Cost cutting can pay for canyon fix

A recent question in your paper asked if the City Council should

raise taxes to pay for the Bluebird Canyon landslide repairs.

Hopefully, that idea has been buried with the debris from the

tragically destroyed homes.

Let’s not raise the bridge -- let’s lower the water, by cutting

expenditures. If Laguna Beach cut per capita expenditures to the

average of Dana Point and Newport Beach, its surplus would be

$23,672,390 a year! That is more than enough to fix Bluebird Canyon

and build a good library system, with lots left over.

The spreadsheet on page XX, using figures pasted from official

websites, compares expenditures of five coastal cities: Laguna Beach,

Newport Beach, Dana Point, San Clemente and Laguna Niguel.

The cost of the Laguna Beach government is $2,373 per capita,

highest in Orange County and about double the average of all Orange

County cities.

Laguna Beach expenditures are about a third higher than Newport

Beach, which funds a superb library system (which they kindly let

Lagunans and other neighbors use).

Pro-business Newport Beach has excellent sales tax revenues,

having consistently encouraged business. One of its more than 10,000

businesses reported sales higher than the combined sales of all

businesses in Laguna Beach, which has an anti-business reputation.

Meter parking costs less in Newport Beach and its meter maids are

more pleasant and pragmatic. This has a positive effect on shoppers

and thus business tax revenues: even with lower meter rates, Newport

puts parking revenues into a sequestered parking fund that has many

millions in it, while Laguna has no equivalent fund, since parking is

the city’s piggy bank of choice, tapped often for “special projects.”

I hope that the people of Laguna Beach will be mad as hell and not

take it any more, that they demand that the fat be cut from city

government. Several experts in accounting and municipal governments

with whom I have spoken and who are familiar with 505 Forest Ave.

[City Hall] estimate that its costs could be cut 30% to 40% with no

lessening in essential city services. (Indeed, two said that city

services would probably become friendlier and more can-do after

redundancies are eliminated, as has occurred in many governments

forced to cut costs). Some of the ways to accomplish it:

* Abolish obsolete programs and functions.

* Establish incentives to reward city officials for cutting and

controlling costs, rather than the present system, where pay

corresponds with the size of the staff and budget.

* Bring compensation into line with private enterprise for similar

functions.

* Weed out the poor performers and those who do not serve the

public well.

* Outsource many more functions. Private industry, competitively

bidding for such functions as vehicle maintenance and sign

fabrication, will do it better and cheaper.

If expenditures were reduced to the average of Newport Beach and

Dana Point -- which spend the most per capita after Laguna Beach --

Laguna Beach’s surplus would be $23,672,390.

One of the few bright spots of Jimmy Carter’s Presidency was his

zero-based budgeting program, looking at existing functions and

programs, analyzing asking whether or not creating them from scratch

would be a good use of resources and makes sense. Laguna badly needs

zero-based budgeting.

Identifying opportunities to cut waste and obsolete functions, and

then actually making the cuts, will not be easy. It took Congressman

Cox over a decade of diligent effort to get rid of the Helium Reserve

Program, begun in World War I for barrage balloons and maintained for

potential needs of ASW blimps, the last of which the Navy retired in

1962. Eliminating poor performers will cause a stir, as will

adjusting compensation to match private business.

Reorganizing City Hall and demanding change will require

leadership on the part of the City Council. It must step up and

demand that these changes be made, and accept no excuses for failures

to perform. If its members don’t, Lagunans should replace them with

new Councilmembers with fire in their bellies to make Laguna Beach

fiscally sound and managed efficiently and effectively.

“A man needs to be repotted every few years,” said Ernest

Arbuckle, then Dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business,

before political correctness was an issue. Like a plant, city

governments get rootbound and outgrow their pots. Every few years,

the excess roots should be cut away and efficiencies introduced.

Laguna’s bureaucracy needs to be repotted.

Tom Ahern is the owner of Latitude 33 Bookshop and was president

of the Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce in 1999 and 2000.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Are city officials spending too much to run Laguna? Write us at

P.O. Box 248, Laguna Beach, CA, 92652, e-mail us at

coastlinepilot@latimes.com or fax us at 494-8979. Please give your

name and tell us your home address and phone number for verification

purposes only.