Tonight, for the second straight Monday, the City Council will devote its 7 o’clock meeting — three weeks before its scheduled approval date —to further studying a deficit budget with hundreds of moving parts.
Confronted with a recently revealed $6.5 million deficit, Mayor Andy Weissman calls the present concept “a status quo budget that does not provide for reductions or growth, just maintenance of the status quo.”
While no layoffs are proposed, some city positions will be left vacant when present occupants resign, retire, or, heaven forbid, get the axe.
In reviewing what he has called “a gimmicky budget” that includes a stack of onetime monies to fill in crevices, Mr. Weissman notes that City Hall hopes to reduce the deficit by $1 million by convincing the six city unions to agree to a measure of givebacks.
Sources say that union leaders will train one of their eyes on the Police Officers Assn. to establish the proper fiscal mood by taking the lead in returning some prized fiscal gains.
A Sunny Outlook Is Urged
Meanwhile, Mehaul O’Leary, the Council’s optimist-in-chief, said today this is no time to look glum.
Even though the Culver City air is nearly still at what should be the height of construction activity season, Mr. O’Leary says that if his colleagues will put on a believable sunny face, he is confident that City Hall can work through its slice of the recession and emerge in a stronger position.
Owner of his own pub near one of the city’s busiest intersections for nearly a decade, the Councilman says there are plenty of investors hungrily searching for a community in which to place their money.
“As a business owner,” he said, “I see these kinds of situations all of the time. All of us, restaurants and pubs, have been affected by the recession. But there are people who there with money, plenty of money, that they want to invest. Here we are.
“You can’t just shrink and hope.”
He says city leaders, meaning Mr. O’Leary’s colleagues on the dais, need to assume a more aggressive position so they can help sell the many virtues of investing in Culver City.
“If Los Angeles is the entertainment capital and Culver City is the Heart of Screenland, that should put us in position to become the kind of destination that we should be,” the Councilman said.
