LAGUNA BEACH : Residents Support Cost-Cutting Effort

Prodded by 100 residents eager to help them with their task, the City Council on Tuesday began tightening city spending to reflect fiscally leaner times.

Mayor Lida Lenney called the budget hearing one of the council’s most difficult, but the overflow crowd was enthusiastic in encouraging the city to limit spending.

Suggestions revolved around freezing or cutting city workers’ salaries--especially those in management--while cutting costs and maintaining the current level of public safety. Tax hikes were rejected by all but one speaker, whom the mayor dubbed “a brave woman.”

The council agreed to continue shaping the 1993-94 budget between now and its adoption on June 15, each member developing a list of priorities showing which budget cuts or additions they would be most likely to endorse.

At least three council members indicated that they would be willing to freeze salaries for managers at City Hall.

The proposed $32-million budget offered by City Manager Kenneth C. Frank called for shifting $1 million earmarked to buy open space and create parking areas into the city’s general fund to help keep the budget balanced. It also called for additional spending cuts of $800,000.

Frank recommended imposing no new taxes and laying off three city employees. “I think those cuts are cuts we can reluctantly live with,” he said.

The city has been staggered by an anticipated loss of $1.8 million in property tax revenues--money the state is expected to usurp in this and coming years.

The council agreed to shift up to $1 million from the parking fund, depending upon what other cuts they ultimately make.

Among the more emotionally charged options offered were eliminating the information and referral program for the city’s youth shelter, halving funding for the city’s HIV task force and relinquishing its lone police dog. While the council ultimately may not agree to those cuts, they are all assumed in the proposed budget.

Giving up the referral program, which in fiscal year 1991-92 took 2,208 calls, would save the city $3,500. Abandoning the Police Department’s canine program would save $2,400. The HIV task force currently gets $10,000 from the city.

Options listed but not assumed in the proposed budget included cutting the schools’ DARE program for a savings of $6,000, eliminating an after-school playground program that costs $18,800 and eliminating the HIV task force’s funding.