Tax Rejected, Oceanside Sifts Alternatives

Oceanside city officials began searching Thursday for new ways to cut the budget after the City Council rejected an unusual property tax increase to offset a looming $3.9-million deficit.

Officials are now considering slashing the city’s management staff and other measures to avoid making deep cuts in police, fire, library and parks programs.

“I’m suggesting much deeper cuts in management and much less cutting in the lower levels,” Deputy Mayor Melba Bishop said Thursday.

Initially, officials told the council that a 1954 special property tax that hasn’t been collected since the mid ‘70s should be reinstated to raise badly needed revenue.

The tax would have cost property owners $71 per $100,000 of assessed valuation, but the plan was heavily criticized at a four-hour public hearing before the council Wednesday night.

Council members voted, 5 to 0, to reject the tax plan, but also balked at drastic reductions in emergency services, libraries and recreation.

Instead, they ordered officials to explore the possibilities of management layoffs, salary reductions and mandatory unpaid furloughs for some city workers.

However, specific spending reductions won’t be determined until officials return to the council with a new budget-bashing proposal next month.

“We’re not going to have a proposed budget until sometime in May,” city spokesman Larry Bauman said Thursday.