By Lookout Staff

December 11 -- City Manager Lamont Ewell -- who has been in charge of day-to-day operations for nearly a year -- wants to have a sit down with residents beginning Monday night.

In the first of five talks about community priorities and how much money there may be to back them, Ewell will meet this evening with residents at Reed Park Auditorium, 1133 7th Street, at 7 p.m.

Over the next 9 days, four other talks in preparation for the upcoming 2006-2007 fiscal budget will be held at various venues Citywide.

The talks are co-sponsored by Friends of Sunset Park, Ocean Park Association, Pico Neighborhood Association and the Wilshire-Montana Neighborhood Coalition.

This will be the second budget session for Ewell, who presented what he called an "aggressive budget" for the current fiscal year.

In an effort to get back to basics, the $444.8 million budget was the largest in the city’s 120-year history, representing an increase of nearly $34.5 million over the previous fiscal year.

The record budget, which came after several years of fiscal belt-tightening, marked an 8.4 percent hike buoyed by an extra $14 million in projected revenues during the 2006-07 fiscal year.