Mayor has had better weeks

Stung by the city’s failed Olympics bid and the latest setback to his schools takeover plan, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa faces two other uphill battles this week as he unveils a gang-prevention strategy and a lean city budget, both of which are meeting resistance.

Villaraigosa will deliver his annual State of the City address tonight, outlining an anti-gang plan that calls for a different approach from that advocated by some civil rights advocates.

On Thursday, Villaraigosa will unveil his 2-year-old administration’s second budget, a financial blueprint that will call for slashing $100 million from the city’s $231-million structural deficit, amid declining revenue and upcoming contract negotiations.

Villaraigosa’s address will come a day after a California appellate court panel unanimously overturned his hard-won state legislation that would have granted him partial control over the Los Angeles Unified School District. As an already-difficult week unfolds, Villaraigosa is facing pressure from civil rights attorney Connie Rice to align his gang plans more closely with hers. In a recent report commissioned by the City Council, she called for a new department headed by a gang czar to coordinate the city’s scattered anti-gang efforts.

The mayor is also experiencing cooling relations with the City Council and facing dissent from his own police commissioners, some of whom complained Tuesday about a potential lack of funding for police equipment.

Villaraigosa now finds himself struggling through one of the toughest periods since he took office nearly two years ago.

Said Councilman Herb Wesson, “Being mayor is full of challenges -- you’re going to have good weeks, and you’re going to have bad weeks.

“It’s been a painful week, and it’s only Tuesday,” added Wesson, who said he believes the mayor will bounce back.

About this time last year, Villaraigosa won unanimous City Council approval of his first budget, which included an increase in trash pickup fees to free up money to hire more police officers.

The Democratic mayor also forged an unlikely alliance with Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that helped him push through the now-overturned law to give him partial control of the school district and that aided in securing billions of dollars for Los Angeles in state infrastructure bonds.

But the pace of success has been hard to sustain.

Losing out to Chicago on Saturday for a chance to hold the 2016 Summer Olympics didn’t help Villaraigosa, who may run for governor in 2010.

And others seem to be claiming a larger share of the local political spotlight. It was the council, not the mayor’s office, that shepherded a tenant-protection law earlier this month, and now Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky is pushing a plan to fix the city’s Westside traffic problem with one-way streets.

Still, Villaraigosa ticks off a list of his own triumphs, including a recent lobbying effort to secure money for a carpool lane on the 405 Freeway and the city’s ongoing embrace of alternative energy sources to clean up the environment.

In an interview Tuesday, he cited his plans to expand gang intervention programs even as the city grapples with a slowing economy. “I think L.A. is in a great place right now,” he said. “There is no question in my mind that we’re moving forward. People feel good about this town.”

The mayor will articulate his vision in tonight’s speech at a North Hollywood high school.

He is expected to call for a new $3-million grant program for gang prevention efforts in several gang hot spots, including parts of South L.A., the northeastern San Fernando Valley and the Eastside. A new deputy mayor would coordinate the grants.

The objective would be to “saturate” the neighborhoods with social services and increase coordination among hospitals, schools, parks, community-based organizations and other groups.

As part of this effort, Villaraigosa is also expected to announce plans to expand a gang intervention program that he said has shown promise on the city’s Eastside. The program provides regular group meetings and counseling for 200 teenage gang members and others.

And the mayor will return to a familiar theme: County, state and federal officials must pony up to help Los Angeles, which has an estimated 39,000 gang members.

“If you want to address gang crime, you’ve got to invest in people,” Villaraigosa said. “When you look at the roots of gang crime, so much of it has to do with poverty and broken families and the lack of a safety net in these communities. We’ve got to invest in them. And cities cannot do that alone.”

Rice, director of the nonprofit Advancement Project, was briefed about the mayor’s gang strategy Tuesday.

“The PowerPoint I saw isn’t a plan. It’s an agenda for further discussion,” she said. “What the mayor’s proposing could be a step in the right direction or a bad step backward.”

This budget will be leaner than his first because of slowing revenues, due in part to the recent cooling in the real estate market. As a result, Villaraigosa will have less money for his own initiatives unless he reduces spending somewhere else in the city, secures more money from the state or federal government or floats a ballot initiative to raise money.

“It’s going to be a problematic budget this year,” said Councilman Greig Smith, a member of the council’s budget committee. Villaraigosa, he added, “is going to have to negotiate, and he hasn’t done a good job of that lately.”

Some of the mayor’s appointees to the Police Commission voiced concern of their own about funding for Tasers. “I realize at some point it becomes a matter of priorities ... but there are things about the Tasers that are critical,” Commission Vice President Alan Skobin said during Tuesday’s commission meeting.

Villaraigosa said he is proud of the fiscally prudent course he has charted for L.A. and cited steps he has taken to correct the long-standing imbalance between the city’s spending obligations and the money it takes in each year.

“There is no question,” he said, “that the challenge of this budget is to do what we have to do to address gang crime, to address housing, to address the needs of public safety and street services while at the same time living within our means.”

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duke.helfand@latimes.com

steve.hymon @latimes.com

Times staff writer Patrick McGreevy contributed to this report.