Huntington Park to Eliminate 15% of City Work Force

City officials have decided to lay off 25 employees and eliminate six vacant positions--about 15% of Huntington Park’s work force--to free money for salary increases and other expenses.

The cuts were made after voters in September defeated a proposed tax on utilities that would have provided $2.74 million to balance the budget and hire more police officers. The city’s engineer and two department heads will lose their jobs in the layoffs, Chief Administrative Officer Donald L. Jeffers said Wednesday.

Details of the remaining layoffs, which will be determined by seniority, were being worked out Wednesday. The majority of the layoffs will be made in the Public Works, Engineering and Recreation departments, Jeffers said. The council spared the Police Department.

Priority for Law Enforcement

“The priority has shifted from services to law enforcement,” Councilman Jim Roberts said.

The City Council unanimously approved the layoffs during a four-hour, confidential personnel session that ended after midnight Monday, Roberts said. The cutbacks will free about $800,000 this fiscal year that ends June 30, Jeffers said.

Roberts and Jeffers said the public probably will not notice the effect of the layoffs immediately. But they said overall maintenance of Huntington Park and other city services will probably deteriorate over time.

“Initially (residents) won’t see a great problem, (there will be) kind of an eroding of services,” Roberts said. “We won’t see the streets dealt with as well. We won’t see recreation dealt with as well.”

As of press time Wednesday, city employees had not been told who would be laid off, representatives said.

“Everybody’s getting lost, confused,” said Martha Castillo, president of the General Employees Assn. “Nobody knows who will be affected. We have a lot of heads of household.” The association represents the city’s clerical workers.

There were similar fears among employees in the Public Works Department, which is represented by Teamsters Local 911 in Long Beach.

“Everybody’s worried,” said shop steward Tomas Carranza. “We don’t know what to expect. It’s like a cold shower.”

Last summer, the council approved a $27.8-million austerity budget. It provided $10.2 million for general city services during the 1989-90 fiscal year. But the budget contained no money for raises for the city’s 208 employees and a small general fund reserve of $11,400 for this fiscal year.

City officials had pinned their hopes on a 7% utility tax to raise $2.74 million a year, but voters soundly rejected the tax in a special election on Sept. 12.

The council members said if the tax had passed it would have solved the city’s financial problems and provided enough money to hire 15 more police officers.

Roberts said the council did not cut Police Department personnel because the city already has too few officers. The department is authorized to have 60 sworn personnel to patrol a city of about 52,000 residents.

At full strength, Huntington Park has 1.15 officers per 1,000 residents, while the average city police department in the state has 1.51 officers per 1,000 resident, according to a recent study.

The Police Department has five vacancies that remain in the budget but will not be filled immediately, Roberts said. The city enacted a hiring freeze shortly after the utility tax was defeated.

“The Police Department was our priority for preservation, but there was no way we could add a single officer,” Roberts said.

Will Contract Engineering

Virtual elimination of the city’s Engineering Department will require Huntington Park to contract for engineering services for public improvement projects.

City Engineer Mohammed Rafique will be laid off along with four other employees of the eight-person department, Jeffers said. Two vacant positions will be eliminated and the remaining employee will coordinate contract services.

Jeffers said the effect will be to slow street and other public improvement projects.

“We won’t be able to do a lot of the in-house design work on various projects,” he said. “We’ll have to contract that out anytime we have a public works-type project.”

Thirteen employees are being laid off from the Public Works Department and two vacant positions are being eliminated, Jeffers said. The department had 52 employees.

Mechanical Supt. Jim Finerd and Streets and Parks Supt. Bill Huyck are being laid off and their duties will be assigned to the remaining two superintendents.

“Our response time on street repairs and street problems will be greatly diminished,” Jeffers said. “We’ll no longer be able to respond on 24-hour, 48-hour notice to do street repairs.”

Recreation Effect Unknown

The city’s Recreation Department will lose five of its 14 employees, Jeffers said. Exactly how the city’s recreation program will be affected was not immediately known, he said.

In addition to the personnel cuts, the council also reduced by 25% the $84,000 it was scheduled to provide the Huntington Park Chamber of Commerce for promotional activities this year.

Overall spending will decline little because the savings from the cuts will pay for raises for remaining workers and other expenses. Jeffers said he hopes the city will be able to establish a $500,000 reserve by the end of the year.

The city will enter negotiations over pay raises next week with its three employee associations, Jeffers said.

The 4.2% raise Huntington Park employees received last year costs the city about $300,000 annually, he said.

City officials attribute Huntington Park’s financial problems to various factors, including the elimination or reductions of federal and state subsidies that accounted for more than $1 million a year.

During the past year, the city lost three truck and car dealerships that generated about $1 million in annual sales tax revenue, Jeffers said.

The city has picked up new businesses and sales tax revenue, but the result is that general fund income has remained about the same while expenses have increased, Jeffers said. The general fund pays for most city services, including police protection.

The city Redevelopment Agency also has been a drain on Huntington Park’s general fund. The Redevelopment Agency is not pulling in as much revenue as anticipated. That has forced the city to loan the agency about $14 million over the past several years to meet its debts.

The city faced similar spending cuts in 1987 because of the financial drain of the Redevelopment Agency, city officials said at the time. The city sent notices to dozens of employees announcing possible layoffs. Instead the council eliminated 13 postions without layoffs and made other spending cuts.

The Police Department suffered the brunt of the cutbacks in 1987, losing three officer positions and five clerical and support positions.