FIXING LA-Last Tuesday night's City Council Board of Public Works and Budget Committees met and allowed a lot of good public input to a series of concerned and available Councilmembers and City officials. The attendance and input were both outstanding--I want to thank Councilmember Mike Bonin, in particular, for allowing the outreach and advice to and from the constituents to reach the highest levels of City government.
While I'm certainly biased towards what the City should do on this "sidewalk crisis", I hope that the recurrent themes I kept hearing get the right attention and priority from the City Council. Here are five points to consider--not just from me, but all the others who kept saying it over and over last Tuesday night:
1) Speak to the fact that the voters have paid for these sidewalks already, and are being asked to do so in a manner that may result in the sidewalks not being repaired in a cost-effective and timely manner. No, it's NOT hard to have the Departments of Public Works and Street Services work with Council District offices and Neighborhood Councils to prioritize and expedite the most urgent sidewalk and tree replacements.
2) Have this project be an example of what a good City private/public partnership can do. From liberal to libertarian, no one wants to have a lack of oversight from City engineers and arborists to make sure the repairs are done right--but private contractors in the City of L.A. can do this job both cheaper and quicker than City workers (who will have plenty to do with choosing the priority of sidewalk repairs and overseeing the contractors). We don't need to establish a hiring spree in new City workers as much as we need to stimulate the City economy.
3) Don't aim low...aim high. If ficuses need to be replace with native trees that won't tear up the new sidewalks, and which are more environmentally-friendly and water-wise, then do it. Ditto for environmentally-smart and affordable materals for the replacement sidewalks. Make fixes that last 50 years, not five years...seriously.
4) This need not be a silly, money-wasting exercise in pork-barrel politics, and this need not be an exercise in the City doing in 30 years what it can and should do in 5 years. That's right: FIVE YEARS (maaaaaybe seven years). That means an all-out exercise in City workers finding lost revenue sources, missing mitigation funds from cheating developers, and anyone else bilking the City or using it as their own personal ATM machine.
{module [1177]}
We'll never have an Olympics without walkable sidewalks, and City employees should have a five-year pay freeze until this money can be found (and, conversely, should get a much-deserved pay hike if they find that money). Yes, the City workers and City taxpayers can come up with $1 billion over the next 5 years to pay for this, and create a public works project that restore taxpayer faith in local government...and maybe establish an economic recovery for the City.
5) A year from this November, voters will be voting on a "Measure R-2" which will create a sales tax funding mechanism for more LA County transportation funds. While this cannot be relied upon to entirely fund the sidewalks, it does allow another revenue source to ensure this gets done via the sales tax funds that proportionately go to the City of LA. Not only would "Measure R-2" have everyone pay into this effort via sales taxes, but it would allow City residents the assurances that this WILL happen within their lifetimes.
Shared Sacrifice is fundamental to making this effort work, and the commitment to a FIVE-year sidewalk fix (again, maaaaaybe seven years). If Mayor Garcetti and the City Council want to show that the City is really doing things differently and aiming high, this sidewalk fix is the perfect way to turn angry frowns into sighs of relief from stressed-out and burned-out Angelenos who are wondering if it's high time for another Proposition 13.
And we could all use a lot less stress, and a lot more relief, from a government who finally "gets it" and chooses to represent us all.
(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected] He also does regular commentary on the Mark Isler Radio Show on AM 870, and co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 62
Pub: Jul 31, 2015
