{"id":344461,"date":"2010-02-20T20:25:47","date_gmt":"2010-02-21T01:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.szone.us\/f76\/city-council-moves-close-budget-gap-greig-smith-39746\/"},"modified":"2010-02-20T20:25:47","modified_gmt":"2010-02-21T01:25:47","slug":"city-council-moves-to-close-budget-gap%c2%85greig-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/344461","title":{"rendered":"City Council Moves to Close Budget Gap\u0085Greig Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><b><font face=\"Georgia\"><font size=\"4\"><font color=\"#000099\">City Council Moves to Close Budget Gap\u0085<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/b><br \/>\n<b><font face=\"Georgia\"><font size=\"4\"><font color=\"#000099\"><br \/>\n<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/b>The City Council on Thursday moved decisively and boldly to address the City\u0092s $212 million budget deficit and avert severe financial disruption. The Council voted to eliminate up to 4,000 City jobs, which will inevitably include many layoffs.<\/p>\n<p>This was the most difficult decision that an elected official could make. I understand that every layoff represents a real person whose family now faces very difficult times and I did not take these decisions lightly or without working hard to explore all of our available options. But we had run out of options.<\/p>\n<p>Even as we were working to address the budget deficit, we received yet another warning from the financial ratings agencies that the City was in danger of having our bonds downgraded, which would make it more expensive to borrow money.<\/p>\n<p>Each day that the Council deliberated, we lost another $330,000, the equivalent of four jobs.<\/p>\n<p>This is the most dire situation we have faced in 75 years and without drastic steps, the City was threatened with insolvency. Failure was not an option. <\/p>\n<p>My priority remains maintaining the most essential core City services, especially public safety. We will emerge from this crisis leaner and stronger and with more focus on the most essential core City services. <\/p>\n<p>I applaud my fellow Council Members who joined me in this most difficult but necessary decision:<\/p>\n<p>Bernard Parks, Dennis Zine, Ed Reyes, Bill Rosendahl, Jan Perry, Tom LaBonge, Tony Cardenas and Council President Eric Garcetti. My special recognition goes to Councilmembers Jan Perry and Ed Reyes for moving to break the logjam that was crippling the Council.<\/p>\n<p>Thinks as always to Councilmember Grieg Smith and his fine staff.  Keep up the good work:)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>City Council Moves to Close Budget Gap\u0085 The City Council on Thursday moved decisively and boldly to address the City\u0092s $212 million budget deficit and avert severe financial disruption. The Council voted to eliminate up to 4,000 City jobs, which will inevitably include many layoffs. This was the most difficult decision that an elected official [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4296,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4296"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}