City budget calls for 23 layoffs

Costa Mesa passed a budget for next year that steeply cuts spending — an 18% decrease from this year’s budget — primarily by laying off city staff members, cutting pay and benefits, offering early retirement incentives, capping overtime pay and making up the rest with money the city has in reserve.

The City Council passed the budget 4 to 1 late Tuesday night, with Councilman Eric Bever voting against it. Bever expressed concerns that the budget relied, in large part, on cutting staff costs — about $17-million worth, he estimated — through measures that require pending negotiations with the unions representing the city’s police, firefighters and other staff members.

“We have very little in terms of fund balance left on hand and if this $17 million doesn’t occur we’re going to be in a real bad way,” Bever said.

The main tenets of the budget were widely anticipated. The council passed a 10-point plan recommending the proposed cuts earlier this year to offset a projected $19-million deficit.

It calls for laying off 23 staff members (mostly from the police and fire departments) to save $6.3 million, asking the remaining staff members to take a 5% pay cut to save $3.6 million, offering early-retirement incentives to save $3.5 million and reducing overtime pay by $1 million.

Even with those cuts, the city estimates that it will have to take roughly $5 million out of its reserves.

In addition to those major cuts, Councilman Gary Monahan proposed an additional list of cuts that he estimated to be worth more than $650,000.

Most of the big-ticket items on the list narrowly failed. They include: laying off animal control and code enforcement officers; shutting down after-school programs where other nearby programs exist; and eliminating city-run basketball and football programs in favor of other nonprofit leagues like Pop Warner and YMCA.

Others passed. City officials will no longer be provided meals before late meetings, the city will no longer contribute to a program to send Costa Mesa students to Australia and council members will no longer be able to have the city pay for training and professional development programs.

The proposals created a big rift down the middle of the council with Monahan and Mayor Allan Mansoor supporting the vast majority of them, while Councilwoman Katrina Foley and Mayor Pro Tem Wendy Leece adamantly opposed them.

“This is probably one of the most disappointing meetings that I have participated in as a City Council member,” Foley said after the vote. “And I really feel that we cut the heart out of our city tonight and we didn’t really achieve that much in savings by doing so.”

Monahan said that he had no animosity toward any of the programs he recommended cutting, but was afraid that the city would face serious financial threats, including bankruptcy, if more cuts were not made.

The layoffs, pay cuts and other staff cost-cutting measures have not been implemented and further negotiations with union leaders are pending.