Los Angeles on $300,000 a year

After a voting quorum finally shows up, Garcetti motions to Cardenas, who will present the fancy document to the team. But Cardenas can’t find his prepared remarks, prompting staffers to search high and low. Cardenas, after all, can’t appear live on Channel 35, which broadcasts council meetings, and sound like a fool.

The remarks are finally located, and Cardenas stands at a podium with the football team surrounding him. “The message here,” says Cardenas to the cameras, “is to never give up on our young people.”

Fred Noland

Ted Soqui

Garcetti’s sleek home got a spread in Dwell magazine.

In the public gallery, Zuma Dogg, who has attended scores of City Council meetings, shakes his head. “They’ll sit here for two hours and give awards — and then they’ll lose a quorum for real business.” Just as he offers that complaint, Zuma Dogg looks up at a big attendance board behind Garcetti, which shows which council members are present and which are not. Among those present are the seven members who face a March 3 election that will be more like a coronation. Zuma Dogg starts to count.

“We don’t have a quorum!” he yells out — out of order in the august chambers, in fact. “Can you believe that? We don’t have quorum!”

It’s January 23, and newspapers around the country have recently written that Los Angeles faces a record deficit of more than $300 million as of July 1, a blink of time from now. But the City Council can’t keep it together for the Friday meeting. One of the three days a week for council members to do business is kaput, and it’s not even one o’clock in the afternoon.

Contact Patrick Range McDonald at pmcdonald@laweekly.com.