Cuts in Services Outlined in Budget Plan : Government: Revenue shortfalls will mean unfilled staff openings, shorter library hours, fewer trees and dirtier streets.

The City Council got its first look Tuesday at a proposed $299.9-million budget for the 1992-93 fiscal year, and the consensus was that cuts in services and staff are going to hurt.

To match income with expenditures, budget officials said that the city must, among other things, shorten library hours, cut back on street sweeping, stop tree planting and impose penalties on late-paying utility customers.

“This will be a painful budget,” said budget administrator Barbara Harris. “People will feel the impacts.”

The total proposed budget, including the general city budget and budgets for the city’s enterprise programs and affiliated agencies, is about $23 million higher than this year’s total of $276.2 million. But the increase will be absorbed largely by higher personnel costs, notably from cost-of-living increases guaranteed in various union contracts, officials said.

The greatest challenge will be to balance the general city budget, which covers departmental operations, said City Manager Philip Hawkey. Budget officials are faced with the task of paying for $132.1 million in expenditures by city departments when they anticipate revenues--from taxes, fees and other traditional funding sources--of only $128.4 million. The revenue shortfall is mostly attributed to recession-related drops in sales tax revenue and decreases in state sources of funding, officials said.

Hawkey said similar revenue shortfalls this year were bridged “without major impact on the community” through departmental consolidation, trimming and increased workloads for city staff.

But the options will be more limited next year, Hawkey said. Most of the consolidations and trims have already been carried out, and there is little prospect for finding new sources of income, he said.

“We’ve pretty well gone to the limit in terms of generating new revenues,” he said.

Nevertheless, the city expects to generate some extra money by leasing jail space to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and by charging fees to developers for plan checks by fire department inspectors. Budget officials also are considering charging late fees on utility bills and franchise fees for refuse haulers.

But the long-term prospects are not bright, Hawkey said. “This is not a dip, a roller coaster that we anticipate will go back up,” he said. The 1992-93 budget is the first step in what city officials see as “a multi-year down-sizing of the organization,” he said.

Among the short-term effects:

* The main public library (whose employees have already foregone raises totaling $110,000) will open at noon on weekdays, rather than 9 a.m., and branch libraries will open just four days a week.

* Street sweeping in residential areas will be done once a month rather than twice a month.

* A total of 25 city jobs, including two sergeant positions in the police department, will not be filled.

* The tree planting program will be suspended.

On the other hand, a few new programs will be funded, including the new Villa Parke Community Center and summer youth programs for Northwest Pasadena.

The budget will be the subject of four public hearings at City Hall on June 1 from 8 to 11 a.m., June 2 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., June 9 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and June 16 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The City Council must approve the 1992-93 budget in its final form by June 30.