City Services

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa began the formal transition of power to his successor on Thursday, hosting Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti for breakfast at Getty House where he told reporters that the city councilman had his "full support. " Garcetti, who defeated City Controller Wendy Greuel on Tuesday, will not take office until July 1. But he and his team have already begun to prepare the policy initiatives that he hopes will allow him to "hit the ground running on day one," as he said during a news conference afterward.

As Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti assembles his new administration, it is interesting, and encouraging, to note the odd confluence of circumstances that will leave him beholden less to factions or special interests and more to the people of Los Angeles. Garcetti may be the most politically progressive mayor Los Angeles has seen in recent history. He has been a friend to organized labor, including the city's public employee unions. But the biggest city unions, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the unions representing Department of Water and Power workers, firefighters and police officers all cast their lots with Controller Wendy Greuel, helping to raise and spend millions of dollars for her campaign and for independent campaigns backing her. Greuel came up short, and they came up short with her. Money sometimes makes the difference, and in fact the independent expenditure groups led by labor were relatively successful at electing many of the candidates on their slate to the City Council.

For decades Valley residents have been complaining about the lack of city services, such as street cleaning. Petitions are circulating in an effort to get enough signatures to study the merits of secession because supposedly residents are fed up with the lack of services. Well guess what? Just recently new "No Parking for Street Cleaning" signs went up in a number of Valley neighborhoods. Many of us were delighted, after all these years, at the prospect of having clean streets and gutters once in awhile.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa began the formal transition of power to his successor on Thursday, hosting Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti for breakfast at Getty House where he told reporters that the city councilman had his "full support. " Garcetti, who defeated City Controller Wendy Greuel on Tuesday, will not take office until July 1. But he and his team have already begun to prepare the policy initiatives that he hopes will allow him to "hit the ground running on day one," as he said during a news conference afterward.

Glendale officials will introduce a budget next week that would slash millions in city services and serve several employees with pink slips. City Council members have indicated support for roughly $4 million in service cuts — including elimination of all programming at Deukmejian Wilderness Park and police-sponsored athletics programs for at-risk youth — as they try to fill a projected $18-million budget gap. "It's been a difficult year,...

The four candidates competing to replace outgoing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa squared off in South Los Angeles on Friday, debating the respective roles that housing, education, city services and budget cuts play in the lives of area residents. The forum at the St. John's Well Child and Family Center was intended to focus on health issues in an area of the city where political power has moved steadily from black to Latino voters. However, the candidates' comments were wide-ranging.

Ten weeks before he leaves office, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday offered a $7.7-billion budget that would begin reversing years of cuts to basic city services such as tree trimming and sidewalk repairs while avoiding employee layoffs and furloughs. Buoyed by an estimated $111-million uptick in revenue, Villaraigosa's spending plan for the coming year provides money to add 65 firefighters, purchase 533 new vehicles at the Los Angeles Police Department and trim an additional 35,000 trees - leaving the city on its most solid footing since it was engulfed in crisis five years ago. The mayor also offered a long-term blueprint for financial recovery that would require the city's elected officials to be far less generous to their public employees than he and the council were during his eight-year tenure.

Seeking opinions from residents and businesses about city services and spending, the city will mail a questionnaire to 15,000 addresses next week. The survey, included with the fall issue of the city magazine, asks people to rate their level of satisfaction with a range of services, from police and fire protection to recreation programs.

Starting next month, Los Angeles residents will pay more for art classes, zoo admission, zoning permits and some other city services. The Los Angeles City Council voted without discussion Tuesday to increase more than 80 fees for the fiscal year starting July 1 to balance the city budget. Some fees that will increase: * Zoo admission, $9 for adults, up from $8.25; $4 for children, up from $3.25. * Planning Department applications and permits, up an average of 5%.

Plain old human contact is the centerpiece of a new program aimed at making City Hall more open to West Hollywood residents. Greeters will meet residents attending meetings of the City Council and other city commissions and show them how to sign up to address the panels. The city cable television channel that broadcasts the meetings will show viewers an abbreviated agenda beforehand and live discussions of city issues during breaks.

In the campaign for mayor, Eric Garcetti spoke grandly about a city with plentiful summer jobs for low-income teens, a tunnel under the traffic-clogged Sepulveda Pass and even an end to homelessness. But a day after winning office, the mayor-elect faced some immediate and less lofty challenges: potentially bruising battles over employee salaries, police overtime pay and how to reverse cuts to ambulance staffing, sidewalk repairs and other basic city services. On Thursday, the City Council - a body that Garcetti will remain part of until June 30 - is set to decide whether and how to pay for a scheduled 5.5% raise for many city workers, a payout portrayed by the city's top financial advisor as a long-term budget buster.

In their feisty final debate before election day, controller candidates Dennis Zine and Ron Galperin repeatedly hammered an insider-versus-outsider theme, seeking to convince voters they would be best prepared to be the city's next chief auditor and accountant. Zine, completing 12 years on the City Council and a 33-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, said he'll be ready to navigate City Hall on his first day. "I know how the system works. I don't need to be trained," Zine said at the Wednesday face-off before the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.

In 1989, then-Los Angeles Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky unveiled an audacious plan to boost the city police force by more than 25% to 10,000 officers. He couldn't have imagined that city leaders would chase that goal for nearly a quarter of a century until, at the start of this year, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced that he had pushed the LAPD over the long-elusive benchmark. The two candidates vying to replace Villaraigosa in the May 21 election - City Controller Wendy Greuel and Councilman Eric Garcetti - have embraced the mayor's achievement, crediting the LAPD buildup in large measure for the city's lowest crime rates since the 1950s.

Ten weeks before he leaves office, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday offered a $7.7-billion budget that would begin reversing years of cuts to basic city services such as tree trimming and sidewalk repairs while avoiding employee layoffs and furloughs. Buoyed by an estimated $111-million uptick in revenue, Villaraigosa's spending plan for the coming year provides money to add 65 firefighters, purchase 533 new vehicles at the Los Angeles Police Department and trim an additional 35,000 trees - leaving the city on its most solid footing since it was engulfed in crisis five years ago. The mayor also offered a long-term blueprint for financial recovery that would require the city's elected officials to be far less generous to their public employees than he and the council were during his eight-year tenure.

Despite stubborn financial problems and reductions in city services, a majority of L.A. voters give departing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa good marks, a USC Price/Los Angeles Times poll has found. In a telephone survey conducted last week, nearly 53% of respondents said they had a favorable view of the mayor, who was barred by law from seeking a third four-year term. He leaves office this summer. Nearly 42% of voters said they viewed Villaraigosa unfavorably. Whites were about evenly split -- 46.3% viewed the city's first Latino mayor in modern history favorably; 46.9% had an unfavorable view.

The employee union for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has made mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti political enemy No. 1, running TV ads attacking him and spending heavily on his opponent, Wendy Greuel . But that didn't prevent one of the DWP union's other candidates from showing up this week at a campaign event for Garcetti. John Choi, seeking to replace Garcetti on the City Council, stood Friday with other Garcetti supporters at a news conference announcing the endorsement of Garcetti by U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles)

A dozen east Wilmington businessmen joined this week in demanding that Los Angeles city departments do more to rid their neighborhood of crime, garbage and vagrants. "We're very disappointed with the service we're receiving from all branches of government.

The fiscal quandary in which the city of El Segundo finds itself should at least be instructive to others. A band of "development is always good" councilmen and landowners hoping to turn a fast buck have saddled our community with a passel of marginally occupied high-rises, traffic problems that will not go away, and a spate of large businesses that have assumed that the future will continue to be like it was under the former administration, a...

Initial election results in Compton's hotly contested race for mayor showed former Mayor Omar Bradley - whose 2004 conviction on corruption charges was overturned by an appeals court last year - heading into a runoff with political newcomer Aja Brown. The results could signal an ouster of Mayor Eric Perrodin, a deputy district attorney and former Compton police officer who unseated Bradley in 2001. However, with 1,176 vote-by-mail and provisional ballots yet to be verified by the county registrar, the final results may not be known for another week.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Wednesday that city employees should pay considerably more for their healthcare and retirement benefits to avoid “giant balloon payments” in coming years. Appearing on KTTV's “Good Day L.A.,” Villaraigosa argued that workers should contribute as much as 20% of their salaries toward their retirement benefits, up from the 11% that most pay now. “If we're going to keep [pensions], they've got to be sustainable,” he said. “Even 11% is not enough.