In a unanimous vote, the Los Angeles City Council Wednesday instructed staff to conduct a comprehensive analysis of funding, staffing and resources needed to address deteriorating public infrastructure and bring the city up to industry standards.<\/p>\n
Several city departments are expected to provide a report in 60 days identifying industry standards and best practices for repair, replacement, maintenance and timely inspection of bike lanes, curb cuts, sidewalks, street trees, storm drains and street lights.<\/p>\n
The report should provide information on staffing levels, equipment costs and materials, as well as fleet capacity to reach standards.<\/p>\n
The Department of General Services is also expected to report within 60 days on fleet maintenance, repair and storage needs for proposed phases to meet established goals, among other things.<\/p>\n
Council members Eunisses Hernandez and Katy Yaroslavsky introduced the motion calling for the information in September. Prior to Wednesday\u2019s vote, Hernandez emphasized that council members often hear from residents asking for the basics.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want to know why a tree hasn\u2019t been trimmed in 15 years. Why the street light has been dark for six months. Why is the illegal dumping on the corner still there, or why the crosswalk to their child\u2019s school has faded away,\u201d Hernandez said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur answer has been: We\u2019re doing the best that we can with what we have. But the reality is that we have normalized the system based on scarcity. We have normalized the patchwork approach to public safety,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Hernandez described her motion as a way to direct city departments to share the truth of what the city needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need a comprehensive assessment of what it actually takes to run the city, not based on last year\u2019s budget and not based on what we think we can afford in the short term, but based on industry standards and best practices it asks for,\u201d Hernandez said.<\/p>\n
The neighborhood councils of North Westwood, North Hollywood, Reseda and Loz Feliz filed community impact statements backing the proposal.<\/p>\n
\u201d supports this motion to update our standards, staffing and funding for maintenance of infrastructure in the public right of way,\u201d according to a letter submitted by the North Westwood Neigh.<\/p>\n
\u201cBudget challenges have resulted in fewer resources to manage our streets, leading to an increasing reliance on expensive outside contractors,\u201d according to a letter from the North Westwood Neighborhood Council. \u201cIn addition to improper staffing and chronic underfunding of relevant departments, the illogical segmentation of city departments and responsibilities leads to inherent inefficiencies that must be addressed in a time of fiscal distress.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a unanimous vote, the Los Angeles City Council Wednesday instructed staff to conduct a comprehensive analysis of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":344486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[9810,66890,1582,276,6283,139708,5173,2961,224,5337,6514],"class_list":{"0":"post-422615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-address","9":"tag-advances","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-council","13":"tag-failing","14":"tag-infrastructure","15":"tag-la","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-losangeles","18":"tag-proposal"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115657692175064586","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}