[NoHo Arts District, CA] – This week, City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian talks about “Meeting the City’s Budget Challenge.”
This week, the City Council adopted the budget for the next fiscal year. We faced an enormously difficult challenge, trying to meet our growing needs with fewer resources, so we’ve had to find savings wherever we can.
The draft budget proposed laying off 1,600 City workers. That included people who dispatch emergency fire and police response, and the staff who trim our trees, and clean and repair our streets. These services are stretched so thin already, I could not accept further cuts on that scale. Nor was I willing to lay off hard-working staff who are so needed. In the budget we finally passed, we managed to save 1,000 of those jobs for the time being, but there are still roughly 600 workers who are being laid off.
Making the best of a bad situation is no cause for celebration. I didn’t agree with every choice we made, but I voted to adopt our revised budget because the alternative would have been disastrous.
One area that will receive an increase in funding is the Fire Department, which will receive more funding than at any time in its history. By retaining civilian employees in the Police Department, we’re enabling our sworn officers to concentrate on their core mission: protecting you and your family. We were able to keep the current number of teams that remove illegally dumped items from our streets, and we will continue to fund the Care+ teams working every day to resolve homeless encampments.
We can’t talk about the budget without talking about the revenue we lose when our economy isn’t performing well. The revenue we collect from tourism is down drastically from previous years. The flight of film production to other cities and countries has also cost us economic activity and tax revenue.
The World Cup and Olympic Games are a great opportunity to bring tourism and tourist dollars to Los Angeles. The money we spend on improving our infrastructure in advance of these global events is an investment in our future.
The film and television industry has been a cornerstone of our City’s prosperity for over a hundred years. It spurs technological innovation, it supports a vast network of related small businesses, and it draws visitors from around the world. Keeping this legacy industry here in Los Angeles is vital to our economy, our identity as a city, and our continued growth.
This week, we did the best we could with the resources at hand. In the long run, making our city a better place to do business will benefit all of us.
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