City Manager Proposes Seeking Community Input on Budget : Thousand Oaks: A task force, composed of two dozen local activists, would make recommendations to the City Council.

No matter how Thousand Oaks leaders craft the city’s $72-million budget, constituents complain: Why cut back on street sweeping? Why not hire more police? Why not lower golf course fees?

To give citizens a crack at airing those concerns early, before the phone-book-size spending plan is printed, City Manager Grant Brimhall has proposed establishing a Community Budget Task Force.

About two dozen local activists--perhaps one representative from every city commission--would huddle with council members and bureaucrats to debate the budget in televised sessions.

Citizens would thus, for the first time, have the chance to give input before the city comes up with a detailed spending plan. If citizens wanted cleaner streets, they might have to settle for fewer recycling programs. If they wanted more police patrols, they might have to cut back on drug-education programs.

The recommendations would then be forwarded to the City Council for consideration during a public hearing. And several council members said they would welcome the input--and the chance to show citizens how they arrive at tough decisions.

“It’s one thing to say, ‘Expand library hours,’ and another to say, ‘Here’s where you should cut services to pay for that (expansion),’ ” Councilwoman Judy Lazar said.

Along with advising the council on spending priorities, the committee could help the city draft an understandable budget, officials said. Citizens and council members alike have complained that the budget, packed with columns of figures, is difficult to digest.

“We need clear graph displays and a consistent charting of where the money goes from year to year,” Zukowski said. “There needs to be much more citizen oversight of the city’s budget process.”

While she agrees with the principle of citizen participation, Councilwoman Elois Zeanah suggested a different approach to revamping the city’s budget process.

Instead of inviting arts commissioners and sports coaches to sit on a budget task force, she proposed asking professional accountants, auditors and financial managers to review the city’s spending plan.

Although the city has won state and national awards for excellent financial statements, the accountants who conducted the most recent audit found some inconsistent reporting practices.

“There seems to be a lot of confusion and a lot of flux,” Zeanah said. “This is dangerous. This is not the way to run a city.” A professional oversight committee, Zeanah added, would provide “the safeguards we take for granted are out there.”

But Councilman Frank Schillo, himself a financial planner, countered that the city’s regular audit should give residents confidence in municipal finances.

He said he could support a well-trained task force to advise council members on spending priorities, Schillo said, but not a group of accountants meddling in the books.

“We have an audit every year, for God’s sake,” he said.

Council members received Brimhall’s recommendation about the community task force with this week’s agenda packet. But they will not formally consider the report until their Oct. 4 meeting. At that time, they will also tinker with the 1994-95 budget.

Brimhall has recommended boosting the sheriff’s budget $200,000, which would cover the cost of dispatching another staffed patrol car 56 hours a week. The funding could come from rejiggering the financing of the East Valley Sheriff’s Station, he said.

In reviewing the budget, Brimhall also explored the possibility of opening the Thousand Oaks Library on Fridays.

To keep the library open on Fridays, the city would have to cut morning and evening hours throughout the week, Brimhall concluded. So he and library Director Marvin Smith have recommended sticking with the current hours of 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday.