Ventura Tells Workers of Layoffs : Budgets: Fifteen city employees receive notification. Another 20 positions will be eliminated.

Fifteen Ventura city employees were told Wednesday they would be laid off in three months, and city officials announced that another 20 positions--some already vacant--would be eliminated.

City Manager John Baker said more layoffs might occur before July 1 but could not give any estimate of how many additional workers from the city’s payroll of about 655 employees would lose their jobs to budget cuts.

The employees who received the layoff notification on Wednesday will stop working on June 30, Baker said. Duties of some of the eliminated jobs will be assigned to five new positions that will be created after June 30.

“It’s been a bad morning,” said Barbara Harison, director of the Parks and Recreation Department, which is being eliminated under a reorganization proposal that Baker unveiled about two months ago. Harison said she received notice Wednesday morning and then had to give layoff notices to some of her 95-member staff.

A March 31 memo from Baker about the layoffs lists more positions from the Parks and Recreation Department to be cut than from any other department. Baker’s proposal to eliminate the department calls for dividing its duties between two other departments after June 30.

According to the memo, every city department suffered cuts. Affected positions include a police lieutenant, city arborist, a senior civil engineer, five recreation coordinators and several administrative assistants.

Miriam Mack, director of the Redevelopment Agency, will lose her job after 19 years as a city employee. “I’m exploring options,” Mack said Wednesday.

As head of redevelopment, Mack is in charge of the city’s plans to redevelop the downtown area and parts of the Ventura Avenue neighborhood. She said she did not know how the reorganization and budget cuts would affect the city’s long-term redevelopment plans.

In his memo, Baker said the 35 positions are the only jobs that have been targeted so far. He strongly disputed an estimate published by The Times on Saturday that quoted the city’s finance director as speculating there could be as many as 50 more layoffs.

“We have not identified 50 more positions as suggested by last Saturday’s Los Angeles Times article. No such determination has been made by anyone,” the memo said.

The story quoted Finance Director Terry Adelman. He had taken the average salary and benefits of a city employee--$50,000--and divided it into the additional $3 million that is expected to be slashed from the city’s budget, and then reduced it slightly.

Baker, however, said it is too early to make such guesses, and that Adelman’s estimate was “just flat-out wrong.” He said it is up to the council to make decisions on how many jobs will be affected.

Council members are looking at proposed budget cuts and will make a final decision on layoffs in June when it passes the city’s 1993-94 budget.

Baker said in the memo that it is too early to tell how city services will be affected by the layoffs. But positions that are targeted for elimination include:

* the city arborist, who oversees maintenance of city trees,

* the recycling coordinator, who oversees recycling programs,

* a civilian police services officer, who takes crime reports from residents, and

* five recreation coordinators, who oversee recreation programs.

Last week, a council subcommittee directed Baker to put together proposals for severance packages as well as a buyout plan to encourage some employees to retire early.