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Council adopts committee report on LA Bridges, agrees to evaluation and continued funding pending review
Summary
After extensive public testimony from program staff, police and schools, the City Council adopted a committee report that keeps LA Bridges funding in place while directing fiscal and programmatic reviews, evaluations, and administrative reforms to be completed before a reconsideration date.
The Los Angeles City Council adopted a committee report on the LA Bridges anti-gang and after-school collaboratives after hours of public testimony from program staff, police officers, educators and residents. The motion, advanced by the committee chaired by Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas and amended with a set of friendly amendments, passed on a recorded vote.
The committee report directs a fiscal review, administrative reforms at the Department of Community Development (CDD), and an outcomes evaluation to be completed and reconsidered by the council in six months (the committee's timeline as discussed). The council approved the report as amended after debate about funding continuity, evaluation timing and program oversight.
Supporters of LA Bridges told the council the program provides in-school and home-visit case management, bilingual counseling, after-school clubs and referral networks that connect youths to services. Dr. Curran Wharf of Children's Hospital Los Angeles described the program's community-driven design and tied investments in prevention to reductions in homicide and serious injury among youth, saying homicide remains "the single leading cause of death for young people in Los Angeles County" and offering cost figures cited in testimony ("each gunshot wound costs the county about $30,000" and "each year in prison costs about $30,000 to $40,000"). Case managers and school staff described home visits, mediation and school-based supports that they said prevented escalation into gangs.
Councilmembers stressed the need both to keep effective collaboratives running and to fix programs that are not meeting outcomes. Controller Rick Tuttle explained his office's audit findings and warned that extending contracts for a full year without a clear six-month improvement deadline could blunt leverage for reforms. Councilmember Feuer offered an amendment to ensure the eventual overseers have authority to recommend program substitutions if specific collaboratives fail to improve.
Councilmember Jackie Goldberg pressed for certainty about funding continuity for critical bilingual case managers and said she would support the committee report if it ensured a full year of funding for those positions; members discussed whether the committee report continued funding generally but did not guarantee funding for each specific site.
After colloquy about the committee report language and assurances that the item continued funding for Bridges generally but left individual program renewals subject to review, the council voted (recorded roll indicated 12 ayes) to adopt the committee report as amended and move forward with the evaluation and administrative changes.
Next steps listed in the committee directions include CAO/CLA involvement in evaluation design, CDD reforms for contract compliance and collection of more reliable program data, and a council reconsideration at the end of the review period to determine which programs will be continued, adjusted, or replaced.
The council repeatedly distinguished between continuing funding for the Bridges initiative in the near term and guaranteeing continuation of every specific collaborative without review.
