While California's economy continues to experience a slow recovery, the City of Los Angeles continues to be challenged by a $165 million deficit. Addressing the structural deficit could require either or both increasing revenue and decreasing City services. This means that some of the services that are important to you may not be delivered or may not be delivered as frequently.

Please know that I am very focused on improving efficiency, increasing accountability and transparency. While we continue to make progress on those fronts, the decisions inherent in the annual budget process cannot be mitigated by efficiency alone.

The Budget and Finance Committee's deliberations on the 2015-16 budget begin on April 28, 2015. You can find a schedule of budget hearings here. Hearings are broadcast live on the City’s public access network on Channel 35 and are streamed online here.

Yesterday, on April 1, 2015, at least 8 residential burglaries occurred in Woodland Hills in the Topanga Area. See the community alert from LAPD below, and follow these burglary prevention tips.

• Reminder: Don’t forget to lock and secure your residence when you leave. Leaving your windows open is an open invitation for a burglar to come into your residence.
• Here are a few examples of things that may help prevent you from becoming a victim: If you decide to leave your windows open get a stick and put it in the window frame preventing your window from opening all the way.
• Make sure you have your side gates locked. This is one of the most common entries for burglars. They enter through the side gate, and make entry into your home from the rear, away from public view.
• Keep your bushes around your windows trimmed so there is no place to hide.
• Post alarm signs in your front yard.
• Place a Beware of Dog sign on your gates.
• If your residence looks like a hard target, the criminal will be more likely to pass your house and move on to an easier target. 

See more at nixle.com.

Last night, as the City Council's Economic Development Committee met to discuss proposals to raise the City's minimum wage to lift people out of poverty, I submitted a letter to the Chair, raising questions and proposed solutions to ensure that any wage increase enacted by the City works to achieve our goals. 

Raising Los Angeles's minimum wage has the potential to change people's lives for the better, and re-energize many sectors of our economy. But with Los Angeles's diverse and complex regional economy, it is important that we craft good public policy that addresses the unique needs of our City.

The text of that letter appears below:

The Los Angeles City Council’s Economic Development Committee will be holding a series of field hearings across Los Angeles on the proposal to raise the City’s minimum wage. By doing so, the Council hopes to create as thorough and deliberative a process as possible. Hearings are open to the public and will be held starting the week of March 24th as follows: 

Over the past two decades, Spark of Love has successfully collected millions of toys for children in need.

It was my pleasure this morning to present a sample of this season's donated toys to Chief Ralph Terrazas and the Los Angeles Fire Fighters who make Spark of Love possible.

If you have new, unwrapped toys and sports equipment to donate, please join me this Monday from 4:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. as we Stuff-a-Bus full of toys at the Westfield Topanga & Promenade.

The City of Los Angeles has the opportunity to act on an ambitious and important minimum wage proposal that can dramatically improve the lives of many, but we must do so in a way that will actually create jobs, improve our economy and best serve our entire community. Yesterday, the Council’s Economic Development Committee heard testimony on a pair of motions that merged together will help advance the minimum wage increase in a deliberative manner.

This past Labor Day, Mayor Eric Garcetti put forward a plan to raise the City’s minimum wage from the current $9.00 per hour, to $13.25 per hour by 2017.

With 27% of Los Angeles residents living at or below the poverty line, raising the minimum wage is a noble goal. I applaud the Mayor, and my colleagues who authored the motion, Councilmembers Mike Bonin, Curren Price, Nury Martinez and Gil Cedillo, for their commitment to bettering the circumstances of more than half a million of our fellow Angelenos.

And as we work together to lift families out of poverty, it is crucial that we be deliberative and get it right--particularly because there will be real impacts felt by small businesses and non-profit providers who drive our economy and serve our vulnerable communities. Making sure these impacts are fully studied and properly mitigated is the intent of the second measure considered by the Committee today, which I offered last week alongside Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell.

We know that raising wages is a proven way to put money into the hands of the working poor and who will, in turn, spend that money locally. But legislation is equal parts art and science, and all too often the devil is in the details.  We know that wages in this country have been stagnant for too long, and we know that many people who work full time receive food stamps and other government assistance. What we don’t fully understand are some of the unintended consequences of a wage increase. 

It was my pleasure to address the Senate Human Services Committee yesterday at their field hearing on the future of funding of services for people with developmental disabilities, held yesterday at City Hall, where I was pleased to welcome Chairman Jim Beall and Sen. Carol Liu. 

Blumenfield addresses the Senate Human Services Committee field hearing at Los Angeles City Hall, on October 9, 2014.

In addition to praising the committee for holding this important field hearing, I took the opportunity to raise a pair of challenges we face in the City of Los Angeles as we work to lift Angelenos out of poverty. These challenges, if left unaddressed, have the potential to hurt Californians living with disabilities and numerous vulnerable populations, including seniors and others.

First, because many of the service providers are partially funded by state and federal reimbursements, it is crucial that leaders in the State take into account cost of living and local minimum wage when setting reimbursement rates. As the City of Los Angeles works to increase the minimum wage for workers across Los Angeles, this issue will become even more important to our local agencies. 

Second, the state must clarify that exempt employees who must be paid twice the minimum wage have that wage based on the state, not local minimum wage. 

Today, I introduced a motion that would formally activate our lobbyists in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. to work with our elected representatives to correct and clarify these two important issues.

As a result of the anticipated increased winds and lowering relative humidity, the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) will pre-deploy additional resources beginning at 8:00 AM on Thursday October 2, 2014.

These additional firefighters will be placed at select Neighborhood Fire Stations serving high hazard brush areas, including Fire Station 84 in Woodland Hills, for an anticipated 24 hours, pending re-evaluated weather conditions.

Additional staffing includes: 11 Engines, 5 Brush Patrols (4x4 trucks able to access remote areas, equipped with water and hose), one EIT (Firefighter Staff Assistant) for each Battalion and Division Chief, two Metro Fire Dispatchers, one Air Operations Officer and one Helicopter Pilot.

Councilmember Blumenfield addresses reporters a July press conference on Orange Line improvements.

The Orange Line is the valley's only dedicated transit way and every day thousands of people rely on it to get to work, school, and home. Making the Orange Line faster and more efficient for riders is a priority for me. Yesterday, Metro Board staff presented some immediate, short, and long term options to improve this service. I'm very encouraged by their recommendations for the near future and will continue working with Councilmember Krekorian and the growing coalition of Valley stakeholders for the long term.  

Metro's The Source reports:

The Orange Line is Metro’s second-busiest bus line behind only the 720, the Rapid bus service along Wilshire Boulevard. With the Orange Line often crowded at peak hours, the Metro Board in July approved a motion asking Metro to investigate short-term fixes to speed up the Orange Line and add capacity, the feasibility of a possible bus rapid transit line between North Hollywood, Bob Hope Airport and the Gold Line in Pasadena and a possible conversion of the Orange Line to rail.The above Metro staff report explains how the agency plans to go forward.The gist of it: as for the question of rail conversion and extending bus rapid transit to Burbank and Pasadena, Metro plans to have those issues studied as part of an ongoing “mobility matrices” process. Yes, that’s a mouthful. In plain English, the matrices are evaluating potential transportation projects around Los Angeles County to see which should be included in an update of Metro’s long-range plan.

In July, I testified to the Metro board in support of a package of proposed improvements along the Orange Line--improvements that will make a huge difference in my West Valley council district, where each of my five communities touch the Orange Line. 

Today the Metro board received a staff report on that package, the first step in turning that plan into action. 

I'm happy to see some service level improvements that can be implemented in the short term while we await the February study on big impact changes. I will continue to push forward on these critical needs to make the Valley's most important public transit resource even better.

Did you know that each year the Bureau of Street Services (BSS) resurfaces more than 2,400 lane miles of road? Here are the Council District 3 streets scheduled for resurfacing in September and October 2014.