WOODLAND HILLS : Safety Comes First, Riordan Tells Crowd

At the top of Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan’s five-point budget plan is a single goal that comes before everything else: improving safety in the city.

Speaking to a group of 16 west San Fernando Valley homeowners associations Monday night, the mayor said the other four points in his budget--making the city friendlier, cleaning up its infrastructure, making it more livable and improving government efficiency--would all get considerable attention. But improving safety comes first.

And to that end, he told the crowd, he will hire 1,522 more police officers and purchase 400 more black-and-white cruisers.

Riordan said he would make the improvements by cutting and streamlining elsewhere, not by seeking additional funds.

“There will be no new taxes,” he said, garnering a hearty round of applause from the 400 on hand at the Francis Parkman Middle School auditorium in Woodland Hills. Acknowledging that the city has continued to suffer from the recession and has a growing reputation as a crime-ridden region, Riordan said such town meetings were the places to initiate change.

“Let me tell you the secret of turning L. A. around,” he said. “It’s organizing like this. If you wait for governments to do it, in the long run, it’s not going to happen.”

Council members Marvin Braude, Zev Yaroslavsky and Laura Chick also made brief statements, and Riordan spent more than half an hour taking questions from the crowd.

Riordan planned to meet with east Valley homeowners Tuesday night at Osaka Sangyo University in Studio City.