Cuts of $3.6 million no walk in a park

Alicia Robinson

County-funded park services in the city won’t suffer much despite

state budget cuts of $3.6 million to Orange County’s Harbors, Beaches

and Parks department, county officials said.

The Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve and Orange County Sheriff’s

Harbor Patrol receive funding from the state and could be subject to

cutbacks, but county staff members still are reviewing the best way

to handle the cuts, Harbors, Beaches and Parks Director Kevin Thomas

said.

“We’re doing a series of things, asking those to whom we provide

funding to absorb a proportionate amount of that wherever we can,”

Thomas said. “Aside from asking the harbor patrol perhaps to review

some of their expenditures, I don’t believe Newport or Costa Mesa

would notice any appreciable effects.”

The county’s goal is to keep services at the current level, he

said.

Orange County Supervisor Bill Campbell pointed out the state

funding loss in a recent newsletter. The letter also mentioned an

unexpected cut of $4.3 million to the county’s Flood Control

District. Officials are working on exactly how they’ll deal with the

cuts, but some possibilities are delaying long-term planning and

capital improvement projects or a 10% cut across the board for

Harbors, Beaches and Parks services, Campbell said.

“We don’t have an answer as to where we’re going to take it out

yet,” Campbell said.

Staff members will come up with recommendations and bring them to

county supervisors next month, he said. The county will have to amend

its budget, which was planned on the assumption that there would be

no cuts, he said.

The funding reduction is the latest blow to the Harbors, Beaches

and Parks department, which has lost $110 million to the state since

1993, Campbell said.

Thomas said the cuts will be offset this year by $1.1 million from the sale of a piece of former county land, but next year will be a

bigger challenge because the state already has promised at least

another $3.6 million in cuts, and there’s nothing to offset that.