Patience Wears Thin for Oceanside Budget Woes

About 175 angry and frustrated Oceanside residents crowded into a City Council meeting Wednesday night to protest possible cuts in police, fire, library and recreation programs that are designed to wipe out a predicted $3.9-million city budget deficit.

Some residents said they’d even, reluctantly, accept a controversial city plan to resurrect a special property tax to help offset the deficit and save programs.

It was a meeting that council members had dreaded as Oceanside’s third straight year of lagging revenues and looming program reductions brought the public’s patience to an end.

“The budget deficit has gone on too long,” complained city resident Florence Frum. “I want to see some dignity put back in the city.”

Although she opposed the renewed property tax, calling it “gross taxation without representation,” others among the dozens of speakers told the council they would be willing to shoulder the tax if it meant sparing critical city services.

Gerald Smith, a new Oceanside resident, said, “I feel the cuts proposed for the safety departments are too deep, but the cuts in other city services are absurd. We have little choice but to accept the tax.”

And Ray Duncan, 33-year resident, had similar sentiments but demanded that city government streamline its operation.

“I’m in favor of the tax,” Duncan said, “but we must reduce and control city costs and be sensitive to the needs of the community.”

City officials have warned that, without raising more property tax revenue, the deficit for fiscal 1992-93 could eliminate nearly 100 city jobs and cut deeply into emergency services.

The tax was first approved by voters in 1954 to pay the city’s share of employee retirements. It hasn’t been collected since 1976, and, despite city officials’ interest in resuming the tax, the county assessor’s office and others have questioned whether it’s legal to do so under property-tax limits set by Proposition 13 in 1978.

Without the tax, which would cost the average property owner $71 a year for every $100,000 of assessed valuation, severe cuts will be unavoidable, interim City Manager Jim Turner told the council Wednesday.

“Our hope is that we come through this thing whole,” Turner said.

One deficit-slashing alternative that doesn’t include the property tax calls for a 9.4% spending cut in all city departments. That would chop 29 Police Department jobs and 12 in the Fire Department. Further, one fire station would be closed.

Another plan would be more generous to police and fire departments but more drastically cut libraries, park maintenance, recreation and street repair.

While the big question has been whether the council would approve the controversial tax, Deputy Mayor Melba Bishop gave signs Wednesday night that there aren’t enough council votes to resurrect the tax.

“It’s my feeling from what I’ve been hearing, not only in City Hall but outside City Hall, that there’s no sentiment to adopt this ad valorem tax in the first place,” said Bishop, who leads a three-member council majority.

“We are a city that brings in approximately $53 million a year, and we have to live on a little less,” Bishop said.