Beverly Hills City Council Crafts Budget : Government: The roughly $78.5-million spending plan is 8% more than this year. It includes $1.5 million in extra costs to run new Civic Center.

Rocked by cost overruns for completion of a lavish new Civic Center, members of the Beverly Hills City Council took off their jackets and wrestled with the municipal budget until midnight for two nights this week, emerging with the promise of a $500,000 surplus for the coming fiscal year.

“Previously the budget was drawn up by staff, with a summary coming to the City Council for, frankly, a cursory review,” said Mayor Allan L. Alexander.

“What I felt was essential was to have more knowledge by the council members as to all aspects of the budget, and to participate in the preparation of the budget itself with staff, and to have it on (cable) TV in evening sessions so that the community could watch the procedure,” Alexander said.

The mayor, who was elected to the City Council after the Civic Center project was well under way, has spoken out in the past against the size and cost of the city’s complex, which may end up at as much as $120 million.

Along with the other four members of the City Council, he approved extra costs of $1.5 million a year to run the new police headquarters, library, fire station and renovated City Hall.

The money will go to pay for extra police officers, librarians and maintenance workers, as well as higher utility charges.

“In the process we eliminated certain cost items and in certain instances added expenditures, in particular one emergency fire vehicle that the staff had not originally put in,” Alexander said. “In extensive detail, the public has been made aware--if they wanted to watch--as to specific line items in our budget where we, as a City Council, feel the priorities are.”

Although the final numbers need to be refigured before a budget resolution goes back to the City Council next week, Finance Director Donald J. Oblander said that operating expenditures for the 1990-91 fiscal year should amount to about $78.5 million, up 8% over this year.

“Even if the economy did get weaker and our revenues went down, we’ve still got a lot of options,” Oblander said. “I don’t think we’ve got a lot of surplus revenue, but there are some options we can look at if we run into revenue or expenditure problems.”

The $78.5-million figure includes a transfer of $1.5 million to the city’s capital improvements fund, which has been hard hit by expenditures for the Civic Center.

According to a report from City Manager Mark Scott, “the recent intense concentration of capital improvement activity has placed a substantial drain on funds available for discretionary projects.”

The fund, which had $31 million available on June 30, 1983, began the current fiscal year with only $6.8 million available for new projects, he said, and it will have less than $1 million as of July 1.

The commitment to transfer $4.9 million from the operating budget to the Beverly Hills Unified School District, which is a legally independent government agency, will also strain the municipal finances, Scott said.

But if revenues come in as expected, the city should be able to contribute $1.5 million to the capital improvement fund, he said, with yearly increases until it returns to the previous level of $5 million a year in 1994-95.

About 70% of the city’s operating budget comes from business taxes, and city staffers hope to boost that contribution by at least half a million dollars in the coming fiscal year.

The plan, which may have to be approved by a public vote, calls for charging doctors, lawyers and other professionals according to their gross receipts, instead of a flat fee.

Now, a single professional with one clerical employee pays no more than $667 a year. Under the proposed method, which was recently instituted by the city of Los Angeles, Beverly Hills would collect as much as $6,000 for each $100,000 of gross revenue.