Fire Department Hopes to Rescue Jobs and Stations : Spending: A $20-million cutback from the state may be avoided, but the chief still lacks funds to maintain current staffing.

Exemption of fire departments from state funding cuts could help the Ventura County Fire Department avoid plans to lay off 286 employees, close 18 fire stations and impose a $110-per-household tax, county officials said Thursday.

The department will not suffer an anticipated $20-million loss in funding if Gov. Pete Wilson approves the measure, Fire Chief George Lund said. But he said it still must grapple with other state cuts and union pay packages that will force an estimated $3.5-million budget shortfall,

“We’re not looking at a $20-million hit, but we still do not have adequate funding to maintain current staffing,” Lund said. “We have additional costs of doing business.”

Supervisor Maggie Kildee said Thursday she will ask the board at its meeting Tuesday to reinstate 56 fire employees it laid off last week and to postpone action on the proposed fire tax. But Kildee said she wants the department to dig for more cost-cutting measures so it can absorb some of the shortfall.

“If we do look at closing fire stations, it will not be because we don’t have enough money,” she said. “It will be because we’re in a streamlining mode and we’re trying to give people the best we can for their money.”

Lund said he will offer a cost-cutting plan to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that may allow them to consider reinstating 27 firefighters and 29 civilians who were laid off last week.

But the plan requires closing two stations, delaying some merit increases, approving some salary cuts and cutting back overtime, Lund said.

And whatever the supervisors approve, they will have to deal with a $1.3-million cut in state revenue, and a 4% raise for about 60% of the union’s members in July and an additional 4% raise for all union firefighters on Jan. 1 that were promised in the most recent contract negotiations, he said.

“What we’ve done is to identify short-term savings options, and the majority of the money is salaries and benefit packages to employees,” Lund said.

The Fire Department also is trying to shift work handled by higher-paid union members, such as some training and procurement work, to lower-paid civilian employees as a way of avoiding layoffs.

“The board has to reassess the entire picture right now,” Lund said. “The best we can hope for them is to say, ‘Do not go forward with the layoffs.’ ”

One union official said the firefighters’ offer to take a 5% pay cut--laid out for the Board of Supervisors when state funding cuts threatened to gut the entire department--is still on the table.

But the union will insist on its original conditions on the sacrifice--including 5% pay cuts for all county employees earning more than $30,000 a year and 10% cuts for those earning more than $60,000, said Carroll Hoiness, vice president of the Ventura County Professional Firefighters Assn.

The union also wants to negotiate any contract changes informally before opening the contract to formal negotiations that could lead to an impasse and give the county the opportunity to take away more, Hoiness said.

“It looks like he’s trying to balance his budget on labor’s back,” Hoiness said of Lund’s plan. “We have said we’ll talk on any subject as long as it’s fair and equitable. Would we open our contract? I don’t know. But would we talk about it unofficially? Absolutely.”

Abbe Cohen, the Fire Department’s financial manager, warned Thursday that none of the shortfall estimates are firm unless Wilson signs the budget package, along with the trailer bill that exempts fire departments from his plan to shift $2.6 billion from local governments to schools.