Reporter Paul Teetor wrote that the Manhattan Beach City Council held an illegal meeting to hand City Manager Geoff Dolan $270,000 to walk away from his job after he admitted to inappropriate behavior with at least one female city employee (“Manhattan Beach Sex Payoff,” April 1).

The council's decision came after Dolan's colleague of 13 years, City Attorney Robert Wadden, repeatedly warned that Dolan would sue unless he was bought off. (His bad behavior had occurred during a team-building management retreat in Pismo Beach. We're still chortling over that: Taxpayers in tiny Manhattan Beach funded their well-paid managers' trip to Pismo Beach, apparently because they can't do team building in Manhattan Beach.)

“It is unfortunate that so much of the Manhattan Beach taxpayers' money was wasted,” writes “PublicSafetyProject.org,” which is a watchdog website in nearby El Segundo. “People will tend to spend other people's money more wastefully, frivolously and irresponsibly than they will spend their own money. This is one more reason why government taxes and spending should be low, and people should be allowed to keep more of their earnings to spend to best meet the needs of their families.”

Reader “Bev” writes: “Teetor has strobed hot lights on some of Manhattan Beach's long-murky waters, about — and by — both the city's former manager, Geoff Dolan, and what appears will be the former city attorney, Robert Wadden, and it is as sad and embarrassing as it is outrageous. In Teetor's tale of two city employees, Dolan was a very able manager for the 'City,' if not THE city (the people). He adroitly managed the shop, the keepers and council, keeping very frustrated residents at bay. No pun.

“And it appears the city attorney's ill counsel to council and client (the city or the manager? Who did he represent, anyway?) was both the city's — and the city manager's — undoing. But in classic irony, we see how the city attorney and manager managed to finally outdo, and do-in, each other — using the city's taxpayers as pawns.“

Nancy Daylen disagrees, saying the problem wasn't the behavior of city officials. The problem is the Weekly. She says our “bogus tabloid story will bring in additional readers for the L.A. Weekly's smut ads for prostitution services, marijuana dispensaries, tattoo/piercing parlors, pawn shops, stripper bars, illegal immigration services and other sleazy scum businesses.”

(Zounds. We certainly hope so.)

Mike retorts: “ 'Nancy Daylen' resorted to personal attacks and falsehoods because s/he does not have supporting facts or logic. I know from personal experience that Paul Teetor is a reputable news reporter who does detailed research on his news stories to dig in and get the facts.”

UCLA's Largesse

Beth Barrett's story about the whopping raise UCLA gave to David Feinberg, CEO of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center (“UCLA's Millionaire Doctor,” April 1), brings this from Tbone: “I'm on the faculty at the UCLA school of medicine. We've got a huge problem at the departmental and divisional administrative staff level. Workloads are heavy and salaries are crap (at least relative to the cost of living in L.A.). There is consequently lots of attrition in these positions, which greatly impedes the normal operation of the school. Feinberg's retention bonus alone could pay for four or five entirely new positions that we know would actually make the school better.“

Feinberg's $1.33 million salary now includes a $250,000 retention bonus paid each year he stays at the medical center.

P.C. B.S.

One reader took exception to writer John Johnson's references to “Negro Alley” in his cover story last month on L.A.'s Chinese massacre 140 years ago.

“In this age of lying P.C. bullshit, one can always count on lefty papers like yours to pander when it comes to history,” writes Samuel I. Coleman. “In every single book on the history of Los Angeles, you will not find one author who claims that the former street was ever known as 'Negro Alley.' It was known as 'Nigger Alley.' Stop lying.”

Actually, Johnson says later books refer to the street as Negro Alley and he simply chose that term for his story.

(We couldn't resist the urge to run a letter from someone complaining that we were afraid to use the word [expletive deleted].)

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