Council Told 60 Jobs Must Be Cut to Avoid Deficit : Oxnard: Officials say the city will be forced to provide services more efficiently in coping with the $2.3-million shortfall.

Oxnard city officials were distressed Tuesday at a proposal to eliminate at least 60 full-time positions over the next two years to avoid a projected $2.3-million deficit for the next fiscal year.

However, the impending fiscal problems were no surprise to officials in the financially beleaguered city. When the council--faced with a $2.8-million deficit in this fiscal year--voted in June to cut 18 positions, former City Manager David Mora told the council that it should expect future budget shortfalls.

“We’re really facing some terrible times right now,” Councilman Manuel Lopez said.

The recommendation for cuts in the next two years was made by Mora’s replacement, Vernon Hazen, who blamed a lion’s share of the city’s projected shortfalls on a sagging economy and the increased costs of services provided to the city by the county.

He said the deficit could reach $3.4 million.

The council decided to delay action on the proposal until Hazen recommends specific cuts and modifications Dec. 18. Hazen said one of those recommendations could be a hiring freeze that would last until the city’s budget problems are resolved. The city’s fiscal year begins in July.

Despite the dismal forecasts, city officials expressed some optimism, saying the financial problems will force the city to provide its services more efficiently.

“Although these are not happy times, I think this will give us an opportunity . . . to look at the way we do things in the city,” Hazen told the council.

Councilman Michael Plisky agreed.

“It’s going to be tough,” he said. “But the sooner we realize this, the sooner we recover.”

“I’m optimistic that if we just tighten our belts, we will come out OK,” Councilwoman Gerry Furr said.

Hazen said the city’s financial problems are tied to a recession that he believes began six months ago and that he predicts will continue for another 12 months.

The council also studied for the first time Tuesday the responses from city department heads to a management audit completed in June by Cresap Management Consultants of Washington, D.C.

However, council members said they would not act on the audit until Hazen’s recommendations are completed Dec. 18.

In February, the council agreed to pay Cresap $250,000 to complete the audit, despite warnings that the firm has a history of recommending drastic cuts to public safety departments. The city also spent $80,000 to have another firm interview and recommend Cresap and two other auditing firms to the city.

The audit suggested that the city can eliminate 103 city positions, including 30 in the Police Department, seven in the Fire Department and 43 in the Public Works Department, and still improve city services.

However, department heads gave the Cresap audit a poor review, saying most of the recommended staff cuts would drastically reduce city services.

Lopez said he was not surprised at the response by department heads. “I don’t think we can delete all those basic services,” he said.

In a report to the council, Public Works Director James Frandsen said: “Most of the consultant’s recommendations are reductions in service levels rather than recommendations to eliminate inefficiencies in operations.”

In his report, Police Chief Robert Owens rejected every recommendation to eliminate police positions. He also rejected almost all recommendations that he said would substantially alter current police policy.

Of the 30 police positions Cresap recommended for elimination, the audit suggested cutting 19 patrol officers from the department’s total of 159 sworn positions.

“The Cresap proposal would reduce the number of deployed patrol units by 20 to 50 percent, compared to current deployment,” Owens said in the report. “Implementation of this recommendation would seriously degrade both officer and citizen safety and would disembowel proactive efforts.”

However, Owens agreed with a recommendation to add a $239,500 computer-aided dispatch system that would help dispatchers quickly determine the closest police unit to each incident and help them more easily monitor all units deployed at a given time.

In his report, Fire Chief Richard Smith also rejected the audit’s proposal to eliminate seven positions in the department and close one fire station in downtown Oxnard. The audit says emergency calls from residents in the area can be handled by other fire stations.

“Our current staffing authorization is just sufficient to maintain our current minimum staffing of 22 personnel per shift,” Smith said in his report.