City Workers to Get a Chilling Warning That Layoffs May Arrive With Summer

Nine thousand city of San Diego employees will be notified Friday that “several hundred” of them might be laid off this summer because of an impending $60-million budget shortfall for fiscal 1991.

In a memo to be distributed in the paychecks of all full- and part-time employees, City Manager John Lockwood warns that “the city may have to make sharp cuts in some services due to a layoff of several hundred employees that would be effective July 1.”

Lockwood has also ordered a hiring freeze, effective today, and restricted most transfers, promotions and demotions to prevent employees from “jockeying for positions that might be safe” from the budget ax, he said.

“There is no way I can see that we’re not going to severely impact the work force,” Lockwood said. “It’s not thousands (of layoffs), but we are talking about several hundred positions.”

The layoffs would be the first since 1979, when passage of Proposition 13 resulted in trims, said Rich Snapper, city personnel director. In the mid-1980’s, loss of some federal funds prompted layoffs in one youth program, he said.

Word of Lockwood’s memo, and ongoing publicity about the council’s budget crunch, already has produced widespread concern among city workers, said a representative of the city’s largest labor union, the San Diego Municipal Employees Assn.

“Last week, we started getting a lot of calls, once the City Council decided not to place some of the suggested revenue-generating measures on the ballot,” said Kathy Rollins, senior representative for the union, which represents about 3,500 professional, clerical, administrative and technical personnel.

But Harry Eastus, general manager of the San Diego Police Officers Assn., said that “even if they send those (memos) to our people, we are not terribly concerned at this time. I don’t see them laying off any police officers” because of the City Council’s emphasis on public safety.

Acknowledging the anxiety his notice will create, Lockwood said he chose the lesser of two evils by opting to create concern among his workers rather than notify them later this spring, when layoff plans would be more specific but employees would have less time to adjust.

“Worse, to me, is knowing that this is in the offing, to let people go along thinking it will work out like it always does,” Lockwood said. “This is not a normal year. We are going to have to go to the layoff procedures here.”

Lockwood has been warning the City Council since January that the city will be $60 million short of the $492 million needed to keep services at current levels when fiscal 1991 begins July 1.

But after four chaotic meetings last month on whether to place any new tax or fee increases on the June 5 ballot, the council declined to propose any measures to give Lockwood new revenue. In fact, they ordered him to prepare a $432-million budget that would require sharp cuts in library hours, park and recreation programs and the Planning Department staff, among other things.

While the council still has the option of enacting tax or fee increases itself during budget deliberations that are scheduled to begin in May, Councilman Bruce Henderson and other city officials have suggested that such action might endanger voter approval June 5 of an increase in the city’s spending ceiling for fiscal years 1992-1995.

Henderson, who opposes new taxes or fees, said Thursday that the city can live within a $432-million budget next year without laying off employees because the sum is nearly 5% more than the city’s current $414 million budget.