A year after a deadly wildfire ripped through the Pacific Palisades and destroyed thousands of homes, the union representing Los Angeles firefighters has launched a ballot initiative that would raise hundreds of millions of dollars for fire control by raising the city’s sales tax.
On Thursday, more than a dozen firefighters from the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112 gathered in front of Fire Station 58 in Crestview to launch a signature drive.
Proceeds from the half-cent sales tax increase will be donated to the Los Angeles Fire Department, and will raise money to build new stations, hire more firefighters and buy new equipment, organizers said.
“This is about preparedness,” said Los Angeles City Council member Traci Park, a supporter of the plan. “I, for one, cannot allow what happened to my people in Pacific Palisades to happen to any other community.”
The ballot measure would raise the city’s sales tax from 9.75% to 10.25% and help shore up a department budget that has been underfunded and underinvested for more than half a century, the firefighters union said.
The proposed tax increase would raise more than $300 million annually and would be earmarked directly for the LAFD. The revenue, which could reach $10 billion by 2050, could build 30 stations and increase the size of the department by more than 1,000 firefighters.
“We have the same number of firefighters today as we did in the 1960s,” said Doug Coates, UFLAC acting president.
Coates said the department has 42 fewer firefighters than it had at the time of the Palisades fire and has fewer firefighters per 1,000 residents than the cities of Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and Seattle.
The sales tax would represent the largest investment in the city’s fire department since 2000, when voters approved Proposition F, a ballot measure that authorized a $532 million bond issue — more than half of which was allocated to build 19 nearby fire stations and a helicopter hangar.
Mayor Karen Bass has also supported union voting.
“The city has experienced very difficult budget cycles. New sources of revenue are needed, and this ballot measure will help ensure that we can build the Los Angeles Fire Department to fully serve all Angelenos now and into the future,” Bass said in a prepared statement.
Bass said he has added resources to the department every year he has been in charge, noting that this year’s budget includes 17 more auto maintenance positions, which will bring the department to its highest level of auto maintenance since 1995.
The department faced cuts during this year’s budget process, although its overall budget increased. The city cut the department’s Bureau of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and fired LAFD emergency response specialists, who help coordinate fire responses. Paramedics are assigned to other positions in the department.
“This is a national problem,” said Frank Lima, an LAFD firefighter who is also the secretary general of the International Association of Fire Fighters, UFLAC’s parent organization. “But the problems in Los Angeles are worse than I’ve seen in any other major American city.”
