LOCAL ELECTIONS / YORBA LINDA : Candidates Separated by How They’d Spend City Money : The four running for two City Council seats seem to agree things are good the way they are. They differ on what to fund to make things better.

With a hefty budget reserve, enough money for expensive projects like a gymnasium and sports park, and a low crime rate, candidates for two seats on the City Council have little to bicker over except how to spend the city’s money.

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The biggest problem facing Yorba Linda residents, said council incumbent John M. Gullixson, is the traffic jam every morning at Esperanza Road and Imperial Highway.

“And that’s not even in Yorba Linda. It’s in Anaheim,” Gullixson said.

Councilman Henry W. Wedaa, whose term is also up, is not seeking reelection.

Gullixson is not the only one who sees a lack of major problems in the city. Christine Norris, Gene Wisner and Todd Tande, all candidates along with Gullixson for the council seats, share the same basic list of concerns, which mostly involve keeping the city the way it is.

Where the candidates start to diverge is in how to spend the city’s money.

Gullixson has frequently led the effort to expand and improve the city’s sports facilities. One pet project has been the effort to annex Esperanza High School from Anaheim, not for educational reasons but to gain access to the sports fields and gymnasium.

But Norris, a real estate agent who ran unsuccessfully two years ago, wonders if the city has overextended itself on building and buying sports facilities.

“My biggest concern is, do we have the money to maintain all the new facilities we’re building,” Norris said. “I don’t want to have to close facilities later because we don’t have the money to maintain them.”

Both Tande and Wisner would like to see more money spent on police service.

Wisner, a retired shoe-store owner who served on the council from 1982 to 1992, said he would call for an increase in the number of patrol hours the city buys from Brea Police Department, with which it contracts for police service.

“The No. 1 issue facing our city is public safety,” Wisner said. “It’s a concern no matter where you live, on the east side or the west.”

Tande, a county fiscal analyst, said he would also want officers to spend more of their time in Yorba Linda.

“I think at some point we are going to need a police building in Yorba Linda. Officers patrolling on the east side of town have to drive all the way back to Brea when they arrest someone,” Tande said. “That’s done at the expense of patrol time.”