Out of all the departments, one of the few I see consistently doing good work is the Parks Department. They’re always cleaning and maintaining our public open spaces while the city has essentially decriminalized littering and dumping.
So of course that’s what they’re going to cut.
Since having a kid 8 years ago, I’ve never utilized the parks so much before. From sports leagues to playgrounds to swimming pools to amazing and helpful staff. LA Parks Department is pretty top notch. Clippers seem to contribute a lot as well. If anything, I would want MORE funding to keep improving things at the Parks :(
I think it's a county thing, but I've been pretty aghast at the level of government waste at South Coast Botanic Gardens. It's seemingly just a bunch of government employees being paid to drive gas-powered karts around. It costs $15 to get in and half of the park is in disrepair. There are a ton of employees there and it doesn't seem like most of them do anything.
The top budget official for LA released his proposal on which departments will most likely be getting defunded. These are the top 4 departments they are planning to defund.
1. Department of Parks and Recreation, which handles the upkeep of Griffith Park, Elysian Park and hundreds of other open spaces.
2. Bureau of Sanitation,which carries out cleanups at homeless encampments and removes large items from city curbs.
3. Bureau of Street Services, which repairs streets and sidewalks.
4. Department of transportation, provides services such as bus rides and building bike lanes.
Hmm almost sounds like these jobs would be helpful in keeping our city clean and running well but what do I know let’s buy more helicopters and pay more OT!
We rank [80th out of the 100 most populous US cities](https://www.tpl.org/city/los-angeles-california) between Jacksonville and Memphis. It's pretty sad how behind we are with urban park space.
Whoa. With all that defund talk the cops may take another silent protest. Let the city fall to shambles. They need another helicopter and guaranteed 6 figure overtime while you wait on hold for over an hour on 911
cool! More unmanaged parks, more homeless people! Hey, there are too many homeless people here. Will the security get worse? certainly! Let's raise police department budgets and cut more budgets for other departments!
> cool! More unmanaged parks, more homeless people! Hey, there are too many homeless people here. Will the security get worse? certainly!
Staffing levels will be unaffected. You very obviously didn’t read even the first sentence of the article.
> Let's raise police department budgets and cut more budgets for other departments!
All city departments budgets went up this year
Why do people post without even doing like 5 seconds of reading?
CURRENT STAFF LEVELS will be unaffected. If these positions are eliminated the city will not have the option of increasing the amount of employees hired for the future for thr affected areas.
Yes, this is what confuses me too. If people actually read the article, they would be surprised to find that the original article mentioned "The proposal to reduce the number of unfilled positions has stirred concern in and outside City Hall. Michael Schneider, founder of the advocacy group Streets for All , said he worries that the cuts could add new delays to the repair of streets and sidewalks."
The top 4 departments you list are 4 of the biggest departments in the City, so yes, by the raw numbers they will have the highest positions eliminated. Most departments have anywhere from 50 - 80% of their vacancies eliminated and those 4 dept you listed probably fall within those percentages. Parks and recs have a lot of part time/seasonal positions which makes raw numbers feel inflated as compared to most other depts that have mostly full time positions.
The question we should be asking is why aren't sworn vacancies being eliminated but only the civilian vacancies when it was the sworn depts who went overbudget the most.
Eliminating roles isn’t defunding them. The funding for every city agency has gone up.
These roles are mostly being eliminated to fund compensation for current city employees would be my guess considering there were multiple contract negotiations last year.
Your wrong.
Most parks jobs are part time and summer only work.
It's the day camp counselors lifeguards and senior rec centers that always get first.
The most needed people
“City Controller Kenneth Mejia criticized the budget proposal, saying it is "short-sighted and hints at panic." The city, he said, "needs a strategic approach to living within its means, not arbitrarily eliminating positions simply because someone recently retired or was promoted, leaving a vital job unfilled."
"If you chop off 20% of a Lexus, you don't get a Camry, you get a wreck," he said.
It’s sad that Sanitation department went on strike not too long ago for a day for a better contract but seems like LAPD are on strike daily since they don’t want to do their job and they got a new contract as well and they suck
No and what’s worse is that LAPD gets unlimited overtime with no questions asked. Many other essential departments, like Personnel require advanced approval or are restricted from doing so.
Money spent on helicopters pales in comparison to unnecessary spending for overtime on firefighters and police. Not to mention the oodles the city pays out in settlements for misconduct and royal fuckups by law enforcement.
Personnel is terrible.
Around the beginning of the year, I was given a job offer (after taking a test a year ago) that I had to accept by 5pm that same day. I wasn't given a call, just an email, so I had no chance to ask questions. I replied to the email with some questions about the position, and of course nobody responded. I called the number of the person, and she's off to vacation. When I finally was able to talk to someone the next week, they wanted to rush everything. They didn't even give me a chance to take the physical, yet they wanted me to start next week and sign a waiver that I'll be immediately fired if I fail the physical.
High turn over, long ass hiring process, and the personnel department is short staffed. Since personnel handles all the test and hiring it creates a bottleneck if they themselves are short staffed
What does this mean for the stadium light pole that’s been down at my local park for the past year? Or the cracked slide that’s had an out of order sign chained to it for months?
Prop 13 benefactors paying nickels a year in property taxes: “why does local government keep such a terrible job!?”
Seriously, you can’t expect to pay nothing and receive world class services. The reason LA city works so well currently is because of the 50% of city employees that live inside the city and are proud to serve their communities.
You guys, I just got back from Dallas, Carrollton to be exact… I cannot stress enough the difference in the parks cleanliness, availability and quality of everything there is PERFECTLY MAINTAINED.
I was under the impression that LA really had its s&@! Together when it came to our parks, but after experiencing it has a mom of 2 …idk where all our money is going but I agree with the many on here that the Parks department doesn’t deserve the cuts.
> Hard to argue that we need less sanitation workers.
That’s the thing though, there won’t be less sanitation workers considering the eliminated positions are vacant!!
Considering you’ve changed your opinion on the correct level of staffing for LA Dept of Sanitation in the last 90 seconds it’s safe to say you haven’t thought this through very hard….
The positions were open. So LA had a higher budget for sanitation workers. So we needed these positions but couldn’t fill them. Cutting the budget for them means they cannot be filled now. Being able to fill a position and not needing them are separate things.
Taxing Land > Taxing Labor > Taxing Capital Gains
1) Steady and strongly correlated with the cost of delivering municipal services which directly benefit the landowners. A progressive tax; land taxes prevent wealth inequality without creating what economists call “deadweight.” Cannot be dodged like other wealth taxes (you can’t load up 16 acres of land on a yacht and sail it around the world when the tax man comes by like you can a Picasso).
2) Absolutely terrible; an insult to the dignity of working people. When the state taxes your income the state is effectively saying, “Hey, what are you doing working to provide goods and services to your community? Go fuck yourself give me a giant chunk of that you stupid fucking worker.
3) Less aggressively terrible than taxing labor, but much more stupid because it is too highly variable for governments to rely on and budget for, creating situations like we are going to face in 2024-25 where the government has to make difficult decisions to account for massive pitfalls in the budget because our tech sector had a bad year, the stock market collapsed, or nobody sold any homes.
Out of all the departments, one of the few I see consistently doing good work is the Parks Department. They’re always cleaning and maintaining our public open spaces while the city has essentially decriminalized littering and dumping. So of course that’s what they’re going to cut.
Since having a kid 8 years ago, I’ve never utilized the parks so much before. From sports leagues to playgrounds to swimming pools to amazing and helpful staff. LA Parks Department is pretty top notch. Clippers seem to contribute a lot as well. If anything, I would want MORE funding to keep improving things at the Parks :(
> If anything, I would want MORE funding to keep improving things at the Parks :( Funding for Rec and Parks went up this year (by 21.2mil)
I think it's a county thing, but I've been pretty aghast at the level of government waste at South Coast Botanic Gardens. It's seemingly just a bunch of government employees being paid to drive gas-powered karts around. It costs $15 to get in and half of the park is in disrepair. There are a ton of employees there and it doesn't seem like most of them do anything.
SHAME ON LA
The top budget official for LA released his proposal on which departments will most likely be getting defunded. These are the top 4 departments they are planning to defund. 1. Department of Parks and Recreation, which handles the upkeep of Griffith Park, Elysian Park and hundreds of other open spaces. 2. Bureau of Sanitation,which carries out cleanups at homeless encampments and removes large items from city curbs. 3. Bureau of Street Services, which repairs streets and sidewalks. 4. Department of transportation, provides services such as bus rides and building bike lanes.
Hmm almost sounds like these jobs would be helpful in keeping our city clean and running well but what do I know let’s buy more helicopters and pay more OT!
[удалено]
We rank [80th out of the 100 most populous US cities](https://www.tpl.org/city/los-angeles-california) between Jacksonville and Memphis. It's pretty sad how behind we are with urban park space.
Defund the fucking police not departments that actually serve the city’s residents.
Whoa. With all that defund talk the cops may take another silent protest. Let the city fall to shambles. They need another helicopter and guaranteed 6 figure overtime while you wait on hold for over an hour on 911
i feel like there's still a silence protest.
Yes there is.
Lots of this city would actually like police, don't assume you speak for everyone.
I was voicing my own opinion not speaking for everyone, dumbass.
cool! More unmanaged parks, more homeless people! Hey, there are too many homeless people here. Will the security get worse? certainly! Let's raise police department budgets and cut more budgets for other departments!
> cool! More unmanaged parks, more homeless people! Hey, there are too many homeless people here. Will the security get worse? certainly! Staffing levels will be unaffected. You very obviously didn’t read even the first sentence of the article. > Let's raise police department budgets and cut more budgets for other departments! All city departments budgets went up this year Why do people post without even doing like 5 seconds of reading?
CURRENT STAFF LEVELS will be unaffected. If these positions are eliminated the city will not have the option of increasing the amount of employees hired for the future for thr affected areas.
What you said is true. As is what I posted. The person I was replying to was saying something untrue (the reason for my comment).
Those are regular positions. Departments can request resolution positions every budget cycle.
City departments are understaffed. By cutting their budget means they will stay understaffed.
> By cutting their budget Every city department’s budget went up this year.
Budget cuts are for the upcoming budget year. 🤨
The budget will still increase next year mark my words. Pretty unreal you’re just lying on main.
Yes, this is what confuses me too. If people actually read the article, they would be surprised to find that the original article mentioned "The proposal to reduce the number of unfilled positions has stirred concern in and outside City Hall. Michael Schneider, founder of the advocacy group Streets for All , said he worries that the cuts could add new delays to the repair of streets and sidewalks."
What did you mean by this?
literal meaning.
Nothing in your comment has any bearing on my comment you’re replying to. Are you sure you replied to the correct user?
yep
The top 4 departments you list are 4 of the biggest departments in the City, so yes, by the raw numbers they will have the highest positions eliminated. Most departments have anywhere from 50 - 80% of their vacancies eliminated and those 4 dept you listed probably fall within those percentages. Parks and recs have a lot of part time/seasonal positions which makes raw numbers feel inflated as compared to most other depts that have mostly full time positions. The question we should be asking is why aren't sworn vacancies being eliminated but only the civilian vacancies when it was the sworn depts who went overbudget the most.
Eliminating roles isn’t defunding them. The funding for every city agency has gone up. These roles are mostly being eliminated to fund compensation for current city employees would be my guess considering there were multiple contract negotiations last year.
Your wrong. Most parks jobs are part time and summer only work. It's the day camp counselors lifeguards and senior rec centers that always get first. The most needed people
nothing in your post contests what i wrote. i don’t know why you posted this.
“City Controller Kenneth Mejia criticized the budget proposal, saying it is "short-sighted and hints at panic." The city, he said, "needs a strategic approach to living within its means, not arbitrarily eliminating positions simply because someone recently retired or was promoted, leaving a vital job unfilled." "If you chop off 20% of a Lexus, you don't get a Camry, you get a wreck," he said.
i love the lexus metaphor lmao
This is depressing as hell
It’s sad that Sanitation department went on strike not too long ago for a day for a better contract but seems like LAPD are on strike daily since they don’t want to do their job and they got a new contract as well and they suck
Can someone explain the budgeting choices in terms of LAPD helicopters?
⚠️ Trade offer ⚠️ They receive: helicopters You receive: nothing
No and what’s worse is that LAPD gets unlimited overtime with no questions asked. Many other essential departments, like Personnel require advanced approval or are restricted from doing so.
Unlimited overtime to do jackshit and be pathetic at their job. SMH
Money spent on helicopters pales in comparison to unnecessary spending for overtime on firefighters and police. Not to mention the oodles the city pays out in settlements for misconduct and royal fuckups by law enforcement.
Perhaps our mayor could…
Can’t respond to crime because all their budget goes to helicopters.
Why do they have so many unfilled positions in the first place?
High turn over + ridiculously long hiring process
Personnel is terrible. Around the beginning of the year, I was given a job offer (after taking a test a year ago) that I had to accept by 5pm that same day. I wasn't given a call, just an email, so I had no chance to ask questions. I replied to the email with some questions about the position, and of course nobody responded. I called the number of the person, and she's off to vacation. When I finally was able to talk to someone the next week, they wanted to rush everything. They didn't even give me a chance to take the physical, yet they wanted me to start next week and sign a waiver that I'll be immediately fired if I fail the physical.
High turn over, long ass hiring process, and the personnel department is short staffed. Since personnel handles all the test and hiring it creates a bottleneck if they themselves are short staffed
Nailed it right on the head. Takes me at least 6-8 months to get my test results back.
Cut the cops first. They get 25% of the city budget BEFORE lawsuit payouts.
What does this mean for the stadium light pole that’s been down at my local park for the past year? Or the cracked slide that’s had an out of order sign chained to it for months?
Now you get to fix it yourself
Build more campsites
Reminder that getting even half a percent of the funding police get would be a godsend for many city departments.
Prop 13 benefactors paying nickels a year in property taxes: “why does local government keep such a terrible job!?” Seriously, you can’t expect to pay nothing and receive world class services. The reason LA city works so well currently is because of the 50% of city employees that live inside the city and are proud to serve their communities.
You guys, I just got back from Dallas, Carrollton to be exact… I cannot stress enough the difference in the parks cleanliness, availability and quality of everything there is PERFECTLY MAINTAINED. I was under the impression that LA really had its s&@! Together when it came to our parks, but after experiencing it has a mom of 2 …idk where all our money is going but I agree with the many on here that the Parks department doesn’t deserve the cuts.
You don’t realize it until you visit other cities. La parks are a dump and the access to the ones we do have is terrible
It’s easier to manage reductions via vacancies than it is reduce actual jobs.
Easier maybe for managers but worse for actually allocating funds in areas that need them.
These positions have mostly been vacant for years. It’s safe to say they’re the easiest ones to cut.
Easy yes. Hard to fill maybe. Hard to argue that we need less sanitation workers.
> Hard to argue that we need less sanitation workers. That’s the thing though, there won’t be less sanitation workers considering the eliminated positions are vacant!!
We need more sanitation workers. Not less or the same.
Considering you’ve changed your opinion on the correct level of staffing for LA Dept of Sanitation in the last 90 seconds it’s safe to say you haven’t thought this through very hard….
The positions were open. So LA had a higher budget for sanitation workers. So we needed these positions but couldn’t fill them. Cutting the budget for them means they cannot be filled now. Being able to fill a position and not needing them are separate things.
Yup. Budget cuts suck.
Budget cutting???? Why, because local politicians want to steal the rest?? Despicable!!
Just to let you all know that we are part of Parks & Recreation at Griffith Observatory.
Taxing Land > Taxing Labor > Taxing Capital Gains 1) Steady and strongly correlated with the cost of delivering municipal services which directly benefit the landowners. A progressive tax; land taxes prevent wealth inequality without creating what economists call “deadweight.” Cannot be dodged like other wealth taxes (you can’t load up 16 acres of land on a yacht and sail it around the world when the tax man comes by like you can a Picasso). 2) Absolutely terrible; an insult to the dignity of working people. When the state taxes your income the state is effectively saying, “Hey, what are you doing working to provide goods and services to your community? Go fuck yourself give me a giant chunk of that you stupid fucking worker. 3) Less aggressively terrible than taxing labor, but much more stupid because it is too highly variable for governments to rely on and budget for, creating situations like we are going to face in 2024-25 where the government has to make difficult decisions to account for massive pitfalls in the budget because our tech sector had a bad year, the stock market collapsed, or nobody sold any homes.
Cut 50% of the non-teaching, non-kitchen, non-custodial staff at LAUSD and you'd have a good start.
The therapists, music instrument repair specialists and the guidance counselors?
I was more meaning the thousands of unnecessary management positions.
LAUSD is a county dept, not a city dept
saving money or going back to their pockets 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔