City Facing $1.9 Million in Cutbacks : Ventura: Proposed reductions could affect nearly all departments. Officials blame prisoner booking fees and property tax costs.

Facing what may be its biggest deficit in 13 years, the city of Ventura is considering $1.9 million in proposed budget cuts that could affect nearly every department, from police to parks and recreation, Ventura Finance Director Terry Adelman said Monday.

Now at the midpoint of its two-year, $101.2-million budget for 1990-92, the city faces a projected $1.36-million budget shortfall--largely because of prisoner booking fees and property tax administration costs that were forced on all California cities by the Legislature, Adelman said.

This week, Adelman’s office is compiling a list of proposed budget cuts from city department heads. The list will be presented to the City Council next week.

“The first level of cuts will have an impact, but we feel these are cuts we can probably live with,” he said. “The whole thing was to minimize the service impact on the public as much as possible. The idea was to cut from the inside and keep it . . . invisible to the public.”

The proposed spending cuts could affect nearly all city departments, he said.

The widest array of cuts would be felt by consultants hired by the city, Adelman said. A total of more than $146,300 in cuts has been proposed in most departments for outside consultants on matters such as engineering and traffic studies, sales tax impact on Ventura’s finances and city planning.

Other cuts would affect the internal operation of departments that work directly with the public, such as the Police Department.

Police officials propose cutting their spending on psychological support services by $76,000, Adelman said. Such services include counseling for officers, and training sessions to build teamwork among the officers, he said.

Police Capt. Pat Rooney said the department might also consider cutting overtime and some new special programs, but he declined to discuss the cuts in detail.

“Certainly, overtime is one of the areas where cutbacks may be considered. Unfortunately, a lot of the overtime is tied into special programs that the community has come to rely on,” Rooney said. “We’re really hopeful that the critical programs are going to remain intact, and I personally think the City Council and the community and the departments all realize which ones are critical.”

The city might forgo hiring an extra police officer to combat gang activities, Adelman said.

A $50,000 cut has been proposed for a $100,000 fund budgeted to enact anti-gang programs recommended last year to the Parks and Recreation Commission by an East Los Angeles gang-intervention consultant, Adelman said.

The council will also consider putting off hiring a $53,000-a-year zoning inspector who would help chip away at a backlog of 400 building code inspections that must be done, Adelman said. Also, the Parks and Recreation Department has proposed cutting $60,000 from its budget for maintaining Ventura’s public parks, much of which resulted when actual expenditures were lower than expected, he said.

Additional cuts have been proposed for items ranging from city cultural activities to traffic signal maintenance contracts, Adelman said.

City Manager John Baker said the council will try to decide upon $1.4 million in spending cuts from the $1.9 million in proposed cuts.

“We didn’t go in with the idea of getting any specific percentage from any department,” Baker said. “The idea was to get the least-needed programs from the division heads and go to the department heads and say, ‘You prioritize them.’ They’re not looking at just their own budgets, they’re looking at the entire city with an eye to making the best of what we can.”

California’s economic future--and the nation’s--could dictate whether more vital services will have to be cut in Ventura next year, Baker said.

The city might not be able to absorb the deficit and replace the cut services by the end of the current fiscal period in 1992, and might have to suffer cuts to more essential services to balance its budget, he said.

The city might also have to cope with the 1.25% sales tax increase proposed by Gov. Pete Wilson, Baker said. On the other hand, real estate sales are increasing and national economists are predicting that the retail market will pull out of its slump, he said.

But in light of these events, Baker declined to predict Ventura’s economic future. “I guess my crystal ball prediction for the budget of ’92 to ’93 is--I don’t want to pull the cover off it yet.”