By HAROLD L. KATZ

In this time of economic chaos across our country, I know it is important to maintain a positive attitude about the financial future of Los Angeles, California and our country. But how to deal with my subject matter and do that is a quandary.

We all know that to survive, the L.A. business community must accept many of the sacrifices required to balance the budget. The primary purpose of government by that I mean the top priority is to protect its citizens at all costs. Without that protection, the business community as well as all the citizens are placed at great risk.

Decisions have been made at the city and state levels that place the L.A. business community and the citizens of California at great risk. While drastic cuts in budgets have been made in every area, there is one area where I don’t think cuts should have been made. That is public safety.

Fires don’t understand that financial conditions are bad and there isn’t enough money to go around. There have been fires and there will be fires, both buildings and in natural areas, but government will not have the tools they have had until now to fight those fires.

Grounding planes

One thing that caught my attention was the decision to cut California’s lease deal in half on the jet airplane that carries water and fire retardant. When the fires come and they will come as they always do I wonder if the losses sustained will far exceed the money saved by the governor’s veto pen that reduced the availability of that aircraft.

The Los Angeles Fire Department is considering the implementation of service “brownouts” by scaling back service by eliminating 28 crews around the city at any given time. So if you own a business and it catches fire, keep your fingers crossed that you will be lucky enough to have fire engines come to fight your fire.

City Council President Eric Garcetti said that “none of us want to do this, but we only have so much money to go around.” He is correct, but public safety is not the place to cut. I empathize with the position he finds himself in, but again, the first priority is public safety. Everything else comes second.

By the way, the city will be reducing its fleet by nine ambulances, though it said it is maintaining all paramedic ambulances, which is good, but does not compute.

Next, let’s look at the cuts the Police Department is going to have to make. Back in the early ’80s, I was co-chair of a ballot proposition called Project 8500. It called for an assessment of $57 on every piece of real estate in Los Angeles and it would have increased our police force from 6,900 officers to 8,500 officers, and it lost. We now have about 9,800 officers, but we lose a substantial number to retirement yearly. At that time, I realized that we didn’t need 8,500 officers, we needed about 18,000 officers and we would still be well short of New York’s or Chicago’s numbers. In addition, we cover 464 square miles, far more than either of those cities.

Our small numbers of police officers do an incredible job for this city, considering the facts. I don’t know by how much the L.A. police force will be reduced as a result of not training recruits to replace the officers who retire. But I do know that when the economy is bad, crime does not take a vacation, which leads me to my third point: The negative impact on both the business community and the citizens of this city by the federal court order to release 40,000 inmates.

License structure

Now I am sure that there are many nonviolent criminals in our jails on minor drug charges whose release would not be a threat to the life of anyone. We are told that these are the people who will be released. If this could be accomplished, why was Charles Samuel released, resulting in the death of Lily Burk, age 17?

With all due respect to my many friends in elected office, I feel that most elected officials have 20/20 vision, they can see 20 feet in front of them and 20 feet to each side, when they should be looking out at least 20 years into the future. If someone had done that 10 or 20 years ago, maybe we wouldn’t be in the position we are in now.

We are losing businesses because of our city license structure; we are losing film and TV production because we don’t offer the credits other cities do. We have Proposition 13 that other states don’t have, but that doesn’t seem to help. Yet we are sinking in a sea of deficits and we cannot counter this problem, so things will get worse. How is it that New York can have some 45,000 police officers, and offer credits for film and TV production?

Councilman Bernard Parks noted that the city budget is $2.3 billion, of which police and fire budgets account for $1.6 billion, leaving only $700,000 million for all other city services.

My last question is: How did we get into this mess in the first place? It all can’t be blamed on the poor economy. How is it that other cities have police forces that are 2.5 to four times our size? Somebody screwed up big time along the way.

Finally, since Chief Bill Bratton is resigning, I can’t let this opportunity pass without recommending to the Police Commission that they consider Cmdr. Joan T. McNamara as his replacement.

McNamara has accomplished miracles in her assignment to the Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau. She is a 28-year veteran of the LAPD. She is a commander noted for her integrity and her leadership ability. I know that from personal experience with her.

Harold L. Katz is a partner in a CPA firm in Los Angeles and a citizen activist.