Glendale Council Expected to OK $330-Million Budget : Finances: The spending plan provides support for the Alex Theatre and more police officers as well as a small raise for city employees.

After months of hashing out the details, the City Council is expected today to approve a $330-million 1995-96 budget that includes hefty financial support for the Alex Theatre, more police officers and a small raise for city employees.

But the spending plan contains less money than expected for the city’s fledgling computer bulletin board system and other items on its wish list.

Glendale’s financial outlook has improved since the recessionary problems of 1992-93, when dwindling revenues forced the city to lay off a handful of employees and cut services--mostly due to a slowly recovering local economy and a recently adopted system that encouraged department heads not to spend all the money they are allocated each year.

Although the new budget adds a handful of new positions to the 1,580-member city work force and requires no departments to cut services, City Manager David Ramsay said officials have been hamstrung at times during budget deliberations by two long-standing policies: one that says half the city’s sales taxes should go into capital improvements, and the decision not to impose a business license tax.

“Those two policies are major factors in our budget, they shape the character of it,” Ramsay said. “And I think they make good sense. All I am saying is that these are revenue opportunities that we are not availing ourselves of, and there are ramifications to that.”

One of the apparent casualties of the budget debate is the expansion of the LYNX computer network, which is scheduled to be offered to the public in August.

Rather than the $170,000 requested by the city’s library department, which operates the network, only about $70,000 is expected to be included in the budget--enough to operate the system, but not enough to market and promote it to the public, or to offer some of its more advanced features.

The most significant fee increase is a 7.7% water rate hike, which amounts to roughly $3 bimonthly per household. The water fee increase is expected to pay for a federally mandated ground water cleanup program and a rate hike from the Metropolitan Water District, from which the city buys water.

Under the budget proposal, five police officers are being added to the city’s neighborhood policing program, known as COPPS, to expand the program from the southwest part of Glendale into other areas. Most of these funds are from the 1994 federal crime bill, city officials said.

The beleaguered Alex Theatre will receive a combined operating subsidy of $350,000 from the city and the redevelopment agency as it enters its second season of musical shows. The theater is under the supervision of a new city-appointed director, with a new production company providing the entertainment.

Raises of 1.75% have been negotiated for the city’s police and general employees, and the same increase is expected for the Fire Department and management workers. About $1.5 million has been set aside for the raises, officials said.