ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK : A Trailer for Coming Subtractions

Maybe they can work out of a car?: Strapped for cash, the Irvine Unified School District might sell four properties, including its 35,000-square-foot headquarters on Barranca Parkway.

If the idea is approved, the district hopes to sell the property to a buyer willing to give the district a long-term lease.

But given the deep cutbacks the district faces, Deputy Supt. Paul Reed joked that the school system might not need all the space.

“With what’s left, the district office may fit nicely in a trailer,” he quipped.

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Spreading the pain: County supervisors aren’t the only ones racing to reduce perks in the wake of the financial crisis.

Some city and school district officials are also talking about cutting back--with mixed results.

Irvine Unified School District trustees voted to reduce their monthly stipends from $400 to $100. The district has more than $105 million in the county’s collapsed investment pool, the most of any school district.

The situation in Newport Beach is a different story. Councilwoman Norma Glover this week asked her colleagues to postpone or cancel a two-day goal-setting workshop planned for this weekend.

With $13 million in the frozen investment pool, the city could find a better use for the $9,000 allocated for the workshop, she said.

But city officials said most of the $9,000 is already owed to a facilitator who met last year with each council member to discuss issues facing the city.

So, the workshop is still on.

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Jurassic job center: A new job placement center for fired county workers has an unwelcome visitor.

Just outside the career center at the Old County Courthouse is an exhibit of prehistoric whale and fish bones from the Ice Age.

The fossil exhibit is meant to lend some heft and history to the old building. As an unintended consequence, they are making people making use of the center feel more like their lives as county employees are also in the past.

Career center officials said several fired workers mentioned the display.

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Hard times: The bankruptcy has the county and other local agencies questioning every expenditure, no matter how routine.

Last week, the county coroner’s office turned down a reporter’s request to have one page of a report faxed to him. Instead, a clerk said the reporter would have to pick up the paper in person.

At the Orange County Sanitation Districts, officials are trying to conserve paper by sharing thick reports that would usually be duplicated several times.