Re: Democrat on LA City Council bashes city for prioritizing free crack pipes over funding fire dept

On 2025-01-20, Leroy N. Soetoro <[email protected]> wrote:
> https://nypost.com/2025/01/17/us-news/democrat-on-la-city-council-bashes-
> handling-of-fire-funds/
>
> A Democrat on the LA City Council is slamming “chronic under-investment” 
> in basic services and fire prevention — even as Mayor Karen Bass has 
> funneled money to providing drug addicts with free crack pipes.
>
> The fury in LA Council member Traci Park’s voice was palpable as she raged 
> against what she called years of poor financial decisions by LA city 
> officials and how it’s come to a head with the catastrophic wildfires in 
> her district, which includes hard-hit Pacific Palisades.
>
> “It’s bananas,” Park told The Post. “The city of LA is in the middle of 
> multiple crises: mental health, addiction, the homeless, infrastructure 
> failures everywhere. We have pipes underground that are 100 years old and 
> are just poised to cause an environmental catastrophe. Our sidewalks are 
> cracked and falling apart all over.”
>
> Park, 49, who was an attorney for 20 years before being elected to the 
> council for District 11 in 2022, is a Democrat but hasn’t shied away from 
> left-wing sacred-cow issues such as the vast and seemingly insurmountable 
> homeless problem in her city.
>
> “The fire department was decimated after the financial collapse of 2008 
> and it’s never recovered,” she said. “There has been a chronic under-
> investment in public safety here for years. It’s not just the fire 
> department, it’s the police department as well. It’s not the fault of one 
> mayor or one fiscal crisis. It’s chronic decades of underinvestment.
>
> “We have the same number of firefighters and fire stations in LA in 2025 
> that we did in 1960. How insane is that?”
>
> Since 1960, Los Angeles’ population has more than doubled — from around 
> 6.2 million to more than 12.5 million today.
>
> Activists angry over Park’s stance that homeless encampments should be 500 
> feet from schools and homes tried to interrupt her swearing-in ceremony in 
> 2022. But the council member has been undeterred in calling out what she 
> sees as wasteful spending in some areas and none in others.
>
> “Last year, the LA Fire Department responded to over 500,000 emergency 
> calls,” Park said. “Half of those calls were related to the homeless 
> population.  We haven’t added new staffing or even any new 911 operators. 
> On an average day in LA we are not staffed adequately to meet demands.
>
> “We have gone so far away from core services,” she added. “We are spending 
> a billion dollars a year for the homeless and what is it getting us? It 
> gets us ‘harm reduction kits’  so we are basically handing out free crack 
> pipes  enabling people to stay addicted and out on the streets rather than 
> fixing our sidewalks and investing in our fire department.
>
> “We are doing these free money giveaways and going down these crazy rabbit 
> holes of supposed social service programs that have no real oversight or 
> management and no effectiveness.”
>
> So far, the fires have killed at least 25 people, singed more than 40,600 
> acres and annihilated upward of 12,300 structures, among them countless 
> homes, according to Cal Fire. 
>
> The Palisades Fire, the most destructive of the blazes which wiped out 
> much of the star-studded Palisades and Malibu last week, was 31% contained 
> as of Friday, while the Eaton Fire burning outside Pasadena was 65% 
> contained.
>
> Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna has warned that the death toll 
> could go up, considering that close to 30 people are still missing.
>
> Park, whose team is working around the clock to tend to thousands of 
> suffering residents who have lost their homes as well as to the gargantuan 
> task of cleaning up and rebuilding, could not hide her frustration.
>
> “I spoke at a fire commission meeting 21 days before the Palisades fires 
> and said we have emergency response times that are double the national 
> standard,” she said. “We don’t have enough fire stations. We have million 
> dollar-fire vehicles sitting in a boneyard [because there aren’t enough 
> mechanics to fix them.)”
>
> “We have tens of millions of deferred basic maintenance at our fire 
> stations. The roofs leak every time it rains. The HVAC system doesn’t 
> work. We need special washing machines to get the poisons out of the 
> firefighters’ turnout gear. They’re called PFAS extractors. They get the 
> cancer-causing chemicals out of their turnout gear.  We don’t have the 
> plugs in the walls to plug [the machines] in.”
>
> But Park, who was a registered Republican years ago, refused to bash any 
> top elected officials like Gov. Gavin Newsom or Mayor Bass. 
>
> “I’m someone who is non-ideological. I don’t care if someone is a 
> registered Democrat or registered Republican. My ask is the same. I need 
> help. I have thousands of constituents who have lost everything and are 
> suffering. Pointing fingers is not going to bring their homes back to life 
> or rebuild them.
>
> “But I’m not accepting any excuses. We need to turn this around.”
>
> Conversation
>
> BMD
> 10 hours ago
>
> I’m so sick and tired of hearing about all of this in-your-face, blatant 
> corruption, transpiring throughout every aspect of California, yet no one 
> is EVER held accountable, responsible, or serving time behind bars where 
> they obviously belong. SOMEONE NEEDS TO MAKE A SERIOUS, LEGAL MOVE in the 
> interests of actual residents and legal citizens. You don’t need to be a 
> rocket scientist to clearly see what is going on now for decades. It’s 
> absolutely mind boggling.  
>
> RationalMan
> 8 hours ago
>
> This is what happens when gars are in control. No? LOOK at every major 
> city where they are mayors and in the administrations. 
>
> Jefferson said "they" would never adapt to decent society. And they never 
> will.
>
> Thurston Howell III
> 6 hours ago
>
> All of this corruption in LA and they have a Gofund me that received 100 
> million dollars and movie stars starting a fund raiser meanwhile we hear 
> nothing about the people of western North Carolina those simple living 
> white people are being ignored.
>
> Cythedog
> 10 hours ago
>
> The reason the homeless population is growing is the money being spent on 
> them. Spend more money, get more homeless. $1.3 Billion would take care of 
> a bunch of infrastructure problems. Drug addicted people should be detoxed 
> once, a second appearance in the system should yield serious prison time. 
> As long as the voting public installs far left democrats nothing gets 
> fixed.  
>
> Boran Bopha
> 4 hours ago
>
> 100% correct. For Dems, as sick as this is, growing the homeless 
> population is considered a "win." If they "help" the 100k homeless people 
> in their jurisdiction one year, then 200k the next, they literally cheer 
> and congratulate themselves.
>
>

Another fine example of liberal governing in action.
Put democrats in charge of a city, state, anything, and they will screw it up.


-- 
pothead

"Give a man a fish and you turn him into a Democrat for life"
"Teach a man to fish and he might become a self-sufficient conservative Republican"
"Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up,"
---  Barack H. Obama
The Biden Crime Family Timeline here:
https://oversight.house.gov/the-bidens-influence-peddling-timeline/