Pasadena Budget Calls for ‘Painful’ Cuts to Avoid $4.7-Million Deficit : Government: Plans include scaling back affirmative action and arts funds. Sixteen workers would be laid off.

Pasadena’s draft budget would force City Hall to lay off 16 employees, end grants for artists, close a swimming pool and halve funds for a summer jobs program for youths.

The budget also would cut the city’s affirmative action program and eliminate the Northwest Office.

Among the employees targeted for layoff are nine of the city’s 12 police assistants, who help sworn officers take reports. In addition to the 16 layoffs, 20 city jobs now vacant would be eliminated as numerous departments downsize.

The Arts Division would be particularly hard hit, with three-quarters of its budget slashed, including all of the $130,000 it dishes out in grants each year to local artists.

The $312.7-million 1995-96 budget proposed by City Manager Philip A. Hawkey on Monday is only $1 million lower than the 1994-95 budget, yet it contains $4.7 million of what city officials describe as “painful cuts” needed to overcome a deficit.

City officials blamed the $4.7-million deficit on the higher cost of city business, the raises given employees in the last year, a decline in revenues of about $300,000, new programs costing about $500,000.

“When you get to the fifth year of cutting, there isn’t much left,” Hawkey said.

Hawkey proposed the cuts after the council last month rejected several new revenue sources.

The budget’s one new tax is on grandstand seats for the Rose Parade. It will generate $100,000 annually and was the only revenue idea approved by the council last month.

There are few new programs in the city budget. The additions are in recreation and after-school programs for youths established last year with money from the World Cup. These will now be funded by the city at a lower level.

At a special council meeting Monday, council members generally praised Hawkey’s work but voiced concern about the level of cuts and layoffs.

“Who are these (full-time employees)? Who are these letters and numbers?” asked Councilman Chris Holden. He particularly worries about cutting the youth jobs program and police assistants who free up officers for enforcement duties, he said.

Nevertheless, Councilman Rick Cole complained that Hawkey had neglected to mention the $2.1 million in salary raises last year in the budget outline and its contribution to the deficit. “That number isn’t in this book, and that is a very important number,” he told Hawkey.

Hawkey, however, defended the raises, saying many city employees had not received a cost-of-living increase since 1992, and the recent hikes only allowed them to earn the average for comparable cities.

Arts activists were the first to scold Hawkey in Monday’s council session. Many artists already are leaving the city, they complained.

“We need to preserve our traditional image as a city with a strong and healthy arts community,” said Barbara Cole of the private Pasadena Arts Council. Ambassador Auditorium is closing, and two performing companies have left the city.

Hawkey defended the proposed cuts, saying there was a plentiful supply of private money for the arts in Pasadena.

Labor union leaders also bashed Hawkey’s budget. They suggested that rather than layoffs, he should consider whether services contracted out to the private sector by the city could be done more cheaply by staff.

In the past two years, the city has avoided drastic cuts. In 1993, city voters approved a library tax after Hawkey proposed severe cuts to the library system. Then last year, the city got $2 million from the World Cup soccer tournament’s use of the Rose Bowl.

The council took no action on the budget Monday other than to send it to the finance subcommittee for hearings. The budget will be debated once the three new council members elected Tuesday take office May 1; it must be approved by June 30.

The city’s budget process actually covers two years at a time. The 1996-97 budget differs only slightly from the 1995-96 budget, city officials said. The city will hold budget workshops and hearings in May and June before the council finally adopts a budget June 18.

Among the cuts recommended by Hawkey:

* Reduce the city’s Affirmative Action Office by eliminating an employee who monitors city contracts and another who coordinates programs, as well as cutting training city employees, for a savings of $165,701.

* Restructure the city attorney’s office by cutting in half outside legal costs and hiring an attorney and paralegal to do the work for a savings of $159,000.

* Eliminate the Northwest Programs Office, which handles issues in the city’s poorest area, and place its head and another employee in the city manager’s office for a savings of $66,701.

* Eliminate four full-time and one part-time positions in the Finance Department for a savings of $335,509.

* Restructure the Human Services programs to save $412,583, including cutting by half a $240,000 summer jobs program for city youth.

* Close Blair High School swimming pool, reduce by one day the opening times for pools at Pasadena High School, Villa Park and the Jackie Robinson Community Center, while reducing lifesaving training to save $46,748.

* Eliminate a vacant deputy fire chief position for a savings of $147,763.

* Terminate $3,000 of funding for the Sister Cities Committee.

* Reduce programming and equipment for the city’s television station, KPAS-Channel 55, to save $66,026.