L.A. City Council passes $7-billion budget

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's $7-billion budget got a green light this afternoon, albeit with some snips and a few tweaks. Our own David Zahniser has the details:

Gone is a plan for shutting regional libraries on Sundays. Gone is the plan for eliminating the city-owned Channel 36, which features educational and high school sports programming. Gone is the plan to eliminate the city's calligrapher, who works on the proclamations handed out to honored members of the public.

At an all-day meeting catered by Barragan's Mexican restaurant, the council went full speed ahead on plans for $98 million in higher fees next year -- money that will allow Villaraigosa to continue toward his goal of 1,000 more cops by 2010.

That means more expensive trash pickup, parking tickets, rounds of municipal golf and various other city services. And the council left open the door to even more fee increases in the next few weeks, by asking residents to pay more when they use extra-large trash bins.

Still on the books: Villaraigosa's plan to hire 284 more police officers. Even more fiscal thrills in David's full story to come.

--Veronique de Turenne

Comments

[jeffs]

It was absurd to watch some of the Councilmembers jumping all over themselves figuring out ways to tax us, now that they've spent and spent like drunken sailors while the real estate market was booming -- covering up a structural deficit that's been there for over a decade. (About when the illegals became a critical mass, and what they put into the tax base is far less than what they take out in services.)

Alarcon started the day by proposing a $5.00 surcharge PER MONTH on extra trash cans at private homes (on top of the jump to $39/ month in trash fees from just $11 a year ago), but by the end of the day, was demanding it be hiked to an extra $10.00/ month.

Even tax-happy Rosendahl, who couldn't stop crowing about his finding "gold in the gutters" in extra meter fees -- raising hourly fees fourfold and extending the hours they'd be in use, plus fines -- had reservations about all these fees coming on trash all at once. LaBonge and Greuel did, too, even thought the city could be sued, for pulling this out of a hat without warning or debate -- which made Alarcon awfully mad, saying the Council didn't need to consult Homeowners on this, they could do what they want.

The same Alarcon who claims to be such a champion of the Neighborhood Councils -- maybe, when he can get them to rubberstamp his own ideas to make it look like a communty mandate?

Just one of the more unseemly, and amateurish, performances of the day.

BUT in fairness, at least these numskulls let us watch on Ch. 35 -- The far more powerful Board of Supervisors of 5 Kings and Queens spend three times more, and are still far more incompetent in finding housing for homeless, managing the County hospitals and Clinics, jails or anything they do. YET they have salaries and perks that make the Council look look like paupes, and gave DA Cooley a HUGELY UNSEEMLY $70k RAISE just to satisfy his ego, too. CEO Fujioka has the same salary as the Mayor, and his huge staff have the salaries of Councilmembers. Yet NO ONE ever calls these numbskulls to task.