HUNTINGTON BEACH : City Administrator Presents Budget Plan

City Administrator Michael T. Uberuaga presented a plan to the City Council this week that would eliminate the city’s projected $5-million deficit without laying off any full-time employees or imposing pay cuts.

Uberuaga’s 1992-93 budget proposal, presented to the council Monday night, would enact roughly equal levels of spending cuts and user-fee hikes to offset the spending shortfall. Some of the shortfall, he said, has already been reduced by $450,000 in income that the city will earn this year from a new program in which Orange County Jail inmates may pay a fee to serve time instead in the Huntington Beach city jail.

Uberuaga’s recommendations came a week after a citizens’ panel studying the budget recommended that the council either cut employees’ pay raises by 3% or lay off 19 workers to balance the budget. The Budget Review Task Force, in making its recommendations, was assuming a projected deficit of $5.6 million next year. City officials on Monday revised that figure to slightly less than $5 million.

Like the task force, Uberuaga strongly urged the council to balance the budget this year without dipping into city reserves, as it has done for the past two years. If the city does not balance next year’s budget, it would face a deficit as large as $6 million by 1993-94, Uberuaga said.

“By June 30, we’ll end up having a balanced budget,” Uberuaga told council members Monday during a detailed budget presentation. “Now, when I say ‘balance the budget,’ that does not mean using the reserves. . . . You’ve got to do something. You’ve got to cut expenditures and increase revenues.”

Uberuaga proposed that the city slash $2.65 million in spending and increase its income by $2.62 million. Those savings would balance the budget and leave the city with a $293,000 surplus. The Budget Review Task Force has recommended cutting $4.6 million in spending and increasing yearly income by $1.6 million.

Uberuaga’s plan would eliminate 25 full-time positions and 80 part-time jobs. Fifteen of the full-time jobs to be deleted are now vacant. To avoid layoffs, the remaining 10 jobs would be cut by transferring workers to other vacant budgeted positions or by funding the positions with sources other than the General Fund.

Uberuaga’s plan, detailed in a 59-page report to the council, also proposes eliminating the 25-member fire reserve corps. Customer service would be cut in most city departments, including the Police Department, where six vacant jobs--including five office positions--would not be filled.

Additionally, operating hours would be reduced at the city’s community centers, the Rodgers Senior Center and the city gym and pool.

This year’s budget deficit, originally expected to exceed $3 million, has been reduced to $541,000 because of the city’s hiring freeze, cutbacks on overtime and temporary worker salaries and other savings. The city will cover that remaining shortfall by using reserves.

The council will hold a public hearing on the budget Feb. 24.