Your Moment of Zen
Do-nothing Fridays.
City Council meeting pomp.
Yack and smile for pics.
http://noblehaiku.blogspot.com
Labels: haiku, Los Angeles City Council
Posted by Michael Higby @ 7/15/2008 08:59:00 PM
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Do-nothing Fridays.
City Council meeting pomp.
Yack and smile for pics.
http://noblehaiku.blogspot.com
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16 Comments:
I love that you're sharing my haiku. But can you also please include a link to my blog where it's at?
http://www.noblehaiku.blogspot.com/
You have to admit, that's a very accurate depiction of City Council meetings on Fridays.
Great photo!
Don't forget my fresh ode to MIA council member Jack Weiss:
http://noblehaiku.blogspot.com/2008/07/mia-city-councilmember-jack-weiss.html
Your humble servant and faithful Mayor Sam reader.
Or my fresh Dodger haiku with a link to the Tommy Lasorda World Series rant.
http://noblehaiku.blogspot.com/2008/07/thanks-blue.html
Be sure to always come back to the Mayor Sam blog. I am just a side dish in the blogosphere meal.
Thank you!
Your bumble swervant.
Tom LaBong.
Mr. Los Angeles, he says.
He drapes himself in the mantle of "City History Cheerleader." Tom loves to regale (bore) people with tales of the City's history. We are so lucky how much he cares about the City's history.
That's why Tom is quietly working behind the scenes at City Hall to be Jackie Autry's good little boy. Jackie Autry (poor Gene's second wife) wants the City to endorse her plan to rip the Southwest Museum's collection out of its historic building and put it into her expanded Autry building in Griffith Park. Oh, and she wants an extension of her $1 per year lease of Griffith Park land to do it.
So Tom "Mr. History" LaBong, is about to preside over the most offensive destruction of a piece of this City's history. Ummm, would someone please wake up Jose Huizar and let him know that Tom is about to help widow Autry strip the 14th Council District of its biggest and most significant cultural institution? Oh wait, someone from the Autry just slipped some more campaign money Jose's way. Never mind. Jose will just roll over.
Tom LaBong in retirement: "Grandpa Tom! Tell us again how you got the clueless City Council to support you when you destroyed the Southwest Museum as a political favor to Jackie Autry. Hehehe. That is the best story, Grandpa."
Cannot wait for Tom's explanation on how destroying the Southwest Museum, an irreplaceable part of this City's most early history, was a GOOD IDEA.
Mr. History's mantle is looking a little tattered and bedraggled as he tries to defend the indefensible Autry plan.
You people going on about how moving the SW collection to nice, new facilities at the Autry, where people will actually visit it, is such a crime? Why? Makes sense to anyone outside you nutzos in CD14. Not that I see why the city should give it a free lease -- the museum should pay rent, even if on a sliding scale as admissions increase -- makes no sense to subsidize them, and charge so much for the zoo. (The zoo with one elephant, another CD14 obsession.)
You people are worse than the blue haired 80 somethings in the West Valley and other HOAs around town, who oppose everything.
I wemt to the SW once and it was a pain the ass, I wasn't sure if the street parking in that hood was even safe, there was graffiti around. The building was old and looked cool -- is it earthquake- ready?
Between this, the backbiting at your NC meetings, the saga of Reyes and Alicia and Teresa Corona and Las Villas, complete with priests and nuns who come in for their share of finger-pointing, and then wasting our money on Las Semillas del Pueblo to study Aztec dancing and Mayan "astronomy" and Mandarin, when the kids can't speak English or do basic math -- you people are a joke, know that?
You're worse than a cheap telenovela.
LeBong has cotton candy for brains.
He can't stay on-subject.
When the discussion gets rolling, he gets bored and goes in the back for a snack.
If the people don't replace him, he will continue to dismantle "his part" of L.A.
10:21 = Clueless flunky of Autry, Latham & Watkins, or Sugerman.
Good news. Since you last visited the Southwest Museum, we put a rail transit station at the front door. So no need to drive your gas hog SUV like you will have to do to visit Mrs. Autry's ego-trip building on taxpayer-owned land in Griffith Park.
10:59 noone wants to ride that stupid slow train. I want to drive my gas hog thank you very much!
I don't have a train stop anywhere near my house -- I'd have to drive to Hollywood and park somewhere to catch it, which would be stupid, worrying about parking my car somewhere in a strange neighborhood or paying a ton to park it in a garage for the day.
That's why more people don't take the skeletal mass transit we have now.
10:21: " You people going on about how moving the SW collection to nice, new facilities at the Autry, where people will actually visit it, is such a crime? Why?"
As a condition of the Autry taking responsibility for the Southwest Museum and a collection of artifacts that are estimated to be worth somewhere two to ten times the value of the entire Autry Museum, the Autry Board promised it would operate the Autry National Center with three separately identified and operated entities: the Museum of the American West (the former Autry Museum), the Southwest Museum, and the Institute for the Study of the American West.
Autry promised it would maintain the separate identity of the Southwest by either renovating the Southwest campus or building a SEPARATE Southwest Museum building in Griffith Park next too (and not part of) the Autry Museum building, or both.
Expert studies by Autry's experts demonstrate that the Southwest's building can be successfully renovated and marketed to tourists and residents of Los Angeles -- especially with rail transit access of the Gold Line and a decent marketing effort (something the former Southwest Museum Board never did).
Autry blew off its own experts falsely claiming that the Southwest is not feasible for renovation without a shred of evidence. Even worse, it has proposed to consolidate the Southwest Museum into the same Autry Museum building instead of building a separate and distinct Southwest Museum facility at Griffith Park.
The new building on taxpayer land is estimated at $100 million. The renovation of the Southwest was estimated at Autry's experts at $16 million. With a modest expansion for better exhibits at the old Southwest, it was estimated at $22 million. The Friends of the Southwest Museum Coalition prepared conceptual plans to take the Autry's expert plan and expand the museum for more exhibition space to attract more visitors. That is estimated to cost about $40 million.
Autry refuses to consider the more cost effective renovation of the nationally historic building. It also refuses to propose a separate Southwest Museum facility at Griffith Park. Instead, the Autry wants to spend twice as much money to double its single building and destroy the separate identity and integrity of the Southwest Museum institution.
The ONLY significant promise that Autry made as a condition of being entrusted with the assets of the Southwest Museum was to preserve its separate identity and integrity. Mrs. Autry wants a single building to be marketed (already marketed) as the "Autry National Center" (instead of the "Museum of the American West" which does not sound as "nationally important"). So she breaks that promise too.
Thus, Autry is essentially ignoring the only major condition imposed upon it in exchange for getting a priceless collection. Autry is USING that collection in the philanthropic community to solicit millions of dollars, but Autry refuses to spend ANY of the money raised using the Southwest's collection on the Southwest Museum.
In this way, the Autry's failed stewardship and broken promises are simply a white-collar crime: a theft of the assets of the Southwest Museum to be diverted from the purposes of its original donors to the sole benefit of the Autry. This will be especially true, if as suspected, the Autry will try to sell the Southwest Museum site for more money for the benefit of the Autry if it gets City permission to expand the building in Griffith Park for these illegal purposes.
If allowed to proceed, Autry will convert all of the Southwest's assets to the sole benefit of the Autry Museum -- an outcome prohibited by California law.
There is no way this has to happen but our elected officials have been pulled away from decades of their support of the Southwest Museum by the lobbying efforts of Autry, Latham & Watkins, and convicted felon, Steve Sugerman. I guess it is appropriate for Autry to hire a felon to handle the Public Relations effort to portray this theft of the Southwest Museum as somehow "beneficial."
The final insult is that the Autry has the gall to ask for the City to help it break all of its promises to preserve the Southwest Museum institution by extending Autry's free use of Griffith Park land in the middle of the City's largest budget crisis. The records of the City show that Autry for the past 20 years has not complied with its lease agreement with the City -- yet Autry asks to be rewarded with an extension of its lease representing a cross-subsidy by the taxpayers of about $350,000 a year.
Personally, I do not think our taxpayer monies should subsidize this group of white-collar thieves so they can rob the Arroyo Seco of its most prominent icon and largest institution. There is a better way that is respectful of the promises Mrs. Autry made and in comformity with the expert advice the Autry received from its experts.
7:25 am
Yeah, you are right. Not everyone in Los Angeles could conveniently access a renovated Southwest Museum via the Gold Line. BUT, some percentage of Los Angeles residents and tourist COULD use the Gold Line. Some people would still have to drive whether the Southwest's collection was exhibited in Griffith Park or at its historic building in the Arroyo. However, the Gold Line would work for alot of people -- especially tourists in downtown including the soon to open Convention Center hotel.
A responsible Autry Museum Board would jointly market a Gold Line Tourist Day with a stop at the Southwest Museum station to see the Southwest's collection at its historic location, a further trip to Pasadena Old Towne for lunch and then the Norton Simon or other Pasadena museums. They could even negotiate with MTA for a special Arroyo/Pasadena train/bus pass to be marketed at local hotels. The Mayor is on the MTA Board and would be in a position to make this happen.
The old Southwest Museum Board never marketed the site. Autry has a great new opportunity at its front door, but it "prefers" to take the Southwest away from the Gold Line. What a shame and the Autry has "purchased" the silence of our "transit" Mayor. So, yeah 7:25, there will be no choice for anyone -- to view the Southwest Collection everyone will have to drive to Griffith Park if Autry's ego-driven plan is supported by our elected officials.
Even worse than the crap that Autry is trying to pull now is how the Autry has been misleading donors, press, and the public about its finances. There is a report at www.friendsofthesouthwestmuseum.com that explains how in 2000, Jackie Autry issued a press release from the Autry Foundation (Gene's tax-exempt family foundation). She announced that she was making a gift of $100 million of endowment to the Autry.
When Autry was courting the old Southwest Museum Board of Directors to agree to turn over the Southwest to the Autry, John Gray (Autry President) was telling the LA Times and other press that the Autry could handle taking on the Southwest Museum because it had a "$100 million endowment."
The scrappy and very together Friends of the Southwest Museum hired an expert attorney and CPA to review the Autry, Southwest, and Foundation's tax returns. He discovered that in 2000 Mrs. Autry's foundation did NOT give the Autry Museum $100 million as endowment.
Instead, she pledged that the Autry would get the $100 million from the Foundation upon her death. For the last 8 years, John Gray has been telling the press, the public and major donors that the Autry has $100 million of endowment when, instead, it only has a promise of the Autry Foundation to pay $100 million about 25 years from now when Mrs. Autry goes to her maker.
And will the Autry ever really receive the $100 million? Well, the report says even that is questionable because the Autry Foundation has never had on its balance sheet more than $17 million. Unless Jackie Autry puts the money into her foundation, the foundation will not be able to pay its pledge to the Autry Museum. Despite this reality, the full $100 million is shown as the Autry Museum's biggest asset on its balance sheet.
Why didn't Jackie Autry make the pledge of $100 million herself? Why did the pledge come from her foundation which definitely did not have the assets to pay the pledge?
Some people think it was a scheme of Jackie Autry and John Gray. Some think that they wanted to make the balance sheet of the Autry Museum look much bigger than it really was without Jackie actually being on the hook to pay out the $100 million. Some think Jackie Autry did not want to let go of any of her money and the foundation's pledge was a way to make it APPEAR that Jackie had given $100 million to the museum when she really did not. Then, it was up to John Gray to go out and convince major donors to give to a campaign for "more endowment" when in reality, it was a campaign for "some endowment at all."
The report on the Autry points out that on the day of the merger with the Southwest Museum, the struggling Southwest Museum had almost $5 million of endowment and the Autry had a pathetic $1.8 in invested endowment. So, although the Los Angeles Times was misled into writing a glowing editorial lauding the "wealthy" Autry for "saving" the Southwest Museum, perhaps it was the "wealthy" and "collection-rich" Southwest that was actually saving the Autry.
To this day, the Autry Museum limps along year to year with just enough money from Jackie Autry to close its annual deficit. The effort to raise all of this "additional endowment" from clueless major donors, appears to be an effort to mislead donors into ponying up the endowment that Jackie Autry refuses to give to her namesake museum.
Jackie Autry forced Gene to kick The Newlywed Game out of KTLA's production studios back in the late 70s because she thought it was too rude.
"Is the building (Southwest Museum) earthquake-ready?"
Hmm. Let's see. The Southwest Museum was constructed with the personal supervision of Charles Lummis. It was constructed with extra thick Adobe style concrete walls with steel rebar. The building was completed in 1914.
Since then, the region has had the 1933 Long Beach quake, the 1971 Sylmar quake, the Sierra Madre quake, and the 1994 Northridge quake. Yep! It's earthquake-ready.
However, in 1994, Northridge resulted in some minor damage where the building's tower meets the main building. FEMA gave the Southwest Board about $1 million to do some further seismic retrofit work. The Southwest's Board took forever to use the FEMA money as it needed to move the Collection out of the tower to do the retrofit work. The Board had raised about $3 million for a new collection storage building so the collection could be moved to allow use of the FEMA money. Then,the Southwest Board decided to merge with the "wealthy" Autry and give the Collection building money to the Autry.
Autry took the money raised for the Southwest's collection building as part of the merger and redirected it to other Autry priorities. Then, Autry closed the exhibition halls of the Southwest and moved the collection into those rooms so the FEMA grant could finally be used. As a result, the Autry converted the Southwest into a warehouse and it has no intent to construct the former Southwest Museum Board's collection building. Instead, Autry wants to take all the collection over to its museum and mix it in with the Autry's collection of cowboy stuff.
The seismic retrofit, fixing of roof leaks, and some limited other restoration work is being done right now at the Southwest. Is it out of Autry's $100 million endowment? Ooops. Nope, the Autry, in many people's opinion, lied about that to the public and the Southwest Museum board. The money for the seismic work, roof leak on the tower, and exterior plaster work is funded by that long ago FEMA money and another $900,000 from the State of California.
John Gray keeps telling the press that Autry has made "investments" of $5 million into the Southwest Museum. Informed people know better. The money is coming from government grants and some limited foundation money connected to building improvements to assist the conservation of the Southwest's collection. How could Autry have invested $5 million in the Southwest Museum over the last 5 years as Gray has claimed in press releases when the Autry had only $1.8 million of endowment on the day of the merger with the Southwest Museum? It is not a credible claim.
So, yeah, the Southwest Building was overbuilt in strength in 1914 and it has endured many devastating earthquakes where lesser buildings in the region fell down. (A state office building in the Civic Center had to be demolished after the Sylmar quake damaged it beyond repair.)
With small additional investments, further seismic retrofit of some window and door openings on the Southwest's iconic tower would protect the building further and this must be done. The Autry is refusing to raise any private money to do this additional work.
It's good that the building is getting nearly $2 million of government-funded work right now. However, Autry's selfish refusal to take FULL proper care of the building is appalling.
"Goat eyed Greuel," that's a new one.
She's considered one of the popular ones, but then so is Rosendahl -- tell the puebs whatever they want to hear at that moment, consequences by damned. (Or in Bill's case, change your mind soon as another group comes along or someone objects to what you promised the first group.) But it seems to work -- the puebs are dumb enough to buy this and lack even the attention span of a flea, so they don't notice the backpeddling.
LaBong calling Gil "drivers licenses for illegals" A Great Man tells me, he doesn't even know WHO the guy is, just went along with the majority. LaBong also spoke in favor of these anchor kids "getting as good a college education as I had." Didn't he go to community college, and apparently sleep through that?
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