O.C. Philharmonic Society Out of Financial Woods : Funding: It has wiped out 70% of a deficit of $114,000. Strong subscription and cost containment efforts are credited.

NEWPORT BEACH —  The Orange County Philharmonic Society has wiped out 70% of an accumulated deficit of $114,000, after closing the fiscal year with a surplus, officials announced Monday.

The society raised $80,000 beyond its 1992-93 operating budget of $2.3 million, to end the year in the black and have money left over to apply to the deficit, according to unaudited figures.

Society Board President Steven A. Lupinacci on Monday described the remaining $34,000 as “almost inconsequential. . . . For an organization that runs break-even on a $2 1/2-million budget every year, a plus or minus $30,000 is essentially a zero-deficit position.”

Officials credited strong subscription and single ticket sales, donor support and women’s committees’ fund-raising campaigns for the results.

Another factor is that the organization has undergone “very painful cost containment over the last two years,” Lupinacci said.

“The staff has gone without salary increases, we’ve cut staff and we’ve issued appeal after appeal to our donors,” he said. “We’ve done all the hard things you need to do, and it’s been very successful. We’re just very grateful to all the people who made it possible.”

Lupinacci said the society’s dispute earlier this year with Orange County Performing Arts Center management over ethnic, non-classical music programming it wanted to bring to the center had “to some extent became a rallying point, in terms at least of highlighting what it is we do and what we’re trying to accomplish.”

The society said it has paid off in full money it owed to the center for rental fees and other costs from last season. The center had extended rental credit because the society had been having cash-flow problems earlier in the season. The society paid the center $97,500 by the June 30 deadline, as it had projected.

Additionally, officials said the society has raised almost half of a $500,000 goal set as part a 40th anniversary campaign, launched in April to raise $500,000 by June, 1994. The money would be used to ensure future programming by building a sizable cash reserve.

The deficit reached a peak of about $300,000 in 1991, as a result of a shortfall in projected subscription ticket sales and fund-raising goals and OCPS’s share of a reported $300,000 loss from poor ticket sales for the New World Music Festival in 1988. However, the deficit was subsequently steadily cut.

Those money troubles had prompted society officials to explore the possibility of a merger with the Pacific Symphony, which has had its own financial difficulties. But that effort has since been shelved, at least in part because the society’s finances have improved.

The good financial news came on the heels of the announcement of Dean Corey as the new executive director, a post left vacant since Erich A. Vollmer left in January to serve as executive director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

In other society news: Richard J. Schwarzstein of Laguna Beach was elected president, succeeding Lupinacci, who became chairman of the board. Gary N. Babick, Corona del Mar, was elected secretary-treasurer.