Simi Applying Final Touches to Budget Plan

Dollar by dollar, the Simi Valley City Council is totting up what it can and cannot spend next year as it prepares for a final budget vote June 24.

On Monday, the council is scheduled to review a request to spend about $202,000 more next year on the Department of Environmental Services, much of it on consultants for revising the city’s General Plan for development.

“We’re coming in very close to the current year’s budget,” General Services Director Steve Elam said. “From an operating standpoint, it’s pretty flat. There’s a real emphasis on holding the line and tightening the belt wherever we can.”

If approved, the added funds would boost the environmental services budget to $4.3 million, about one-eighth of the total proposed $32.6-million spending plan for 1996-97.

Between now and the final budget hearing a week from Monday, the council must figure out how to handle a relatively small $327,300 revenue shortfall.

“I think we’re in very positive fiscal shape,” City Manager Mike Sedell said Friday. “And the council will be bringing the budget into balance by the time they are ready to adopt it on the 24th.”

But one wild card remains: the cost of doing business with the city employees’ union.

Assistant City Manager Laura Herron is in negotiations with Barry Hammitt, head of the Service Employees Union International, which represents 260 of Simi Valley’s 550 workers, including secretaries, technicians, maintenance workers and others.

Neither Herron nor Hammitt are allowed to comment on negotiations until they are complete.

Nor have council members decided whether to give raises for nonunion employees, ranging from Sedell down to mid-level managers in smaller departments.

Meanwhile, the council has already approved about $260,000 in spending increases for the Police Department, including a wish list of high-tech crime-fighting gear.

The council agreed Wednesday to spend $96,000 on an optical imaging system for loading paper records into police computers and $15,000 on a trailer-mounted, radar-triggered signboard that shows motorists how fast they are driving.

Council members approved $20,300 to upgrade the positions of four police dispatchers to that of lead dispatcher so the police dispatch center van be run by supervisors around the clock.

And they authorized $4,350 for a portable telephone that relies on satellite signals in case local phone lines are knocked out in a disaster--as occurred in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

The council, however, also rejected a $48,500 request for a mobile communications and command trailer that would operate as a portable disaster command center. The council also nixed a $4,500 notebook computer for the press information officer.

The total police budget request is about $13.4 million, near the amount the department spent this year.

“You’ve got to remember, the City Council is very supportive of law enforcement and wants to give them the tools they need to keep this a safe city,” Sedell said. “I think the council was extremely fair with every department.”

In all, Sedell said, the council granted “80% to 90%” of the Police Department’s one-time budget requests, and many of the other departments’ wish-list items.

The council approved budgets for smaller departments, such as the $9.7-million spending plan for the Department of Public Works. That includes $8,500 for a remote-controlled camera to scope out sewer pipes, and a $5,500 device for analyzing oxygen levels in sludge.