‘A bunch of inequity’
City services are prompt— or not, depending on locale
When residents in Hollywood Hills West called City Hall to repair a pothole, they waited more than four weeks for a crew to arrive.
Fixing a pothole in Chinatown took just 4 ½ days.
When a homeowner put out a bulky item for pickup in West Los Angeles, it was collected by the next scheduled trash day more than 97% of the time. For a resident of Wilmington, it was less than 40% of the time.
Asked to remove graffiti from the streets and alleyways in Mid-Wilshire, crews took more than three days to respond. In Sunland, a foothill community in the San Fernando Valley, the wait was less than three hours.
When it comes to city services, Los Angeles isn’t one community, but many. Depending on where you live, your service can be reliably swift or maddeningly slow.
And the differences don’t correspond neatly to the wealth or political influence of different neighborhoods. Rather, they ref lect a city government chronically unable to deliver a uniform level of service across a vast and diverse metropolis.
These findings emerge from a Los Angeles Times analysis of how promptly municipal agencies respond to requests for some of the most basic city services. The Times examined more than 1.4 million service requests since 2010.
For Mayor Eric Garcetti and city administrators, the wide variations in service levels underscore the challenges of ensuring consistency in basic functions of municipal government for nearly 4 million people spread across 500 square miles.
“In a city as large as Los Angeles, it will never be easy to see change hap-
pen evenly,” said Garcetti, who has made improvement of core city services the centerpiece of his first-term agenda.
“But I am committed to that goal,” he said, adding that the city is changing the way it deploys resources to better address varying service demands. “I will not be satisfied until we have reached parity across the city.”
Officials cite citywide improvements in the delivery of services since Garcetti took office more than two years ago. For example, median response time on pothole complaints was cut from 14 to 7 days, according to the analysis of data through 2014.
But The Times found significant disparities persist when it comes to how promptly City Hall addresses residents’ complaints.
In some cases, agency officials say they weren’t aware of the imbalances and were unable to explain them.
“The city just has a bunch of inequity baked in,” said newly elected Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson, whose South Los Angeles constituents received slower service on potholes, graffiti and illegal dumping removal. “There is a lot that is accepted as ‘that is just the way it is.’ ”
Harris-Dawson and several of his City Council colleagues are calling for a detailed assessment of basic service levels, why they vary so significantly from area to area and how the differences can be reduced.
Neighborhood leaders are echoing those demands.
“Nobody is asking for anything more than anybody else gets,” said Anastasia Mann, president of Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council, where pothole response was the slowest in the city. “Just having your concerns answered is all we want.
“People think there is extra political clout” in the Hollywood Hills, she said. “But it’s just not true.”
The slowest median response time for pothole repairs over the last five years was recorded in some of the city’s pricier neighborhoods, including the Hollywood Hills West, Beverly Crest, Studio City and Windsor Square. Crews took three weeks or more to fill potholes in those communities. Slow repair times also were found in South Los Angeles areas such as Manchester Square and University Park.
The fastest pothole service — five days or less — was provided in downtown’s Chinatown, as well as Lincoln Heights and El Sereno on the Eastside.
Nazario Sauceda, director of the Bureau of Street Services, said staffing shortages, equipment malfunctions and bad weather can add to delays. But he couldn’t explain the uneven
service levels found by The Times.
“I don’t really know,” Sauceda said. “If you happen to see that in some areas that the response takes a little longer, let me assure you it’s not because we want to discriminate against an area.”
Citing more recent 2015 city data, Sauceda said citywide response times for pothole complaints were just under two days on average. (The Times used median response times in its analysis.) The service improved partly because trucks have been equipped with GPS units that allow them to be more quickly and efficiently assigned to new reports of pothole problems, he said.
Bulky item pickup also has improved citywide during the Garcetti administration, with collections completed before the next scheduled trash pickup day 90% of the time, records show. The comparable rate before Garcetti took office was 82%. Enrique Zaldivar, director of the bureau of sanitation, said the good performance has continued into this year.
The Times’ review showed service disparities were significant in bulky item pickup as well. On the Westside, 95% of discarded furniture and other large items were removed before the next trash collection day — the agency’s standard for good performance. But in four neighborhoods in the harbor area — Wilmington, San Pedro, Harbor City and Harbor Gateway — the city failed to pick up more than half of the requests in that time frame, the analysis found.
On graffiti removal requests, the median wait for city-hired contractors to paint over the markings was more than three days in a dozen neighborhoods in South Los Angeles, including Vermont Knolls, Chesterfield Square and University Park. In the foothill communities of Sunland, Tujunga and Lake View Terrace, the wait was less than a day.
Paul Racs, director of the Office of Community Beautification, said South Los Angeles neighborhoods have the most requests for graffiti removal. Responding in those areas can involve safety issues for the work crews and require police escorts, increasing delays, he said.
As crew supervisors with the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, which paints over graffiti under a city contract, Barbara Rocha and Norah Bustamante paint up to 100 spots per shift.
They carry paint in 14 basic colors and an additional 20 colors for custom jobs. As they cover up graffiti, taggers sometimes wait nearby, they said, shaking spraypaint cans.
On an overcast spring day, the workers stopped in Jefferson Park and used rollers to paint over a graffiticovered wall.
“We’ve been here every single day this year,” Rocha said. “It gets hit constantly.”
City officials note that when they learn about disparities, they try to fix them.
The Times reported earlier this month that city crews responded to complaints of illegally dumped refuse at dramatically different rates in many of the city’s 114 neighborhoods, with poorer areas generally receiving worse service than wealthier ones. In response, Garcetti ordered an internal investigation of the city sanitation agency’s performance.