Riordan to Offer Plan to Aid Children

Mayor Richard Riordan, who last week proclaimed 2000 as the “Year of the Child,” today will submit a plan to the City Council to spend millions of federal dollars largely on programs that assist Los Angeles children.

Although the exact amount of money coming from the federal government was still unclear late Tuesday, Riordan’s budget team was estimating that four sources of federal money combined would give the administration about $175 million to work with. The federal aid, which is received annually, is likely to be about 4% to 5% more than in 1999, said Deputy Mayor Jennifer Roth, Riordan’s top budget and finance aide.

Riordan proposes spending the majority of the grants on services for young people in Los Angeles, Roth said.

Among other things, he intends to recommend an expansion of L.A.’s Best, an after-school program that proponents say provides young people with a safe, educational place to be after school. Under Riordan’s proposal, the program, which now serves 1,860 students, could be expanded to 2,610 young people.

Federally subsidized lunch programs, which primarily benefit low-income students during the school year, also would receive a boost, allowing 500 children a day to receive free meals at Recreation and Parks facilities when school is out.

Of about $10 million the mayor proposes spending on economic development, most would go to pay for the final year of his Targeted Neighborhood Initiative, an effort to help a dozen marginal Los Angeles neighborhoods organize and improve. That initiative has a mixed record, registering modest achievements in some areas but disappointing some residents in East Los Angeles.

Riordan’s plan would also add 27 miles of sidewalks and plant 4,000 trees in poor communities.

The mayor, who has been criticized for not doing enough to address Los Angeles’ dire shortage of affordable housing, will target $50 million toward that goal. Most of the money would go toward rehabilitating dilapidated housing. Some would be devoted to a program intended to reduce the federal government’s stock of unused property. Under that proposal, Los Angeles would buy at a discount 1,500 single-family and multiple-family properties that the federal Housing and Urban Development Department owns. The city would then invest in improvements and sell the properties, in theory transforming eyesores into homes.