LOS ANGELES — Take a walk through Michael Schneider’s neighborhood near Melrose and La Brea, and it’s easy to find sidewalks and streets in pretty bad shape. 

Schneider is the founder of Streets for All, a group that fights to improve streets for all modes of transportation, and he fears with the latest proposed budget cuts by the city, it’s only going to get worse.  

As the city administrative officer for the city of Los Angeles, Matt Szabo is in charge of the budget.

“This current year, we are seeing an overspend of nearly $300 million and we’re seeing revenues come in under plan by nearly $200 million,” Szabo said.

He’s proposing to cut up to 2,000 vacant positions, half of which he says have been unfilled for more than a year. He says the city has almost $300 million tied up in over 3,600 vacant positions.

“That is more than we spend on every library in the city,” Szabo said. “In a time where budgets are tight, we can’t afford to spend money on positions that don’t exist and are delivering no services.”

During the pandemic, the city saw decreased revenue, leading to a hiring freeze and incentivizing retirement, which led to thousands of vacant positions. 

Two years later, when the economy bounced back and the city saw a surge of federal funding, it added even more positions on top of those that were already vacant.

(Spectrum News/Ariel Wesler)

“It may hinder our ability to expand service, but the goal is to maintain current service levels and to deal with our budget gap at the moment,” Szabo said.

Of the vacant positions being cut, the majority, 17%, would come from Rec and Parks, followed by the Bureau of Sanitation and the Bureau of Street Services. 

The cuts would save around $155 million.

“They may not reduce services further, [but] it certainly doesn’t mean that you’re going to be getting better service in the city, and the streets are going to get repaved faster, and sidewalks are going to get fixed faster, etc.,” Schneider said.

And for those who criticize the city for giving raises during a budget deficit, Szabo says, “We need to remain competitive as an employer. We do need to be able to pay competitive wages to our police officers and our other city workers and that is a reality of the economic times that we’re in.”

While Schneider agrees pay increases for first responders and other city workers are justified, he feels the city needs to do a better job of balancing priorities.

“We’re just focused on when there’s an emergency. How do we optimize for that situation? [Then we] give those departments raises and everything else kind of goes by the wayside,” Schneider said.

The final decision is soon to be in the hands of the mayor and the city council.

Mayor Bass is expected to present her proposed budget to the Los Angeles City Council by April 22.