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This question has bothered me for many decades, but it seems particularly apropos as I settle into my house and start paying property taxes.

Thoughts?

I can't address the quality of services, but I can throw some light on County budgets. There are different "pots" of revenue and most are earmarked on the federal and State level or by the voters through initiative for specific purposes and can be spent for no other.

Human Services, Public Health and Behavioral (Mental) Health are funded as entitlement programs initiated and largely funded by the federal government. The State also provides a large revenue match and the County provides a smaller match from its general fund. The County administers the program, so the whole amount is shown in the the pie chart as an allocation, even though most of the revenue stream actually comes from the State and the feds.

Transportation is funded from the earmarked pots of the gas taxes, Prop. 42 and a sort of federal in lieu of taxes amount that replaced the timber tax in rural areas. Prop. 42 funds have been pillage by the State before and are proposed to be pillaged again in the current budget. Funds for roads are being diminished on the local level. http://www.calvoter.org/2002/primary/propositions/42.html

The County General Fund pays for administration services like the tax collector, auditor, assessor, recorder, clerk. Usually, service fees help support planning and building departments. A large part of the general fund goes to the sheriff, jail, probabtion and D.A. The General fund revenue is largely property tax, sales tax, VLF and the various subventions paid by the State when it plays shell games with the VLF, Williamson Act and others. http://www.sco.ca.gov/ard/payments/vlfrealign/1103.pdf

In our County, the county currently recieves only about 23% of the property taxes. The rest are diverted elsewhere through shell games like ERAF http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:BokgNnF5MtkJ:www.californiacityfinance.com/ERAF_facts.pdf+ERAF&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
which divert County and special district revenue to satisfy the State's obligation to the schools under Prop. 98. (The Gov. is proposing to take even more in the current budget. http://www.csac.counties.org/feature.html) Propert taxes currently account for about 26% of our General Fund. VLF is about 24% and subventions or backfill for Williamson Act (open space tax breaks) amounts to about 17%. http://www.csac.counties.org/legislation/williamson_act/wa_fact_sheet.pdf

Another technique of the State is called realignment. This is where they "devolve" greater and greater responsibility for State and federal social services programs to the County, while cutting the amount of money to implement the program.

It is as if the State was an invading hoard approaching the gates each year (sometimes more frequently) to pillage - lol.

>> Thoughts? <<

Obviously there's a plethora of issues, but here's one.

Municipal government is inherently inefficient. The larger the entity, the more layers of bureaucracy there are, and the more isolated the "civil servants" become from the public they serve. The result is lack of responsiveness and major inefficiencies.

If you're over in the east valley some time and want to see a graphic example, drive down Magnolia Blvd from North Hollywood into the city of Burbank. The pot-holed L.A. road suddenly becomes well-maintained at the city limit.

There's another equally funny example on Clybourn street just north of Riverside drive. The city limit runs right down the middle of the street and, sure enough, the west side is a mess while the east side is in good repair.

I'm currently living in a medium sized town in San Diego county. The administration and much of the staff is Republican. A month ago, I had occasion to contact the city regarding a maintenance issue. There was an E-mail response within hours and the problem was solved the next day.

I'd contrast this with an experience I had in obtaining a legal document in L.A. County. I spent two hours and visited four different offices in three different buildings. The reason? There are multiple offices for each general issue, and no process by which a citizen can determine which office handles a specific issue. You go to the most likely office and are required to fill out a form and wait in line before you can ask whether you're in the right place or not. Upon discovering you're not in the right place, you find that you're dealing with an employee who doesn't think its part of his/her job to tell you where the right place is. Truly maddening.

There's a powerful motivating factor in knowing that the chances are fairly high that the average citizen knows someone who can fire your ass. It has an impact on civic employees in medium sized communities. It's missing in the big city.

And... for what it's worth... your taxes may be high now, but thanks to Prop. 13, later buyers will be paying a higher share of the bills than you do a few years from now. If you live to be about two hundred you'll be getting the level of service you're paying for.

I guess you gotta go where the jobs are, but is it worth it staying there? Life could be simpler and easier elsewhere. Your salaries can't possibly compensate for the high cost of living in California.

Dang ... in my neck o' the woods you could get a very nice (new) comparably-sized home for $110K. With a yard, no less.

The riddle that has plauged me over the years is that my radio breaks everytime I enter LA City limits.

Here in Las Vegas it works fine. On I-15, It works fine.

I get to LA city limits, and all I get is Spanish stations...

Graft is siphoning off the funds. LA city is controlled by the Democratic Party (read organized crime) which also owns the only newspaper (LA slimes). Public service money is given away to cronies of the various public officials (Senator W in C*rs*n gets her friends appointed to various service heads in her district that can't even read or write but control the crime elements on the street). Road contracts are issued for ease of job instead of where needed because kickbacks. Ill-conceived public works projects for image sake of politics. LA Police (which I used to regard as some of the best) have given up as the legal services are stacked against maintaining law or order since the corruption is coming from the top down. There are few fighting it, very few but they get threaten, forced to resign or thumped if they get to close to the truth (known a few).

You are also in the Valley, which gets a meager portion of the funds slated for the City. Since you are newbie to the Valley, there has been an ongoing range war between the interests of the Valley and Downtown. Each year, the city gives the valley less even though the valley taxes contribute more and more to the coffers than does central LA. The separation issue now comes up every two years and I would not be surprised that the Valley separates itself from LA within ten years (it would have already if it hadn't been for the large hispanic vote on the north side).

LA will continue to be a sewer as long as it has only one newspaper that is more interested in defeating national Republicans than reporting local politics. You'll find that communities that have better services will have local papers that concentrate on their own communities (Pasadena, Monrovia, etc.) which do not exist for central LA or the Valley. The daily News tries but it has become too large to give the local community coverage that is needed. When it was the Green sheet, the Valley was a nice place to live; now the ghetto portion has expanded from side to side of it.

Since you are now stuck in the middle of the wasteland, learn to live with it (I lived there once also). In a couple of years, you'll discover the smaller canyon communities that ring the valley have nice hideaways while still offering reasonable commute times. You can then escape the flat lands for one of these.

Should have asked on FR before making the move. Some of us would have clued you in on where to look.

I am sick, sick , sick of this place.. If my kids weren't located out here (divorced father of 2 girls), I would leave in a nano-second..

It's too bad, because it has such great potential, and it used to be such a fantastic place.. -- Southern California.

"This question has bothered me for many decades, but it seems particularly apropos as I settle into my house and start paying property taxes."

Bothered you for decades? It apparently hasn't bothered you ENOUGH to deter you from purchasing property there.

Why didn't you purchase in adjacent Orange County, where you yourself indicate services are better? Ditto Ventura County? Thousand Oaks?

Part of your problem is being in the incorporated city of Los Angeles, even though they call your section "Woodland Hills."

An old real estate adage: Buy the worst house, in the best area you can afford. Lotsa people get hung up on the building, overlooking the area.

What happened to Agoura Hills in your decision?

Me - Huntington Beach, California

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/963618/posts

I'm sure our fellow FReepers will say many of the same things I'm going to say, but here is my two cents: California has for a long time been, as the American Prospect proclaimed, a "laboratory" for Democratic politics, and therein lies the answer to your ponderings.

Well, the experiment has failed. Miserably. In the opinion of this college FReeper, California (especially Southern California) is yet another example of what results from liberal policies: inflation, gross inefficiency, and thus, ultimately a reduced standard of living for all but the exorbitantly wealthy (*coughBarbaraStreisandcough*).

And yet people still can't seem to wake up to the fact that socialism is BAD. It has failed over and over, but thanks to a liberal press feeding us propaganda, a liberal teachers' union controlling public education, and liberal college environments trying to tell us that we haven't actually tried communism yet (or that communism only failed because it was too extreme, and that modern [Western European] socialism can work), the ordinary layperson won't figure it out for him/herself.

See, the ordinary layperson just doesn't have the time to go and look up the stuff for themselves, or else it never occurs to them to do so. If it did, and they looked this stuff up, liberals would never win elections ever again, especially in the United States.