Yesterday, Mayor Villaraigosa, Council President Eric Garcetti (CD-13), Council Person Jack Weiss (CD-5) and DWP General Manager David Nahai held a press conference by a men's restroom in a Century City office building that has converted all urinals to "waterless" urinals.
All the jokes and comments were what they consider to be their priority for the moment. Tony is a camera hog and publicity whore, and you would expect that from him instead of doing real work. Garcetti is a 100% "Go Green" advocate and would go for anything green, regardless of how much the cost would be to anyone, including you and me.
The news media comes out for bizarre things that really aren't at the top of urgent matters that affect life and death in L.A. You see little of what goes on in City Hall in the newspapers, and the Times has fired large numbers of staff in the last year, but they stopped real reporting on city issues long ago. The mayor is expert in news conferences but not so in caring about working for the city, as the LA Weekly story, "All-about-me Mayor" (linked in the sidebar) vividly show.
The crime and violence is something that I suppose gets to be put on "hold" while these city officials spend the better part of the morning to show urinals. You can also bet that there is some money to be made by an industry element who manufactures and installs these things, and that this publicity stunt is for the purpose of priming the pump for such things as getting approval for awarding contracts for city business. It all comes back to money besides their own egos.
When it comes to city development and policies- that's been strangely done, and not much in public, for most cases.
Now let's see how much money is going to these guys by way of salary.
"Raises for L.A.'s top city officials look bad," L.A. Daily News, Oct. 30, 2008, http://www.dailynews.com/ci_10860599 - The story show that in these times of increasing financial hardships hitting so many in the country, you have this runaway machine that continues to create raises automatically for city officials. They like to say, "It's out of our hands," but they could change it. They don't like that topic.
The salary for each City Council member over is $180,000.00 per year. They have lot of perks: a city-paid for vehicle, free gasoline, a staff authorization of 20 persons each, and much more that boost the benefits for these ELECTED officials. Do you have any wonder as to why they would like to stay in office?
All is not as it appears and that is what I want to keep in the forefront amid all the stunts and glad-handing that the city government continue to shower us with.
More of this to come.
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