MURRIETA -- A city-commissioned report on the possible effects of three initiatives that have qualified to go before the public for a vote indicated that one ordinance would put the city at a great disadvantage to employ qualified staff members and another could prevent lower-income residents from running for office.

The report, produced by Management Partners Inc., a San Jose consulting firm, will be the focus of a discussion at Tuesday's City Council meeting. After the three initiatives qualified for a public vote by receiving more than 3,700 signatures of Murrieta registered voters, the council voted to spend nearly $22,000 on the report before deciding how to proceed with the initiatives.

The three initiatives were circulated by two Murrieta men and a Temecula resident who say they want to reign in what they feel is inflated spending on salaries and benefits for elected officials and top city administrators. They also want to limit residents to serving only two consecutive terms on the council.

On Tuesday, the council will have the option of either adopting any or all of the initiatives as law, or putting them before voters at the next general election in 2010. The deadline to get an initiative on the November ballot has passed.

Mayor Rick Gibbs said Friday that he had read the full report and stood behind the findings of the consultant that the initiatives would harm the city's ability to conduct business.

"I would say that the independent consulting firm kind of laid out a position that these initiatives were ill-conceived, drafted with imprecise and subjective language, and subject to legal challenge," Gibbs said. "They don't do, I believe, anything close to what the proponents had intended."

Backers of the initiatives could not be reached for comment Friday.

The first initiative would impose term limits on the council so no elected official could serve more than two four-year terms consecutively.

The second would cap the compensation for council members to 15 percent of the median household income, which was recently estimated at around $80,000, and do away with benefits they can receive such as life insurance or club memberships.

The last initiative seeks to cap the salary and benefits of top administrators, excluding police officials, at 2 1/2 times the median household income of Murrieta residents.

In addressing term limits, the report notes that term limits are not popular among California cities.

The consultants found that, in 2001, only 12.7 percent of cities in the state used term limits. More recently, an informal city survey showed that out of 50 cities in the state that responded, 32 percent had term limits.

The report notes that, while arguments can be made both in favor of and against term limits, the initiative as written leaves room for interpretation, which opens the door for a legal challenge.

City Attorney Leslie Devaney wrote in a report to the council that the wording was problematic -- with all three initiatives.

Most concerning, according to the consultants, was the vagueness of the term "median household income," which are at the heart of two of the initiatives.

The consultant's report states it would not be a financially sound practice to base a salary or compensation package on an arbitrary income that fluctuates with the market.

Additionally, the consultant notes that the savings from the second initiative, which seeks to limit a council member's compensation, would only be realized by the city eliminating the health benefits available to council members. If voters decided to remove that benefit from the council members' stipends, the city could save as much as $15,922 per council member each year. But removing those benefits could dissuade persons with lower incomes from running for office, the consultants said.

Devaney also stated in her report that she found the initiative to be "legally defective."

"It is unclear as to whether its effect is retroactive, the standard by which compensation is limited is unclear," Devaney wrote.

But it is unlikely that initiative would pass, the consultant states. In order for an electorate to cap the compensation of their elected officials, a supermajority of registered voters would have to vote in favor of such a proposition. But only twice since 1992 has a supermajority, or 55 percent of registered voters, actually shown up to Murrieta polls, the report stated, leading analysts to believe that sufficient support wouldn't be attained for the initiative.

Analysts took particular issue with the third initiative that would cap the salary and benefits of top city administrators, including the city manager.

The consultant noted that the initiative could pose a situation where managers would earn less than some of their staff, who would be paid a market rate. It would also make it less likely that an employee would accept a promotion if it meant a pay cut, the consultants stated, which would hamper the city's ability to recruit qualified applicants.

"Although the city council term limits and compensation system have negative impacts, they are not as potentially detrimental to the city as limiting the salaries of management staff," the report states. "This initiative will have long lasting negative impacts on the city."

Backers of the initiatives have said that tying salaries to the median household income of residents would act as an incentive for city managers to find ways to raise the income of the community, but the report states that "directing funding to economic development activities would be more productive."

Gibbs agreed that this particular initiative was the most problematic.

"My belief was that (issue) was so critical to the life of the city that we had to have the report that would lay things out in black-and-white terms that would say what the impact on Murrieta's viability would be," Gibbs said.

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 24601 Jefferson Ave.

Contact staff writer Nelsy Rodriguez at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2626, or nrodriguez@californian.com.