Lawndale Lays Off 2 to Help Pay for Deputies

The Lawndale City Council has laid off two 12-year employees to help raise $313,696 to pay for more Sheriff’s Department personnel, and promoted to city manager the administrator who recommended the layoffs.

At the close of a council budget session Monday night, Councilman Harold E. Hofmann complimented acting City Manager Jim Arnold for following the council’s direction and devising cuts that would enable the city to spend more on law enforcement. He praised Arnold for “doing what it took” to come up with the money.

The council later went into a closed-door session to discuss the hiring of a city manager. After about 15 minutes, Councilwoman Carol Norman left the meeting, saying angrily that the council majority was dominating the deliberations and she wanted no part of the discussions.

In less than an hour, the remaining four council members emerged to announce the appointment of Arnold as city manager.

After the council voted in May to spend $300,000 or $400,000 more on law enforcement, Arnold wrote a memo targeting six workers for possible layoff. Cutting staff is the only way to trim such large sums from the budget, he repeatedly warned the council.

Four of the six who were targeted will keep their jobs, but two administrative analysts were laid off Monday as the council voted 4 to 1 to approve the budget for 1989-90. The two $35,370-a-year employees, Marsha Schutte and Grace-Marie Johnston, sat quietly in the council chambers as their jobs were eliminated. Both declined to comment.

An exact budget total was not immediately available this week, but city officials said that with other changes made during council workshops over the past three weeks, the council was able to keep the budget figure about the same as the $7.8 million originally proposed, without affecting the other four workers Arnold had recommended laying off.

The cuts were about equal to the added expenditures, according to Assistant City Manager Paula J. Cone.

In addition to the two layoffs, the cuts included a variety of expenditures in all city departments. Additions included the $313,696 for more sheriff’s personnel and $50,000 to repair the City Hall air conditioning system.

Among the most hotly contested cuts were those made in the city clerk’s budget Monday night. At the council’s request, made at an earlier meeting, City Clerk Neil K. Roth, an elected official, reorganized his department. He came back to the council Monday with a plan that would have cost the city $97,150--about $10,000 less than the $106,950 he had been given to spend. But Councilman Larry Rudolph insisted on cutting the salary of one member of the clerk’s staff by $6,000.

Mayor Sarann Kruse argued that Roth, who had already reduced his budget below what the council was prepared to let him spend, should be allowed to allocate his own budget. Norman agreed, saying, “Ethically, you shouldn’t take an elected official and tie his hands.” But Rudolph, by insisting on a salary limit of $28,990 for one worker in the clerk’s department, in effect eliminated Schutte, who is paid $35,370.

Schutte’s departure will leave the city without an employee familiar with election procedures, Roth said. It could cost the city an extra $15,000 to hire a consultant for next April’s municipal election, he warned.

During a break in the meeting, Roth said this year’s budget process and the threats of layoffs have hurt staff morale. “The city’s best interests are not served when you take the heart out of the city” by laying off longtime employees, he said.

Voting Reluctantly

Kruse, saying she was voting reluctantly for the budget and the two layoffs to get the budget resolved by the start of the fiscal year July 1, joined Councilmen Rudolph, Hofmann and Dan McKenzie in approving the budget.

Norman dissented, saying that the decision to pay more than $300,000 more for police services and to cut longtime city employees was “reprehensible.”

The city should have demanded an accounting of the services and productivity of current sheriff’s staffing before hiring more deputies, she said.

The city will spend the additional $313,696 on two more one-deputy patrols and two nonuniformed community safety officers who will perform civilian duties, such as writing crime reports.

Upswing in Crime

The council majority said that the city needs more law enforcement personnel to fight an upswing in crime and gang activity in Lawndale. “As long as there is crime in this city we don’t have enough police,” Rudolph said during the budget hearings.

Arnold was originally hired as planning director in February, 1988, and was named acting city manager after the forced resignation of former city manager Daniel P. Joseph in November, 1988. He is paid about $60,000 as acting city manager. A new salary and benefits package is being negotiated.

Arnold has held a variety of planning and administrative jobs in California and the Midwest. He was a Ford Foundation planning consultant in India, and has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in municipal management and city planning from USC.

THE COST OF FIGHTING CRIME Here is the cost of Lawndale’s decision to beef up law enforcement. Expenses include salaries, benefits and equipment. Community safety officers are civilians who will write crime reports, conduct crime-prevention programs and perform other duties.

2 deputies: $270,032

2 community safety officers: 43,664

TOTAL: 313,696

Total law enforcement budget: 2.2 million

Total city budget: 7.8 million

Source: city of Lawndale