Deficit Complicates Mayor’s LAPD Plan : Budget: Riordan urges department heads to help close $200-million gap while he expands the police force.

Mayor Richard Riordan is sticking to a commitment to fully fund his Project Safety for beefing up the Los Angeles Police Department, even as the city prepares to deal with an estimated $200-million budget deficit in the next fiscal year, Riordan’s top budget adviser said Friday.

On Wednesday, in a meeting with the heads of city departments, Riordan reiterated his warning that the city faces a large deficit and said he is relying heavily on their inventiveness to close the budget gap.

Michael Keeley, Riordan’s chief financial adviser, said that the deficit assumes full funding of the second year of Project Safety, the mayor’s plan to add 2,855 officers to the LAPD over five years.

Keeley said “$200 million is our best guess of the size of the deficit now,” but he acknowledged that Chief Legislative Analyst Ron Deaton recently projected a $312-million shortfall.

“This is the most brutal recession we’ve had since the Great Depression,” said City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie, commenting on the fact that the city has seen four straight years of declining revenues.

Actually, the city is anticipating a slight upturn in the economy and in city revenues this year and officials are predicting a 2% increase in city revenues for the 1995-96 budget year, which begins July 1.

Nevertheless, the city will be facing $75 million in additional costs next year to pay for salary increases for city employees, including police, and new costs of about $40 million for Project Safety, Keeley said.

Under the mayor’s police plan, the city would have 1,435 new officers by the end of fiscal 1995-96. A recent Los Angeles Times review, however, found that expansion has proceeded at only half the pace sought under the plan.

“We don’t know how we’re going to balance this budget,” Comrie said. “We’re bringing in some outside consultants to help us.”

City department heads submitted their plans for 1995-96 belt-tightening to Comrie this week. But he said Friday that it is too early to asses their effect.

Riordan repeatedly has urged city executives to help him make city government more efficient.