The people’s budget

Does City Hall have a drive-up suggestion window? Or the e-mail equivalent? Short of leaving a note for the mayor under the doormat at Getty House, how else can Angelenos get their leaders’ attention?

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa laid his new budget on us this week, and as matters stand, ordinary Angelenos aren’t getting to say what they think of it until public hearings on May 16, long after the mayor cobbled it together and well after the City Council began to pick it apart.

Stop -- re-boot. The citizens who are being asked to pay more for a slashed-and-burned city government should get to share what they’re willing to put up with and what they’d put down. Richard Riordan’s “Bright Ideas!” awards for cost-saving suggestions back in 1996 were hokey but heartfelt, and City Hall needs more ideas like the ones I’ve been hearing -- and the civic enthusiasm that goes along with them.

All week, Angelenos -- and some outliers with a sporting interest in this city -- have offered up ways to save money here and raise some there.

“Hole” doesn’t begin to describe the $406-million budget pit Los Angeles is in. To fill it would take the salaries of all 15 council members for nearly 160 years (about $170K times 15 council members times 160 years), or about the amount the U.S. spends in a single day on the war in Iraq.

The meager money budgeted for things other than cops and firefighters would go for new left-turn arrows and for fixing an extra 60 of the city’s 7,300 miles of streets. That whittles the wait time for road repairs down from 63 years to 40 years. Years. When you work in government long enough, I guess you can report such things with a poker face.

The ideas I got weren’t vetted for legal or liability issues, and they weren’t always PC or quite practicable, like Thomas in Valencia’s suggestion for getting “$500 million. Easy money” out of the underground economy, with a minimum 5% business tax on “scofflaws” such as baby sitters, day laborers and gardeners.

What I read in these e-mails is that Angelenos care about this place and are angry and worried. And they still think that government can be a tool for fixing things -- if its officials aren’t just tools themselves.

Some wouldn’t even mind paying more taxes -- with caveats. Frank in L.A. -- who bought his house before Proposition 13 passed in 1978 -- said the measure has been “a great deal for me, totally unfair to the city” and to those who bought more recently. Ted in L.A. dreamed beyond the scope and nerve of politicians, of surcharges for summer gas and for expensive new cars.

I liked the ingenuity. Danila in mid-Wilshire sees money in solar water heaters on city roofs, and Bo in Van Nuys wants parking meters converted to “pay and play” slot machines, with instant payoffs and jumbo winners. “Watch the money fill L.A.’s coffers!” Sure, if we can get the curbs declared Indian reservations.

Janet in L.A. thinks jail inmates could clean streets as well as get “some air and a job that might release some of their anger and frustration. ... There could be security problems ... but couldn’t we give it a try?”

Volney in Sherman Oaks imagines all the money we’d save sending gangbangers to Iraq -- they’re already armed, for starters. Diane, who signs herself “native Angeleno,” has faith that volunteerism would cut costs and “take back ownership” of L.A. Her motto, recast from the Depression-era song, is “Hey buddy, can you spare some time?”

Most popular idea? Cutting city officials’ use of city-owned wheels, but Charles in L.A. took it a step -- or a mile -- further: No chauffeur-driven city car for the mayor: “This way he would repair our streets even faster.”

Carlton in West Hollywood thinks that for every square inch of billboard space allowed, billboard companies should have to pony up for a square foot of low-cost housing. John in Riverside wants city toll booths at the entrances to gated communities. Sam in Van Nuys wants to get more cops on the street by ending the LAPD’s three-day, 12-hour workweek and by putting more one-cop cars on patrol. (An outside study found 565 LAPD jobs that civilians could fill; maybe some of those civilians are now in the 767 city jobs the mayor plans to eliminate.)

Me? I’d turn Getty House into a B&B; (the mayor can get up first and turn on the coffee maker) and start a Pothole Partners program -- you can jump the 40-year wait list and pay to get the one on your street fixed ASAP, as long as you pay to fix a second pothole in a poor neighborhood.

If all else fails, let’s have a telethon -- City Hall meets Hollywood, 48 hours of nonstop celebrity begging in front of a big tote board. Thousands of us would pay cash money to hear Villaraigosa and Britney Spears weeping through an Hour 45 duet of “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”