This is the dessert that Mark Ridley-Thomas has been priming for ever since he decided to make community politics his life almost 30 years ago.
The quintessential hometown politician, the essence of populism who knows voters by name and by trait. He gets things done, and voters remember. State Sen. Ridley-Thomas (D-Culver City) believes in retail.
Hard to say what voters will get if Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks is elected to the County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
Once his longtime family friend Yvonne Brathwaite Burke last year disclosed her intention to retire at the end of her fourth four-year term, Mr. Parks immediately leaped in.
State Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas’s campaign for the County Board of Supervisors charged yesterday that with six days left until the election, rival Bernard Parks is almost $340,000 in debt.
With surgical swiftness and tidiness, the County Board of Supervisors, behind the strong lead of Board Chair Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, completed this afternoon what it started last week.
They completed the job in less than 30 minutes.
After sitting through still another ponderous, meandering, esoteric City Council debate last night about a, so far, amorphous Youth Advisory Commission, community activist Tom Camarella stood up to join Jeff Cooper of the Parks and Recreation Commission in pacing around the back of Council Chambers.
Last Tuesday afternoon during the County Board of Supervisors meeting, Bernard Parks and I walked through a doorway almost simultaneously. As we spoke, a photographer neither of us knew, drifted around.
[Editor’s Note: Racing to beat the deadline before Tuesday’s scheduled vote by the County Board of Supervisors, at 500 W. Temple St., downtown Los Angeles, on rules to govern increased drilling in the Inglewood oilfield, the President of the Culver Crest Homeowners Assn. has sent the following message to members:
As putative pioneers of a New Generation of kinder, gentler builders who value sensitivity toward the neighborhood over more traditional (negative) traits commonly associated with some developers, partners Greg Reitz and Steve Edwards received their reward last night when they went before the Planning Commission in Council Chambers.
After Fred MacFarlane, a senior deputy to state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Culver City), read this morning’s story in which a basketball icon recorded a video slamming the style and tone of the senator’s campaign against L.A. City Councilman Bernard Parks for a seat on the County Board of Supervisors, he smiled wryly. (See “Backing Parks, Magic Johnson Raps Ridley-Thomas for ‘Negative and Untruthful’ Campaign in Video Remarks.”)
In a decision that was a blow to the Expo Line Construction Authority’s proposed street-level crossing next to Dorsey High School, a Public Utilities Commission administrative law judge has ruled that MTA’s crossing plan is unsafe and that safety concerns voiced by the South L.A. community and by LAUSD valid.
