ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Services Ranked for Possible Trimming : Finances: County officials are making decisions on what is vital and what is nonessential. Many health concerns are given top priority.

The triage has begun.

Tuberculosis prevention, trash disposal, restaurant inspections--these are services Orange County department heads say the public cannot do without. But well-child visits, outreach to prevent mental illness and improving landfills may fall by the wayside in the county’s worst-ever fiscal crisis.

County officials reluctantly prepared Wednesday to take the paring knife to nonessential services, revealing for the first time what some of those services might be.

A County Board of Supervisors resolution approved late Monday ordered all department heads to prioritize their contracts with thousands of providers--from toilet paper vendors to nonprofit agencies that care for abused children and addicts.

“We’re using as criteria what is of most benefit to the community--and keeping the community out of danger,” said Dr. Hugh Stallworth, county director of public health.

Department heads said they must prepare for a worst-case scenario. County administrative office staff met late Wednesday afternoon to “start the countywide review” of the emergency lists, said Murray Cable, director of the county’s Integrated Waste Management District.

In a letter released Wednesday, Supervisor Roger R. Stanton suggested that an operations management team be formed to coordinate all day-to-day county services and facilitate the “health, safety and welfare of the public.” He suggested that the team be headed by Supervisor Gaddi Vasquez with assistance from a host of county agencies.

Low priority items on preliminary lists prepared by administrators--which have yet to be approved by top officials--range from furniture for the Superior Court to a $35-million project to close a mothballed county landfill. Stallworth said certain prevention services, such as well-child checkups at public health clinics, fell toward the bottom of his preliminary list. Such exams “could be done by other clinicians in town and . . . could be delayed (with) minimal hazard to the community,” Stallworth said.

Infectious diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis, as well as food inspections at restaurants and immunizations, have been assigned top priority, Stallworth said.

“I’m comfortable that the community health will not be jeopardized,” he said--although he and his employees are not as comfortable with the “big unknown” of what will be cut and by how much.

Similarly, county mental health Director Tim Mullins said his list, completed about 2 p.m. Wednesday, has near the top such things as medications and involuntary detention for the severely mentally ill, as well as support and care for patients in residential facilities. Prevention services for youths were deemed less important. Mullins said drug and alcohol services receive the bulk of their funding from the state and federal governments, so they may not be as affected.

Mullins and other administrators said they were not asked to make recommendations on layoffs, but merely to prioritize programs or services.

Cable, of the waste management district, said he submitted a list to the county administrative office that calls for his agency to cancel or suspend hundreds of contracts.

“The things that need to be done in order to bury the refuse and to protect the public’s health and safety are the things that will be done,” Cable said.

Any contracts for planning or reports or plans for building at the three open landfills are in limbo, as is a five-year plan to close the mothballed Santiago Canyon landfill.

“We have contracts for archeology and paleontology in case we run across a fossil,” he said. “Under law, we’re still going to need to bring someone out to do that. . . . We will start that again, but in these (emergency) conditions, I don’t need to have someone come out and look at a whale bone.”

More on Bankruptcy

* For complete background on the Orange County bankruptcy, including Times profiles of key players, sign on to TimesLink. Also, reprints of articles about bond deals and derivatives are available from Times on Demand. Call 808-8463, press *8630 and select option 1. Order Item No. 2811 for bond articles. $3.95. For derivatives, order No. 2810. $2.95.

Details on Times electronic services, B4

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Small Agencies, Big Concerns

Several smaller public programs--agencies that do everything from giving Christmas gifts to the poor to killing mosquitoes--have money tied up in Orange County’s bankrupt investment pool. The future of some of the programs is in jeopardy. Here is a sampling of the smaller investors: Fund: Amount in pool Victim/Witness Assistance: $723,822 Emergency Mosquito Abatement: $584,313 Irvine Child-Care Project: $313,621 Alternate Dispute Resolution: $277,695 Air Quality Improvement: $243,762 Public Guardian: $232,384 Coast Community College Child Development: $190,587 Fish and Game Propagation: $107,722 Human Relations Commission: $26,071 Operation Santa Claus: $9,996 Santa Ana Gardens: $8,109 Homeless Issues Trust: $7,903 Job Training Partnership Act: $3,444 Senior Santas: $837 Source: Orange County treasurer’s office