City Council Delays Tough Budget Choices : Finances: Members decide they don’t have enough information to consider cuts needed to close a $4-million gap caused by state aid reduction.

City Manager Philip Hawkey showed the City Council graphs and charts, introduced experts on city spending and passed around reports on budget trends.

But after more than four hours of deliberations Tuesday, the council decided that it didn’t have enough information to make the hard choices needed to close a $4-million budget gap forced by reductions in state aid.

The council opted instead to put off the vote until next week on Hawkey’s bitter-tasting menu of budget proposals, which include cuts in service, staff reductions and fee increases.

Among Hawkey’s suggestions were eliminating 36 city jobs, reducing the weekly council meetings to three per month, cutting more than half of the city’s contribution to an AIDS coalition, dropping a program for elderly crime victims and biting deeper into an already fund-starved public library system.

Police and fire staffing would not be affected by the cuts, and at least 30 jobs to be eliminated are not currently filled.

A procession of speakers at the public budget hearing alternately pleaded for programs in jeopardy, proposed slashes in management salaries and attacked city budget officials (“One thing you’re good at is protecting your salaries and perks,” one critic said.)

Several council members pointedly suggested that Hawkey come back with cuts in staff perquisites, such as car allowances and travel pay. Several hundred city employees receive car allowances, amounting to about $240,000 a year, Hawkey said, including $6,000 he receives.

“I propose deleting it entirely,” Councilman Jess Hughston said.

Councilman William Paparian suggested cuts in the city’s longstanding bonus system, under which employees with good performance records are rewarded with bonuses, and in travel expenses. He said cuts in bonuses could save the city an additional $1 million.

“In today’s economy, I would say that continued employment with the city is ample reward (for good performance),” he said.

The city’s current dilemma, like that of most other cities in the San Gabriel Valley, is the result of recent state action, city officials said. Two months after the city had balanced its budget, based on a given level of revenue from the state, the state skimmed 9% of city-bound property taxes and 16% of the city’s redevelopment funds.

“The State of California has confiscated $4 million,” Mayor Rick Cole said.

With continued recessionary conditions, the city is doomed to experience more losses in future years, Hawkey said. Even without the state action, the city probably faces a deficit of from $1.8 million to $3 million this year because revenues will be less than anticipated when the budget was adopted, he said.

These are hard times, Cole said. “My own view is that it gets worse, not better.”

City budget officials anticipate budget shortfalls hitting the city in increasing annual increments until they reach a level of from $9 million to $20 million in the 1996-97 fiscal year.

Pasadena Public Library Director Ed Szynaka, whose staff has already voluntarily given up $100,000 worth of salary increases this year, was downcast as he appeared before the council. “Clearly, the proposals in front of you are Draconian for the library system,” he said.

Among other things, Hawkey has proposed closing the central library on Sunday and Monday, closing branch libraries four days a week, and cutting back on services for children and shut-ins.