TRASH COLLECTION FEE / INCREASE

Motion - With only 25 police officers for every 10,000 residents, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) remains significantly understaffed compared to other large cities across the country. The City of Los Angeles deserves a police department with the necessary resources to reduce crime and protect our residents. Yesterday, the Mayor of Los Angeles released his budget for Fiscal Year 2006-07, which aims to eliminate the structural deficit while investing in critical services and programs that improve the quality of life in our neighborhoods, such as police and crime prevention. To achieve the goal of eliminating the structural deficit and increase the police force by over 1,000 officers, the 2006-07 budget proposes increasing the fee for household trash collection. The increased trash collection fee will allow the City to recover some of the costs associated with providing this service and will, in turn, generate additional General Fund savings that can be used towards increasing the police on Los Angeles' streets by over 1,000 officers and increasing crime prevention programs. Far too often, the City squanders general fund savings on unnecessary and inefficient programs. The Mayor has stated that the increased trash collection fee should be dedicated solely to the improvement of LAPD and law enforcement efforts. Should the City Council approve the proposed trash collection fee increase, we must work with the Mayor to ensure that these general fund savings are used the way they were intended--to hire more police and invest in crime prevention programs. THEREFORE MOVE that the City Administrative Officer work with the City Attorney and report to the Budget and Finance Committee on the mechanisms that could be used to earmark the General Fund savings generated through the increased trash collection fee so that they can be used solely and exclusively for public safety and for hiring 1,000 additional police officers.