Millions in Quake-Safety Funds Go Unspent by L.A. : Preparedness: Only about $30 million of the $376 million authorized has been used. Staff shortage blamed.

While Los Angeles police headquarters was flooded by leaking pipes and a pedestrian bridge in Tarzana nearly crashed to the ground in last week’s earthquake, the money that might have prevented the damage sat unspent in the city treasury.

Repairs for dozens of city buildings and bridges have been mired in the bureaucracy for more than 3 1/2 years, since voters agreed to raise their property taxes to make seismic improvements, a review by The Times has found.

Of the $376-million bond sale authorized by Los Angeles voters in 1990, less than $30 million has been spent or pledged for specific projects. Just one-quarter of the 160 bridges and eight of the 34 buildings slated for earthquake safety improvement have been repaired.

A similar program for all of California, using a 1990 state bond issue, has also been mired in red tape. State officials have appropriated just $60 million of $300 million and are still trying to decide which of thousands of structures are most in need of repair.

“The earthquake punctuates with an exclamation mark the need to move this work forward,” City Controller Rick Tuttle said Wednesday.

Executives in the city’s Bureau of Engineering defended the pace of the seismic retrofitting program, saying that until recently they did not have enough employees to oversee the huge volume of work.

Officials said they were relieved that no city-maintained buildings or bridges collapsed in the earthquake. “It’s a feeling of ‘there but for the grace of God. . . ,’ ” Tuttle said.

Still, a partial inspection has found 186 city buildings damaged, 46 of them substantially. Seven buildings remain uninhabitable--three San Fernando Valley libraries, a fire station near the quake’s Northridge epicenter, a former fire station in Hollywood that is now a museum, an East Valley refuse collection building and a North Hollywood building used by parking enforcement officers.

City Hall suffered enough cracked plaster and damaged exterior tiles that workers had to sheath the upper observation deck in nylon netting to prevent debris from falling 26 floors. Broken pipes forced temporary closure of some offices at Parker Center police headquarters and a battered generator beneath City Hall shut down the city’s automated 911 dispatch system until afternoon on the day of the quake. City Hall is slated for a $112-million earthquake renovation.

In Tarzana, the city pedestrian bridge serving Wilbur Avenue Elementary School is closed and has been temporarily propped up to prevent it from collapsing onto the street below.

Many of those structures were supposed to be strengthened by the seismic safety bond measure. Proposition G--which increased the average property tax bill by $28.50 a year--was the city’s primary response to the destructive Loma Prieta earthquake that hit Northern California in 1989.

Even before the Loma Prieta quake, in April, 1989, Angelenos approved two other bond measures that included earthquake improvements in comprehensive remodeling programs for city libraries and police stations. Much of that money has also languished in the city treasury, with just $53 million of $229 million spent so far.

City Engineer Robert Horii said the initial delays in all the programs resulted from a shortage of city employees to issue and monitor contracts. He said more workers were needed to draw plans, write detailed bid specifications, award contracts and oversee construction.

Horii said that his initial attempts to get more employees to expedite the work were thwarted by the City Council.

As late as last March, City Council members Zev Yaroslavsky and Joel Wachs said they were reluctant to hire more city workers. Yaroslavsky argued that the construction programs were stalled by “lack of administration and leadership” and that money should be preserved for actual construction and not enlarging the city staff. Wachs said supervisors should “crack the whip” to get the jobs done, rather than hire more workers.

At the instigation of Controller Tuttle and then-Mayor Tom Bradley, the City Council eventually put aside those concerns, and 50 people were hired or transferred from other work to speed construction. The so-called “bond acceleration program” is supposed to expedite all of the city’s bond construction programs, and spur the local economy in the process.

Horii said the program has gotten the construction projects moving in recent months. “I don’t want to dwell on the past,” he said. “I think we are on a positive track right now.”

Clark Robins, head of the city’s Structural Engineering Division, said the seven-year goal for completion of seismic retrofitting will be met. “It takes a long time to do these things; six months to hire consultants, six months to do the design and then a year or two to complete construction,” Robins said.

“You can say it’s slow if you want, but that is just typically the way you do things,” Robins said. “It’s hard to spend tax money quickly because there are lots of checks and balances and City Council approvals required.”

City officials also defended their decision not to apply for yet another pot of earthquake improvement money. California cities were eligible for $50 million from the state’s own 1990 seismic bond measure.

Horii said the city learned that the state funds were for buildings in imminent danger and that a bid from Los Angeles would have also been hampered by the existence of the city’s own program.

“We looked at the priority that would have been assigned to us and decided it would have been so darned low that we decided not to do it,” Horii said.

Officials in the state architect’s office said the city was eligible to apply for the money but that it’s unclear whether it would have been awarded any.