Outgoing staff stress that the word is not gone, merely stuck in a permitting queue behind a cultural impact review.
LOS ANGELES, California (Screw The News) – City Hall began preparing this week for a new mayor who told cheering supporters that the building had grown so used to refusing things that it “forgot how to say yes,” and staff confirmed that the word is now being relearned through a phased program that begins, appropriately, with a feasibility study.
Councilwoman Nithya Raman was projected as the winner after leading Mayor Karen Bass by roughly four points, and Bass conceded the following day, saying in a statement that she had phoned her successor and promised a “smooth and seamless transition,” according to ABC7’s account of the concession. Neither woman is known to have said the word “yes” to the other during the call, though sources describe the tone as “affirmative-adjacent.”
The Yes Readiness Task Force Convenes Its First Meeting
The Office of Municipal Affirmation Readiness, a 14-person bureau that has existed since a previous administration and has never been observed in public, announced a 90-day plan to restore the city’s capacity for agreement. Phase One consists of a listening tour. Phase Two is a report on the listening tour. Phase Three, according to the briefing slides, is “TBD pending Phase Two review, public comment, and a letter from the City Attorney that says no.”
“People think City Hall can’t say yes,” said Bernard Tolliver-Osei, a deputy assistant coordinator for process alignment, who has worked in the building for 31 years and has approved, by his own count, four things. “That is unfair. We say yes all the time. We say yes, pending. We say yes, subject to conditions. We say yes, but only after you resubmit the form that we lost. The yes is in there. It is just wearing a lot of layers.”
A Handover Memo Arrives Early
Staff in the outgoing mayor’s office were reportedly asked to prepare briefing materials for the incoming team, and a copy of the opening page circulated among city employees on Thursday afternoon, apparently by accident, apparently on purpose, and apparently in triplicate.
TO: Incoming Mayoral Transition Team. RE: Orientation to the Building. Welcome. Please note the following before your first day. (1) The elevator marked “Express” stops at every floor except the one you want. (2) The word “approved” is a legal term of art and should not be used casually in the hallway. (3) There are 15 council offices, each of which operates as an independent nation with its own discretionary budget, flag, and grievance against the other 14. (4) All requests for fast action should be submitted through the Fast Action Request Portal, which currently estimates a wait of eight to twelve months. (5) Please do not feed the Bureau of Engineering. It has never been fed and does not know how to begin.
The memo continued for 31 pages, with a final section titled “Things We Meant to Get To,” which ran longer than the rest of the document combined.
Comedians Take the Transition Personally
Local stand-up comic Marisol Quintanilla-Reyes, who performs most Thursday nights at a bar in Highland Park that she says is “technically a pop-up, permanently,” said the election had given her a week of material and one existential crisis. “A city that can’t say yes elected a person promising to say yes,” she told an audience of eleven. “That’s like a cat promising to learn to fetch. I’m rooting for her. I’m also not holding my breath, because in this town the breath itself needs a permit.”
Fellow comic Desmond Achterberg-Lim, who was not present at the show and was told about the joke afterward, said he found it fair. “I’ve been trying to get a sidewalk repaired in front of my apartment since the previous mayoral term, and the one before that,” he said. “The sidewalk has outlived two administrations and is now old enough to run for office itself. Honestly, it would probably win.”
What 400 Residents Think a Yes Should Look Like
The Los Angeles Institute for Municipal Mood, an independent polling group that operates out of a converted laundromat in Reseda, surveyed 400 residents about what the first official yes from the new administration should be. Results were as follows.
- 41 percent said they would like a yes to a single pothole repair “in my lifetime.”
- 27 percent said they would be satisfied with a “maybe” delivered within a calendar quarter.
- 19 percent wanted a yes to a question they have not yet thought of, “just to see how it feels.”
- 8 percent asked whether the survey was affiliated with the city and, when told it was not, said yes to the survey.
- 5 percent said they had already received a yes from City Hall in the past, but that it was later rescinded due to a clerical error.
Institute director Priscilla Vandermolen-Okafor cautioned that the margin of error was plus or minus 4 points, “or one council district, whichever arrives first.”
Committees Prepare to Study the Committee
While the incoming administration drafted plans for its first 100 days, the council signaled that it was ready to be flexible. A motion introduced by an unnamed member would create a Special Ad Hoc Subcommittee on the Question of Whether City Hall Should Have an Ad Hoc Subcommittee. It is expected to meet for six months, a timeline that will feel familiar to anyone who has read about the rural committee that spent half a year deciding whether it governed a ranch or a farm, and which reportedly reached the same conclusion as the council: more research is needed.
Raman’s campaign, for its part, has said it wants the city to become better at basic services, housing, and affordability,. Whether the elevators cooperate is a separate matter. Readers who want to follow the story as the new administration discovers where the bathrooms are can find more coverage at Bohiney Magazine, which has already filed a request for a yes of its own.
At press time, the Office of Municipal Affirmation Readiness had issued its first official statement of the transition. It read, in full: “Under review.”
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/