THE ECONOMY, THE MAYOR AND THE CITY OF LA: Good Grief.

by smf for 4LAKids

I went to art opening on Monday, I’ll write about that in Sunday’s 4LAKids.

I spoke to an LA City Councilperson at that event. She was out of her bailiwick, in someone else’s council district - doing her best  to appreciate the art and how it maybe changes young people’s  lives.  But if you’ll remember – Monday was the day city government came face to face with how deep in recession red the city is.  She was not the cheerful happy camper politicos-in-public are supposed to be.

The news was bad and she had moved beyond denial (where we all have been languishing)  on to another phase – somewhere perhaps between anger, bargaining and depression.  The light at the end of the tunnel was undeniably an oncoming  train.

In the next few days we saw the city council hesitate – agreeing to save some art programs, arguing about whether to cut police. I don’t think Posturing is one of Kubler-Ross’s stages of Grief …although maybe at City Hall it is.

Where I going is this: The city is today where LAUSD and school districts throughout California  have been for the past few years. Even in boom times California Public Education has been taking a hit because of a lack of vision, commitment and political leadership in Sacramento.  School districts need to have their budgets balanced three years out – a burden the state, city and counties don’t have. The bursting of the bubble has hit education hard – but we are unfortunately used to it.

Today – like about and hour-and-a-half ago – I got an email blog from Mayor Villaraigosa.  It was kind of scary – Mayor Tony too has moved beyond denial:

“Unfortunately, instead of making progress, we are headed in the wrong direction…up until today.

“With the authority invested in me by the City Charter and the people of Los Angeles, I’m taking immediate action toward balancing this fiscal year’s budget….”

I don’t know what version of the City Charter hizzoner is working from, the City of Los Angeles has a weak-mayor (ceremonial) form of mayor–council city government. This isn’t New York City. Or Chicago.  He can look it up here on Wikipedia. Or here in the charter.

I don’t doubt the mayor’s new-found urgency…or the depth of the hole the city is in. But he’s got to play his plays-well-with-others-card, not his man-on-a-white-horse card..And he’s got to play it well. And maybe – just maybe – he needs to focus on being mayor rather than educator-in-chief …or even Tony-on-the-spot.

His entire message is here.  It’s informative to dial back in his blog to a week ago, to the time before ‘up until today’ - before the urgency struck.

Meanwhile, this is still on his website:

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