Oxnard Starts Hearings Over Troubled Budget

The Oxnard City Council has begun hearings on how to deal with the city budget crisis, but officials said they won’t make final decisions until they see the results of a management audit next week.

The council is discussing how to avoid a projected $2.8-million budget deficit next year. The hearings started Tuesday and continued into Wednesday night.

“I don’t think there is anyone looking forward to the next few days,” City Manager David Mora said at the outset on Tuesday.

He said the city must consider service reductions and as many as 64 personnel cuts, including 16 from the Police Department and 8 from the Fire Department.

The city had hoped to raise $5 million annually with a 5% utility tax increase, but voters rejected it on June 5 by a 3-to-1 margin.

The management audit was originally due May 30 but was delayed until next week. It is expected to explain the cause of Oxnard’s fiscal crisis and recommend savings.

Mayor Nao Takasugi has criticized the auditing firm, Cresap Management Consultants of Washington, for suggesting in private conversations that the city cut 41 positions in the Police Department, eliminate 18 positions in the Fire Department, close two fire stations and sell some city parks.

Mora said some personnel cuts are inevitable but revealed several ways in which the city can lessen the impact.

He said the city can spend part of a $1.4-million rebate from the state-run public employee retirement program. The rebate was the result of successful investments made with the city’s retirement funds, city officials said.

Mora said the city can avoid immediate layoffs by spending some of the rebate money to pay employees until they find other jobs or retire.

Councilman Manuel Lopez recommended that the city spend $600,000 of the rebate to allow staff reductions through attrition and use the balance to reduce the deficit. Councilwoman Dorothy Maron agreed.

Councilwoman Geraldine (Gerry) Furr suggested that half the rebate go toward phasing out employees and the other half go to replenish the city’s reserve funds, which have dropped from $9 million to about $4 million.

For the last three years the City Council has dipped into the reserves to avoid deficits. This year it vowed to leave the reserves untouched.

Mora said the council could also reduce the deficit marginally and avoid further cuts by putting off a five-year, $3-million project to remove asbestos from several city buildings.

He said the city has earmarked $457,000 this year to begin the asbestos-removal project. But Mora said the city should not put off the project. “The asbestos problem is not going to go away,” he said.

In Wednesday’s hearing, Takasugi suggested that the city delay the project but put aside $120,000 toward the cost of removing the asbestos in the future.