Torrance Officials Plan More Budget Cuts, Fee Increases : Economy: The action would help erase a revenue shortfall of more than $1.74 million.

Torrance officials are preparing to adopt an array of budget cuts and fee increases to erase a revenue shortfall amounting to more than $1.74 million.

At a meeting Tuesday, City Council members approved in concept a plan to cut $1.27 million from the city’s operating budget, reducing spending on everything from tree removal to official lobbying trips to Sacramento and Washington.

The proposal would also eliminate the equivalent of six full-time positions, all of them relatively low-paying posts ranging from custodian to secretary. Of the jobs to be eliminated, however, only one is now filled--and the employee who holds it would be transferred to another post, Jackson said.

The council is scheduled to consider a final version of the proposed spending cuts next week. And in November, it will take up a plan for a $360,000 increase in fees on items including plumbing permits and library meeting room rental.

Taken together with a shift of $164,000 in transit funds to the city’s operating budget, the austerity steps are designed to balance the city’s $148-million, fiscal 1992-93 budget, which was thrown out of kilter by a reduction in this year’s state allocations to cities.

City Manager LeRoy J. Jackson said the moves will not be painless. “Each and every one of the cuts will affect the level, to some degree the quality, of the service we render in the city of Torrance,” he told council members on Tuesday.

When the state last month reduced local property tax allocations to cities by 9%, Torrance lost $1.58 million in revenue. The state also reduced Torrance’s share of cigarette tax revenues by $165,000.

“These are not onetime losses,” Jackson said. “They are permanent reductions to our revenue stream. . . . We are now out of balance by $1.74 million.”

The state cuts further deepened a fiscal crisis brought on by a depressed economy--and a resulting dip in tax revenues--according to city officials. Torrance was stung by a nearly $4-million shortfall in revenue, primarily in sales tax receipts, prompting an earlier round of budget-cutting measures last June.

Later, in anticipation of state budget cuts, the city imposed a selective hiring freeze that has left 82 of the city’s 1,500 jobs unfilled.

The city’s plans to fill those posts drew fire Tuesday from Guido De Rienzo, staff representative of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 425 Torrance workers.

De Rienzo fears that filling the vacancies--most of which are considered nonessential from a public safety standpoint--will make future cost-cutting necessary. He unsuccessfully urged the council to continue the freeze.

But city officials said freezing the currently vacant positions would have a disproportionate effect on services.

“It’s arbitrary and capricious as to service levels,” Jackson said.