$190-Million Spending Plan Boosts Staff and Services

In his two decades on the job, City Manager Grant Brimhall has endured some rough municipal budget years--the kind where hiring is frozen and programs are cut--and he has also seen his share of rosy ones.

This year’s budget, he said, is clearly on the rosy side.

After struggling through a succession of lean years earlier this decade, Thousand Oaks is in a position to bolster its overworked staff and enhance its already exceptional array of public services.

The City Council tonight will consider adopting Brimhall’s proposed $190-million two-year operating and capital-improvement budgets.

The budgets would maintain all existing programs, open the Newbury Park branch of the Thousand Oaks Library on Fridays, and put three new Ventura County Sheriff’s Department cruisers on city streets. In all, Thousand Oaks, which currently employs 449 staffers, not including police, would grow by a total of 19 1/2 full-time positions.

“Fortunately, our own local economy is doing well, and the major revenue sources, including sales taxes, are on the upswing,” Brimhall said. “With the economy doing its magic locally, we’re able to represent a budget that is balanced. We are basically keeping all the services the council has wanted in the past and including some additional ones.”

The city took in sales taxes of $15.2 million in 1996-97. Officials predict that figure will rise to $16.2 million in 1997-98, and $16.9 million the following fiscal year.

The biggest beneficiary of the resurgent economy is expected to be the city’s police services, which are provided on a contract basis by the Sheriff’s Department.

In addition to the police cars and the about 4 1/2 full-time officer positions needed to staff them, the operating budget includes the addition of a new investigative clerk and four service technicians. That amounts to almost 10 new positions, bringing the city’s total police force to nearly 111 sworn and non-sworn personnel, for an overall increase of more than $1.86 million over the two-year budget span.

“That’s a big-ticket item,” Brimhall said of the police improvements. “We obviously have a commitment there over the next two years. We got about 85% of what [police] wanted.”

They may not include everything she had hoped for, but Sheriff’s Cmdr. Kathy Kemp, who acts as Thousand Oaks’ police chief, said she is more than satisfied with Brimhall’s recommendations.

“I think we presented a strong case for the impacts we foresaw over the two years, and I think the city manager responded to that,” Kemp said. “I was very pleased. The bottom could fall out of the economy in two years, but for now, it appears very positive.

“We’ve been at the existing beat configuration for 20 years, and we need to change,” she added. “With the growth at the various ends of the city, we need to enhance and reconfigure the way we do things.”

Because it will take some time to train the new deputies, Kemp said her goal is to begin the enhanced system of police patrols by January 1999.

Thousand Oaks’ library system, already the healthiest in Ventura County, is expected to have its hours extended once again. The City Council voted last year to open the library’s main branch on Fridays.

Now, Brimhall, acting on a suggestion of the city’s Community Budget Task Force, is suggesting they do the same at the smaller Newbury Park branch--at least on a test basis, he said.

“We’re beefing up the library,” Brimhall said. “I’m suggesting that we open the Newbury Park branch on Fridays as a pilot program. Let’s see how it works.”

Many other city departments are expected to get a boost.

For example, the budget includes a $56,000-a-year deputy city attorney position. With the council’s desire to aggressively pursue code enforcement violations, the city attorney’s office really needs another hand, Brimhall said.

“We really need that additional attorney,” said Kemp, whose deputies often work closely with the city attorney’s office. “We’ve really been loading up on them.”

Likewise, as Thousand Oaks becomes more active in providing housing assistance to residents, the city’s Housing Services division is feeling the strain. The budget would provide for a full-time program management assistant for housing assistance.

And now that the City Council has decided to have the city clerk’s office post campaign contributions and other city information on the Internet, Brimhall has included a digital scanning and imaging system in the budget to simplify and speed up that process.

The city clerk’s office is also expected to receive a new part-time position to handle the increased work stemming from Prop. 208, the campaign reform law passed last year by California voters.

Of course, not every city department would get all it wanted.

For example, the Community Development Department was hoping to get more personnel than the budget recommends. That could still happen, Brimhall said, under a proposal being kicked around by the Mayor’s Business Roundtable, a citizens committee, to raise city planning fees.

“There’s always a lot more things you could buy, if you had a lot more money,” Brimhall said. “Overall, I feel very good about this budget. Everybody got something.”