Civics: LA is spending more but getting less. A new mayor won’t fix it.
From street sweeping to tree trimming, LA residents are seeing less of the basic services they rely on.
With the mayoral race heating up, candidates are promising to fix the problem. But LA is spending more and getting less — and whoever wins will take on a system that limits how much they can actually change.
In five years, LA’s budget grew 34%. The number of sidewalks it repaired fell 33%.
And residents are feeling the effects in their neighborhoods. In 2021, LA cut street sweeping from weekly to every other week. In Westlake, a group of volunteers responded by picking up trash the Bureau of Sanitation left behind, said Elaine Alaniz, president of the Westlake North Neighborhood Council.
When asked how she felt about the decline in services, Alaniz hesitated to speak for herself.
“I don’t even want to put feeling [into it]. Let me just tell you by the responses that I’m getting from the community,” she said.
As most Angelenos see, these aren’t isolated complaints. They point to a bigger problem: LA is struggling to keep up with the work residents expect their city to do.
