City Councilman Bill Rosendahl and L.A. Police Chief William Bratton hosted a town hall meeting attended by more than 300 people last Thursday to address concerns about the loss of police officers from the West and Pacific Police Divisions due to the opening of two new police stations.

Meeting at the Felicia Mahood Senior Center in West L.A., Bratton assured the audience that the move of officers was temporary. There are 550 cadets currently at the academy who, once graduated, will replace the 300 police who have been taken from stations citywide. With about 400 officers a year retiring, and if the current statistics hold, it could still take Bratton many years to get the force he wants if the City Council doesn't put a freeze on hiring to balance next year's budget.

The audience learned that for several years now, a computer program has been tracking crime citywide and if there is a spike in crime in an area, Bratton and his commanders can move police around to serve the need of that community. But he added, 'I am not expecting an increase in crime.'

Although the 2006 hike in trash fees was implemented in order to stop subsidizing trash collection from the general fund, thus allowing the City to use those funds to hire additional police, there is concern that the city's budget crisis will freeze the hiring of police officers, preventing the reinstatement of officers to the Westside.

'I'm worried that the City may renege on a promise to hire 1,000 officers,' Bratton told the Palisadian-Post after the meeting. 'The City has never had enough police. We're bouncing them around all the time. We have 9,000 and we need 12,500.' It may be a tough sell for Bratton when the city is down $86 million this year and facing a possible $400-million shortfall next year. Since he took over the department in 2002, overall crime is down, with violent crime down 48.9 percent and property crimes down 27.7 percent.

'We need those 1,000 cops,' he said. 'The obligation of a democratic society is safety.' The audience agreed with Bratton, including Richard Cohen, chairman of the Pacific Palisades Community Council. 'Our community has special needs because of our geographical isolation,' Cohen said. 'When an officer makes an arrest and takes the prisoner to a jail in the Pacific or Van Nuys division [the West Division doesn't have a jail], then our one car is pulled out, leaving our community unprotected.'

A Brentwood resident agreed, saying 'We don't have enough protection.' West L.A. resident Jim Donaldson warned, 'When the trash fee went up, we were told it would put more cops on the street. I would hope that the City Council doesn't do cutbacks in the police and fire department.' A woman from Playa Vista complained that her newly-built neighborhood rarely saw police officers. 'At least lower our property taxes because we get no services.'

Several audience members questioned the wisdom of opening two new stations without the funding to man them through direct hiring. 'There's a $60 million commitment to open those stations,' Bratton said. 'If we don't open them, they [City Council] probably won't because of the budget crisis.' 'We have to decide what our priority is as a city,' Rosendahl said. 'Do you want more police or do you want your trees trimmed?' In order to balance the budget this year, the City used one-time fixes like hiring freezes and selling surplus City property, which City Controller Laura Chick in a recent L.A. Times article called addictive and easier than cutting programs or asking voters for higher taxes.

But residents of Los Angeles want both police and tree trimming. Rosendahl was asked about the $45 million in overtime paid to city workers in last year's budget (which didn't include firefighter or police overtime). El Pueblo de Los Angeles, the department that maintains the L.A. Historical Monument listed $34,500 in overtime. The Bureau of Contract Administration had $1,099,000 in overtime and the Planning Department received $624,500.

'We will go through the budget line item by line item to find the right priorities without impacting services by the City,' Rosendahl told the Post on Tuesday. 'I do believe we need more officers. We're under policed.' The City funds the Commission for Women, which was made a permanent department in 1980, to assure that women have equal participation in city government. Twenty-eight years later, with one woman running for president and a second running for vice president, and more women than men attending college, Rosendahl was asked about the validity of the department, given its $292,450 budget.

'Some are historical,' he said. 'But we will look at all departments, and consider consolidating and eliminating. Everything will be on the table. Everyone will have to justify his or her existence.'

Rosendahl, a former vice president at Adelphia, is familiar with the hard choices that businesses have to make and takes that experience to the City's budget. 'We'll do zero-based budgeting and start with a blank piece of paper,' he said. 'In the private sector we justify positions or eliminate them.'