Rancho P.V. Looks for More Cuts : Finances: City officials are considering higher fees and more spending cutbacks to close a $3-million deficit. Voters rejected a parcel tax in April that would have eased the burden.

Faced with a $3-million deficit, Rancho Palos Verdes officials are scrambling for new ways to raise money and more places to cut services.

When the upscale city’s voters rejected a parcel tax in the April 14 municipal elections, the message to the City Council was clear: Make do with what you have. That is not going to be easy, city officials say.

The budget balancing effort will probably mean substantially higher fees for all city services, a special lighting and landscaping assessment district, and the loss of more city services, including a reduction in Palos Verdes Public Transit shuttle and dial-a-ride services, officials report.

The goal generally is to cut $1.5 million in spending and raise an equal amount in new fees, assessments and service charges, City Manager Paul Bussey said. The cuts will probably come in park and recreation operations, city staffing, and a reduction in hours for city offices.

The city has laid off 15 employees and reduced spending for street maintenance, police protection and other services, officials said.

“We’re going to have to make some more drastic changes,” Mayor John McTaggart said. “Some might not like what we do, but we don’t intend to let this city go down the drain.”

The city could raise as much as $700,000 by creating a citywide special assessment district under the 1972 Landscaping and Lighting District Act. The district would levy about $50 a year against each parcel of private property, according to the proposal under consideration.

The money would finance street lighting, traffic signals and the maintenance of medians and parkways, Bussey said, freeing general funds for other uses. Creating the district will take three months and is subject to public hearings, he said.

Another $400,000 or so could be generated by raising fees on other city services. The city charges developers, builders, homeowners and others a variety of fees for checking plans, making inspections and regulating the development of private property. However, a city-commissioned study revealed that most of these fees fall short of covering the city’s costs, Bussey said.

For example, when a builder or homeowner applies for a building height variation, the fee is $305, but the city spends $1,000 processing the application, the city manager said. The council could decide to bill the full cost for this and other fees, or just raise the fee to a more substantial figure.

The council has made a major policy change in public works. Instead of paying a consultant to run the city’s public works projects, the council hired its own public works director, a move that will save $200,000 or more in the “next few years,” Bussey said.

“It will be cheaper for us to have our own public works staff,” Bussey said. The private consultant, Charles Abbott Associates, will be used for some consulting work, he said, but the city will have direct control over projects and costs.

The city may also be able to raise a few hundred thousand dollars over the next few years by selling off some of the Proposition A county sales tax revenue it receives. The money is earmarked for transit use, and the city gets about $400,000 a year it might be able to sell to another city for up to 60 cents on the dollar, officials said.

However, if the city sells off some or all of this transit money, it will mean a cutback in the service offered by Palos Verdes Transit, a three-city transit district that operates subsidized shuttle buses and dial-a-ride services. Rancho Palos Verdes contributes the largest share to the transit agency.

No one wants to cut transit service, McTaggart said. However, he said, “when a decision must be made to either fix the street or subsidize dial-a-ride, we’ve got to fix the potholes.”

All city departments have submitted their budget cut recommendations to Bussey, who is cobbling together a 1992-93 budget proposal totaling about $7 million. It should be ready for the council by the end of May.

The council’s final decisions must come before the end of the fiscal year, June 30.