ORANGE : City Government Revamp Proposed

City Manager David F. Dixon has proposed a reorganization of city government that would eliminate an unspecified number of staff positions and cut as much as $5 million from the annual budget.

The policy, which Dixon said would “re-engineer” the way city government works, lays groundwork for coming discussions of the 1995-96 budget.

It also picks up where the city left off in earlier efforts to reduce staff. Since 1991, the city has eliminated more than 140 positions, personnel director Steven Pham said, and now employs 645 people full time and 260 part time.

Dixon’s plan would make dramatic cutbacks in every department except police and fire, with most of the staff cuts at the management level. Better use of computers would help to compensate for the loss of jobs, Dixon said.

The operating budget for the current year is just over $47 million, a $900,000 reduction from 1993-94. If all of the proposed items survive the budget process and bargaining sessions with unions, the budget for 1995-96 could go down by as much as $5 million.

Dixon insisted that residents would not notice any decrease in services--the same jobs would be done by a restructured staff aided by computers.

That view was not universal, though, and John Loertscher, head of the Orange Management Employees Assn., also expressed concern about the effect of the plan on employees.

Layoffs made in earlier cutbacks “had a great impact on the city,” Loertscher said. “The general public didn’t really feel an impact last time because we were able to compensate and still provide almost the same level of service.”