Around the Horn Tuesday
MayorSam is occupied this morning, and blogger is behaving flakily to boot. In between it all, I hope you'll find what you need here to start your day.
LA City Council is in RECESS today. That makes that easy...
The Daily News picks up on the Affordable Housing story. Mayor Villaraigosa is quoted: "We're here in the midst of a housing crisis in Los Angeles," Villaraigosa said. "We need an unprecedented investment." Unprecedented investment sounds like just the way a first-time homeowner feels. I don't know that the City could spend enough to rebuild Hoover Dam and still find a way to affect housing prices, but alternate opinions are welcome.
Also, more trouble for Sheriff Baca, as a Federal judge finds that County jails are providing cruel and unusual sleeping arrangements.
The Times doesn't have much in the line of local political news this morning. I wonder why not?
In the Daily Breeze, Redondo Beach is getting two awards for its budgeting practices. Redondo's star is shining of late: the City bagged the finish line of the recent Amgen cycling Tour of California. Hope Parks and Budget and Fi are paying attention to what they're doing down there.
Also, I saw a pretty good band last night at Tangier, Dappled Cities Fly, out of Australia. Look out for these guys. They are extremely progressive, still a bit wild, great rhythms and synthesizers, and have a lot of charisma.
LA City Council is in RECESS today. That makes that easy...
The Daily News picks up on the Affordable Housing story. Mayor Villaraigosa is quoted: "We're here in the midst of a housing crisis in Los Angeles," Villaraigosa said. "We need an unprecedented investment." Unprecedented investment sounds like just the way a first-time homeowner feels. I don't know that the City could spend enough to rebuild Hoover Dam and still find a way to affect housing prices, but alternate opinions are welcome.
Also, more trouble for Sheriff Baca, as a Federal judge finds that County jails are providing cruel and unusual sleeping arrangements.
The Times doesn't have much in the line of local political news this morning. I wonder why not?
In the Daily Breeze, Redondo Beach is getting two awards for its budgeting practices. Redondo's star is shining of late: the City bagged the finish line of the recent Amgen cycling Tour of California. Hope Parks and Budget and Fi are paying attention to what they're doing down there.
Also, I saw a pretty good band last night at Tangier, Dappled Cities Fly, out of Australia. Look out for these guys. They are extremely progressive, still a bit wild, great rhythms and synthesizers, and have a lot of charisma.
Posted by Joseph Mailander @ 3/14/2006 07:59:00 AM
7 Comments:
Antonio getting beat up in Daily News and I'm glad.
Elephants?
Re "Latest elephant plan not peanuts"(March 11):
The mayor is considering a new $39 million home at the Los Angeles Zoo for three elephants. After reading that Los Angeles is leading in human homelessness, you would think he could spend the money on these people, or on the schools, streets, police, public transportation or anything else that would help the city - not $13 million for each elephant.
- Carl Fowler
Burbank
The bigger story
In Saturday's Daily News, one article dealt with the $40 million to be spent on Los Angeles' elephants. A second was about Los Angeles' homeless situation, said to be the worst in the United States. What was shocking was that the elephant story received more space.
Have you as a paper and we as people lost our humanity? I love animals as much as anyone does, but right here in L.A. we have real people - families - living on city streets in boxes, freezing in the cold, wet, starving and dying every day. Elephants become a bigger story than people. Is this because we believe we can't make a difference? Maybe it's because we just no longer care about each other. I hope and pray that's not the case.
- Alan Levy
Studio City
Sanctuary
The Los Angeles Zoo controversy is not so much about Billy, Ruby and Gita, the one males and two female elephants. It's about who has to pay for the $30 million to $60 million to enlarge the exhibit. This would include $13.9 million in Municipal Improvement Corporation of Los Angeles funds. MICLA debt is paid for out of the General Fund. With interest, this would be $22.4 million. Don't forget the $13 million of county funding. Currently, we spend $341,670 on the normal elephant expenses plus $96,000 annually on treatments for Gita's chronic condition....The exhibit, no matter what size is decided upon, is an Asian forest. There are no African elephants in the Asian forest. This means Ruby will have to be disposed of. Sanctuary. Anything less would be fiscally irresponsible.
- David Hernandez
Valley Village
Not inherited
Re "Rewarding mediocrity" (Editorials, March 10):
We should reject Mayor Villaraigosa's self-serving claim that he "inherited" a "structural deficit of $300 million." Villaraigosa was sworn in as a City Council member in 2003 and then as mayor in 2005. This is not a problem he "inherited," but a problem he himself helped create in the first place.
- Walter Moore
Los Angeles
The public trough
Before he can become the mayor of the Los Angeles Unified School District, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa should be required to clean up the fiefdom he already has: the political and governmental cesspool known as the city of Los Angeles...He could get a good start by reducing the L. A. City Council to five members. That would not only save millions for taxpayers; it would also be a boon for lobbyists by easing their mother hens roles in feeding the gaping mouths of so many at the public trough.
- Ralph Smathers
Newhall
Archie is correct. Case in point: I was interested in buying a vacant, boarded-up lot -- a former gas station -- and building a small structure on it. Then I found out the permit and EIR process would take three years. Three years! Result? The lot sits there useless, as it has for several years now.
Walter Moore...hope you decided to run again! There might not be anything left to salvage in three years, but if there is...I will vote for you!!! And so will millions more.
Re sanctuary for the elephants, I favor spending whatever it takes...LA is a santuary for millions of ILLEGALS and the elephants certainly deserve more than the illegals.
Just think about it...if we got rid of 5M illegals in this city, the problems would be solved...traffic, housing, schools, hospitals, jobs, crime...and a new MAYOR!
It's called California Dreamin'.
It's called,
California Racism
Happy to see this site still attracts the racists like
Archie Bunker
Walter Moore
(Self Hater) David Hernandez
and other anonmyous folks.
That's good news on the budget awards from the GFOA and CSMFO for Redondo Beach. Just wanted to point out that the City of LA has received the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award from the GFOA every year going back at least to 1997 (that's as far back as my dusty collection of Adopted Budgets goes).
________________________________--
It's called,
California Racism
Happy to see this site still attracts the racists like
Archie Bunker
Walter Moore
(Self Hater) David Hernandez
and other anonmyous folks.
_________________________________
I love this. We expect all levels of Govt. to uphold the laws, except where we find it goes against personal position. As such, we have huge advocacy groups and elected politicians (who are supposed to represent the Citizens first) trying to legitimize a huge population that has broken the law.
I say enforce the laws at every level: arrest people who are illegal, arrest the employers that hire them, and recall the politicians that try to make it convenient for them to be here.
Marco Firebaugh
RIP
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home