In an unprecedented State of the City address on Sunday, April, 19, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti outlined a plan under which employees of the pandemic-beleaguered city would get the equivalent of a 10% pay cut in the coming fiscal year.

Garcetti is expected to release his budget proposal on Monday, April 20, for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The City Council must approve the budget, before it can be adopted.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gives his annual ‘State of the City’ speech at City Hall in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 19, 2020. (Pool photo by Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gives his annual ‘State of the City’ speech at City Hall in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 19, 2020. (Pool photo by Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gives his annual ‘State of the City’ speech at City Hall in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 19, 2020. (Pool photo by Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gives his annual ‘State of the City’ speech at City Hall in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 19, 2020. (Pool photo by Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti elbow bumps a production worker after giving his annual ‘State of the City’ speech at City Hall in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 19, 2020. (Pool photo by Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)



Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gives his annual ‘State of the City’ speech at City Hall in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 19, 2020. (Pool photo by Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gives his annual ‘State of the City’ speech at City Hall in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 19, 2020. (Pool photo by Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gives his annual ‘State of the City’ speech at City Hall in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 19, 2020. (Pool photo by Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

People watch as Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gives his annual ‘State of the City’ speech at City Hall in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 19, 2020. (Pool photo by Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gives his annual ‘State of the City’ speech at City Hall in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 19, 2020. (Pool photo by Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)



Dodgers player figurine in on an unoccupied city council desk as Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gives his annual ‘State of the City’ speech at City Hall in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 19, 2020. (Pool photo by Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gives his annual ‘State of the City’ speech at City Hall in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 19, 2020. (Pool photo by Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gives his annual ‘State of the City’ speech at City Hall in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 19, 2020. (MANDATORY CREDIT:

That spending plan’s recommendations will include 26 furlough days to be taken by civilian employees — which would not include sworn police and fire employees. This would come atop a hiring freeze the mayor ordered last month, and that he said should continue into the coming year.

“I do not take that step lightly,” he said during a speech that painted a picture of the city’s economic health as worse than that of the Great Recession.

The State of the City address is traditionally delivered to the City Council. But this year, with physical distancing practices in force, the benches in the hall were sparsely filled.

Garcetti said the coming year’s budget will be a “document of our pain,” one that arrives as the city is already challenged by “sharply reduced strength” in its ability to maintain city services.

The city has endured steep drops in revenue, particularly from hotel taxes and other activity in the tourism industry — amid the “collapsed” state of hotel reservations and air travel at Los Angeles World Airports, down by 95%. Garcetti said the scenario portends a hit to the city’s fiscal health even bigger than that of the 2007-2008 economic collapse spurred by the housing market’s bust.

“From a fiscal perspective, this is the worst it’s ever been,” he said.

Amid such jolts, the city has already had to borrow tens of millions of dollars to “front the cost” of responding to the novel coronavirus outbreak, such as purchasing kits to equip the now dozens of testing sites across the city and county.

“These are expenses we couldn’t shy away from, and they won’t be the last ones, either,” he said. Some of the costs could be reimbursed with federal and state funds, but not all of it will be, he said.

Garcetti also hinted at other elements of the city budget that could come under the knife, pointing to “significant changes” coming to “recreational and community services,” and the possible scaling back of graffiti removal and tree-maintenance services.

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In recent days, the mayor has hinted that he still wanted to see firefighters continue to be hired in the coming year, but at a less frequent pace.

Garcetti’s speech revolved around the devastating blow the novel coronavirus has delivered to virtually all aspects of daily life in Los Angeles and the rest of the country, a month after he issued stay-at-home orders — restrictions that steadily ramped up in the subsequent days.

While he said there would be no statement — as there had been in previous years — that the state of the city was strong, Garcetti said that it was “ready” and that when the crisis is over, “we will fly again” in the City of the Angels.

“Our city is under attack,” he said. “Our daily life is unrecognizable. We are bowed and we are worn down. We are grieving our dead. But we are not broken, nor will we ever be.”

Vaccines are needed before the city could seriously consider re-opening the economy, without fearing a renewed spike in cases, he said. But he added that staying indoors for another six or seven months could risk “greater economic catastrophe.”

There will not be a “false choice” of picking between saving lives and the economy, he said. Rather, Angelenos should work together to open a unified path toward bringing the economy back.

Garcetti described the first task as carrying out the five-point “pillars” strategy he introduced last week, starting with the expansion of virology and antibodies testing, and continuing with expanding hospital resources and forming a “CARES corps” of workers to engage in contact tracing and responses, while critical vaccines and other treatments are developed.

He also warned that there will be “lasting changes” wrought by the effects of the coronavirus, with hundreds of thousands of Angelenos now unemployed — and that number expected to rise.

Council President Nury Martinez said the council “has begun taking steps” to meet the challenges presented by COVID-19, but that another “key fundamental question remains to be answered — what the city will be like after the crisis is over.”

“We must think of better days ahead as we meet our greatest challenges and fears together, as Angelenos,” she said in a statement.

Garcetti’s cost-cutting decision drew support from some business leaders, including Stuart Waldman, executive director of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association.

Waldman compared the city’s “tough choices” to those of CEOs who are looking at reducing employee costs, and described Garcetti’s early move in this direction as a sign of “bold leadership.”

As the mayor made his remarks, activists held a protest at the traditional mayor’s residence, urging Garcetti and other city leaders to move forward with more strident steps to address widespread unemployment and other economic tolls suffered by Angelenos. Among the demands was the cancellation of rent for tenants amid the pandemic.

Garcetti said that the aftershocks of the financial crisis may impact Angelenos in an unequal way, with some racial and ethnic groups less able to work from home and with such “working-glass Angelenos of color” also potentially risking their health while staying on the job.

Lives have been lost that can never be restored, he said, with now 600 dead in Los Angeles County and 3,400 people hospitalized for the illness. And as Garcetti delivered his speech Sunday, 81 people were reported as dying from COVID-19 across the county, the highest ever, for a single day, since the crisis began in Los Angeles.

Garcetti’s address came just hours after that latest round of grim local news was issued. Another 24 people died from the novel coronavirus, L.A. County health officials announced, affirming that more than 100 people lost their lives because of the virus over the weekend.

“We are all inextricably linked to every single loss, each day,” he said.

“We are in the midst of a collective trauma that will leave none of us unmarked and so many of us deeply wounded,” he said. “If there’s any justice to be had, it will be in how we heal.”

Drawing inspiration from a generation the lived through the Great Depression and two World Wars, Garcetti proposed that Angelenos rethink what “normal” might look like, just as the president during the time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt envisioned.

Roosevelt “called us to imagine not only what we could have, but what we could, and must, stand for,” he said. That means not only “liberties of speech and worship,” but also ensuring that people will return to “jobs, homes, medical care, education, and protection in old age and infirmity.”

“We owe each other no less this very day,” Garcetti said.