Anaheim Puts a New Utility Tax on the Books : Revenue: The assessment, to go into effect Sept. 1, will cost households a little more than $5 a month but excludes those with incomes of less than $20,000 a year.

The City Council on Tuesday passed a new utility tax for users of electricity, water and telephone service but exempted cable television subscribers from the assessment designed to overcome a $10-million budget deficit.

Council members voted 3 to 2 for the new tax which will cost the average household about $5.23 a month. It is expected to raise almost $12 million in revenue and help avert a proposed layoff of 90 city employees.

Households with incomes of less than $20,000 a year can request exemptions from the new tax, which goes into effect Sept. 1 and which will be reviewed annually.

Mayor Fred Hunter and Councilmen Bob D. Simpson and William D. Ehrle voted for the new assessment, while Councilmen Irv Pickler and Tom Daly opposed it.

“I’m just mystified that with all the revenue we have, why we have to hit the taxpayers up for money,” Daly said. “I think our overhead is too high, city government is bloated, and we don’t need to raise taxes.”

The split vote brought cheers from about 100 city employees who packed the council chambers to protest the plan to cut jobs to make up the shortfall in the city’s $545-million budget. The tax brought angry responses from a handful of residents who also attended the afternoon meeting.

Already, the city has trimmed about $10 million from the proposed budget by reducing operating costs 5% in all city departments, cutting capital expenditures and scaling back on labor costs.

“We don’t want to tax the citizens,” said Sharon Ericson, president of the Anaheim Municipal Employees Assn. “But we’re taking employees out the door that would degenerate city services.”

Citing the franchise fees that MultiVision cable television already pays the city, Hunter, Ehrle and Simpson decided not to assess the company’s subscribers despite some concern that the exemption was unfair.

“Last year, MultiVision handed me a check for $600,000 for having this franchise in the city,” Hunter said. “It’s not like we don’t get money from them already.”

In Huntington Beach, however, cable television subscribers did not fare as well Monday night when the City Council voted 5 to 1 to impose a 5% utility fee on cable TV. It will become effective on July 17. The Huntington Beach council passed the fee despite a vigorous campaign against the measure by Paragon Cable, which serves Huntington Beach.

“I think this has been the most distorted, self-serving campaign put on the people of the community in a long, long time,” Huntington Beach Councilman Earle Robitaille said Monday night. He criticized Paragon as being “a monopoly that borders almost on the criminal.”

Huntington Beach city officials said the cable TV fee was needed to prevent budget cuts in the police and fire departments next year. The fee is expected to bring in $750,000 a year for the public safety agencies.