Spending Plan Unleashes Criticism : Oceanside: New budget proposal calls for a 5.7% reduction from current level.

Only one thing seems certain in Oceanside’s continuing battle against the deficit.

Everybody, including the City Council, seems able to find something to hate about the way interim City Manager Jim Turner has proposed cutting next year’s spending more than $3 million below the current year’s budget.

The budget “is out of control,” grumbled Mayor Larry Bagley before Tuesday’s council workshop that gave the public a chance to comment on the spending plan.

“We’re going to have to tear into the budget,” warned City Councilwoman Nancy York. “Management positions--real management positions--haven’t been slimmed down.”

Councilwoman Melba Bishop said she dislikes Turner’s plan to cut out support for the local anti-drug organization, Citizens Helping Oceanside to Obtain a Sober Environment, or CHOOSE.

Bishop said she feels a major cause of crime and gang problems is drugs, and “we need to meet that commitment (to CHOOSE) for another year.” Her motion to order Turner to target $50,000 for that organization was approved.

Turner, struggling with the third straight year of looming deficits caused by recession and plunging revenues, has proposed slicing the current year’s operating budget of $57.5 million by 5.7% to $54.2 million for the 1992-93 fiscal year, which begins July 1.

To do that, Turner is asking the council to approve cutting more than 60 full-time jobs from the municipal work force. Other employees and supervisors would find themselves demoted or shifted to different posts.

Department heads and many top-level managers will also find their take-home pay slashed by 7% to 11% as the city eliminates car allowances and reduces its contribution to the state retirement system.

The city’s Public Services Department, a catch-all agency that performs citywide maintenance work ranging from street sweeping and repair to park maintenance, would be one of those most heavily affected.

Under Turner’s proposal, the department is slated to lose $763,000 in funding, down 13% from this year, with nine jobs eliminated.

In fact, Turner said he is planning to begin a study to see if the entire department can eventually be eliminated and its responsibilities parceled out to other departments.

Turner said he is also hacking money from his own department’s budget, along with funds for public information, travel and training.

Only about 20 of the targeted jobs are now filled by employees who would find themselves with pink slips, Turner said. The rest became vacant during the past year through attrition, with no replacements hired.

And there’s good news hidden within the bad, he said. No police or firefighter jobs are endangered. In fact, the budgets of those two departments would be slightly increased.

Earlier reports, which drew strong public protest, said as many as 29 police and 12 firefighter department jobs could be eliminated and a fire station could be closed. All five city fire stations will remain staffed, Turner said.

The city’s main and branch libraries, which at one time were threatened with closure for four days a week, will remain open five days a week.

“It’s a balanced budget with reserves in it,” said Turner, defending his efforts. “It’s probably the most realistic budget that we’ve seen in the last three years.”

Bagley is taking specific exception to the proposal to slice heavily into the Public Services Department.

Calling the plan “foolish,” Bagley said the department has been on the front lines in providing services directly to city residents.

“It has been one of the most successful departments we’ve had,” he said. “We are preserving all the jobs that are there to push paper and eliminating those that are there pushing brooms.”

Councilwoman York, a former Marine Corps officer, said the city has been the victim of what in the military would be called “grade creep”--the promotion of people to supervisory titles, with increased pay, although there is little in the way of increased responsibility to justify the move.

“They’ve done it to where promotions no longer become significant in terms of taking on more responsibility,” she said.