City Budget--Heavy-Duty but a Popular Read : Finances: The imposing document promises to get widespread scrutiny because it contains $100 million in spending cuts and $77 million in new taxes.

This is not light reading .

It’s nearly 6 inches thick, more than 1,000 pages long and rife with cumbersome charts, lists and exhibits that attempt to explain just where and how Los Angeles plans to spend $3.9 billion during the next year.

It’s the annual city budget, a seven-volume collection of spending priorities for the city’s 3.5 million residents.

And it ruined the weekend for more than a few City Hall staffers who had to wade through the various schedules, workbooks, analyses and appendices in preparation for a grueling round of City Council hearings that will begin Tuesday.

For the next six weeks the budget will be the primary focus of the City Council, which has until June 1 to make additions and subtractions to the record package of taxes, expenditures and personnel cuts proposed by Mayor Tom Bradley. The fiscal year begins July 1.

As thick as it is--in size as well as spirit--this budget promises to be one of the best-read in more than a decade because it contains more than $100 million in spending cuts and $77 million in new taxes. It also eliminates hundreds of staff positions, including more than 400 police officers.

Late last week--one week after its general shape and somber tone were first revealed by Bradley--the tome finally made its way off the city’s printing presses and into the hands of department heads eagerly waiting to see what share of the record cuts they would have to shoulder under the mayor’s proposals.

Once the City Council begins its fact-finding, anything is subject to change, said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the Finance and Revenue Committee that holds the annual budget hearings. “This year, everything will be on the table,” he said.

But if any of Bradley’s budget cuts are put back in, something of equal value will have to be taken out--or new taxes found to pay for it, Yaroslavsky said.

With opposition to the taxes and Police Department cuts already brewing, decisions will be tougher than ever as each department’s expenditures will have to be weighed against those of every other in the search for extra dollars. For instance, this year:

* The budget proposal eliminates 160 firefighter positions, but contains record spending--$14.8 million--for the City Council and its staff.

* The mayor has proposed spending $3 million to support cultural events, including $5,000 for a Cold Tofu festival, while eliminating a $3.5-million after-school and weekend recreation program for inner-city youth.

* The Police Department will lose more than 400 positions through attrition, while the Recreation and Parks Department will add 58 positions for expanded child care programs.

Some of the items are not always as simple as they first appear.

* The Police Department spends more on out-of-town travel--$735,984--than the city’s two biggest travel-oriented departments: the Departments of Airports and Harbor at $555,000 and $317,125, respectively.

* The city Transportation Department spends more on sign maintenance and repair--$3.8 million--than the Police Department does on ammunition, tear gas, uniforms and the $715,707 in marksmanship bonuses combined.

* City departments spend an average of $3,000 a year on “governmental meetings,” with the Community Development Department leading the pack at $24,088.

And there are bound to be hard questions on some proposed increases: At a time when city government--and all residents of the city--have been asked to cut back on water usage, allocations for water expenses are up at all departments except sanitation.

But in a bureaucracy, there is a justification for everything:

* A $350 entry on the Animal Regulation budget for an “ammunition locker” is explained by the following note: “Exposed ammunition will become highly explosive if there is a fire.” The department keeps ammunition to destroy wounded wild animals.

* The Street Maintenance Department has projected that cubic yards of debris to be removed in the coming fiscal year will drop from 145,000 this year to 140,000 next year. In addition, the department has projected that areas requiring weeding will drop to 25 million square feet from 26 million.

* The Sanitation Department is estimating that there will be 12.6 sewer stoppages for every 100 miles of sewers next year, compared with 14.6 stoppages this year.

Despite these detailed explanations, Yaroslavsky said, every department will be pressed to justify its expenditures in what he said would be the most thorough budget hearings in more than a decade.

“The time has come for some structural changes” in the way City Hall is run, said Yaroslavsky.

Under the City Charter, the mayor had until April 20 to submit a balanced budget to the City Council, which then has until June 1 to put its mark on the document. The mayor then has five days to veto any council changes, and the lawmakers get an additional five days to muster a two-thirds vote to override any vetoes.

This year’s fiscal crisis, which Bradley and Yaroslavsky agree is one of the worst in city history, was spawned by a soft real estate market and slow retail sales projected to produce one of the smallest increases in tax revenues since the recession of 1982. The city’s general fund will grow by just 2.3% in fiscal 1991-1992 and total city revenues by just 6%, officials said.

At the same time the city faces rises in key expenses: An across-the-board 5% wage hike will cost $89 million, state-mandated improvements at the Lopez Canyon landfill are estimated to cost $26.8 million and hikes in health insurance, workers compensation and other services are projected to cost an additional $42.4 million in the coming year.

To make up the difference, Bradley has proposed a series of new taxes and tax increases including: extension of the 10% utility tax to cable television; increasing the storm water pollution abatement charge by $6 per year per household; a new documentary transfer tax on the sale of real property at a rate of $4.50 per $1,000 in sales, or about $900 on the sale of a $200,000 home.