Hartley’s Office Gets Touch-Up

San Diego city workers have begun re-covering Councilman John Hartley’s office with new wallpaper little more than a month after Hartley delayed purchase of the wall coverings because of concerns about the cost.

Hartley decided to go ahead with the $4,400 wallpaper installation after comparing the city price with an estimate from a private contractor, said Raquel Beltran, Hartley’s top aide. The private contractor estimated that the job would cost $4,962, she said.

Hartley will stand by his decision not to purchase $33,000 worth of work stations for his staff, keeping the total cost of his office renovation at about $16,000, Beltran said. Instead, partitions taken out of city storage will be used to divide the office, Beltran said.

Hartley announced that he would not install the work stations and postponed the wallpaper purchase at a March 1 press conference, calling the $50,000 cost of the office remodel “offensively high.” The announcement came as newly elected council members Hartley and Linda Bernhardt were receiving intense public criticism for authorizing the renovations at a time when the city was beginning to address a $60-million deficit for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Bernhardt, whose $32,450 renovation was nearing completion at the time, called Hartley’s announcement “a cheap political ploy.”

At the time of the announcement, the wallpaper installation was estimated at $6,100. By having city workers do the recovering during daytime work hours, the cost was reduced to about $4,400, Beltran said.

Hartley also announced that he would not accept a salary increase voted by the council that will bring the eight council members’ pay to $49,000 by July 1, 1991.