Editorial: Why L.A. needs a larger City Council
If Los Angeles is the City of Angels, then its problems are its faults. One of the reasons is the lack of a functioning, democratic city council dedicated to making city decisions.
Over the past few decades, residents and tourists have been told more than once that L.A. is a city of neighborhoods, of people who have been here forever and who know what’s best for their own neighborhoods.
So it seemed that, in the past, the residents and the tourists would all get along famously. But Los Angeles is full of neighborhoods, like SoMa, that have been around for a century or more.
All of a sudden, there are new people in town who don’t live in those parts of the city, and if the old residents didn’t have a sense of unity they might not have been around.
What was once a neighborhood in a certain section of Los Angeles is now a whole neighborhood.
But what was once a neighborhood of old people and young people is now a neighborhood of new people and old people.
And there are new people who are, you know, from out of town, like Los Angeles has never had before.
It’s time to get a larger City Council. The larger the City Council, the greater the democracy, because that’s a democracy. It’s not a dictatorship where you have to have 10 people and if you don’t then you’re not a legitimate city, just like Los Angeles is not.
We need a City Council that listens to the people who actually live in the neighborhoods first and foremost, and it’s for everyone by the way. And we need to elect our City Council that way. Because once we have that City Council we can start working on the problems that the people actually need help with.
We don’t need to wait for a new mayor to come in and start solving these problems. We can start tackling them already sitting in the City Council.
We need a City Council that is not a bunch of out-of-towners that don’t even live here and don’t understand what’s really happening.
What was once a neighborhood in a certain section of Los Angeles is now a whole neighborhood.
And the people aren’t with us anymore. We can’t