Council Blow by Blow for 6-2-08

PREFIGHT WARM UP:

Nothing done in closed session that they talk about. Asst. City Clerk Mark Jomski leads the pledge. He gets it right, too. Robinson's missing in action. Campaigning in Puerto Rico for Obama, ya think?

Ismael Trone gets sworn in to Community Development Commission.

NO PUBLIC COMMENT tonight.

CONSENT CALENDAR: Council spends our money on all sorts of stuff without talking about any of it. $1,000,000 for an energy consultant for the power company. $5,000,000 for something called emerging technology consultants for the electric company. Happy to know my higher rates are paying consultants. $300K in heavy equipment, that's at least buying something.

FINANCE COMMITTEE: Gets a report on investments. City's doin' ok in spite of all the problems with the economy. Madison wants to know about foreclosures and they'll get a report some other time on that. They're doing something about changing how city bonds are rated. I'm not real clear on it. They're redesigning the ice rink for an extra $400K for the ice rink that's too expensive anyway. BUT it's gonna cost half again as much to design it cheaper, instead of doing it that way in the first place? Joe Conrad says it's not about hockey or figure skating but about kids. Wants something to get done.John Dudley VP of Pasadena Hockey wants it done. Wants users to have input. Terry Miller Prez of Pasadena Figure Skating wants to know if they're putting in enough $$$. Why aren't the skating moms and hockey dads paying for this instead of me? These people want more seats and think we're all gonna pay for it. Why get a Focus when you can have somebody else buy you a Cadillac? Stop wasting money on this. If those folks want more stuff, get them to pony up the cash for it! Where's Wayne Gretsky when you need him? Can't we find somebody to build and run this thing so it doesn't cost us anything?

INFORMATION ON CABLE TV DEAL FROM AT&T: Mayor and Tyler can't be there 'cause they have stock in AT&T. How nice for two of our rich folk councilmembers. The phone company wants to do cable tv service. Public Works director says we gotta take it. They can't get the powerpoint to work at first. I'm confident. They say it's gonna be better. Got faster stuff, more features, supposed to be cheaper. It's also got boxes and wires and all the fun stuff neighbors don't like. AT&T makes pretty much the same pitch as Champion did to me. We're cheaper and better, but they created no end of havoc with neighborhoods when they hung the wires and put in those huge boxes. Council remembers Altrio. Seems like they can do what they want mostly but just came to tell the council what they're up to. The AT&T people do a commercial for the service. Some smarmy guy from cable access warns about what they aren't offering, like from public presentations that we already get. Bob Knisel talks about Altrio and warns about bringing in another just like it. He said the Altrio stuff is coming out. After some talk McAustin gets it all brought back again in a week or two. Do we get an environmental report on this? We should so we can be sure they don't totally fuck our neighborhoods, too.

GOLF COURSE FEES: Are going up. The pro from Dover says it's because of water costs. It's only on weekends when the place is busiest. There's also some plans to do work on the course in the next couple years but nobody talks about it much.

EIR FOR ROSE BOWL PLAN B: Plan B is gonna widen the tunnels, add new luxury boxes and put a big traffic circle in front of the Rose Bowl. EIR's done, RBOC oldster Bill Thompson says go forward with it. Paul Little from the Chamber of Commerce says, "Get on with it!" Livvies want to blame global warming and everything else on the Rose Bowl. Complain about traffic. Some garden gnome lookin' women complain about how the Rose Bowl bothers their plantation homes. One gnome even complains about the breast cancer walk. SERIOUSLY! Old white guy Parker says he knows the Rose Bowl won't have more impacts but they still want to stop the project for now and keep studying so they get less traffic. Gordo calls them on blaming everything on the Rose Bowl. Finally after a bunch of garbage from the councilmembers it passes.

People are talking about doin' a traffic study to cut down on cars in Brookside Park. No mention from Airheaderlein about how we need more park space when they're talkin' about keeping people out of the biggest park in Pasadena. Wake up people. You gonna cut use in Brookside 'cause the rich Livvies don't want people down there? But you bitch about how we're so short of park space. I guess the numbers matter more than the people who use the park. Do I care if a few thousand people use Brookside to raise money to fight breast cancer? Well, honestly, NOT AT ALL! I think it's good we can use it for things like that, and picnics, and parties, and festivals and soccer and football.

I got an idea: bring the Jazz Fests back to Central Park. Those were great events that didn't bother many people at all and were really good for downtown Pasadena. Especially the free one.

LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE: They don't like a bill that makes cities have finished designs before bidding projects to contractors. Huh?

PUBLIC HEARINGS:
BUDGET HEARING: It's all being done in Finance Committee. Budget gets continued with not much talk about it at all.
NO CELL PHONE TOWERS for a while. AT&T person says don't do it. Bob Knisel and others say please do it. They do it. OK by me. There's gotta be better ways to do the cell phone tower thing than the ugly ass towers they do now. Pasadena only allows antennas on light poles in neighborhoods. Public commenters Marion Kwan, Raymond Kwan don't like the towers. Anita Gabrellian from AT&T thinks they're ok or she's paid to think that anyway.

AN OLD APARTMENT HOUSE ON CALIFORNIA'S A LANDMARK and another mansion on Arden Road gets the nod, too.

PUBLIC COMMENT AT THE END: James Peterson angry condo dude complains about a building at Cordova and Marengo. The dude's just complaining about everything and everybody, even AQMD and the health department about how high some building is near his condo on Marengo. He also basically says nobody but him cares. He walks off muttering to himself. Melekian says the guys speaking for himself. Tyler says it's the famous area they talked about before.

POST FIGHT ROUND UP: Madison asks about a retreat on July 12th. Nobody's sure what it is. Bogaard says it's a meeting involving councilmembers. It's happening at the Rose Bowl. Bogaard says they're interviewing candidates for the "open position" on the 23rd at 8 a.m. Holden wants to know about building permits expiring because of the recession.

It's way painful to watch the Livvies demand attention when so many other people have serious problems. Here's a drinking game: Take a shot every time the West Side Surrender Monkey tries to find some way to do the Livvies' bidding.

Enough for tonight!

D.