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Emergency Management urges standing recovery unit after Palisades fires, warns staffing gap vs. peer cities
Summary
Emergency Management Department leaders told the Budget Committee the city lacks a standing recovery and reconstruction division and said current staff have been reassigned to recovery work; they asked that vacancies be filled when funds permit and requested a phased staffing plan to cover recovery and upcoming large events.
The city’s Emergency Management Department told the Budget Committee it lacks a permanent recovery and reconstruction division and has had to reassign staff to conduct recovery work after this year’s major wildfires.
GM Carol Parks and senior staff said 12 department staff have been pulled into recovery efforts and that the department must build a standing recovery capability aligned with the National Disaster Recovery Framework. “The consultant has spent a significant amount of their early time here actually creating a structure from whole cloth,” an assistant general manager said, noting the county has a standing recovery capability that the city has not previously maintained.
EMD said it is grateful that the mayor’s proposed budget keeps department staffing “status quo” but argued the city needs additional staffing to maintain planning, training, exercise programs, community outreach and a standing recovery posture ahead of large, planned events (Super Bowl, World Cup, Olympics). The department noted that New York’s emergency management staffing exceeds the city’s by a large margin (EMD cited 31 staff compared with New York’s over 200) and requested a phased approach to grow EMD capability as funding becomes available.
Council members asked for memos: a cost‑benefit study comparing the long‑term costs of a standing recovery division to repeatedly contracting recovery support; a phased growth plan to meet near‑term event needs; and a plan for folding extreme‑heat programs into EMD if the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office is consolidated. EMD responded that it can integrate heat resiliency actions, hazard mitigation and vulnerability assessments but would require personnel and funding to do so.
