Recently in City Hall and beyond Category

This is the Los Angeles Conundrum: What makes this place an exciting and open and progressive place to live is what makes it so poorly run. It's pretty much a regional distillation of the California Conundrum.

Many regions of the US demonstrate a greater combination of civic-mindedness and community cohesion than LA. Think of, say, Cincinnati. Yet those regions typically foster less innovation, less of the progressive spirit that fuels creativity and cultural and economic growth. LA people are independent spirits and less willing to see themselves as personally invested in the identity of their larger community. That's why they left places like Cincinnati.

The damaging irony is that, because LA and California people are more progressive than citizens of most other states, we have a tendency during salad days to come up with costly utopian programs and stifling utopian regulations that compromise our competitiveness over the long haul. So Jonathan's right: our giving up some "non-essential" service now may teach us a thing or two about what's really essential.

Over at Come on Feel the Nuys (despite the success of Part of Sherman Oaks to annex my Part of Van Nuys, the blog name remains, and I can't seem to write anything but "Van Nuys" on my outgoing mail), I assess the state of the Council District 2 race now that Christine Essel and Paul Krekorian have direct-mailed their way into the December runoff.

(Photos by John McCoy/Los Angeles Daily News. Ever since I mashed these two images together for Dailynews.com, I've insisted on making my two minutes of work bringing said images together [with the excellent IrfanView image editor for Windows] appear as often as possible.)

In case you didn't have a reason to go to TMZ, check out this video of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, KTLA anchor Lu Parker and host-about-town Ryan Seacrest exiting Mozzo after presumably dining together.

Funny: The headline at TMZ is "Seacrest out ... with the Mayor?!" ... no mention of Ms. Parker.

I have no way of explaining it, but as I write at the Daily News' Click technology blog, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, quite a tweeter in his own right (at least that's the word on the virtual street) has begun following my very own, extremely nerdy Twitter feed.

I never "tweet" (as the verb describing the act of posting to Twitter is written) about politics, certainly not L.A. city politics ... although I just might now that Antonio is in the audience.

I mostly write about the computer hardware and software (mostly free and open-source) I'm using, how well it works (or doesn't), and what I'm going to do with that hardware and software in the minutes, hours and days ahead. I do throw in a little breaking technology news and generally anything I want to write about and be done with in seconds (rather than the minutes it takes to cook up a "proper" blog entry; yes, I have no attention span, that much should be clear).

We all know that Twitter is the geek/technology equivalent of Marilyn Monroe in the '50s, Brigitte Bardot in the '60s (and most of the '50s, it turns out), Farrah Fawcett in the '70s ... you get the idea. Twitter is now. And now Antonio is Twitter. Or so it seems.

At any rate, welcome to my Twitter feed, Mayor V. Only the best for you and my 82 other Twitter followers ...

"We can — and we will — beat this recession," Mayor Villaraigosa just emoted.

Now he's talking about his grandfather and others who "came here for a better life." Cue the violins. ...

"It explains the life of Tom Bradley" — where did that come from?

"The future is a matter of what we're willing to say 'yes' to," he continues. "We can do anything, we can be anything here, in the City of the Angels. Thank you all and God Bless."

He went out to the strains of Sly Stone's "Everyday People."

Antonio just praised LAUSD Superintendent Ray Cortines and pledged to put "a team in place" to help reform schools.

He's probably said the word "charters" eight times already.

And if our schools don't succeed:

"When wholesale change is the only answer, we will close them down ... and turn them over to charter operators, the mayor's partnership, local universities."

Mayor Villaraigosa just bragged about some 2,000 diesel trucks that have been replaced with "clean" alternatives. He plans to make the harbor cleaner still.

He calls a development near Arroyo Seco "the clean-tech corridor" of L.A.

Much like President Obama, Antonio says he wants clean technology and economic growth to fuel each other.

Antonio just said, "crime is at historic lows, our police force at historic highs." Homicides are down, and then there's the anti-gang program.

"Our budget will protect police and fire and put 1,000 cops on our streets," he continues.

"We can't afford not to (hire more police)," he says.

Now he's talking about ending the council-district-apportioned money for anti-gang programs and instead focusing the funding and effort on the most needed areas. The "Summer Night Lights" program "will be expanded to 15 parks."

"With the passage of Measure R, Los Angeles is in the business of building again," he continues.

"Angelenos didn't buy the politics of 'no,' " ... and yes, he used the words "subway to the sea."

If the water rises enough, I guess Westwood will be seaside soon enough, but I digress.

Now he's getting all pollyannish about Locke High, Green Dot and parental involvement. Bet UTLA's happy about that.

Antonio just announced a partnership (with unknown partners) that would place 16,500 youngsters in jobs, "the most in 15 years," he said to applause. All I'm thinking is that things were super-good 15 years ago.

He said he's counting on federal funds to get kids "off the streets and out of trouble" in education and work programs.

He wants to create "21 family (re)source centers" in "the toughest neighborhood" to help people get all the help that's coming to them — and he thinks 15,000 families will benefit.

He then pledged to help some 4,000 families with immediate needs.

"We will not leave our neighbors behind, no matter what the cost," Antonio said.

He just uttered the phrase "From Van Nuys to Venice," in a preamble to a pledge to help small business in the city. He said it's time "to take our game to a higher level," and assist "over 1,000 local and small businesses in the coming months."

With this kind of aid, he said, the dollars will "come back to local communities."

He wants to "aggressively grow the industries of the future," making L.A. the center of "the green economy," and a "clean-energy powerhouse."

The mayor sure sounds like he's running for something: He commented on what a tragedy it would be if Social Security funds had been invested in the kind of shaky investments that brought down the rest of the economy (and our 401k plans).

Now he's making a case for city services and how they're strained more than ever in this terrible economy.

He's offering to form a "partnership" with city unions in order to get over the hump.

He said the city could be forced to lay off 2,800 city workers. Right now he said that 1 hour per week without pay could save 500 jobs, and other things such as deferring raises will save even more jobs.

And he just said "lockbox." He channeled both Obama and Gore in the space of a few minutes.

What looks to be a local high-school jazz band has been playing for the past 20+ minutes preceding Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's State of the City address at a Harbor City factory where electric trucks are made.

I have no idea where the kids are from, but for the most part they're pretty good. Sure there's a horn player in there somewhere who's more than a little flat. I won't single out winds or brass, so you've gotta listen yourself if you seek additional information.

A girl delivered a pretty good-sounding flute solo (who doesn't love jazz flute, am I right?), and there was a fine sax solo by another girl after that. I also dig the vibes — meaning the vibraphone — you don't see that very often in a high-school band.

The CEO of the electric-truck company is giving a speech now, and I guess that takes the pressure off of Antonio, who should be on at any minute.