Oceanside Floats Controversial Tax Plan : Budget: City considers resurrecting a 1954 property tax to help curb an expected $4.4-million deficit.

Unless property taxes are increased, Oceanside faces a $4.4-million budget deficit for fiscal 1992-93 that could eliminate nearly 100 city jobs and reduce police and fire services, city officials warned Monday.

For the third straight year, lagging revenues have caused a fiscal crisis in North County’s largest city, but, unlike before, officials are considering an unusual property tax scheme to help balance the $57.8-million budget.

City administrators are asking the City Council to resurrect a special property tax that voters approved in 1954 to pay the city’s share on employee retirements.

Although that tax hasn’t been collected since 1976, city officials believe it should be reinstated to raise $4.6 million that would erase the projected deficit in the general fund.

The tax proposal, which is already becoming controversial, would cost each property owner $71 a year for every $100,000 of assessed valuation.

Sandra Schmidt, the city’s finance director, said in a report that city attorneys have concluded that “there is no legal impediment to the proposed tax levy.”

However, the county assessor’s office has advised Oceanside that the tax might violate property-tax limits set by Proposition 13 in 1978.

If the tax idea is killed--either by the council or a likely legal challenge--city officials grimly predict a staggering reduction in city services.

“What would be left, in some areas, would be only a skeleton of the staff that now provides services,” interim City Manager James Turner said in a statement Monday. “The public may have to drastically reduce its expectations of both the kinds and qualities of services the city could deliver.”

One deficit-reduction plan, calling for a 9.4% spending cut in all city departments, would eliminate 29 Police Department jobs and 12 Fire Department posts.

It also would mean closing one of the city’s five fire stations, along with an engine company and a paramedic ambulance unit.

Police Chief Bruce Dunne said Monday that the 9.4% cut would take $1.8 million from a Police Department that already has eliminated 25 positions over the last two years, through attrition and by not filling posted jobs.

Such a deep cut this year “is absolutely unacceptable,” Dunne said.

Although Dunne would reorganize his department to absorb cuts, he said he could not avoid some impact on services. He predicted longer response times to calls, fewer cases being solved and less officer training.

“We will be a no-frills Police Department,” Dunne said, adding that its beach patrol team would be eliminated, along with other programs and services.

A second budget plan would spare public safety but place the deficit-busting burden on city libraries, park maintenance, recreation programs and street repair.

Among other things, cuts would force the city to limit operation of the Brooks Street and the Marshall Street swim centers, limit hours at or close the Old Mission branch library, bookmobile and the main library, and close 11 parks.

Either cost-cutting plan would cut from 89 to 97 full-time equivalent jobs from the city staff.

This is the third bad year for Oceanside, which has suffered not only from the recession and reduced state revenue but also from the deployment of more than 20,000 Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton during the Persian Gulf War. The deployment stifled the city’s downtown, which largely caters to young Marines.

A report by finance director Schmidt said the problems for fiscal 1992-93 are continued meager sales tax revenue; reductions in fines, forfeitures and cigarette tax revenues from Sacramento; lower earnings on city investments and dwindling development-related fees.

Not surprisingly in Oceanside, with its chronic political disunity, the budget is already a matter of debate.

Mayor Larry Bagley on Monday wasn’t convinced that the city is in such dire straits, saying that, only a month ago, then-City Manager John Mamaux had predicted that the pending fiscal year would only be “tight,” but not a disaster.

“I am dubious as to the extent of the deficit,” said Bagley.

But, if the deficit is real, Bagley is largely blaming the council’s slow-growth majority for discouraging investment and development in Oceanside. “They have hung out the unwelcome mat for business,” he said.

He claimed the budgetary doomsday talk “appears to be a scenario to try to enact” the old property tax to generate more revenue. “If new taxes are needed, and I’m not saying they’re not, we should bite the bullet and put a fresh tax measure on the ballot.”

Bagley, who questions whether reinventing the 1954 special property tax is legal, said he favors asking the public to vote on a ballot measure authorizing a new tax strictly for public safety.

The council will hold a public hearing on the property tax proposal at 6 p.m. April 8.