Do the residents of Hollywood & neighborhoods to the south enjoy...
Seeing neighborhood business get the shaft for chain stores?
Watching high rise hotels misplace residents in the name of "jobs"?
1-hour parking meters on Weekend Nights, with pay lots where free parking used to reign?
If so, they must, because yesterday they chose to re-elect Tom "I can charge for that" LaBonge to the LA City council. In a move that stunned your writer, Tom will be around for another term for more ways to completely destroy Hollywood, cutting any personality a neighborhood has, and succumbing to every whim of Big Business.
Does this mean he's completely careless to the Hollywood citizen? Not completely...potholes get filled...street lights get replaced. That's a broad example, but the basic nuts and bolts shouldn't be a difficulty. But citizens don't drop big bucks to build anything...and once the W Hotel was shoved in at Hollywood and Vine (written in this blog back in 2006) Tom wanted to make sure the owners, not citizens were happy. $$$$ is the answer.
"We don't do that"
-Tom, after finding out the LAPD was giving tickets for parking at broken city meters. Tell that to the people who have to pay the bullshit ticket! This was a couple months after Tom voted against a 4-month moratorium on rent increases in his district.
When Tom ran in 2007, it was unopposed (!) and with no competition, it made Tom think he had a blank check for bullshit. As the construction was going on, Tom continued to follow Antonio's plan for cutting the budget for each library in the district. THEN, when the ballot measure of increased library funding comes around, he supports that. So, is he against the kind of bullshit he passes? Sure, but no one in his district seems to care.
"Remember the gas lines under President Carter? Odd and Even? I couldn't follow that."
-Tom on a proposed odd and even watering only rule from the DWP during drought conditions.
I could go on...and on...but why should I? We have more years of Tom and his zany LA City Council escapades! Way to go!
