This past week, the City Council approved the Fiscal Year 2014-15 Budget.As Vice Chair of the Council’s Budget and Finance committee, I see the City’s budget process not only as a way to fund critical city services, but also as a way to deliver on the priorities that are so essential to Council District 12 communities.
While we will see some modest growth in revenues in the coming year, it is critical to hold the line on expenditures so that we can begin to rebuild our service delivery functions, while maintaining fiscally conservative and sound spending. I have long advocated for using performance metrics as a tool to achieve the greatest efficiencies in our city services, so that each tax dollar goes further and provides more benefit for our residents. I was very pleased to see that Mayor Garcetti referenced my motion on Performance Based Budgeting in his first Executive Directive – declaring that his first budget would utilize performance metrics to measure success toward his priority outcomes.
While this was not a perfect budget, it did set some initial metrics for the city departments, which will be honed in the coming months by the chairs of the various policy committees. I anticipate that next year’s will be an even more robust process and that we will be able to make more informed decisions when allocating the city’s financial resources to align with our priorities.
I also wanted to take the opportunity to identify the key budgetary successes for our council district:
- Secured full funding for the Chatsworth Park South lead and PAH remediation to reopen the park by Summer of 2015
- Restored $1 million in graffiti abatement funding cut out of the Mayor’s Budget
- Provided $20 million for sidewalk repairs, citywide
- Allocated $4 million for tree trimming, citywide
- Funded 2,400 lane miles of street paving, citywide
- Secured $150,000 to keep our Police Activity League (PALS) Center open – serving our at-risk youth with afterschool programming
- Added vital resources to the Fire Department to hire additional firefighters, add back additional ambulance resources and provide critical safety equipment for our firefighters
- Brought a Neighborhood Prosecutor to LAPD’s Devonshire Division to help fight nuisance crimes that detract from our quality of life
- Library hours will be extended in all branch libraries, consistent with the final year of Measure L implementation
- The Northridge Pool summer swim season will be extended
- Restored median maintenance funding – so critical for preserving the look of our neighborhoods
- Increased funding for Senior Meals
- Acquired City Attorneys for our Area Planning Commission meetings to reduce risks associated with development decisions
- Fully funded the FireStat LA unit in LAPD – a critical data monitoring tool to help the department make critical life-safety deployment decisions
- Funded supplemental maintenance to keep our park bathrooms cleaned and to remove trash on the weekends
- Embarked on the first of a three-year plan to reduce the impact of the City’s gross receipts business tax – making the City more business friendly
These are huge gains in a year of moderate growth, and I am very pleased with the process this year. My thanks go out to the Mayor and his Budget Team, Budget and Finance Committee Chair Paul Krekorian, my colleagues on the committee, and everyone that communicated their priorities with me and my staff over the course of the Budget hearings.
- Mitchell Englander, Vice-Chair Budget and Finance Committee
