Oxnard to Consider Cutting 31 Jobs and Closing Center

An Oxnard city councilman said he anticipates “bloodletting” on Tuesday, when the council will consider a proposal to cut more than 31 city jobs, close its South Oxnard Center and ask city employees to accept a voluntary, one-week leave without pay.

“The staff is looking for us to approve everything next Tuesday,” Councilman Manuel Lopez said Thursday. “But I do not feel that we can approve that. There are going to be questions.”

City Manager Vernon Hazen said the recommendations, some of which were made last month by a budget advisory group, would make up an anticipated $5-million budget shortfall for the 1992-93 fiscal year. Hazen is recommending a budget of $61.5 million.

Lopez said it might be premature to approve the budget when the state Assembly may force even more dramatic cuts on cities statewide. Under one legislative proposal to slash funding to local governments, Oxnard would face an additional $5.8-million shortfall.

In a memo to City Council members, Hazen said his proposed personnel reductions, when combined with reductions already approved by the council, would amount to a one-year decrease of more than 60 jobs in city government.

Mayor Nao Takasugi said many of those positions have been vacant.

“We’re really getting down to the bone,” he said.

The president of the union representing many Oxnard city employees said he opposed the idea of an unpaid vacation.

“You start that, it never stops,” said David Hartsuck of the Service Employees International Union Local 988.

He said the union instead will offer to freeze wages for two years in exchange for a four-day, 36-hour workweek.

Hartsuck said the union favored cutting more management positions than blue-collar jobs.

“We took a lot of cuts last year in the lower positions,” Hartsuck said. “Most of the cuts came on the working people in the levels where people are out in the streets, working with the people.”

Hazen said the city will save $250,000 by closing the South Oxnard Center, a community center that serves senior citizens and offers after-school activities for children.

The center’s branch library also would be closed and its staff and collection transferred to the main library.

The Oxnard Library board said it favors closing the South Oxnard branch rather than diluting services at both sites.

Takasugi said a private or church group may want to rent the South Oxnard Center and take over some city functions there as well.

To raise revenues, Hazen also is recommending an increase in water, sewer and garbage fees.

Some of the budget-cutting recommendations were made last month by the Financial Stability Task Force, an ad-hoc group of city employees who scoured the budget for potential savings.

The task force identified $5 million in savings from such ideas as turning over the city-sponsored Strawberry Festival to private promoters and switching to county-run fire companies.

The council already has rejected some of the task force recommendations, such as imposing a public safety tax and a junk-food tax, reducing the size of the Planning Commission, selling advertising space on parks uniforms, and eliminating free food and coffee at staff, council and commission meetings.