Diego substation with “modular buildings” for $3.6 million, instead of $6 million, and might be persuaded to abandon the second substation rather than “ripping the heart out of the park program.”

Under Lockwood’s proposals, the substation spending would require more than $6.4 million in reductions for park and recreation improvements to Mission Bay Park and other city parks over three fiscal years.