Council kills Villaraigosa’s parking garage plan

The Los Angeles City Council killed a plan Wednesday for leasing nine public parking garages to a private company, rebuffing a request from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to keep it as a strategy for solving this year’s budget crisis.

On a 12-0 vote, the council halted its search for a firm to run the garages over the next 50 years. That deal was supposed to generate $53 million for the city’s general fund, which pays for basic services such as public safety and parks.

Council members made their decision five days after City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana, the top budget official at City Hall, revealed that no firm had expressed an interest in bidding on the garage plan.

Villaraigosa said council members had rendered the city’s proposal “worthless” to potential bidders by putting restrictions on parking rates at some garages. He urged the council Monday to resurrect the plan in time to address this year’s $54-million budget shortfall.

That message was greeted coolly by Councilman Tony Cardenas, who said the parking garage plan was a bad idea from the start. “We can beat this dead horse over and over and over again, but I would say, let’s just move on,” he said.

Villaraigosa deputy chief of staff Matt Szabo called the vote “disappointing” and warned that additional furloughs are now more likely for certain city workers. “The outcome from this process turned out to be a counterproductive waste of time,” he said.

With the budget year in its eighth month, Villaraigosa and the council are left with limited choices for erasing this year’s shortfall. Among the options are tapping the city’s reserve fund or adding another eight furlough days, which would generate around $15 million, Santana said.

Still, several council members said they opposed new reductions. “I won’t vote on furloughs or layoffs or anything like that,” said Councilman Herb Wesson.

The mayor’s parking plan drew fire in recent months from business leaders in Hollywood, Westwood and elsewhere who feared that a private company would boost rates and drive away their customers. They persuaded council members last month to rework the garage plan.

But Villaraigosa had called on the council this week to undo those changes. A more lucrative plan could still attract bidders by June 30, the end of the fiscal year, he said.

Santana sharply disagreed, saying it would be irresponsible to rely on the money with so little time left in the fiscal year. “It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to try to receive this revenue” by the deadline, he told council members.

david.zahniser@latimes.com