City Weighs Raising Fees, Cutting Services to Hire More Police : Budget: Plan calls for 10 new officers, and manager offers options to employ 100. But the mayor and most council members say the city cannot afford that many.

LONG BEACH —  A group of neighborhood leaders wants 300 more police, but Long Beach officials say they see little chance of hiring a sizable number of new officers.

Mayor Ernie Kell and City Manager James C. Hankla have proposed a $1.69-billion budget for the 1993-94 fiscal year that includes hiring 10 officers.

Hankla also has given the City Council a list of options, spending cuts and fee increases to come up with $7.5 million a year to hire another 100 officers. But so far, the mayor and majority of council members say they cannot endorse Hankla’s options and they have no alternate plan to pay for 100 or more new police officers.

The city has about 730 officers.

The City Council is scheduled to begin debate on the budget Tuesday. The spending plan, which would take effect July 1, would allow the city to spend about the same amount it did this year.

The proposal includes several fee increases to pay for higher operating expenses unrelated to police. Those include a 5% increase in gas fees, a 5.1% increase in garbage collection fees, a 3.28% increase in recycling fees and still-to-be announced increases in water and sewer fees.

The budget includes 5% raises for city management and 3% raises for other employees, none of whom received raises last year.

If the budget is approved as submitted, residents should not notice much difference in the level of service provided by the city, Kell said.

Four neighborhood leaders have called the proposal to hire 10 officers “an insult to the city’s intelligence.” And they say the city needs 300, not 100, more officers.

“They can’t afford not to do it,” Bill Pearl, president of the East Long Beach Homeowners Assn., said this week. “The city is dangerously under-policed at present. It is literally killing jobs, killing neighborhoods and killing people.”

Dan Cangro of the Wrigley Assn., Bob Kalowes of the California Heights Neighborhood Assn., and Al Morrison of the Belmont Shore Improvement Assn. joined Pearl in calling for 300 additional officers.

City officials agree that Long Beach could use more police. With a population of 437,800, the city has a ratio of about 1.7 officers per 1,000 residents. That ratio is lower than those of many major cities, including Los Angeles, which has slightly more than two officers per 1,000 residents, officials said.

But they say it will be difficult to find the money to pay for them. “We would have to close the libraries, close fire stations,” Kell said. “It’s a great idea (to hire more officers) but it’s not feasible.”

The city already plans to dip into reserves to make ends meet next year. The city’s general fund, which pays for police, fire and other services, is budgeted to spend $292 million, including nearly $7 million in reserves. That will leave the city with emergency reserves of nearly $12 million.

The mayor has a plan to pay for the 10 new officers, a cost of about $568,000 next year. About $192,000 would be raised by charging for most visitor parking at the Civic Center. Miscellaneous cuts, including some in library, parks and recreation and financial management services, would account for the rest.

Kell said that recent efforts have been made to improve policing of the city. Police Chief William C. Ellis recently instituted bicycle and walking beats. And the Police Department has hired new officers to replace the 49 sheriff’s deputies who will leave Long Beach in June. The deputies have been patrolling the north and northeast areas of the city since 1990.

“I feel, however, that we should be doing even more to provide for the safety of our community,” Kell said. “Ten additional officers is a step in the right direction.”

Several council members said in interviews that they would like to hire more police officers but they did not know how to pay for them.

Vice Mayor Jeffrey A. Kellogg said adding 10 officers “does not make an impact at all,” and that he and other council members would try to come up with a plan to cut spending in other areas to pay for more police.

Among other options, Hankla proposed a 4% across-the-board spending reduction for all city departments, excluding the Police Department.

But council members said such a wholesale cut would be unworkable.

Hankla also proposed new fees for maintaining street lights and traffic signals in the city, as well as a special tax that would need voter approval.

Council members pointed out that last November voters rejected a proposed special tax to pay for 100 officers, the second time in recent years that such a measure failed.

Councilman Les Robbins said he would pore over the budget for expenses that could be cut, such as the city’s annual float in the Rose Parade. He said he would consider new fees to pay for the officers only if he were convinced that there were no further areas to cut.

“I think the public has already told us we shouldn’t be looking at any more fees to pay for cops,” said Robbins, who said Long Beach needs at least 100 more officers.