Mayor Bass seeks to shutter department serving the city's youths

[ad_1] 4 years in the past, Los Angeles Metropolis Councilmember Monica Rodriguez stood on the steps of Metropolis Corridor and celebrated the creation of the Youth Growth Division.

She had pushed since 2018 for the division, which oversees applications for younger individuals, together with a Youth Council to teach them about metropolis authorities.

On Tuesday, with the town deep in a funds disaster, Rodriguez pleaded for Mayor Karen Bass to not do away with the division.

In her proposed funds for the upcoming fiscal yr, Bass instructed that the town fold the Youth Growth Division — together with the Division of Growing older and the Financial and Workforce Growth Division — into the bigger Group Funding for Households Division.

The Youth Growth Division would now not exist, although a few of its features can be preserved. Beneath Bass’ proposal, the funds devoted to these features would lower from $2.3 million to lower than $1.6 million. Eight workers can be laid off, with 10 remaining.

“Don’t undermine and wipe away all these years of labor,” Rodriguez stated at a information convention at Metropolis Corridor on Wednesday.

She known as the mayor’s proposed funds “a hatchet to so many applications that Angelenos depend on” and stated there was no “rhyme or cause” to a few of the instructed cuts.

Matt Hale, the town’s deputy mayor of finance, innovation and operations, stated the three departments being absorbed by the Group Funding for Households Division have tasks that typically overlap.

“Like most issues within the metropolis, now we have divided them into silos, and individuals who come by way of our doorways saying ‘I need assistance’ are then given a scavenger hunt to carry out,” Hale stated.

At a Metropolis Council funds committee assembly Tuesday, Hale stated the consolidation would save $5 million and “lead to higher outcomes and simpler companies.”

Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl stated the mayor’s workplace shouldn't be contemplating reversing course on the consolidation.

Bass’ proposed funds, which is being thought-about by the funds committee in a number of weeks of hearings, makes an attempt to shut a $1-billion shortfall precipitated largely by rising personnel prices, hovering authorized payouts and a slowdown within the native financial system. The mayor’s funds eliminates greater than 2,700 metropolis positions — about 1,650 of them by way of layoffs.

Along with working the 30-member Youth Council, the Youth Growth Division organizes the Youth Summit and the Youth Expo, annual occasions that assist younger individuals get jobs and internships. The division is also reviewing metropolis applications to find out whether or not they're reaching youths and assembly youths’ wants.

If the cuts instructed by the mayor are made, the Youth Growth Division would attain about 6,900 constituents, down from about 10,000 final yr.

“To take [the department] away now wouldn't simply be a step backwards, it could be a betrayal of the youth … who need to be invested in, not ignored,” stated Monica Rodriguez — no relation to the councilmember — who was a member of the inaugural Youth Council.

Councilmember Rodriguez stated that as a substitute of being consolidated, the division ought to develop, suggesting that the Gang Discount and Youth Growth program ought to come underneath its purview. This system, which offers gang intervention and prevention companies and group engagement applications, is underneath the mayor’s workplace and has a proposed funds of almost $40 million.

“The division doesn’t need to go away. The division can maintain itself,” the council member stated. “This funds doc must be a mirrored image of the values of this metropolis and what’s being communicated right now is younger individuals’s voices are subordinate to different priorities — and that’s not OK.”