"Another Soulvine Thursday" via Columnist Betty Pleasant, 12-15-11

Its time for "Another Soulvine Thursday", a bloggin feature of Mayor Sam that brings you the wit and prose of longtime African-American Journalist/ Columnist Betty Pleasant. In this week's edition, will Betty stand by her ideal Assemblyman turn City Councilperson Candidate Warren Furutani in CD 15, after new City Council President Herb Wesson endorsed "the cop"Joe Buscaino for City Council? Or will Betty stick to her predictable lamenting of all things City Councilman Bernard Parks? Find out after the "Coliseum jump".

Betty does Bernie and Jan on the Coliseum:

This is the situation: The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Sports Arena are public entities located in the 8th Councilmanic District and operated under the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, through a 66-year-old joint powers agreement with the city and county of Los Angeles and the state of California. As stadia go, the Coliseum is a dump. It’s in need of serious repair and renovation and its physical decline is turning it into a useless eyesore and an embarrassment to the world-class city we say we are.

USC has always leased the Los Angeles Coliseum as the site for its at-home Trojan football games, and the lease currently in effect between USC and the Coliseum Commission promises that the commission will renovate the crumbling facility. The commission has not done so and has been in default of that lease agreement for most of this year. USC, then, has the legal right to declare the Coliseum in breach of its contract.

Instead of doing that, USC is offering to pay for the expensive repairs and renovations the Coliseum needs if the commission will hand over the day-to-day operations of the publicly-owned stadium to the university, with the proviso that the USC will make the Coliseum available for community events, including future Olympic games or as a temporary home should a National Football League team relocate to Los Angeles. Considering that the joint powers — the city, county and state — are running out of money and can’t afford to deliver us our routine tax-paid-for services, this is a win-win deal, right? Right. Except the City Council’s odd couple, council members Bernard Parks and Jan Perry, don’t see it that way.

Parks authored, and Perry seconded, a resolution on Dec. 7 calling for the City Council to oppose the efforts that have been going on for several months to transfer the “operations, maintenance and future redevelopment decisions of both the Coliseum and the Sports Arena” to USC until the proposal has been thoroughly vetted blah, blah, blah. Displaying good sense, council members Herb Wesson and Bill Rosendahl amended the resolution rejecting an outright opposition to the proposition, but rather requesting that the commission “take no action [Dec. 7]” on the proposition. The council adopted the amended resolution and the commission has postponed until Dec. 21 any decision on the proposed transfer.

Now this is my question: Where does Parks get off opposing the transfer of the deteriorating Coliseum to USC? He considers himself to be the watchdog of the city funds and he has been on the TV news advising us that the city is so poor that we homeowners may have to pay to repair the public sidewalks in front of our homes. He’s also been seen on TV warning us that we may have to pay fees whenever paramedics and ambulances are called to help us during medical emergencies.

Mind you, we’re already paying taxes for both of these things, but he makes wise of that fact with insensitive rejoinders about the expectations of little old ladies. Rejoinders that are not the least bit clever. As councilman of the district that is already home to the biggest blighted area in the city — namely the Santa Barbara Plaza cum Marlton Square debacle — he should be loathed to add a Coliseum that rivals in ruination the original Coliseum in Rome to the list of dilapidated and unusable structures in his district. But no, he wants to deny control of the thing by USC, the most prominent and prestigious entity in the 8th District — one of the top universities in the country whose Trojan football team is one of the best on the planet, as proven by the 2011 football season.

Parks has said he wants the city to get “a better deal” from the proposed transfer. Well, Parks has sat on the Coliseum Commission for 10 years now and has done nothing to push his fellow commissioners to live up to their contractual obligation to fix the thing. But now that USC wants to reverse the steady deterioration of the stadium for itself and for the rest of us, he wants a better deal. What better deal could there be for us cash-strapped Angelenos? Well, it could be a better deal for me if USC would renovate the Coliseum, repair the broken sidewalk in front of my home and put a new roof on my house. I’d be eternally grateful.

...... and where is Betty on the Wesson's endorsement of the cop?:

Poor Furutani got thrown under the Pleasant/Wesson Bus.

Your thoughts ...............

Scott Johnson in CD 14