The city’s park ranger positions are once again on the chopping block as Oakland seeks to close a $42 million deficit.

The City Council heard recommendations for budget cuts from Mayor Ron Dellums on Tuesday night — among them eliminating all park ranger positions and replacing them with city police.

Although action is deferred until after a series of budget meetings, council members have already expressed opposition to the proposed ranger program closure. Hills residents have rallied around the cause to save the rangers, who they say play an essential role in public safety and fire prevention.

“I want an explanation,” Councilmember Jean Quan said, adding, “rangers cost less than police.”

Council members drew applause when they questioned the budget’s emphasis on public safety, and staff positions paying more than $100,000. Police and fire are the only agencies Dellums proposed to receive a yearly cost of living salary increase.

Staffed ranger positions — there are only three — cost the city an estimated $100,000 apiece in salary, overtime and benefits. Although rangers have the same overtime and retirement benefits scale as city police, their pay is still on average about 20 percent less than that of police.

The mayor also recommended closing all city services except fire and police one day a week until the end of the fiscal year, and laying off more than 200 city employees.

“These options bring pain and discomfort and dislocation,” Dellums said, referring to the local and national economic condition as “difficult” and “chaotic.”

This is not the first time the city’s park ranger program has been placed in jeopardy due to a city budget crisis. In 2005, when the city faced deficit of nearly $32 million, the program was slated for closure, only to be saved by a last-minute reprieve. Since that time, there have been eight commissioned rangers charged with monitoring all of Oakland’s 160-plus parks.

Now the rangers number only three in Oakland, with five vacancies in the commissioned staff.

“The city only has less than five (rangers),” Councilmember Desley Brooks said at the budget meeting. “To eliminate them I think is unconscionable.”

Residents have joined the rallying cry with e-mails addressed to members of the community and to their representatives, urging all to oppose the closure. Former Parks Commissioner Anne Woodell, of the advocacy group Save Oakland Rangers, called the current ranger staff “a pathetic amount.”

“I feel that park rangers are critical to the safety of our parks,” Woodell said. “They know the parks. They know the community. The regular police do not know all of the ins and outs.”

Hills park-goers value the rangers’ presence in the area, where teenagers have been known to congregate for bonfire parties and illicit activities.

“Eliminating the rangers would be like eliminating all the hills fire stations,” said local activist Anne Novak, a board member at the Metropolitan Equestrian Preservation Society.

Rangers’ regular patrols — including between 1,500 and 2,000 park visits monthly, according to the rangers office — stop these crimes cold.

As police academy-trained peace officers, rangers’ arrests run the gambit from vagrancy citations to prostitution, assault, drugs and weapons charges.

“Whatever occurs in the neighborhoods can occur in the parks,” said Ranger Mark Oliver, president of the Park Rangers Association.

As a 20-year ranger, Oliver can recall a time when his unit staffed as many as 16 rangers. Oliver thinks three can do the job, but he is skeptical that city police can pick up the slack and make up for the mostly patrol-based enforcement the rangers provide with their thousands of park visits every month.

Oliver says when his unit happens upon a potentially dangerous bonfire party, which is “pretty much an annual thing,” it will cite upwards of 100 people.

“I think we serve a vital purpose,” Oliver said. “I think we always have. I know there’s a budget crisis and something’s got to give somewhere.”