Newport Lays Off Dozen Employees

A dozen city employees were laid off Wednesday and seven others saw their hours--and paychecks--cut up to 50% as the city tackled a $4-million budget cutback.

The loss of the 12 maintenance workers in the Parks, Beaches and Recreation Department means trees will not be trimmed and parks and beaches will not be cleaned as frequently, officials said. Another 15 city positions won’t be filled, including five police jobs. The Fire Department will not hire a public education firefighter and will demote the disaster awareness coordinator.

“It’s a difficult year and we’re anticipating things to get worse,” said Capt. Todd Knipp, president of the Newport Beach Firefighters Assn. “We’re upset that the public won’t get the education on fire safety we wanted them to get and feel it’s unfortunate that at a time of heightened disaster awareness, our disaster services director is cut. We just hate for the citizens here not to get the services we’d like to see them get.”

City officials met with the employee associations Wednesday to break the news.

“I know they all knew it was coming,” City Manager Kevin J. Murphy said.

Six library employees learned that their hours will be cut. Some branches will open later than usual and others will close earlier, and all will close Sundays. The alternative, Murphy said, was to cut the budget for books.

“I think the climate for employees anywhere, public or private, is no good,” Murphy said. “For Newport Beach, it’s a departure from the past and we’ll have to learn to be more productive and efficient.”

Employees who lost their jobs will receive one week’s severance pay for every year they worked, he said.

“I know that they were upset but when the revenue is not there, we have to deal with it.”

Mayor Phil Sansone said, “The city and staff tried to be very sensitive to employees’ feelings.”

Next year, Murphy predicted, will be worse.

“We are going to have some difficult times in the future (because) we know the state’s going to have problems.”

The city’s $90-million interim budget passed in June was expected to be in place only until the state passed its own budget. Now that it has, Newport Beach faces reductions of 9% in property tax income and 17% in sales taxes.

The City Council this week also abandoned plans to commission artist Donald Lipski to sculpt a 15-foot-high, 6,000-pound brass sculpture for McFadden Plaza for $90,000.

City officials said the project may be reconsidered for the 1992-1993 budget.

“This has everyone discouraged,” Arts Commission Chairwoman Phyllis Drayton said. “I don’t know what the time schedule is, but I’m not going to give up. This was going to be the first art piece that the city was going to do and that’s really sad.”

The sculpture, titled Zephyr, was to have been part of the city’s Arts in Public Places program.

“I’m torn,” Commission member Marilee Stockman said about the city’s move to scrap the project. “When you see how many employees will be laid off, I think it was justified.”

Members of the Arts Commission said they will stick with Lipski’s piece when the city approves funding for the project next year.