Council Approves $9 Million in Spending Cuts

Pasadena’s $273.5-million 1992 operating budget, approved Tuesday by the City Council, is nearly $9 million less than last year’s.

The reduction will be achieved by eliminating 36 vacant jobs among the 2,000 city employees; cutting spending by 7% to 9% in each city department; delaying some management raises; instituting a onetime $200,000 cut in the tree-trimming budget, and making other changes in city services.

Although the council restored four police officer positions that had been slated to be cut, added seven firefighter jobs, created a $700,000 reserve fund and established a new human services fund of nearly $1 million, the budget reflected a drop in city revenues caused by a slowdown in the 1980s economic boom.

“There’s going to be pain,” City Councilman Rick Cole said. “No one can be happy with a budget that includes $7.5 million worth of cuts from what would have been last year’s operating programs.”

City Manager Philip Hawkey shaved $325,000 off the budget with a three-month delay in cost-of-living increases to the city’s 200 management employees.

Six of the jobs proposed for elimination were in the Police Department, including four officers. But after City Councilmen William Paparian and Isaac Richard vigorously protested the cutbacks, the council agreed to restore the officers’ jobs.

The council set aside money for the other two positions to allow new Police Chief Jerry Oliver, who begins work Monday, to decide if he needs the additional officers.

The council also approved setting aside $890,689 for a newly created Human Services Endowment Fund. Assistant City Manager Callie Struggs, who will oversee the fund, said rules on how the fund will be spent are being developed with help from the city’s Human Services Coordinating Committee.

The council retained the central library’s 9 a.m. weekday opening, which Hawkey had recommended moving to noon to save $104,000 annually. But it agreed with Hawkey’s idea to save $55,378 annually by relying on tape recordings rather than staff-prepared minutes for meetings of the city’s 30 commissions, committees and advisory boards.

The council also restored $25,952 to the AIDS Community Coordinating Committee and $20,360 for a part-time job in Neighborhood Connections, a program that coordinates the city’s neighborhood groups.