ANAHEIM : City OKs Options to Possible Layoffs

The City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved severance-pay package options for employees whose positions will be cut to balance the city’s budget for fiscal 1991-92.

But at the same time, City Manager James Ruth assured about 50 maintenance workers gathered at City Hall that the city would try to reassign them to other municipal jobs if their positions were eliminated. Maintenance positions are likely to be among the first to go.

“We will be able to absorb every employee who was scheduled to be cut,” Ruth said. “That means that any employee working for this city would not be put on the street.”

The severance packages offer up to one month’s salary for full-time employees who have worked at least one year with the city, and up to six months salary for full-time employees with at least 10 years of service.

For those employees within one year of retirement whose jobs were cut, the city will offer the option of early retirement instead of the lump sum.

The packages offered are expected to cost the city up to $10,000 per employee.

The city hopes that eliminating some positions will help reduce a projected $20-million shortfall in the budget that goes into effect July 1. Officials have proposed various levels of personnel cuts, ranging from 7% to 10% of the city’s work force, that the City Council will consider in coming weeks.

At most, 187 full-time employees’ positions would be eliminated, although the number of people laid off probably will be less because the city currently has 132 unfilled positions.

“Their assurances in front of all of us is that none of these people would be cut,” said Sharon Ericson, president of the Anaheim Municipal Employees Assn. “I’m going to believe them until I hear otherwise, but I’m still worried.”