The Los Angeles City Council approved a $14 billion spending plan for 2025-26 on Thursday, reducing Mayor Karen Bass’s public safety initiative as it attempted to spare 1,000 city workers from the layoffs.
Faced with a budget shortfall of around $100 million, the council voted between 12 and 3 in a plan to cut funds for recruitment at the Los Angeles Police Department, leaving fewer officers than in any time since 1995.
The council provided enough money to allow LAPD to hire 240 new executives next year, from the 480 people proposed by Bass last month. The reduction will reduce LAPD from around 8,700 this year, along with around 8,400 executives in June 2026, and from around 8,700 in 2020, and from 10,000 in 2020.
The council also reduced the number of new hires proposed by the mayor to the Los Angeles Fire Department in the wake of a wildfire that destroyed the huge area of Pallisard in the Pacific Ocean.
The Bass’ Budget required 227 additional fire department employees to be hired. The council funded the department to expand with an estimated 58 employees.
Three council members, John Lee, Trace Park and Monica Rodriguez, voted against the budget for cost compensation efforts at two public safety agencies. The park has expressed alarms for those and other cuts in parks, including Palisades in the Pacific.
“We cannot vote in a conscientious vote for a budget that will reduce our city’s safety, physically sound, and even less responsive to components,” she said.
Rodriguez provided a similar message, saying the council should have shifted more money from a secure-based signature program to address the homelessness. Rodriguez, who represents the northeastern San Fernando Valley, said the program had no surveillance and was extremely expensive.
“Currently, SAFE currently spends over $7,000 a month to accommodate one individual. That’s just rooms and boards and services,” she said. “This does not include all the other auxiliary services tapped by our city families to make it work, including LAPD overtime, including sanitary services, including the Department of Transportation.”
Councillor Tim Makosker, who will be joining the Budget Committee, said the fire department still has an overall increase in funding based on the council’s budget. Spending more money on police and fire stations means firing workers who repair streets, curbs and sidewalks, according to Makosker, who represents a neighbourhood that stretches from south of Watts to Port of L.A.
McOsker said the city could potentially increase funds for its LAPD recruitment if the city’s economic situation improves or other savings are identified within the budget. The council has allowed LAPD to step up employment if more money is found later in the year.
“We want to be in a position where we can hire more than 240 executives. Maybe we will. I don’t know, but we can’t today,” Makosker told a colleague.
Councillor Ysabel Jurado, who joined the council in December, also defended the budget plan and said it would help create a “fair, fairer, more inclusive Los Angeles.”
“This budget doesn’t fix everything, it doesn’t close all the gaps,” she said. “But it shows an appetite to make some structural changes.”
A second budget vote by the council will be required next week before the plan can go to the mayor’s desk for her consideration.
Bass spokesman Clara Karger said his boss is grateful that the council has given LAPD the authority to increase recruitment. She was not very supportive of other public safety moves.
“Unfortunately, there’s not much attention paid to funding the life-saving work for the fire department. It’s preparing for the World Cup, the Olympics and more in addition to its important everyday work,” Karger says.
Bass’ spending plans proposed layoffs of around 1,600 city employees over the next year, reducing the depth of agencies handling garbage pickup, streetlight repairs and urban planning. The decision made Thursday would cut the number to around 700, according to city administrator Matt Sabo, who helps prepare for spending plans.
Karger said the mayor is “thank” to see the number of layoffs continuing to decline, and is determined to work with the council to bring that number to zero.
Councillor Katie Jaroslavsky, who heads the council’s budget committee, said that if the city’s union offers financial concessions, the remaining layoffs can still be avoided. For example, she said private urban workers can reduce costs by taking 4-5 unpaid Farrow days.
“My goal, my passionate goal and hope is that the labor comes to the table and says, ‘We take some furrows, we take some time,'” Jaroslavski said.
The city fell into a full-scale financial crisis earlier this year, driven by a largely rapid rise in legal payments, weaker than expected tax revenues and scheduled pay increases for city employees. These salary increases are expected to consume $250 million next year.
To balance the city’s budget, council members tapped $29 million in the city’s budget stabilization fund. They took steps to collect $20 million in business tax revenue. And they supported plans to hike the cost of parking tickets, which could generate another $14 million.
At the same time, the council reduced the series of cuts proposed in Bass’ budget. During the course of the six-hour meeting on Thursday, the Council:
A restored position in the Cultural Bureau that avoids the closure of East Hollywood’s historic Hollyhock House and protects its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. That funding would have been eliminated under the original proposal of the Bus, Councillor eunisses Hernandez has moved $5 million to the Animal Services department. This ensures that all of the city’s animal shelters remain open, secured repairs and repaired funds for street resacrifices and removal of rich items such as street light repairs, street reappearances, rather crowd flocks.
Despite these changes, cities still face the possibility of hundreds of layoffs.
The council has saved the employment of many experts, including an estimated 150 civilian workers in its sector (such as workers who handle DNA rape kits), but another 250 are targeting layoffs.
“We made a scary budget proposal, and made it very bad,” said Bob Blumenfield, a lawmaker representing parts of the West San Fernando Valley. “It took a lot of work to do that, but it was better and we saved our work. But the basics are still very bad.”
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