City Workers Urge Higher Tax : Budget: Employees ask the City Council to raise the levy on utilities rather than cut salaries by 5%. The municipality faces a $1.9-million deficit.

More than 100 city employees packed the El Monte City Council chambers demanding that the city raise its 3% tax on utilities rather than cut the salaries of city workers by 5%.

Meanwhile, officials who head the city’s police, fire and public works departments said that city services would suffer under a proposed $700,000 reduction in their department budgets.

“If you cut us any more, I guarantee that when the Big One (earthquake) comes, we aren’t going to be able to handle it, and we’re going to have to answer to those people that we have sworn to serve and protect,” Fire Chief Leslie George said.

The City Council’s budget committee proposed the $800,000 salary cuts and the $700,000 departmental reductions to help make up an estimated $1.9-million budget deficit for the 1992-1993 fiscal year.

But city employees on Wednesday said that raising the utility tax, imposed on every city resident, would be more fair than cutting the salaries of 580 city employees.

El Monte’s tax, levied last year, is one of the lowest in the San Gabriel Valley. City Council members have pledged in the past to keep the tax low to avoid angering city voters and driving out major employers, such as Longo Toyota and Gunderson Chevrolet.

The council held off deciding on the larger budget proposals and instead approved a variety of smaller cost-saving measures.

They include raising the business license fee to add $352,000 annually, transferring $250,000 from the city’s redevelopment agency to the city’s General Fund, classifying the city clerk’s job as part time to save $40,000 annually and limiting management conferences for a savings of $10,000 yearly.

The salary and departmental cuts, as well as a variety of additional money-generating ideas proposed by city employees and the budget committee, will be discussed at another budget meeting Tuesday at 9 a.m. Although the 1992-1993 fiscal year began July 1, the city will continue to operate, but without a budget.