L.A. City Council Pres.: L.A. Fire Dept. Is Perhaps the Best Funded Fire Dept. Anywhere in the U.S.

EXCERPT:

HARRIS-DAWSON: "So, the Los Angeles Fire Department is perhaps the best-funded fire department anywhere in the entire United States. Every department in the city, police, fire, street services, homelessness, rec and parks, all of them routinely, on a regular basis, ask for more money than the city council can allocate, and the fire department is no different. They asked for more money. We gave them an amount of money. Their budget year over year increased by in excess of $50 million. But here’s the important point about all of this. When you have a wildfire in the state of California, you have access to the entire state fire resources. We have a mutual aid program here. You call Cal Fire and fire trucks from Oakland and San Diego and Bakersfield and San Francisco to wherever you are come to support you. So this conversation about the budget and the way in which the chief has been sort of peppered with questions about it isn’t really — doesn’t really speak to the moment that we’re in now.”