2004 State of the City Address
by Mayor James Hahn

April 19, 2004

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following address was delivered at Fire Station 88 in Sherman Oaks.

Thank you, and welcome to you all.

Looking out at the crowd assembled here today, I see a lot of faces I have had the pleasure of knowing as friends during my travels throughout this city.

The people assembled here today represent all this city is - diverse, hardworking and vibrant. And the young people I see are a shining reminder of our future, a future dependent on the actions we take now. We must not let them down.

I would like to especially welcome our LA’s BEST students who are here today. They are taking part in a program intended to improve their lives, help them learn and keep them out of trouble.

City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo; Controller Laura Chick; City Council President Alex Padilla; honorable members of the city council; esteemed City Commissioners; distinguished consuls general; department chiefs and managers; neighborhood council representatives; ladies and gentlemen.

Since I last reported to you, I have worked to make Los Angeles a fitting legacy to leave to our children. Today, I am proud to report to you that the state of our city is safer, a better place for our families and is improving every day.

It’s been a tough year for the budget, with fewer resources from Sacramento and Washington, and fewer revenues here at home. We are still faced with the uncertainty caused by a state government looking to take our local revenues to fix its budget mess. But while the economy ebbs and flows, this city’s needs remain constant.

We need safe streets. Our kids need safe places to go after school. Their working parents need housing they can afford. Businesses need an environment suitable for growth, where they can put people to work and reinvest in communities.

This year, we took a fresh look at the budget with an eye toward directing resources to the things that make people’s lives better. Now, we have a more efficient government that is providing more services with every dollar. Despite the financial hardships our government and many of us are facing, we are putting more police on the street, repairing more roads and building more housing than ever before.

Next year when I report to you, I am confident that we will again be able to say that the state of our city is better - and is getting better every single day.

It’s good to be here again at Fire Station 88. Those of you in the audience today from Sherman Oaks know Fire Station 88 as the place from where engines roar to put out fires in the neighborhood. But you may not know that this station also plays a vital role in protecting our city and our nation as a headquarters for one of the city’s three Urban Search and Rescue Teams. This station is the rallying point for the Los Angeles Search and Rescue Task Force of more than 200 people who can be anywhere in the nation within 12 hours to help after floods, tornadoes, earthquakes or terrorist attacks.

Surrounding us is the equipment these brave men and women use to save children from flood control channels during storms, and what they used in the aftermath of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City.

Today, thanks to a renewed spirit of cooperation among city, state and federal agencies, we are better prepared than ever before to keep our city safe through any emergency.

Our Search and Rescue teams are always at the ready. Our police department’s Counterterrorism Bureau is working to identify potential threats and take action before terror strikes.

We are working with the Sheriff’s Department, CHP, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to ensure we have the training, expertise and coordination to respond to a major incident.

Safety begins at home, and while we must remain vigilant against terror with the latest technology and the best intelligence, we must not let basic police work fall to the wayside.

I have lived in this city all my life, and I want it to again be - and always be - a place where families can take nighttime walks together. Where good neighbors have a sense of ownership over their block.

Last month, I was in Washington, D.C. to lobby for more Homeland Security funding, but as I drove by the Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial, I was reminded of the danger some of us see right outside our windows.

Etched into the memorial’s stone were the words “freedom from fear.”

What a gift that freedom would be to our city - freedom for seniors to feel safe walking down the street at all hours; freedom for parents to be secure in letting their children play in the front yard; freedom for young people to dream about a bright future.

It’s time the overwhelming majority of good, hardworking people in our city did not have to live in fear of the criminal few.

Los Angeles belongs to us, the good people of this city who work hard and play by the rules.

Three years ago, we saw our city’s crime rate steadily increasing, and we saw our police force shrink by 900 officers.

Today we’re seeing a very different story unfold.

Through a concerted effort and the leadership of LAPD Chief Bill Bratton, officer recruitment and morale have skyrocketed and community involvement has increased. Because of our efforts, crime has gone down.

We added LAPD stop-in centers to 62 city parks to increase safety for the families who use them and to bring the department closer to the communities it serves.

Chief Bratton implemented the COMPSTAT system here in Los Angeles to keep officers up-to-the-minute on crime, allowing them to target their efforts.

The result: violent crime went down in every category. Homicides went down twenty-two percent citywide. Violent crime is already down this year and we will keep pressing until Los Angeles achieves my goal of being the safest big city in America.

Last week I brought several city agencies together to come up with a plan to devote $2 million to pay for almost 40,000 hours of police overtime dedicated to our Housing Authority communities. The past few weeks have seen horrific multiple homicides in and around our Housing Authority neighborhoods.

When I went to Nickerson Gardens to announce this funding, people were understandably anguished, and angry, crying out: “Our kids are dying.” Yesterday I was with a mother at Dolores Mission who had lost her son last month to a stray bullet, as the whole church prayed for healing in that community. In Los Angeles today, we are working together to heal communities plagued by violence.

To help the LAPD protect our families, we are renewing our commitment to bringing more federal dollars to Los Angeles. My Criminal Justice Planning Office has already doubled the amount of grant funding we won compared with the previous year and will continue working to secure additional federal funds for law enforcement.

Reducing crime also means preventing crime. That’s why we have expanded our LA’s BEST after school program to serve an additional 6,000 children across the city - including 500 more students that we are funding in next year’s budget, despite tough economic times.

We know that crime goes down in neighborhoods with after school programs. But LA’s BEST also puts kids on a path to success. Studies show that kids who participate in the LA’s BEST program not only do better in school - they like school more. This will help them succeed in high school, go to college and make better lives for themselves and their children.

Being a safer city will go a long way toward making us a more prosperous city. Safer streets attract new investments, new housing and new jobs to our neighborhoods.

Over the years, we’ve all heard people say you can’t bring down crime until the economy improves. I believe the opposite is true - unless crime is reduced, the economy won’t improve. That’s what Bill Bratton proved in New York City and that’s what we’re doing together in Los Angeles.

Nowhere is the link between safety and the economy more evident than at the Los Angeles International Airport.

LAX is one of this city’s - and the nation’s - largest economic hubs, generating $60 billion a year. To keep goods, people and revenues flowing through our city, we must update our airport to face the unprecedented security threats of the post-9/11 era. This year we will build the consensus necessary to modernize LAX and make it safer for passengers and the surrounding communities.

The people who work in this station can tell you that sometimes the difference between life and death is a matter of seconds -- how long it takes the fire department to get water on a burning roof, or how long it takes before a paramedic can give CPR to a heart attack victim.

Last year, we were able to add a 10th firefighter to 18 Fire Department task force stations, dramatically improving their ability to respond to emergencies. Today I am proud to announce that despite a tight budget, this year we will fund the hiring of 30 more firefighters, adding 10 more stations with a 10th member.

I am also proud to announce that next year will see paramedics and ambulances in every firehouse in the city. And they will be busy - 85 percent of calls to the Fire Department are for medical emergencies, not fires. With trained medical help in every neighborhood citywide, people will be able to get help faster when they need it - this will save lives.

The nation, state and this city are amidst tough economic times. City Hall - and our families -- are not immune from economic forces affecting the entire globe. There are bright spots -- in November, a Cal State Northridge study reported that the Valley is outpacing the state in job growth. We want to see even greater success citywide.

To attract quality jobs, we must have quality housing that is affordable. Our city’s business leaders have told me again and again -- the workers that keep the economic engines running need homes they can afford on their salaries -- otherwise, businesses and jobs will go elsewhere.

The cornerstone of my commitment to affordable housing in Los Angeles was my pledge to create an unprecedented $100 million Housing Trust Fund. Just last week I was proud to announce that we have fulfilled that pledge of $100 million. Los Angeles is now home to the nation’s largest local housing trust fund.

Nine-thousand units of housing are being built this year in Los Angeles, double the amount of two years ago. More than 40 percent of those being built are affordable housing.

While we are focused on helping people find places to live, we are also helping them have places to work. So much attention is placed on the Fortune 500, but we in Los Angeles must realize that small businesses account for more than 90 percent of this city’s businesses and jobs. Our economy rises and falls with individual entrepreneurs, with the people who employ 2 or 3 or 100 people.

We are taking a new look at the city’s business tax, to make it easier and more fair. We are holding meetings all over the city to encourage Los Angeles businesses to win Los Angeles city contracts.

We are streamlining red tape, and my newly-established Small and Local Business Advisory Committee - composed of small business owners from every council district in the city - will ensure that small businesses have a permanent and strong voice at City Hall.

Los Angeles has the most undereducated workforce in the nation, and businesses can only operate where they can find people with the skills needed in today’s - and tomorrow’s - economy.

That’s why we have provided more educational opportunities through our Free Cash for College program, which helps thousands of L.A. high school students get free financial aid for college.

Our Youth Opportunity Program is providing training to high school students and gets them jobs.

Our Workforce Literacy program is helping train people for the jobs of tomorrow and is retraining people who have been laid-off to help them reenter the workforce.

We are enhancing lifelong learning opportunities with new, beautiful branch libraries. We are increasing the library’s operational budget next year and are opening three new libraries, for a total of 72 across the city, offering books, computers and programs for young people and adults alike.

In a city where more than 40 percent of our residents were born in another country, education is crucial. We want everyone, no matter where they hail from, to be able to succeed here. Through education, and through initiatives like our new Office of Immigrant Affairs, we are working to include every Los Angeles resident in our civic life so that they can make as positive a contribution as they can to our city and our economy.

Making this city better also requires us to be responsible stewards of the land, air and water we inherited and will pass on to our children. We are helping encourage the use of environmentally sound technologies by linking businesses and residents with financial and other incentives. Most significantly, this coming year will see the establishment of the Bureau of Environmental Services and the appointment of an environmental issues advisor in the mayor’s office.

By getting creative, we have found solutions to save money and keep up with the city’s priorities no matter what the economic situation.

This year, when our winter homeless shelters were scheduled to close, we found funding to keep them open. Just because it’s warm outside doesn’t mean people should sleep on the street. These shelters also provide important counseling and training services to get people back on their feet - sometimes all people need is a second chance.

Anyone can fall through the cracks. A couple of years ago, I ran into a man on Skid Row. After a moment of conversation we realized that we had gone to college together. He had owned his own small business, but because he was on his own, he did not have health insurance. His wife was stricken with cancer, and he bankrupted himself trying to keep her alive. She unfortunately died, and he was on the streets. We need to help those Los Angeles residents most in need, and this year we include funding to keep shelters open year-round in my proposed budget.

Right now, questions are being raised about how we are doing business at City Hall. My service to the city is always in the best interest of the people of Los Angeles. To me, ethics isn’t optional, and I won’t tolerate unethical behavior from anyone in my office, or any City employee. We are fully-cooperating with all inquiries - no one is more interested than I am in finding out if there is any wrongdoing in city government. If there is, it will be punished and rooted out.

We are focused on doing the people’s business at City Hall - and we need to make sure the people of Los Angeles know that. That’s why I proposed a comprehensive ethics reform plan that directly addresses the concern that to get a city contract, one must give a campaign contribution.

My proposal would once and for all ban political contributions by city contract bidders and land use applicants. Some say that this will make it harder for political candidates to raise money. Well, no Los Angeles resident has ever told me they think there is too little money in politics. Only when the public trusts its government can we work together to move this city forward.

Bringing the community to the table is essential to meeting Los Angeles’ priorities. I have heard a loud and clear message from residents and businesses across our city - you want a more responsive city government. We are listening.

We are listening to neighborhood councils. We now have more than 80 certified neighborhood councils. Each is eligible for $50,000 to fund local projects of their choice - like the Woodland Hills-Warner Center Council’s “Passport to Reading” project at Taft High School, which drew 2,000 kids to hear from 40 authors. The Hollywood United Council bought equipment for the Fire Department. And the Historic Highland Park, Eagle Rock and Glassell Park Council hosted “Santa in York Hills,” where 400 children from needy families were given food and toys. Our Neighborhood Councils are helping us at City Hall better serve communities, and they are directly serving communities themselves. They should be applauded for all of their hard work.

We are listening to our residents and business owners 24-hours a day, seven days a week through our 3-1-1 system, which provides access to city services through one easy-to-remember phone number.

We are listening to our residents and businesses at full-service neighborhood city halls. We are bringing government closer to home.

We are sharing with each other what we are hearing through our TeamWork LA program, which is working to identify neighborhood nuisances that can often be easily solved with a little coordination between city departments. These neighborhood teams have tackled problems ranging from road repairs to graffiti to those shoes hanging on utility lines that contribute to neighborhood blight. By taking care of the little things, we prevent an atmosphere that emboldens those seeking to commit real harm in our neighborhoods.

We have heard over and over again that public safety is something that concerns people the most - and we know that by addressing public safety, jobs, housing and more revenues to pay for things like street maintenance will follow.

Making this kind of progress requires a team effort. I am proud to partner with an energetic and committed city attorney, city controller, and city council, our dedicated city department managers, and thousands of community leaders and residents to make Los Angeles a better place.

Working together, we have been able to improve this city over the last year despite a tough economy and less help from the state and federal governments.

But more must be done.

We must unite to get our fair share from Washington and Sacramento, and keep them from raiding our budget to fix theirs.

We must commit to public safety, affordable housing and help for businesses to create more jobs, more revenues and a better city for everyone.

We must never lose sight of what this city is, and what it can be; the most welcoming, the most exciting, the most diverse, the safest; the best city on earth.

Thank you.

Mayor James K. Hahn
April 19, 2004.