I recently obtained a huge batch of emails between former City Clerk June Lagmay and present City Clerk Holly Wolcott back when she had Shannon Hoppes’s job as Executive Officer. I haven’t managed to prep them all for publication yet, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff in there. See e.g. this recent post about lawsuits against the Downtown Center BID and how the City propped them up for five years by refunding a half million dollars in assessments to an angry plaintiff.

Today’s topic, also based on selections from this material, is a vignette about an attempt by former Councilmember Dennis Zine to donate $30,000 from his salary to the LAPD’s Mounted Platoon to buy a replacement tractor, maybe to move horseshit around?¹ The Council File is 13-0064-S4, and you can read the LAPD’s report on the donation as well. On February 11, 2013 Holly Wolcott emailed Karen Kalfayan, possibly with the office of the Chief Legislative Analyst,² to ask if the money was coming out of Zine’s salary as Councilmember.³

Subsequently Lagmay emailed Wolcott to alert her that the item would be heard in committee on February 22. After the meeting Lagmay emailed Wolcott under the subject line “interesting” to tell her that the item was continued to an unspecified future date, and then Wolcott replied, taking credit for the whole thing: “Yes, that was due entirely to my intervention…….since I couldn’t keep it off the agenda that is what we all decided to do with it. … It will die in continuation pergatory, [sic] never to be agendized again hell now. [sic]“ Lagmay’s reply expresses pure admiration: “You one powerful woman.” And who is “we all” in Wolcott’s narrative? Some anti-tractor cabal? Isn’t the Committee in charge? Very weird.

That’s the story! And I don’t know if it’s good or bad for Dennis Zine to give a tractor to the LAPD. It’s probably bad, because what good are the cops gonna get up to with heavy equipment?⁴ But good or bad, ideally the City is run by elected officials exercising their lawful powers lawfully granted to them by the people rather than by appointed functionaries using scheduling jujitsu to kill off properly introduced motions by leaving them to “die in continuation pergatory, [sic] never to be agendized again hell now. [sic]“ And turn the page for transcriptions of everything!

Image of Dennis Zine whining about some nonsense is ©2019 MichaelKohlhaas.Org and then there’s this.

1. Knowing the LAPD, though, it’s hard to see how just one tractor would suffice.
2. It’s hard to tell what Kalfayan’s position was at that time.
3. I don’t have a copy of Kalfayan’s answer, if there was one.
4. Or any equipment, for that matter.