L.A. City Clowncil Loses Quorum And Doesn't Finish City Business (After Hours of "Dog & Pony Show" Paid Presentations)

No wonder Los Angeles City Council has become laughing stock fodder for not only local radio talk show hosts, but now even national cable talk show hosts like Bill O'Reilly have jumped on board with comments like, "A confused City Council".

But this really takes the cake: Everyone knows that City Council makes the public endure hours of paid presentations under the guise of "Presentations and Proclamations."

A couple weeks ago CM Wendy Greuel admitted, "today we are getting paid to say nice things about you..."

Well on Friday April 25, 2008 it wasn't the first time Council lost a quorum after hours of their paid "Dog and Pony Shows" (whatever THEY wanna call 'em)...but tell that to the people who showed up for public comment on agenda items affecting their community.

ZUMA NOTICES THE CHAMBERS LOOKS A LITTLE SHORT ON COUNCILMEMBERS


For example, Item 40 was about a zoning variance that Council was to most likely approve that would allow a factory to be built behind a neighborhood of homes. (Yes, right in their backyard, so to speak.)

Well a group of women from the community showed up twice already, but the item was continued both times, so this was their third trip to Shitty Hall. (They had to take the day off, and travel Downtown...only to be told to come back for the third time.)

So they came back on Friday for the 10am Council meeting. General Public comment didn't start until 1PM. And Item 40 was after that, and some other long items before it. So finally after about a four hour wait -- the women are called for public comment on their item.

Only thing, Garcetti announces after they are done, that they have lost a quorum and the item would be continued until Tuesday.

Garcetti may have left them feeling all warm and fuzzy that they had their public comment, but here are two things to consider:

a) If there wasn't a quorum, there weren't the legally required number of Councilmembers on hand to hear the comments.

b) No quorum means not a legally binding meeting and so the comments were not officially on the record. Without being on the record, you cannot take legal action later. (No recourse without showing up to the public hearing first.)

But those women probably won't be back for the actual Item on Tuesday and they won't be on the record, and will have no legal recourse unless ZD shows up to put down a PC for the record.

Plus other agenda items were left on the table...but worst of all...Zuma Dogg did not get his full daily allotment of public comment time. And now when the Items are continued on Tuesday, I bet Garshady will not give me additional time to finish public comment on Friday's items. In other words, I bet those shady corrupt laughing stocks of the nation will make me use Tuesday's time for Friday's items. (Then I can't speak on new items for Tuesday.) We'll see.

AS U CAN SEE,I DIDN'T TAKE THE NEWS VERY WELL
(Not only were agenda items left on the table, so was ZD's public comment time.)

LA Weekly SEVEN PAGE Website Post on Density Problems

From LAWeekly.com

Soon after taking the job of director of the Los Angeles Department of City Planning in 2006, Gail Goldberg made a declaration that let slip how City Hall is allowing developers to pursue a building frenzy straight out of the storied tale Chinatown.
Said Goldberg, newly arrived here from a similar post in San Diego:

"In every city in this country, the zone on the land establishes the value of the land. In Los Angeles, that's not true.

"The value of the land is not based on what the zone says ... It's based on what [the] developer believes he can change the zone to.

"This is disastrous for the city.

"Disastrous.

"Zoning has to mean something in this city."

Goldberg probably wishes she hadn't said that, not necessarily because she got reprimanded by L.A.'s famously vindictive Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, but because Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavksy has repeated her words in public, over and over. Yaroslavsky, who represented the city's affluent Westside District 5 as a councilman until 1994, has been staging a one-man campaign to slow City Hall's feverish promotion of density — a quiet war on the large swaths of suburbia and few hunks of countryside remaining inside the city limits.

ZUMA DOGG ON LA CITY'S "DUMB" GROWTH (Yes, I coined the phrase!)

(notice: turn volume way down.)


Full article

More on Dumb Growth/Density

Zuma Dogg's Eminent Domain Alert

zumadogg@gmail.com