Four mayoral candidates vied for the endorsement of the Pacific Palisades Democratic Club on Sunday, but only City Councilman Eric Garcetti received the 60 percent or more of the vote needed for the victory. The Democratic candidates, who included Garcetti, City Controller Wendy Greuel, 9th District Councilmember Jan Perry and community advocate Emanuel Pleitez, addressed a variety of topics in front of nearly 300 audience members who had gathered at the Woman’s Club for a chance hear the candidates in person. Fire department cutbacks and the City’s deficit were just a few of the topics covered by front-runners Garcetti and Greuel, and they incited big reactions from the audience. ’I am just sick of saying ‘We are going to cut our way and tax our way out of this,” Garcetti said. ‘It is time for us to look at growing the economy.’ Garcetti said that in his 13th City Council District, which includes Hollywood, he has led the City in job growth and has kept vibrant businesses in the neighborhoods he represents. ‘As mayor I am going to look at what we can do across the City’partnerships with our universities to get ideas from the classroom to the boardroom.’ ’We need to graduate people ready to work,’ Garcetti said. ‘It is time for us to address our deficit and not chase businesses over our border by having a gross receipts tax, which taxes you even when you lose money.’ Greuel said there are several things the City needs to do to control spending. She mentioned her audits of the City’s cell phone and gas usages as examples. ‘I’ve taken on the Department of Water and Power, Planning Department, Transportation, Recreation and Parks’you name it.’ City officials need to sit down with labor unions and work toward further pension reforms, Greuel said, adding that 40 percent of the City’s budget could potentially come from the general fund and pensions. ‘We need to have a pension system that works and I’m auditing two of those pension systems.’ In regards to fire response times and safety, Greuel said that funding firefighters and fire response is a priority. ‘I’ve identified, as I’ve said, millions of dollars and things that have not been acted on in the City Council. We have to prioritize and get back to our basic City service’that’s what you need, that’s what you deserve and you need someone who is going to fight for that. '[Councilman] Bill Rosendahl’s been fighting a good fight for all of you to make sure you get the resources here,’ Greuel said. ‘He’s been fighting for you, but the important thing is to make it a priority, to not say, ‘Oh I wish I had.’ To, in fact, have done it, to have said, ‘Here’s the money we need to get those fire stations back up to speed.”’ Garcetti said that 70 percent of the City’s budget basically goes to safety and public services, but that ‘everything was hit’ because of the City’s budget crisis. ’I won’t ever apologize for us balancing the budget in those years,’ Garcetti said. ‘Five years toward bankruptcy, we would have had closures like you wouldn’t have believed. Fire houses, we would have downsized our police department. That we hung onto that in the recession is remarkable.’ When the mayor proposed eliminating 318 firefighter positions permanently, meaning they would never come back, Garcetti said he fought to keep those positions open so that they can be ‘filled again and not permanently cut.’ ’This year, you’ve seen me hold this [Fire] Chief’s feet to the fire in Council and publicly demand a five-year plan for restoration,’ Garcetti said. ‘He will this year finally put some engine companies back in fire houses and some ambulances back there as well.’ Garcetti, like Pleitez and Perry, advocated for the use of technology by first responders as a way to improve services. ’We all use GPS systems in our pockets and our cars’we should have them in every single fire rig and every ambulance,’ Garcetti said. ‘Right now, we have guys holding up maps sometimes to get to where they need to go, and that is unacceptable.’ Perry said that she has been a longtime advocate for a return to the City’s core services. ’Public safety is number one,’ Perry said. ‘Everybody’s community is unique and in this community there is hillside development and access issues.’ It’s important to use technologies to achieve greater efficiency, said Perry, adding that City officials need to be far more innovative and creative with their approach to public safety. The response time issue is lack of oversight, said Pleitez. ‘We need to be looking at technology and data’that’s my expertise. The most recent thing I was doing was working as a chief strategy officer for a data company in Pasadena.’ If elected, Pleitez said he would create a roving engineering team, whose sole job it is to analyze public safety data and concerns. ’We are thrilled that the community came out in such force for our mayoral candidate forum,’ said PPDC President Melissa Grant. ‘We have four candidates that people need to know about for the coming elections in March.’
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