Council Asked to Add Officers, Anti-Gang Unit to Police Force

Faced with a budget even tighter than expected, city leaders could be hard pressed to put any new cops on the beat even as Oxnard is jolted by a recent spasm of youth violence, officials said Tuesday.

Still, the Police Department and residents asked the City Council to consider hiring more police officers to clamp down on gangs and make the streets safer.

“Let’s keep funding the police to maintain a strong anti-gang presence,” said 51-year-old Oxnard resident Howard Fox, a podiatrist. “We need more police on the beat.”

One Police Department proposal raised at Tuesday’s budget hearing includes setting up a permanent anti-gang task force with six new officers and squad cars at a cost of about $546,150.

The request came during a three-hour budget meeting that called on department heads to submit their “service alternatives” or wish lists--outlines of things that departments would do if the city were richer.

“We need sufficient funding to address the gang issue,” Police Chief Harold Hurtt said in an interview before the meeting.

But Oxnard last week learned that it may take in $1.3 million less in revenues this coming fiscal year than the previous year, stretching an already tight operating budget estimated at about $60 million. Ventura, a city two-thirds the size of Oxnard, has a budget only about $9 million less than its considerably larger neighbor.

The Oxnard City Council will undoubtedly have many tough choices to make before it adopts its 1996-97 budget in late June.

When city financial analysts first unveiled a spending blueprint earlier this year, they predicted that they could balance the budget if spending remained at existing levels. But while crunching the numbers, analysts recently got a double whammy.

They learned last week that the city will probably get $750,000 less from Southern California Edison in the new fiscal year because the utility is using less natural gas than in the past. The city collects a special fee for shipping the gas to the utility.

And they learned that the city may now have to pull up to $400,000 from its General Fund to pay the debt service on the 1980s’ construction of the Oxnard Library. Home building in Oxnard has been sluggish, meaning that the city is collecting less in special construction fees used to pay off the debt.

When budget analysts deducted a few other projected dips in miscellaneous revenue, they found that the city might make $1.3 million less than last year.

“It kind of threw everything off,” analyst Dennis Scala said.

Grace Magistrale Hoffman, Oxnard’s management and budget officer, said the city could close some of the gap by freezing an adjustment made to individual department budgets to account for inflation. But she said city leaders will have little money to pay for more services.

“I don’t think there are any easy answers,” Hoffman said.

Some departments have already proposed new cash-generating measures. The Police Department has proposed conducting a door-to-door dog- and cat-licensing enforcement campaign that could generate an estimated $70,000 in its first year.

The city is also suggesting charging homeowners $200 to inspect homes for code violations before escrow closes--an idea that could generate an estimated $124,800 for the city, but drew protests Tuesday from residents and real estate agents.

“If the city were to do another inspection, I could see where there would be conflict,” said Jeff Comstock, a local real estate broker.

Council members instructed city staff to prepare final revenue numbers before they determine the fate of certain proposals.

Echoing the comments of many other council members, Andres Herrera said public safety and gang enforcement rank as the council’s top priorities.

“We need to make sure that we sustain that on a long-term basis,” Herrera said.

But Herrera and others asked the Police Department--and the Fire Department, which requested more money to hire firefighters--to outline their proposals in greater detail. The council is set to review wish lists for other departments Tuesday.

Hurtt said he would like about $200,000 to pay officers overtime to work on the temporary gang task force before the city sets up a permanent unit.

He also said the department could use another $562,750 to complete a three-year staffing plan backed in concept by the City Council that includes adding five sworn officers and a dispatcher.

“We know that the council has established public safety as the No. 1 priority,” Hurtt said, “but we also understand that there are other services to be provided in the city.”

For instance, city parks chief Michael Henderson--and many residents--want the city to reopen park restrooms seven days a week after services were scaled back in 1991. The price tag: $300,000 a year.

It now appears that Henderson’s request may have a harder time making it off the wish list. “It depends how much [council members] want it to happen,” he said.