SEAL BEACH : Council to Address Budget Tonight

The City Council tonight will get its first look at the city’s 1994-95 fiscal year budget.

City officials don’t expect the budget to include major cuts or layoffs even though Seal Beach faces more than $500,000 in unexpected expenses from May’s pier fire and a sand replenishment program.

Mayor George Brown predicted that the new budget will look similar to last year’s $9.2-million general-fund spending plan.

He said the fire and sand bills will prevent the city from beginning to replenish its reserves, a move City Manager Jerry L. Bankston had hoped to begin this year.

The debts might also force the council to delay its promised reduction of the utility-users tax. The 11% levy that residents pay on their monthly gas, electric and telephone bills is now one of the highest in Southern California.

“The pier fire really threw us for a curve,” Brown said. The budget “tightens the belt in some spots, but I don’t see major cuts.”

Brown said the council still hopes to reduce the utility tax, perhaps sometime next year.