More Trash Trucks, Tree Trimmers and Police : Mayor Given New Budget--With a Few Council Twists

When young municipal officials fresh out of graduate school go to work with big ideas of changing the city, if not the world, a veteran will often take them aside and say: “What we do here is police, garbage collection and tree trimming.”

That hard, mundane truth is the story behind Los Angeles’ new budget and the fight between Mayor Tom Bradley and the City Council over the $2-billion-plus spending plan.

Tuesday, the council voted to send the budget to the mayor after making small, but significant, changes in the priorities he outlined in the measure he sent to the council.

The bottom line differences are small: Bradley’s proposal totaled $2.13 billion, the council-approved budget is $2.125 billion.

But within those totals are some disagreements the mayor will have to reconcile in the week he has to review and sign the budget. Bradley can veto the entire measure, which is unlikely, or kill individual items. It takes 10 votes on the 15-member council to override him.

In rewriting the mayor’s budget, the council shifted money toward the more visible aspects of city services--more police officers on the street, more collectors in trucks picking up trash, more tree trimming.

High Priority Services

Bradley, like the council, wanted to increase city services now that, as he put it, “limited additional resources” are available after the lean years that followed approval of Proposition 13, the property tax-cutting measure, in 1978.

“We tried redirecting some of the mayor’s increases to high priority direct services,” said one council aide.

Under the leadership of Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky of the Finance and Revenue Committee, the council decided to build a 7,100-officer Police Department--up 100 from what Bradley recommended.

The council’s Finance and Insurance Committee staff said the council also had decided on two other changes:

- A personnel shift that would enable the city to finance the truck pickup of 5,550 business district trash containers, roughly five times the number Bradley advocated.

- A funding shift that would enable trimming of trees every seven years, instead of every 8 1/2 as the mayor had proposed.

As council members see it, the mayor is not on the front line as much as they are. They believe they get the first complaints about tree trimming. And they worriedly note the example of a colleague, Councilwoman Peggy Stevenson, now locked in a tough runoff election in which challenger Michael Woo is telling voters in the Hollywood hillside area 13th District that services have deteriorated.

The argument over the size of the Police Department is the most visible example of these differences.

Bradley asked for enough money to permanently implement an interim increase of 100 officers voted earlier in the year, assuring a 7,000-officer department. He also asked for 750 new police cars, 138 of them black and whites, to complete the department’s replacement of cars with 90,000 or more miles.

The council changed that. It cut back on money for buying new police cars and approved a 7,100-officer department.

Unmarked Cars

Significantly, the council did not cut the number of highly visible black and whites. Instead, it reduced the unmarked cars by 176. It also cut the amount of money available for cash payment for overtime. That meant more officers would continue to be given compensatory time for overtime.

The Police Department supported the council.

Deputy Chief Barry Wade said that “when we looked at these issues, with the knowledge that there is so much money in the barrel, we opted for more police officers. So the chief went for 176 cars taken out.”

The controversy will not end even if Bradley agrees to the council version of the budget. Community groups in South-Central Los Angeles--crime-ridden and poor--want more officers and their complaints have resulted in a proposed study of police deployment which is under discussion by the council.

In addition, the entire question of department size--and financing-- will go before the voters June 4, when they decide on a proposal to increase the department by 1,000 officers by raising the property tax.