As useless and slow as the Mayor and Council members have been with respect to keeping the city financially secure over the years, they still don't shape up. They refuse to let go of any employees, keeping the salaries and related costs for each job in pension and other benefits without having the money to pay for such costs, including the salaries.
So to go on wth these things, they want to shuffle people into other positions in "proprietary" areas of the city, like the city agencies: DWP, Airport, Harbor, and you have to wonder what that's about. I can see a receptionist in one place moving to another job that has such duties, but say a traffic or street maintenance worker just cannot be lifted and put into ANY other job for the sake of employment preservation.
Well, the Council added another meeting for themselves on Thursday - most of the agenda is about privatization, working on selling or transfering operations to private concerns. Selling anything off is a mistake. Most of the properties can generate income, and besides, how good do you expect the offers will be when buyers know the city is panicky over money? If you talk about "managing things"and keeping the assets and control, that may be a diferent story, but council is so clueless on anything but snatching up money and they have been holding millions that another story in the L.A. Times will tell you about.
Leasing for the long term is as bad as selling anything outright- bad deals by the city that were made only 10 years ago included the rights for posting digital signs on the Convention Center that amounted to giveaways from a past assembly of council persons who had no ability to make a good deal for the city, but a very large ability to lock the city into a deal that goes to a politician's favorite "charity," AEG, the same ones with the Staples Center and LA Live among their properties.
Tomorrow the City Council will be preparing moves in this direction and and CAO Miguel Santana is really only looking at the numbers for now and his narrow view is to accomplish a balancing of accounts - so you can see he is going for this approach, too. Even he, with a really sharp mind when you compare him to the elected overseers, is not perfect- but selling assets would be really stepping on a big pile for the city, and that's never nice.
Call, fax and Email your local CM- see the side bar for links to their contact information with phone numbers- you can leave message that you oppose any decision that involves selling assets that include the Zoo, the Convention Center and any city Golf courses. AND PARKING STRUCTURES and PARKING METERS are on the market- Something from "if you think parking rates are hign now" dept.- voice your opposition now- and do it often. And if you ask for a reply for their position, you might get one, but it will at the very least let them know their plan is AGAINST the interests of the public. You didn't like the parking meter rates hiked during that 2008 Christmas Season, did you? That was nothing compared to the potential that the plan has to make parking as expensive and difficult as driving has become in the city.
Again, the story about the 1,000 person layoffs was mentioned by the CM Alarcon as I recall, or possibly CM Cardenas, "So what we have is reducing 1,000 positions, not 1,000 layoffs." I don't think that even they are aware of how strange their reasoning sounds to the average outsider.
The story by Ron Kaye is pretty descriptive of the behind the plan reality that goes with what Antonio presented last week. "Antonio's Phantom Layoffs: Eliminating Jobs Doesn't Mean Eliminating Workers." By Ron Kaye on February 5, 2010 6:46 AM http://ronkayela.com/2010/02/antonios-phantom-layoffs-elimi.html
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