A Democrat on the LA City Council is slamming “chronic under-investment” in basic services and fire prevention — even as Mayor Karen Bass has funneled money to providing drug addicts with free crack pipes.
The fury in LA Council member Traci Park’s voice was palpable as she raged against what she called years of poor financial decisions by LA city officials and how it’s come to a head with the catastrophic wildfires in her district, which includes hard-hit Pacific Palisades.
“It’s bananas,” Park told The Post. “The city of LA is in the middle of multiple crises: mental health, addiction, the homeless, infrastructure failures everywhere. We have pipes underground that are 100 years old and are just poised to cause an environmental catastrophe. Our sidewalks are cracked and falling apart all over.”
Park, 49, who was an attorney for 20 years before being elected to the council for District 11 in 2022, is a Democrat but hasn’t shied away from left-wing sacred-cow issues such as the vast and seemingly insurmountable homeless problem in her city.
“The fire department was decimated after the financial collapse of 2008 and it’s never recovered,” she said. “There has been a chronic under-investment in public safety here for years. It’s not just the fire department, it’s the police department as well. It’s not the fault of one mayor or one fiscal crisis. It’s chronic decades of underinvestment.
“We have the same number of firefighters and fire stations in LA in 2025 that we did in 1960. How insane is that?”
Since 1960, Los Angeles’ population has more than doubled — from around 6.2 million to more than 12.5 million today.
Activists angry over Park’s stance that homeless encampments should be 500 feet from schools and homes tried to interrupt her swearing-in ceremony in 2022. But the council member has been undeterred in calling out what she sees as wasteful spending in some areas and none in others.
“Last year, the LA Fire Department responded to over 500,000 emergency calls,” Park said. “Half of those calls were related to the homeless population. We haven’t added new staffing or even any new 911 operators. On an average day in LA we are not staffed adequately to meet demands.
“We have gone so far away from core services,” she added. “We are spending a billion dollars a year for the homeless and what is it getting us? It gets us ‘harm reduction kits’ so we are basically handing out free crack pipes enabling people to stay addicted and out on the streets rather than fixing our sidewalks and investing in our fire department.
“We are doing these free money giveaways and going down these crazy rabbit holes of supposed social service programs that have no real oversight or management and no effectiveness.”
So far, the fires have killed at least 25 people, singed more than 40,600 acres and annihilated upward of 12,300 structures, among them countless homes, according to Cal Fire.
The Palisades Fire, the most destructive of the blazes which wiped out much of the star-studded Palisades and Malibu last week, was 31% contained as of Friday, while the Eaton Fire burning outside Pasadena was 65% contained.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna has warned that the death toll could go up, considering that close to 30 people are still missing.
Park, whose team is working around the clock to tend to thousands of suffering residents who have lost their homes as well as to the gargantuan task of cleaning up and rebuilding, could not hide her frustration.
“I spoke at a fire commission meeting 21 days before the Palisades fires and said we have emergency response times that are double the national standard,” she said. “We don’t have enough fire stations. We have million dollar-fire vehicles sitting in a boneyard [because there aren’t enough mechanics to fix them.)”
“We have tens of millions of deferred basic maintenance at our fire stations. The roofs leak every time it rains. The HVAC system doesn’t work. We need special washing machines to get the poisons out of the firefighters’ turnout gear. They’re called PFAS extractors. They get the cancer-causing chemicals out of their turnout gear. We don’t have the plugs in the walls to plug [the machines] in.”
But Park, who was a registered Republican years ago, refused to bash any top elected officials like Gov. Gavin Newsom or Mayor Bass.
“I’m someone who is non-ideological. I don’t care if someone is a registered Democrat or registered Republican. My ask is the same. I need help. I have thousands of constituents who have lost everything and are suffering. Pointing fingers is not going to bring their homes back to life or rebuild them.
“But I’m not accepting any excuses. We need to turn this around.”
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