A budget shortfall may force major changes in the City of Los Angeles that could affect the maintenance of trees along the city streets and parks.
Los Angeles’ top budget analyst, Miguel Santana, is urging council members to focus on very bracing financial challenges in the years ahead which would include outsourcing landscape maintenance operations normally done by city workers.
The Los Angeles City Council could vote this week on whether to proceed with the elimination of 1,000 positions to address this year’s $208-million deficit and the city’s dwindling reserve fund. Santana urged city officials to immediately begin seeking private contractors for the convention center, municipal golf courses, city parking garages and the zoo. For example, a proposed pilot program in the parks department would contract out 20 percent of its landscaping duties. And L.A. residents could soon see some unpleasant changes.
Tree trimming may no longer be a service that Angelenos can count on. Because of prior budget cuts, very few of the city’s palm trees will be trimmed this year, according to the report. In the future, the city’s top budget analyst is asking City Council members to consider reducing the costs of street tree trimming “to the bare minimum” and returning “responsibility for street tree maintenance to the abutting property owner,” as was the case before a change to city law in 1931.