In Storm battered Los Angeles, Bureau of Street Services Interim Director Nazario Sauceda faced off with the CAO at City Hall Wednesday over employee furloughs and the use of Surplus funds in the bureau.

In January, Jose Huizar introduced a Motion to exempt employees performing work which was funded by Measure R, Gas Tax, and other Special Restricted Revenue sources.

Watch the entire exchange in the video below

Committee after committee.

In the last few weeks both the Personnel Committee as well as the Budget and Finance committee recommended the Furlough Exemption of All Resurfacing & Reconstruction Division Employees performing Resurfacing work. This would include our Field Personnel Crews Such as 252, 254, 152, 154, & others. Asphalt Plant employees, Trucking Support for both Zones I & II, Management such as Supervisors & Superintendents, and the General Superintendent of the Resurfacing & Reconstruction Division. Associated with this Should be the Coordinating, and engineering positions related to the above activity’s.

In the Street Maintenance Division, that would include Pothole Crews, Division Supervisors, Area Superintendents, and the Street Maintenance General Superintendent because they are funded by both the Measure R Local return as well as the Gas Tax. Miguel Santana the CAO recommended the same, exact personnel may be calculated differently. Slurry Division personnel is unknown as overlay projects are Qualifying under certain tax funding but not under others, as are the streets on which they work.

Street Sweeping

is only Partially funded by Measure O, Wastewater/Stormwater. Bureau of Street Services does not control the majority of that fund, Sanitation does. Another argument has been that Street Sweeping is a revenue generating activity, although it does generate revenue from parking citations, the CAO found the argument to be insufficient to satisfy the exemption requirement. Obstacles to removing Street Cleaning from furloughs are clear, the CAO has told the council they need to maintain a larger reserve fund and money is going to be swept from our surplus to do that.

 

Urban Forestry Division

Funding for the Street Tree Division is mostly general fund money, however the service they provide is so essential that they may be removed from furloughs due to the recent storm activity. Currently Los Angeles is suffering the effects of the budget cutbacks in the Street Tree Division as only Approximately 80 employees remain to maintain and oversee the Largest urban Forest in the WORLD!

 

 

Solutions

It is my belief that money could be used to remove Street Cleaning & Street Tree from furloughs reducing the transfer to the Reserve Fund as the CAO request, and/or supplementing that with money from the Storm Fund dependent on the balance in that account. It should be very easy to take any funds in the Special Event Fee Waiver fund to remove furloughs from all Street Service Employees.

This situation must be approached cautiously, the more personnel are added the higher the risk of having Huizars motion simply Fail. Another issue of concern is the return of people who are assigned to Street Maintenance duties but loaned to Street Cleaning, according to the Director an estimated 60% of people are working Above classification in the Bureau. Very Few people will volunteer to Sub Sweep if they can be removed from furloughs as are the people associated to Street Maintenance who do not perform “Pothole Repair” as required for Measure R etc..

 

Tensions are high as many on the council feel an obligation to increasing the reserves, and having Street Services remain on furloughs, others clearly see the need for the removal of furloughs from the Bureau and the devastating effects they have on the Core Services people expect and deserve in Los Angeles.

 

Keep in mind the following, We have a Surplus, more then enough to take every member of Street Services off of furloughs not just for the remainder of the year, but it could be done twice over.  How will the Bureau respond to the special Council requests and the Mayoral requests for service when the people on duty are not funded for that task?

Finally Councilman Bill Rosendahl not only threw the entire Board of Public Works under the bus he seemingly backed up and ran over them again asking where they were and why they were not standing up for the Bureau!

Lets Take a look at the CAO’s Plan for Street Services funds from his Report:

Public Works, Street Services

After accounting for interim appropriations and reimbursements anticipated later in the fiscal year and with the approval of recommendations contained within the report, a net year-end surplus of $16 million in special funds, including Gas Tax, Proposition C and Proposition 1B funds, is projected for the Bureau.

The timely receipt of anticipated reimbursements will be monitored to ensure a balanced budget at fiscal year-end The Bureau has stated that it will not be able to meet its revised goal to resurface 235 miles. The goal was lowered in the Second FSR, when the Bureau transferred $5.6 million to the Department of General Services (GSD) to replace lost General Fund appropriations with a corresponding reduction of 16 fewer miles for the resurfacing program.   Approximately $2.78 million in Gas Tax savings were identified to reimburse the General Fund for related costs as approved in the Alternative Plan for the P3 Concession Agreement report (C.F. 10-0139-S2).   The Bureau recommended using $2.5 million in Gas Tax savings to exempt all staff from furloughs. A CAO report recommending exempting only resurfacing and pot-hole repair staff was submitted to Council.

The CAO report also recommended that $7 million in Gas Tax savings be used to reimburse the General Fund for employee related costs and avoid the need for five additional furlough days for all General Fund employees*.

*this number was reduced to 1 additional furlough day for Most civilian employees after using “New Math” Today.

-Watch the video below if you have Microsoft Silverlight.