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The City Council laid the groundwork at last Tuesday night’s meeting for an austerity budget certain to dent city services and maybe taxpayer wallets as well. To do so, however, they had to run a gamut of senior citizens protesting proposed cuts to the city’s senior programs. 

With a $14.6 million dollar deficit looming over the next two years, the council approved a budget framework that calls for $9.2 million in budget cuts spread over 2004 and 2005. 

The council approved the broad framework of a plan that also calls for the use of reserve funds and the restructuring of employee retirement funds to close the budget gap blown open by rising employee benefit costs and declining state funding and local tax revenue. 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz will present the City Council with a final budget plan May 4. The council is scheduled to approve next year’s budget on June 22, after two public hearings set for May 18 and June 8. 

Among the services slated for reduction in the preliminary budget proposal presented to the council by Kamlarz Tuesday night include: 

• Closing one of the city’s two fire truck companies ten hours a day, saving the city $500,000 next year. The proposal would leave the city short a second ladder truck, which city figures show is called into duty about 10 to 12 times a year.  

• Eliminating all 25 part-time school crossing guards, the Berkeley Guides, and Berkeley Escorts at a savings of $328,000 a year. 

• Closing public libraries on Sundays and some evenings and slashing one-quarter of the library budget for buying new books, videos and CDs, for a savings of $1.2 million. 

• Cutting 13 vacant police officer positions for a savings of nearly $2 million. 

• Eliminating a driver and reducing meals and services at the city’s three senior centers, for a savings of $136,000 in 2005 with further cuts up to $191,000 considered for 2006. 

It was the cuts to the senior centers that drew the ire of a group of about 30 seniors.  

“If they make the cuts they’re talking about, we won’t have a staff,” said Cecilia Gaerlan, who volunteers at the West Berkeley Senior Center. The protesters didn’t enter the council chambers until after Mayor Bates paid a visit and promised the council would try to seek new revenue to keep the programs running.  

“It can’t just be cuts,” Bates told the protesters. “People have to step up to the plate and help out.” 

In all Kamlarz proposed cutting 81 positions in Fiscal Year 2005, 69 of which are currently vacant. FY 2005 begins in July of this year. 

That didn’t sit will with Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, who questioned how the elimination of vacant positions actually improved the city’s budget standing.  

“These are phantom positions,” he said. “This kind of creative accounting I think puts Enron to shame.” Wozniak also added concerns raised by the Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Organizations that staff costs needed to be addressed before considering new taxes. 

Kamlarz said that because many of the positions listed as vacant were being filled by temporary workers or by employees working overtime, the elimination of the positions did impact the budget. 

Kamlarz has penciled in an estimated $1.2 million in savings from staff givebacks for 2005. The city is negotiating with its unions on returning 3 percent of the city’s contribution to their retirement benefits for 2005, as senior management has already done. If those negotiations fail, Kamlarz says he will close down city government one day per month, which would yield a similar savings. 

Some of the cuts outlined in the budget will likely be restored if the council, as expected, passes a series of new fees totaling up to $2.6 million.  

The fees include a $1.5 to $3 surcharge attached to all telephone landlines and possibly cellular phones for use of 911 emergency service calls, rescinding seismic fee waivers for building permits, eliminating the option of performing community service for parking fines and implementing a $2 fee for paying city fines and fees over the Internet. The council voted unanimously to set a public hearing for April 20 on the fees for the 911 surcharge and the seismic waiver. 

Those may not be the only new expenses facing Berkeley taxpayers this year. The council voted 7-1-1 (Olds no and Wozniak abstaining) to ask staff to begin preparations for up to four ballot measures that would raise taxes by $4.2 million. If passed, the measures would include $1.2 million to preserve library services, $800,000 to restore funding to youth programs, $1 million for the city’s fund to maintain storm water drains and $1 million to maintain paramedic services. The taxes would come in the form of special assessments to property owners, except for the youth services proposal, which could be funded by a property transfer tax. 

The council opted not to consider a $700,00 tax for street lights, though the city attorney’s office will study the legality of combining street lights with storm water drains as a single infrastructure tax. 

Some city commissions could also soon feel the impact of the budget shortfall. The council voted unanimously to refer to commissions a staff report that calls for 22 of the 45 citizen commissions to meet less frequently. The commissions on aging, disability, civic arts, peace and justice and homelessness would be among 15 commissions to go from meeting every month to every second month. Others would meet quarterly, while the Solid Waste Commission would be combined with the Public Works Commission.  

The reforms would reduce 4,292 hours of staff time, according to the staff report, which also estimated the city spends more than $850,000 a year staffing its commissions. 

The number of commission meetings wasn’t the only thing the council was considering shrinking Tuesday. By a 5-3-1 vote (Bates Worthington, Maio, Breland and Spring voting yes) the council requested that the city staff study reducing the next mayor’s term to two years so that future elections would coincide with presidential elections when voter turnout peaks. 

In non-budget action at Tuesday’s council meeting: 

Satellite Homes non-profit senior housing development received a zoning reprieve. The council voted 8-1-1 (Olds no, Wozniak abstain) to exempt the 79-unit housing project at 1535 University Ave. from new zoning rules being established for the avenue. Satellite Homes argued that if they had to wait for the new regulations to move through the Berkeley permit process, they would lose out on a chance to win funding in February. The project is the fourth on University now exempt from the future zoning ordinance. 

The council voted unanimously to hold a public hearing April 20 on a proposal to set a flat fee rate of $1.50 for a two-hour parking period at the center street garage between the hours of 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. weekdays and 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturdays to encourage more visitors to the farmer’s market. 

The council also denied 8-0-1 (Spring abstaining) the appeal against the Library Gardens housing and retail complex set to be built just west of the central library. Steve Geller staked his appeal of a use permit issued by the Zoning Adjustment Board on grounds that the developer was only required to provide 59 parking spaces for his tenants instead of the 105 he had planned. City staff countered that since Library Gardens includes some retail, city regulations required all of the 105 spaces offered.