Council Speeds Up Construction Jobs

Dozens of bridges, libraries, police stations and sewers will be built more quickly--creating up to 3,600 jobs over the next two years--under an accelerated public works program approved Tuesday by the Los Angeles City Council.

Money for the accelerated city construction will come from part of the $4 billion in bonds approved by voters over the last six years--much of which has remained unspent because of bureaucratic delays.

The idea of accelerating public construction spending was proposed last year by City Controller Rick Tuttle before being pushed forward this spring by Mayor Tom Bradley as one of his last major initiatives before leaving office.

Under the City Council action, 18 engineers, accountants and inspectors will be hired to move construction projects more quickly through the bureaucracy.

Some City Council members previously protested the cost of hiring more city employees. But on Tuesday only Councilman Ernani Bernardi voted no, saying that the $600,000 needed to hire the extra employees would be better spent on direct construction costs.

But coordinators of the accelerated construction argued that the City Hall overhead costs are inevitable. They said the money for the new employees will not make the city budget deficit worse because the money comes from bond proceeds and not from the city’s beleaguered general treasury.

“We want to eliminate the amount of time things sit on desks,” said Felicia Marcus, president of the Board of Public Works. “We want to be able to move it now.”

The extra employees will help the city spend an extra $105 million on public works projects over two years, Marcus said.

Nearly 40% of the money will go to repair the city’s decaying sewer system and to upgrade sewage plants with bonds approved by voters in 1987, 1988 and 1992.

Public works officials said the acceleration will lead to earthquake-safety retrofitting of 110 bridges instead of the planned 35; work on 13 libraries instead of seven; construction of eight police facilities, instead of four, and to seismic improvements on 14 city buildings, instead of two.

The public works projects would have provided about 15,900 jobs over the next two years, but will employ 3,600 more with the acceleration program, City Engineer Robert S. Horii said.

When asked earlier why the projects had not been pushed ahead earlier, Bradley said that a sense of urgency was created only after the onset of the recession and last year’s riots.