QUICK TAKES - Jan. 17, 2009

Making what its president called “a tough decision” to cut staff in hopes of avoiding deficits or programming cuts, the Orange County Performing Arts Center announced Friday that it had eliminated seven full-time and three part-time jobs, while mandating cost reductions across all departments.

The lost jobs represent a 6% reduction in the full-time workforce of about 100.

Terrence Dwyer, the center’s president who in his previous post as the La Jolla Playhouse’s managing director earned praise for helping to shepherd the theater out of fiscal problems during the 1990s, said that with the cuts he was projecting a balanced budget for the fiscal year that ends June 30.

Ticket sales are running “close to target,” Dwyer said, and board members are coming up with “additional gifts” to help the center weather the bad economy without dropping performances or decreasing education programs.

-- Mike Boehm