Wild West Side

JM, Westside Woody 2008, 3.14.08

Joseph Mailander a guy in la • elsewhere • email

Things slip through the cracks on the westside...

Ron Galperin, runing for Weiss's Council District 5 spot, leads former Assemblyman Paul Koretz by over two-to-one in fundraising to-date. There's only a year to go in this election...

When downtown LA pols talk affordable housing, they generally talk about slush funds for developers and contractors. They don't talk so much the simple math of Section 8 and conversion, which costs the taxpayers far less. And then there's developer Greg Pearlman, who Westside Today featured last week. Pearlman's company has 12,000 Section 8 units, and hopes to go to 20,000. The taxpayer's bang-to-buck ratio looks pretty good on Pearlman projects, unlike the ratios that come out of the Mayor's office's projects.

And watch the Westside Today family for increasing expressions of disenchantment with the Mayor. They were recently given a big boost by a group that included Steve Soboroff. When Dick Riordan went on KFI last night, broadsiding the Mayor, it wasn't just the usual Riordan open-mouth-insert-foot performance. It was more calculated than that, and there are rumbles that Riordan, Soboroff, Wardlow, and Broad are all ditching the Mayor and looking for a new, er, white knight who can restore some reality to the City and local politics. Match that with Soboroff's investment in Westside Today and you're watching early 2009 unfold in early 2008.

Postscript: Coming home from the Westside, 3:30 p.m.---I don't know how you people put up with that. Venice is now the worst coordinated east-west street in LA, and that is saying very much. Trying to book north, I guess Rimpau is the new Highland---but only up to 3rd. Thanks, Steve, thanks Dick, thanks Tony, thanks Gloria!