City of Los Angeles could soon slap sign on door: Closed every other Friday

The Los Angeles City Council voted late today to move ahead with a furlough plan that would save $100 million in employment costs but close a majority of city operations every other Friday.

While the city continues to negotiate with public employee unions in search of salary or job concessions, the council spent more than four hours behind closed doors exploring ways of scaling back city services.

Council members agreed that some services, such as trash pickup and public safety, would be shielded from furloughs. Sworn police officers would be exempted but civilian Los Angeles Police Department employees would not.
 
In other cases, certain departments — including libraries, parks and the Los Angeles Zoo — would not necessarily close on Fridays but would still need each of their employees to stay home one day every two weeks, Council President Eric Garcetti said.

“People don’t want to do this, but they know that their first responsibility to the people of Los Angeles is to balance the budget with real money,” he added.

Matt Szabo, a spokesman for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, said that the mayor still would prefer to close the budget gap by pursuing a plan for privatizing parking structures and leasing parking meters, similar to a plan pursued by the city of Chicago. Council members held off on that plan, saying that even if it were feasible, it would not generate money for another year.

“The mayor continues to believe that service reductions of that magnitude should be a last resort,” said Szabo, referring to the furlough plan.
 
With today’s vote, the council essentially instructed the city’s budget advisers to inform its public employee unions of the proposal. The next vote, expected later this month, would implement the furlough plan.

Union officials said they are still pushing for an early retirement package and have vowed to fight furloughs in court. The city’s lawyers, in response, hope to prevent a judge from imposing a temporary restraining order by showing that the city has engaged in a “reasonable” period of negotiations before pursuing unpaid days off.

The city’s budget for 2009-2010, signed by Villaraigosa earlier this week, seeks to eliminate a $530-million shortfall through a series of furloughs, layoffs and concessions from employee unions.

Even with the furloughs, the city must rely on other reductions to scale back another $226 million, Garcetti said. The budget calls for 800 layoffs, on top of 400 approved earlier in May.

-- David Zahniser and Maeve Reston at L.A. City Hall

Comments

[jason]

how about just reducing welfare programs instead of cutting jobs?

[Sad Taxpayer]

Interesting how we have such an emergency, yet the Mayor and council still want to provide services.

Either it's an emergency and we have to shut it down, or it's not.

When will they learn when they make exemptions like this it opens the door to lawsuits. How fair is it to the workers when you tell them to lose a day of pay but were gonna keep operations open and we are going to rotate that day.

I don't see that kind of implementation Except Police and Fire, it's all or none.

Since everyone is taking a day off I am sure the proud LAPD will be handling all requests fro tree trimming potholes loose animals Street Lights out, and every other issue the city workers handle. Funny how they want to take only the parts of the state furloughs that benefit them.

[Tori ryan]

As a dedicated city employee I am shock that the City leaders have resorted to kicking hardworking people out of jobs and proposing to shut down city services twice a month the citizens of Los Angeles deserve better check the City Council members websites, each one of them have at least 20 employees many who do the same duties, Councilman Parks son is his Chief of staff, I am sure the Mayor and the city council members will not be laying off their staff and did I mention the new over budget Parker Center, the excessive overtime paid to the sworn officers, all of the take home cars police officers doing clerical jobs, and of course the millions of dollars that the city pays out for police misconduct.

[Pissed City Employee]

The Mayor's ambition and the City's lack of stewardship of public funds got us into this mess. The City spent money it didn't have appeasing Chief Bratton and his ego to expand the police department. Examples include: 400 million for a new police headquarters, 75 million for the purchase of Figueroa Plaza, 80 to 100 million on each of the six new police stations that came on line within the last seven years. Doing quick math, its easy to see the City would not be experiencing significant financial woes if it would have appeased common sense rather than the Mayor's and Chief's egos. Oh, did I mention the Chief has his own plane? Again purchased with City funds. I can only wonder what the Mayor would do if elected Governor.

[Tracey]

Good. Government workers are some of the worst employees anywhere. Can anyone in a government office ever describe when they created an idea that improved a service, made a process more efficient, found an innovative way to do something more cheaply or quickly? Government doesn't create jobs. It sucks money from everyone and dumps it into failed programs and public "servants" pocketbooks. It's inefficient and bloated. Nothing in the Constitution talks about funding the massive programs we have today. Time for CA to go on a diet. This is good news.

[mike]

Just a thought, lets stop educating and feeding all of the undocumented children in our schools. We spend millions of dollars for children who don't belong to this country. That alone will solve our budget problem.

[Richo]

How could the world no 1 super power let itself get to a situation like this where it is on it's knees about to implode. I hope that everyone learns a valuable lesson out of the GFC and that greed is bad.

[Matt Felix]

Matt Szabo, a spokesman for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, said that the mayor still would prefer to close the budget gap by pursuing a plan for privatizing parking structures and leasing parking meters, similar to a plan pursued by the city of Chicago. Council members held off on that plan, saying that even if it were feasible, it would not generate money for another year.

--terrible idea. There are things that just should not be privatized. Law enforcement,prisons are all included (see the case in Scranton where a judge was taking bribes from prison co. in exchange for locking up juvie offenders). When you put things like this into private hands you crate a huge incentive for abuse. You're essentially giving the power of the state over to a private co. for the purposes of profit. Only the State should have the power of the state. This is a terrible trend that needs to be halted and reversed.

[nmoore6676]

Maybe the Mayor and Council could stay home everyday, not only would it save money but the efficiency rise would be fantastic.

[Dan Mariscal]

This accounting gimmick may look good on paper, but it's attempt at implementation will prove that the cost of these days of non-service will end up more expensive than was intended. Just on the Street Sweeping in the City of Los Angeles, there are many sweeping routes that are on Fridays, that will not get swept. Also the City will lose revenue in parking enforcement, every other Friday. Lot Cleaning will fall behind, Tree trimming will fall behind, sidewalk repair will fall behind. Good luck with Operation Pothole repairs. Our vehicle/equipment maintenance and repairs will take longer, which means that some work can't get done unless these vehicles/equipment are in full service. This will have a devastating trickle-down effect that City bean-counters have not figured on. Layered time-sequenced early retirement would have the best economic results with the least amount of adverse impact to the services that the public needs.

[socalife]

dan mariscal:

I don't know where you live, but the City has never come by my neighborhood to trim our trees for at least a decade and the last time they attempted to do anything to the sidewalks from being uprooted by those same trees' roots is going on 2 decades.

How about the City stop repaving streets and redoing sidewalks that are perfectly fine in the westside and using that money to balance the budget instead? 30 years in my neighborhood and never has the street been repaved. At a buddy's house on the westside, his street has been repaved twice in 7 years and the sidewalks replaced once even though there was no damage.

City Hall needs to reexamine their expenditures and the disproportionate amount of money and care they provide to the wealthier areas.

[White Elephant For Taxpayers]

I like the Mayor's idea about privatizing the Los Angeles Zoo. The City doesn't need to be in the Zoo business. Sell the LA Zoo and save the taxpayers that additional expense. There's such a huge overhead in staff, animal care, facility maintenance, new exhibit development, and casualty insurance (because of all the animals that keep escaping). It's poorly managed, over staffed, and they operate without an eye on the bottom line. Stop the waste. Sell the LA Zoo.

[dwntnjf]

When are hard working people going to get fed up? The people doing their jobs are not the cause of this mess yet they are the ones to get cut. What about the idiots that can't do their job and balance the books? I work for the city and cannot believe the reckless wasteful spending that I see on a daily basis. Workers are doing more than they ever have, so why punish them? The city is too top heavy and management positions need to be eliminated. To many useless positions. ie. an assistant bureau chief? What does the chief do?...pass it on to the assistant. So why have a chief? Crazy!

[singpretty]

Thanks Tracey for spewing overgeneralized bile on government workers. I've worked in both the public and private sector and the only thing different is the funding to bring our systems up to date (the government lags WAY behind). Both private & public have great employees and horrible employees (spent years working under an always drunk supervisor in the private sector who skated responsibility by putting it off on his staff). In my agency, we are constantly striving to improve our service while dealing with a shrinking staff (hiring freeze) and severe budget limitations (we have to justify WHY we need staples & post-it notes). And our pay is not that great (benefits aside).

[KK]

The city is joining the subprime class. Can't borrow even if you want to.

[Angry taxpayer]

How about cutting the real fat? San Francisco has 11 elected city/county representatives who in that very pricey city earn $98,660 per year, compared with L.A City Council’s $179,789. And unlike the vast personal staffs Angelenos are paying to provide to L.A. council members even in this fiscal disaster, San Francisco’s representatives employ just two paid aides, at $77,922 to L.A.’s $94,718 a year each.

What a contrast to L.A. Here, politicians like Janice Hahn, Richard Alarcon, Herb Wesson and Ed Reyes employ about 20 full-time aides — and that’s apiece. And the council has fought off efforts to take away its controversial and very unusual slush funds of $100,000 apiece, given to them every year with virtually no strings — and hidden from the public in plain sight under the disingenuous budget title “General City Purposes Fund.”

[Joe]

It's about time.... That City employees are overpaid. I have also seen a lot of nepotism in the Public sector employment. We in the private sectors have to shoulder their overburden medical and pension thoroughtout thier life. The private sectors doesn't even have a decent health insurance and a pension while we pay for the Civil Servant. Who is the servant? Mayor, I applaud you and please take some more of thier benefits and re-allocate them to the masses.

[GiGi]

How about only the employees making 100K or more take a furlough day. An entry level employee cannot afford such a reduction. Implementing an early retirement incentive made the most sense, but after all what makes sense never happens. The Mayor and Governor both are idiots. What egomaniacs. How about the double edge sword, being a City employee and residing in the City of Los Angeles. Talk about double screwed.

[Victor]

In 10 or 20 years all California may have left of its government services are the prisons and law enforcement personnel all paid for by tax dollars. What will be left of the California government services will then become the sites were residents turn for their services. Thus the Prison Industrial System will have become our primary economy and must of us won't be able to tell the inside from the outside.

[sortofINTHEKNOWinL.A.]

Furlough the Mayor, city council, & all dept heads everyday.......their underlings and line workers do the real jobs anyway.

[Tori ryan]

For Joe, what private sector job are you working at? I started working in the public sector for the last few years and the benefits are good just like the benefits were good when I worked at Bank Of America and other top US companies for the last 20 years, so if your benefits and pay are not good, that is your fault you had the opportunity to improve your situation but instead you chose to stay at your job and pass judgement, the nepotism is in the private sector where it is who you know and not what you know. Most civil servants have to pass an entrance exam, they have to pass exams to promote, not much nepotism,

[Tori ryan]

Bottom line is this country, this state and this country has to live within its means, greed is at every level and everyone is going to have to sacrifice, public sector, private sector, all City employees are saying is the fat needs to be cut at the top and work it's way down, don't put all of the blame on the employees, we are not the ones making the decisions. I am all for the LAPD but all of the new city construction is out of control i say put that money into providing services for the taxpayers and not new state of the art buildings.

[Tori ryan]

The Mayor or the City Council have not talked about an unusual event on one of these closed days, if a large tree or signal light falls and blocks the street are police an firefighters going to pick up the slack, they rushed into this without any thought about the impact this will have on taxpayers/citizens.

[Dan Mariscal]

Socalife: You've just made an excellent point. The decision over what work gets done and where it gets done, is made by management personnel, not the people who actually do the work. If you want services, get into your neighborhood council meetings and also use email and have you and your neighbors make lots of noise. If at all possible, drag your councilman into this. In the City, we have a saying; "the squeaky wheel gets the oil". This is how other residents in the city get their services. Its a community effort.

[Elane]

I am reading all these comments and I agree with the most. Not only do I work for the City, but I am a true Angelino. Born and raised in Los Angeles. If it was not for the Rec and Parks system, children and adult would never know the true essences of sports, swimming, art, dance etc. Our department give affordable programming for all. From Bel Air to Boyle Height, Sylmar to Westchester Rec and Parks has always been there for their communities.

With that said, our Mayor is trying to clean up a huge budget mess at the expense of city employees. Granted I am all for "trimming the fat" however it is not our fault that the budget went down the tube. We are a vital part of the city and its residents. For the Mayor to screw us over because no one knew how to manage the budget is beyond me. At our facilities if we cannot balance our budget we can get discharged, so why does that apply to all employees including elected ones.

I am just worried about my beautiful city. That these crazy attempts to "fix the budget" will hinder our communities more than we can imagine. Who will make sure that trees are not falling on top of people, who will fix signal lights when they go out, who will make sure that there is programming at all the recreation facilities and pools? I am sure as the sky is blue it won't be the mayor nor the council.

All I ask is for the Mayor to realize the downsizing city services by laying off its civil service employees is NOT the answer to the budget crisis. Angelino this did not happen overnight, it was predicted and unfortunately our Mayor did not listen to the prediction. Cutting the employees is a quick fix that will hinder our City for many years.

[Joe Dimas]

Mayor Villaraigosa and all Council members should also take a pay cut. I mean a real pay cut!

[Kathy]

Mayor Villaraigosa should be fired. He will never be Governor of our great State of California.