Smith: Rent A City Worker

Councilman Greig Smith of the 12 Councilmanic District sends over news that the city now has a "Hire a City Work Crew" program. Individuals, as well as businesses, organizations, Neighborhood Councils, etc. can use their own funds to pay overtime costs for city crews to do weed clearing, sidewalk repair, tree trimming, etc. that apparently city employees can't get done during their regular shift.

Does anyone see how ludicrous this is? We're already paying city employees to do this work, its not getting done, so we're welcome to pay additional funds out of our own pockets to accomplish what needs to be done. Or we're welcome to join up with the Rotary Club to have a pancake breakfast to cover pothole repair.

Of course, we're required to use city crews at inflated union wages. Unlike developers, we can't go down and get a non-union, perhaps illegal work crew at Home Depot to do it at lower rates.

Some years ago, Mayor Riordan ran a pilot project where community based organizations accomplished public works using a combination of public and private funds - that they managed and using whatever crews they could come up with. This was the Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative, or LANI. Of course, each LANI group (some did better than others) far outperformed the city in completing these works and got more bang for their buck than the city ever could.

However, when the time came for the next community based public works program, the Targeted Neighborhood Initiative, halfway through the program Riordan - obviously under pressure from city employee unions - decreed that all work must be done by city departments.

Taking Smith's program one step further, I want to know what the rates are to hire out City Councilmembers on overtime. But then, I am not sure what we would have them do.