KP Week-End: Los Angeles' State of the City
Link: www.lacity.org/index.htm
The City of Los Angeles has a population of 4 Million People. The City has 38,000 people on its' payroll. As I write this, I have not been able to confirm whether that includes the 9600 uniformed officers of the LAPD. But, the City is a City in trouble.I have seen reports that the City currently has a $ 212 Million Dollar budget gap. What the City has been doing is to sell City Property, get one time payments from the City's Utility in order to be able to fund its budget. What has been interesting is how the City has continued to grow its' payroll. The Mayor supposedly embraced the concept of "Smart Government". I have been perodically writing about it in Outsiders. There is a lot that can be done differently--that's for sure. The transformation of City Government has to happen. This means simply that more has to be done with less as the revenue stream continues to disappoint.
I have also been assessing the State of Education in LA as well. As I have peridiocally written in "outsiders", the state of Education in California is abysmmal. It is not because of the teachers. Eli Broad and others seem to think otherwise. In my own local school district, we're blessed with wonderful teachers who understand what needs to be done. Yet, somehow, the teachers are to blame. In LA, the teachers are trying to maintain a semblance of continuity and dignity. But, they lost their bid to overturn the LA School Board's decision to award 22 campuses to charter-led schools. I am not so sure that Charters are the end all and that all problems will make the challenges of Educating the kids necessarily be made better. The record I have seen has been mixed, at best.
In my own "write-up" I did for the New America Foundation, I advocated giving control to local campuses. I called it "Smart Schools", a vision for the 21st Century. The transformation I talked about could be applied to LA City Government. In visiting the City's website, though, I clicked on a link for LA Water Rates and ended up going to a General Ask.Com generic search result. So, despite the Mayor's efforts, the transformation at the City is yet to be done as the City continues to deal with its growing shortfall. Hopefully, someone will wake up soon.
Mike Pouraryan
