2 weeks Ago By Kevin Ozebek
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Los Angeles Mayor Bass announced Monday that she's proposing city employee layoffs to help offset a nearly $1 billion budget deficit. The proposal was released after her State of the City address . Exempted from the cuts is the Los Angeles Fire Department, which would get more funding to hire more firefighters.
Bass' proposed new city budget includes bumping up LAFD's budget by 12.7%. That's enough to add 227 positions to help 3,538 firefighters the city already has.
Freddy Escobar, president of the union representing LAFD firefighters, called the move by Bass a step in the right direction. "We have been neglected for decades," Escobar told Eyewitness News. "This isn't a Mayor Bass issue.
" Escobar says that decades of budget neglect has led to a department that's woefully understaffed and that shows in response times. ABC7's investigative team has highlighted how LAFD's response times do not meet national standards. So if Bass' proposed budget is approved as is, will it bring the department up to speed? The vast majority of calls should be responded to in four minutes, according to a national firefighting standard.
But LAFD's average EMS response time is seven minutes and 36 seconds. LAFD says to get the department up to par, it would need 62 more fire stations. L.
A. City Councilmember Traci Park, who represents Pacific Palisades, has been fighting for a bigger LAFD budget even before part of her district was devasted by January's wildfire. "While any increase in that budget and that staffing level is a welcome addition, it is a tiny drop in the bucket for where we actually need to be," Park said.
Park believes LAFD needs such a significant boost in funding, she hopes next year to get a bond measure on a ballot. That would then allow voters to decide if a huge pot of money should be sent to LAFD to build stations and hire hundreds of firefighters..
