Bleak Spending Plan Presented to Council : Lockwood’s Budget Proposal Reduces Funding for Recreation, Fails to Enlarge Police Force

San Diego City Manager John Lockwood, calling the city’s financial straits the gravest since the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, Thursday proposed a $931-million budget for fiscal 1990 that includes sizable cutbacks in recreation programs and a slight retreat from the city’s goal of expanding its police force.

With property-tax and sales-tax revenues expected to increase more slowly than in the past, and city population continuing to soar, the city’s operating budget “is not keeping up with the cost of doing business,” said Patricia Frazier, the city’s director of financial management.

“Last year was the worst year we had since Proposition 13,” Lockwood said. “This year is far worse.

‘Difficult Choices’

“It’s a very, very difficult year and the budget we’re proposing for the council gives them some very, very difficult choices.”

The silver lining in the budgetary cloud can be found in the huge growth of bricks-and-mortar projects such as streets, parks, libraries and sewer projects. The money for those projects is budgeted to increase by $77 million to $260 million, most of it from sewer users’ fees, developers’ fees, special taxes and borrowing.

The capital spending includes $8.6 million for the first year of a projected $45-million spruce-up of Balboa Park and $13.7 million in road construction from the Proposition A half-cent sales tax increase. Sewer and building inspection, funded by user fees, will increase substantially.

4.9% Budget Increase

But the $404.7-million fiscal 1990 operating budget, which would increase just 4.9% according to Lockwood’s blueprint, includes a $577,000 cut in after-school recreation programs that would eliminate half of the 74 sites; a $205,000 savings achieved by closing eight city-run pools for nine weeks in the spring and fall and the curtailment of library hours in Otay Mesa, North Park and Mira Mesa. A city bookmobile would be taken off the streets.

The council nixed a similar after-school recreation cut when Lockwood proposed it last year. “Every year, when we get the budget, they’ve cut Parks and Rec,” said an aide to Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer. “And, every year, the council goes up and fights to put it back.”

Perhaps more importantly to the council and the public, the number of police officers would slip from 1.62 per thousand city residents to 1.59 per thousand city residents, despite the council’s continued determination to bring the department’s staff to a ratio of 2 officers per thousand population.

It is the third-straight year that the council will not achieve that goal, which would cost an estimated $106.4 million over three years. A blue-ribbon panel examining ways to raise the money to finance that effort expects to complete its study by the end of this year, according to Lockwood’s budget document.

Lockwood would, however, put 22 more police officers on the street by eliminating the positions of 21 civilians at storefront police stations around the city.

“I find the budget totally unacceptable,” said Councilman Bob Filner, who said he will press for across-the-board spending cuts or a tax increase to raise the $18.5 million required to start the push toward 2 officers per thousand residents. “For the third year in a row, we have made no progress toward the 2.0 (officers) per thousand (goal), and, in fact, this year we’re going backward.”

Councilman Bruce Henderson had a virtually identical reaction, though for different reasons.

“I don’t find the budget satisfactory at all,” said Henderson, often credited with having the keenest financial mind on the nine-member council. “To cut back in Park and Recreation is totally unacceptable to me. Moreover, I’m very unhappy that we don’t have any money for jails or for vocational education.”

Other council members declined to comment on the budget document because they had not examined it thoroughly or they could not be reached. Mayor Maureen O’Connor is vacationing in Europe.

With the budgetary vise tightening around the council, Mark Nelson, executive director of the San Diego Taxpayers Assn., said he believes that this year’s deliberations may produce debate on fundamental questions of what the city’s budgetary responsibilities are. The council begins its discussions May 25. The 1990 fiscal year starts July 1.

Issue Facing Council

“The council is going to be increasingly put in a position (of deciding) what are traditional municipal services,” Nelson said. “Are we going to continue to pay for parks and recreation . . . or are we going to make them (self-sustaining) services?”

A prime example, cited by both Nelson and Lockwood, is trash collection. Now free to single-family homeowners, trash pickups cost the city more than $20 million coveted by Lockwood to pay for other services. San Diego is the only city in the county that now offers free trash collection. A vote of the public would be required to change the 1919 ordinance establishing free trash pickup.

Lockwood’s budgetary dilemma can be summed up this way: Though his operating budget will increase by $18.9 million, contracts with labor unions and the salaries of 135 top city managers will take up $12.1 million of that. That leaves just $6.8 million to cope with inflation and the expansion of services required by the estimated 27,000 more people who will be added to the city’s population during the next fiscal year. For the first time since 1984, real per capita spending will decline.

Requirements include staffing and maintaining the 15 recreation facilities built or enlarged by developers, staffing a new fire station and adding police officers.

Other Tax Sources

At the same time, the two major sources of city revenue--property taxes and sales taxes--are increasing more slowly than in the past. The increasing number of home resales does not bring the city as much tax revenue as the construction of new homes has in the past, and the growth of suburban shopping complexes outside the city limits such as North County Fair in Escondido and Car Country Carlsbad hinders the growth of sales tax revenue.

The result is less money to go around. Lockwood proposes placing just $1 million--0.25% of the budget--in the city’s rainy-day fund. Another $27.1 million in top-priority needs are left unfunded in the proposed budget.

In another sign of the times, he is budgeting $8 million to pay off lawsuit losses. The city has already spent about $10 million on such losses this year.

Another proposed cut would eliminate cleanup at Mission Bay Park and all other shoreline parks between 3 p.m and 7 p.m.

Departments not facing outright budget reductions will have to do more with less.

“We’re just going to have to get more and more out of our people as we go along,” Lockwood said.