in a letter<\/a>.<\/p>\nOn Wednesday, the council finally approved the hiring of up to 410 officers this year after hearing back from the city administrative officer that the money used to fund the positions this year will come from the LAPD\u2019s budget, and not from the city\u2019s general fund.<\/p>\n
The hiring of the officers delivers a modest victory to Bass, who promised she would find the money for additional police hires when she signed the budget in June. Bass said the additional hires \u2014 which would bring the police force to around 8,555 officers by the end of the fiscal year \u2014 still would not match the number of officers lost through attrition this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second largest city in the United States cannot have an effective police department when it is operating with the lowest staffing levels in years,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd with only five months until Los Angeles welcomes tens of thousands of fans from around the world for the FIFA World Cup, investing in more police officers is critical to public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the mayor\u2019s victory comes after months of tension, with some council members questioning the fiscal wisdom of hiring more officers than the city budgeted for during a time of fiscal crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn overwhelming majority of us support additional… hiring,\u201d said Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, who chairs the council\u2019s powerful Budget and Finance Committee. \u201cMy concern has been and continues to be the fiscal impact to next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Yaroslavsky said she would have preferred to stick to the original council plan of 240 hires this year, she thanked the city administrative officer and the police department for finding funds to hire the additional 130 officers for the rest of the fiscal year. <\/p>\n
The motion to continue hiring up to 410 officers passed in a nine to three vote.<\/p>\n
The funding for the hires, which is about $2.6 million in total for this fiscal year, will come from pots of money within the police department, including a tranche from the \u201caccumulated overtime,\u201d bucket, which is used to pay out overtime to officers who are retiring. The city found the $12 million allotted for that was not being fully drawn down this year. <\/p>\n
Some on the council took issue with the additional hiring, saying the city did not know how it would pay for the ongoing cost of the hired officers, which will grow to about $25 million in the next fiscal year. <\/p>\n
\u201cHow are we going to pay for the ongoing cost?\u201d asked Councilmember Hugo Soto-Mart\u00ednez, who voted against the new plan. \u201cWe are sort of back to where we were in December where we are committing ourselves to a $25 million price tag with no plan for where that\u2019s going to come from.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a report, the city administrative officer said the $25 million should be found in \u201congoing reductions with the Police Department\u201d that would not result in layoffs to civilian staff at the department or take from the city\u2019s general fund.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is robbing Peter to pay Paul,\u201d said Councilmember Monica Rodriguez about the funding decision. <\/p>\n
Police Chief Jim McDonnell, who attended the city council meeting, took issue with councilmembers criticizing the increased hiring.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re working on a skeleton crew,\u201d he said. \u201cThis department is doing amazing things for the residents of this city, but it doesn\u2019t seem to be appreciated.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For eight months, the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Karen Bass have butted heads over police hiring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[72056,72058,72057,1409,72060,2323,60317,60319,72059,48,52,51,51113,47,50,49,72061,4263,3906,590,16975],"class_list":{"0":"post-143856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-allotted-officer","9":"tag-budget-concern","10":"tag-budget-year","11":"tag-city","12":"tag-city-administrative-officer","13":"tag-council","14":"tag-fiscal-year","15":"tag-general-fund","16":"tag-hire","17":"tag-la","18":"tag-la-headlines","19":"tag-la-news","20":"tag-lapd-hiring","21":"tag-los-angeles","22":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","23":"tag-los-angeles-news","24":"tag-modest-victory","25":"tag-money","26":"tag-month","27":"tag-police-department","28":"tag-position"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}