City unions, advocates and residents urge alternatives to mayor’s proposed budget cuts at LA budget hearing

Katie Arslovsky, chair of the City Council Budget and Finance Committee, opened a second day of public comment and presentations as the committee began a weeks‑long review of the mayor’s proposed budget.

The hearing featured 10‑minute presentations from a coalition of city unions and the Engineers and Architects Association, followed by neighborhood budget advocates and more than 200 public speakers. Union leaders said the mayor’s plan would reduce core services and urged the committee to seek alternatives to mass layoffs.

“This budget eliminates 2,721 positions,” Janita Aguilar, regional director for SEIU Local 721, told the panel in the coalition’s opening presentation. “Two thousand seven hundred and twenty‑one eliminated positions will inevitably absolutely result in essential public services to your constituents being cut.”

The union coalition and the Engineers and Architects Association (EAA) warned the committee that the proposed staff reductions and vacancy eliminations would disrupt sanitation, public works, planning, transportation, policing support, and cybersecurity work. Marlene Fonseca, executive director of EAA, said the union’s membership faces “848 jobs that are proposed for elimination, 547 of these are filled positions,” and that the cuts would delay housing and climate initiatives, undermine grant‑funded projects and forfeit future revenues tied to those grants.

Why it matters: Committee members will make choices that determine whether the city addresses a projected shortfall by reducing headcount and program capacity or by…