Garcetti Spends $450K to Renovate Mayoral Manse

Silly Rabbits

While otherwise making a name for himself coast to coast, inserting himself into the sad tale of Los Angeles Clippers owner, Donald Sterling and his silly rabbit, the scribes at the LA Weekly were quietly gathering the details on rennovations the Mayor and his wife, Amy Wakeland, billed the city for in order for the First Family to move into the city owned, Getty House, Los Angeles' official residence for its chief executive.

The piece by veteran journo Gene Maddaus tabulates a near half a million dollars in changes and fixes to the Hancock Park mansion, a process that was essentially project managed by Wakeland.

Read the piece, but there's a few gems in there, such as:

"Amy Wakeland wanted new light bulbs at Getty House. It was late August, and the wife of new

Mayoral Manse

mayor Eric Garcetti had taken command of renovation work at the mayoral residence. On her list of improvements were LED bulbs — ones that would be friendly to the Tudor mansion's interiors while also advancing the mayor's environmental agenda.

The lighting at Getty House had just been upgraded in 2007, and it already had some LED bulbs and compact fluorescents. In the opinion of the city's building maintenance director, there was "probably not much of an opportunity to save energy by changing the lights."

But Wakeland told city workers she could get some donations, and she tasked the mayor's sustainability officer with rustling up some free bulbs. A private equity firm ended up donating some lights, but that did not cover the full cost. In the end, the city spent $14,000 on new lighting for Getty House."

The Garcetti-Wakelands

And this,

"In November, the project was on track for completion by Dec. 1. One key item remained. The family wanted several wooden signs installed on ground-floor doors, with the word "PRIVATE." But no matter how many samples city workerscame up with, they could not find a font that the mayor liked. Finally, they asked the mayor to sketch the lettering he wanted.

On Nov. 6, he wrote out the word "PRIVATE" on a piece of paper and gave his instructions: a sans-serif font, wide spacing, maybe Art Deco–influenced, on silver/metal backing.

This decision was up to him, and he made it."

More importantly, the piece points out the concerns made by others, including L.A. writer, Joseph Mailander (who was recently blocked on Twitter by the Mayor), as to what precisely Wakeland's role is in the administration viz-a-viz the role she serves