EDITORIAL SMALL STEPS, INDEED GARCETTI OVERESTIMATES CITY COUNCIL'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

WRAPPING up one year as president of the Los Angeles City Council, Eric Garcetti boasts of all that he and his colleagues have accomplished. ``I think this Council has a lot to be proud of for this past year, where we took significant steps toward improving public safety, dealing with the homeless and looking at creating more affordable housing,'' Garcetti says.

The key phrase here is ``steps toward.''

Those words should tip you off that the council didn't actually accomplish anything meaningful about public safety, the homeless or housing this past year. It just tried to get a little closer to, you know, actually doing something about it. Later. Maybe next year.

Meanwhile, the council continued to ignore the city's gang epidemic. It sicced cops on the homeless on Skid Row for the crime of driving down key campaign contributors' property values. And its Measure H housing bond went down in flames at the polls, precisely because the public was unwilling to give more money to a city government that does so little with the money it already has.

Yet all this apparently passes for progress in City Hall.

We don't mean to pick on Garcetti. It's not as though his council was any less productive than any of its recent predecessors. But like many a council before it, Garcetti's team seemed far less interested in grappling with the city's most pressing, pernicious problems than in tending to its own concerns.

Case in point: Measure R.

When it came to extending the amount of time council members can stay in office from eight years to 12, the council got to work with remarkable alacrity.

Most city policy initiatives get bottled up in the interminable committee process, but not R. It was fast-tracked, bypassed an Ethic Commission review, and rushed to the ballot -- even though the city attorney warned that it was unconstitutional.

Which is why Measure R, and not any half-hearted policy measures, will be the single accomplishment for which Garcetti's first year as council president will be remembered.

By deed more than word, this council showed where its priorities lay -- and it wasn't with the public.

Let's hope for better in year No.2.