Open
Your Eyes, City Council
By Doug Epperhart
Coastal San Pedro NC
Central, Coastal and Northwest San Pedro councils – are under attack by the L.A.
City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee, particularly chairman Bernard Parks
and San Fernando Valley councilman Greig Smith.
The mayor’s 2009-10
budget proposes giving neighborhood councils $45,000 (down 10 percent from
2008-09). Smith and his budget committee cohorts want to slash that amount to
about $11,000 (a 78 percent decrease). Smith’s justification is that the money
can be used to save jobs of city workers.
The city council doesn’t
understand that the current fiscal mess isn’t due solely to the ailing economy.
Much of L.A.’s money woes stem from the council’s mismanagement of city
finances. Faced with a depleted treasury, Smith and his colleagues believe
leadership means everyone – except themselves – should share in the
sacrifice.
The city council members have no intention of giving up one
penny of their nearly $180,000 annual salaries at the same time Mayor
Villaraigosa is willing to take a 12 percent pay cut. Throw in perks and each
councilmember costs taxpayers nearly $300,000 a year. That doesn’t include staff
and office expenses.
It’s breathtaking to see 15 highly paid and pampered
politicians reward their own incompetence by ordering others to make sacrifices.
It’s astounding Smith uses the false dichotomy of killing neighborhood councils
or laying off employees while maintaining that his salary is out of
bounds.
The money allocated to the 89 neighborhood councils amounts to $4
million in a budget of $7 billion. Each dollar spent by neighborhood councils is
leveraged by hours of volunteer time. The benefits to the city are enormous; in
fact, priceless.
Open your eyes, city council – neighborhood councils are
the best bargain L.A. has ever gotten
Thank you for all you do.
My comment above was meant for the previous column – for today, I think you are very accurate in your appraisal of our city government
and we must put a stop to this missuse of public funds by our “officials” – This is where we might
want to try to get the ACLU do something practical and help us out. They just love to threaten everyone with their opinions. Well, this is a valid opinion. What say you, folks?
The LACK of leadership from the mayor and City Council who have created this budget deficit with their wasteful spending, pet projects and funneling money to non profits organizations, $24 million of taxpayers, general fund, money toward gang prevention/intervention, non profit, organizations, which retired L.A. County Sergeant Valdemar and gang specialist says it will not work and assists gang members in furthering their organized crime.
With their fiscal responsibility attitude, the mayor and City Council have raised Angelenos trash fees, phone tax, DWP rates, and parking meter fees. These increases do not include L.A. County and State voter approved ballot measures or recent sales tax increases. Also, the mayor implemented the TIGER TEAM enforcement, where 37,000 citations had been issued and 13,000 cars towed since the inception of the TIGER TEAM. The cost for each citation is $140.00 that generated over $5 million dollars as of September 2008. The city receives a towing fee from the 13,000 cars towed, not included in the $5 million.
Where is the fiscal prudence from the mayor or City Council? The mayor should NOT allocate any slush funds, $1,500,000.00 or $100,000.00 per Council district, until the mayor and City Council disclose all their wasteful spending. Yet, the Budget Chair, Council member Bernard Parks, and Council member Greg Smith are placing the lack of fiscal prudence on the backs of the 89 neighborhood councils.
Will LA’s Gang Be Redeemed with $24 million Mayor’s Plan
http://www.youtube.com/FullDisclosureNetwrk
Let’s hope the youtube link does not disappear from website.
Elimination of the slush funds could save taxpayers either $15 million or $22.5 million for fiscal year 2009-2010. A no brainer!
In going through the items on this topic, I find that I agree with just about all of it, but it’s not anything new, other than the pronouncement of the end of the NC system that is still evolving.
The main proponent of the change over and above the Mayor’s proposed 10% budget cut is Greig Smith. CM Smith has taken up strong positions before on the wrong side of anything that resembles accuracy or truth. Wasn’t it Smith that went into the long tirade against the residents when the trash fee boost was accelerated? I believe he was the one delivering the message that we had all been getting a free ride for years on trash collection and it needs to end.
That was complete b.s. and if he didn’t know it, then he’s a bigger fool that he appears to be. The trash service was an included part of the services that were provided in the application of the money collected by taxation. The council started the upward spending spiral and then needed to “generate revenue” as the mayor explicitly directed in the last or two, so they concocted this rationale. They carved out a separate fee for trash as if it had not been addressed in the years before and then said “This service needs to be paid for,” as if it were a new item coming to the city.
They pulled it out of the lumped services that rightly were addressed by our tax dollars paid, then ADDDED it again to get more money, and justified it by applying what other cities charge for their trash collections, as if L.A. never included the cost somehow. Of course it was included. How else was there a system of collection established and paid for in the budget. THEY USED TO BUDGET CORRECTLY and now they don’t.
The magician’s device of “diverting attention” or “distracting” the audience from where the trick is really happening is fully employed by these politicians. By BLAMING us for all the ills, or creating some specious argument to support the complete baloney they sell, they hope to pull another fast one on the public.
Greig Smith tends to backtrack or otherwise modifiy his positions to have them be something other than what his plain words actually portrayed. In this respect, Smith is being just outright disingenuous and needs to re-assess the truth of the situation, and stop trying to sell us that snakeoil because we are not buying anymore.
The NCs operate so differently from each others as there continues to be development of the system. The CMs seem to expect NCs to help them serve the public as a sort of tool, but, at least in E.R., this is all advisory, with no obligation to follow recommendations or requests made.
Also, I notice that informationally speaking, we are in no “loop” to find things out promptly that affect us as the Solar Measure B matter, the changes in parking meters and hours, and assorted things that might be of general interest to residents and their lives. We find out what everyone already knows. That is probably the most telling feature that puts NCs nowhere near Council’s priorities for the public’s involvement or simply awarness of what they do in City Hall.
The Council may use this opportunity to effective end NCs but they should do so openly and not as it being a collateral or unintended consequence of budget hardships. They, not us, were the craftsmen of the financial disaster, and that free ride of spending to feel powerful had to end somewhere- they could not be all that stupid, so it IS their blame, with the Mayor getting his share, too.