More than 2,500 Angelenos have been hired to join the City family, Los Angeles delivered 100,000 more services this year than last year, and Metro ridership has increased every month of 2023
LOS ANGELES — Mayor Karen Bass today is highlighting work improving and expanding city services and action to make Metro safer and more accessible for all. The Mayor also released progress on improving access to economic opportunity, connecting Los Angeles to the world, and engaging with Angelenos in new ways.
“The livability of this city is of the utmost importance and we have made great strides to improve Metro and other city services that millions of Angelenos depend on everyday,” said Mayor Bass. “We will continue this momentum and work to ensure that we are addressing these needs with urgency.”
This morning the Mayor will highlight improving and expanding city services and action to make Metro safer and more accessible for all by hosting a press conference after visiting City workers who are repairing a broken sidewalk in San Pedro and speaking at a CleanLA graduation ceremony to mark a successful program that is breaking down barriers to City employment while helping to fill critical vacancies. The Mayor also released a video this morning highlighting progress on these important issues. Watch the video here.
Ahead of her first year anniversary on December 12th, Mayor Bass is criss-crossing Los Angeles highlighting her work on homelessness, safety, business, climate and city services. This week, Mayor Bass will participate in events in West Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley, East Los Angeles, Mid-City, South Los Angeles, San Pedro and Downtown.
World Class Service For A World Class City:
Mayor Bass has begun to improve the way the City of Los Angeles serves Angelenos by prioritizing filling critical roles and maximizing resources to deliver services to all Angelenos.
City Departments have completed approximately 2.5 million 311 service requests since Mayor Bass took office, more than 100,000 than during the previous year. The majority of these actions are made possible by our Public Works Bureaus, who have addressed these critical tasks since Mayor Bass took office, including:
Bulky Item Removal: 601,730
Graffiti Removal: 317,546
Pothole Repairs: 51,518
Streetlight Outages: 15,765
Street Sweeping Requests: 13,727
Flooding: 4,125
Landslide: 2,372
Downed Tree Limbs: 22,628
Upgrading City Services: Mayor Karen Bass signed her fifth executive directive to improve the customer experience of Angelenos requesting city services by decreasing wait times, enhancing the quality of the service and better communicating the result of service requests. The Office of Mayor Bass is also working with departments to clear the backlog of city service requests and to provide more timely services to all Angelenos.
Clean L.A. Jobs Program Trainees: The Board of Public Works' Office of Community Beautification congratulated 55 Clean L.A. Jobs Program graduates who completed 1,000+ hours of litter and weed abatement service work, making them eligible for a City job with LASAN and BSS thanks to agreements with SEIU. 17 of those graduates are currently employed by LASAN.
L.A. Sanitation Curbside Food Scrap Recycling: L.A. Sanitation expanded garbage service in January 2023 for more than 750,000 homes to allow for food scraps to be recycled in curbside green bins, along with yard trimmings. The California Governor’s Office of Volunteers has placed 6 Climate Action Fellows at LASAN to support curbside food scrap recycling outreach.
Winter Storms & Tropical Storm Hilary: Due to climate change, Angelenos are being forced to prepare for weather events never seen before in Los Angeles. Uncharacteristic weather patterns resulted in a significant number of calls to 311 related to fallen trees, flooding, and landslides.
Traffic Safety Sprint: The Los Angeles Department of Transportation worked over the summer to install traffic safety improvements to ensure students returned to school on safer streets, including investments in 10 "quick build" street redesigns, 78 speed humps installed across 28 schools, establishing slow speed limit zones at 45 schools, and funding additional crossing guards, hired expeditiously at Public Works career fairs. The City continues to monitor traffic incident rates to ensure safety is improved. LADOT will continue to implement street safety projects throughout the school year. By June 30, 2024, LADOT will complete “quick-build” street improvements at a total of 41 schools, speed humps at a total of 70 schools, and School Slow Zones at a total of 250 schools.
Using City Services to Address Climate Change: In November, Mayor Bass announced federal and regional funding that has been secured through a locked arms approach and actions that are being taken to combat the impacts of climate change through city services. The announced City services included an innovative bus shelter program that will begin installation in early 2024, planting of additional trees and continued implementation of solutions like cool pavement, which help cool down neighborhoods.
Growing the City Family:
Hiring Fairs: More than 2,500 Angelenos have been hired since December 2022. To fill critical City positions, the Board of Public Works hosted four career fairs that have gained momentum and increased attendance over time including:
The most recent hiring fair in Elysian Park where Jobs were offered by 15 City Departments including DWP, LASAN, Streets. More than 800 Angelenos attended and more than 200 Angelenos signed up to stay in contact about future job opportunities. 68 Angelenos attended job application workshops. This was the fourth career fair in a series of citywide strategic events to help make sure Angelenos have the resources and support to successfully apply for City positions. The previous fairs were hosted in South L.A., Baldwin Hills and Watts
15 new Animal Care Technicians (ACTs) joined LA Animal Services on November 11 from the Targeted Local Hire program. LAAS plans to bring on as many as 30 more ACTs from that program within the next 6 weeks.
LA Animal Services has streamlined volunteer sign-up and onboarding: sign-up now takes just minutes, and volunteers will begin serving in shelters within one week instead of 6-8 weeks.
Leading A Five-Year Strategic Plan: Created an advisory committee of experts to help support the creation and implementation of the five-year comprehensive plan that will first focus on creating a pipeline of Angelenos to address city vacancies as well as the delivery of training services needed to access living-wage jobs.
Making Metro Safer and More Accessible:
In July 2023, Mayor Bass began her term as Chair of the LA Metro Board of Directors, a 14-member board which oversees L.A. County’s largest public transportation system. During her five months as Chair, and in her first year serving on the Metro Board, Mayor Bass has worked closely with her colleagues on the Board as well as with Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins.
Improving Service and Reliability: Metro ridership has increased every month since Mayor Bass joined the Metro Board. During her chairship, Metro opened nearly 3 miles of bus-priority lanes on La Brea Avenue, Venice Boulevard and Sepulveda Boulevard, surpassing 50 miles in bus-only lanes across the region. Metro has also hired 1,000 bus operators to resolve staff shortages. This hiring reduced trip cancellations to less than 1%.
Making Metro Affordable: Fare Capping began July 1 and has resulted in 1,206,282 free trips for riders as of November 28. The GoPass Pilot has provided 16,923,928 free trips for students, which is also an increase compared to 2022. The Low Income Fair is Easy (LIFE) Program has enrolled 95,266 new riders who received 90 days of free trips followed by deep fare discounts. Mayor Bass will continue to make Metro affordable to Angelenos.
Increasing Safety for Riders: Mayor Bass instituted additional cleaning, inspections and use of technology to secure ancillary areas under the Metro B (Red) Line to help curb trespassing in non-public areas. The Agency also implemented pilot solutions at Westlake MacArthur Park which has led to a decrease in loitering, elevator repair needs and instances of graffiti.
Investing in Metro Ambassadors: The Mayor supported Supervisor Holly Mitchell’s effort to increase the number of Metro Ambassadors on Metro and led the effort to ensure Metro Ambassadors were trained to use NARCAN in the event of an overdose. In February, Director Bass requested that Transit Ambassadors be trained on the use of Narcan in response to the increase in opioid related deaths on the Metro system. As a result, Ambassadors saved 84 lives through administering Narcan between April 17 and November 24.
Supporting Unhoused Riders: The Mayor’s Office is coordinating with Metro’s homeless services liaison to strategically coordinate housing and resources and help ensure that Metro is included in the annual homeless count and has access to resources. Metro added 16 new homelessness outreach teams for a total of 24 teams. Since July, Metro teams have helped place 527 people experiencing homelessness on the system into housing. Work to address mental health and substance abuse issues will also lead to a safer Metro.
Expanding Service In Los Angeles: The City worked closely with Metro to open the Regional Connector in June which added three new stations in Downtown L.A. and created a one-seat ride for riders traveling from Long Beach to Azusa and from Santa Monica to East L.A. Metro bike share reached an important milestone of 2,000,000 rides at the beginning of November.
Expanding Economic Opportunity for Angelenos:
Equipping Youth With Skills and Experience: The Mayor’s Office secured $53 million in limited state funding to equip more than 4,000 young people with jobs and training by May 1, 2024. More than 2,700 young people have participated in the program, thanks in part to a strong focus on summer recruitment. The Mayor’s Office has already secured more than $20 million to continue the program.
Improving Los Angeles Through Service: The Angeleno Corps, a program that helps young people gain experience at community-based organizations, welcomed 421 students who made a 10-month commitment to provide at least 10 service hours each week at local non-profits providing direct service in high-need communities. These Angeleno Corps members engaged in more than 5,600 service hours in September, including 4,700 worksite hours and 880 professional development/coaching hours.
Supporting Our Young People: Student 2 Student, a program that helps youth earn wages for tutoring younger students, concluded its enrollment with 647 Los Angeles Unified School District high school tutors, marking 80% of the state’s California 4 All enrollment goal in just the first year of the program. 57,000 hours of tutoring have been provided to younger youth.
Connecting Recently Housed to Jobs and Resources: The Job Connector Initiative is assisting recently housed individuals to connect to a job through one of the city's adult or youth employment centers. The Job Connectors, in partnership with the Weingart Center, are located on-site at the LA Grand.
Serving Young Angelenos and Families:
Advancing Early Childhood Education (ECE): Launched the ECE CoGenerational Connection Program (ECE-CCPro) with the Sesame Street 3G Team to help decrease isolation and loneliness among children and develop relationships between young children and expert early childhood educations.
Expanding Family Source Centers: Allocated additional funds in this year’s budget to expand Family Source Centers, LA's Best after-school programs, and made new investments in child care facilities. Expanded services focused on the highest need in South Los Angeles, Panorama City, North Hollywood, Koreatown, and Central City.
Strengthening Place-Based Services: Helped secure $10 million in supplemental funding for the Mayor’s Office Watts Rising project to fund the next phase of redevelopment for Jordan Downs public housing. Also secured $7 million in federal funding to make safe and complete streets improvements in Watts. Watts Rising launched the MegaWatts Electric Vehicle Car Sharing Program to bring clean transportation options and to introduce a new mode of transportation to the area.
Connecting Los Angeles To The World:
Los Angeles is an international city with people from more than 100 countries around the world and one of the few cities in the country with a Deputy Mayor of International Affairs. Ahead of hosting the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Mayor Bass has centered Los Angeles as an indispensable global city by revitalizing relationships with and inviting new missions to expand L.A.’s diplomatic corps, re-appointing the only Deputy Mayor of International Affairs in the U.S., and welcoming dozens of international delegations to expand trade, create jobs, and advance shared priorities on equitable and sustainable development. The Mayor’s Office has represented Mayor Bass at international convenings in more than ten countries, joined California Lieutenant Governor Kounalakis’ March trade mission to Japan, and attended more than a dozen global meetings including the first-ever Cities Summit of the Americas, the Urban 20 (U20) Mayor’s Summit, the World Trade Organization Public Forum, and the upcoming COP28 Climate Conference.
Bringing The World To Los Angeles: Mayor Bass welcomed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, to address the Los Angeles Consular Corps. Representatives of the diplomatic community, local elected officials, and community and faith leaders were in attendance to hear Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield speak on pressing international issues including food and water security, the climate crisis, protracted conflicts, and attacks on universal human rights. Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield also discussed ways she hoped to engage with Los Angeles. Earlier in the year, Mayor Bass hosted the first-ever annual celebration of Africa Day at the Getty House, bringing together L.A.’s African diaspora communities to mark the 60th anniversary of the formation of the African Union.
Attracting International Businesses and Investment to L.A.: The Mayor’s Office welcomed 29 foreign government-led business delegations to Los Angeles and engaged with more than 700 international companies from 30 countries to promote L.A. for job-creating foreign investment.
Building Global Momentum For Green Supply Chains With Green Shipping Corridors: With support from C40 Cities and its Green Ports Forum established by former Mayor Eric Garcetti, the LA-Long Beach-Shanghai Green Shipping Corridor Partnership developed an Implementation Plan with major shipping lines and cargo owners. The LA-Shanghai Corridor is the first in the world to publicly release its definitions, goals, and plans to decarbonize shipping and port operations. L.A. is also leading the development of Green Shipping Corridors with ports in Singapore, Vietnam, China, and Japan, including our Sister Cities of Guangzhou and Nagoya.
Developing and Expanding Trade with L.A.: In October the Mayor’s Office, in partnership with Carnegie California, launched a series of roundtable discussions to inform a strategy to strengthen economic ties between L.A., our African diaspora communities, and the continent of Africa. The Mayor’s Office also conveyed the Mayor’s intent to lead a trade mission to Vietnam during a meeting with President Võ Văn Thưởng, which was held alongside the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November.
Growing L.A.’s Global Connections:
Mayor Bass has engaged with 48 Consuls General and Honorary Consuls (of 94 in total), recognizing the important role these foreign missions play as partners in providing community services, facilitating trade and investment, and employing Angelenos.
Mayor Bass has personally met with more than 30 delegations representing 25 countries as well as 14 Ambassadors and cabinet ministers, welcoming to City Hall foreign government partners from across 6 continents (all except Antarctica). In total, the Mayor’s Office has met with an additional 8 Ambassadors and welcomed 54 international delegations and almost 1000 official visitors from 59 countries to Los Angeles.
This highlights her leadership across borders to lock arms on shared priorities, to bring jobs and investment to Los Angeles, and to learn from innovative local and national governments around the world.
Engaging Los Angeles In New Ways:
Mayor Bass is transforming constituent engagement, implementing new methods to engage with Angelenos all across the City in historic ways.
Reaching Angelenos Where They Are: Mayor Bass hosted a telephone town hall for nearly 2,000 Angelenos to provide resources including renter protections, small business assistance, street services connections and answer questions from constituents. If you would like to join her next event, sign up here.
Improving Constituent Services: Since the launch of the Mayor’s new constituent portal, the Mayor’s Office has supported more than 2,000 constituents through casework to resolve issues in the City.
Convening Interfaith Leaders: Convened six regional clergy gatherings that brought together faith leaders to discuss critical issues and collaborate on solutions to homelessness. Leaders coordinated hygiene kit donations for our unhoused neighbors.