EDITORIAL : TURNING LESS INTO MORE L.A. COUNCIL SHOULD TAKE A CUE FROM ITS PRESIDENT.LOS Angeles City Council  The Los Angeles City Council is the governing body of the City of Los Angeles, California, United States. President John Ferraro John Ferraro (May 14 1924—April 17 2001) served as a Los Angeles City Councilman from 1966 until his death. Early lifeFerraro was born in the working class suburb of Cudahy, California, just south of Los Angeles. showed leadership Tuesday by calling for his colleagues to improve their spotty spot·ty adj. spot·ti·er, spot·ti·est 1. Lacking consistency; uneven. 2. Having or marked with spots; spotted. spot attendance at council meetings. Ferraro was putting the spotlight on an important subject, even though he offered no specifics. His suggestion that the council could meet only once a week like the county supervisors was thrown out in an off-the-cuff manner to stimulate creative thinking about this problem of poor attendance. Maybe it's more than that, maybe he's on to something big. As far as the public can tell, it would be a wonderful improvement for the council to spend fewer days at City Hall and more time in the field, mingling with the ordinary residents of Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. and finding out what's wrong so they can fix it. Many of those residents, by the way, consider much of the council's activity utterly irrelevant. We're referring to all the posturing, politicking, bickering bick·er intr.v. bick·ered, bick·er·ing, bick·ers 1. To engage in a petty, bad-tempered quarrel; squabble. See Synonyms at argue. 2. and line-drawn-in-the-sand partisanship which serve no constructive purpose, and which only promote pet causes of council members and special interests. By spending fewer days on meetings at City Hall and more days working in their 15 districts throughout the city, members of the city's governing body Noun 1. governing body - the persons (or committees or departments etc.) who make up a body for the purpose of administering something; "he claims that the present administration is corrupt"; "the governance of an association is responsible to its members"; "he might be able to improve their public image by emphasizing service to the whole community, not a political agenda. If council members stayed away from City Hall one more day each week, imagine what might happen. They could meet more people - average, hard-working taxpayers - and learn more about the needs and hopes of ordinary Los Angeles residents. Next, that new knowledge might induce the council to jettison jettison (jĕt`əsən, –zən) [O.Fr.,=throwing], in maritime law, casting all or part of a ship's cargo overboard to lighten the vessel or to meet some danger, such as fire. its feel-good agenda and delegate more responsibilities to subordinates. That could leave the council with more time to handle important, fundamental policies of public safety, more accountability in municipal government and greater responsiveness to the real concerns of neighborhoods and communities. By focusing on what's truly significant, the council might even conclude that they can accomplish the greatest good by meeting together only once a week. As Ferraro said during the council meeting Tuesday: ``The Board of Supervisors meets one day a week. They have a budget three, four times as big as ours, so let's consider that.'' If that were to happen, less would be more - much more. We believe the public would be grateful, and very surprised, too. |
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