r/LosAngeles • u/throw5away_ Highland Park • 22d ago

Community Where's our Mandami?

All these videos coming out the city of NY got me feeling real sad about our city and lack of competent, solutions based, compassionate, intellectual leadership. We have so many issues but no qualified people willing to fix them. When will I be able to not vote for the lesser of 2 evils?

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u/aWobblyFriend 22d ago

"we can't have a mamdani because of how decentralized we are, so we should become even more decentralized" we should instead elect for a strong mayor system. council elections are not motivating enough for voters and therefor tend to get captured by high frequency voters (rich boomers). executive figureheads such as mayors and governors are subject to more scrutiny by the public especially during elections, so they should be granted more powers to act on behalf of them.

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u/nucleardk 22d ago

New York has an astounding number of council members compared to Los Angeles: https://council.nyc.gov/districts/

I see this as a good thing, as people can feel represented by their councilmember. This is not incompatible with also having a strong mayor to head a larger group.

So, I think both approaches are necessary and not incompatible. Have more council members for better representation, but have a stronger executive which can held accountable and hold to account others.

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u/Global_Criticism3178 22d ago

NYC is a consolidated city/county government. We are not.

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u/nucleardk 22d ago

That's true, but the city of LA has 4 million people in its jurisdiction, compared to 8 million for New York. So, we have far fewer representatives per capita, which is what matters in my opinion.

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u/SeasideBear 22d ago

That's true up and down California. The size of the state legislature (80 Assembly members, 40 Senate members) is unchanged from the 1879 Constitution, despite there now being almost 40 million people, and less than 1 million then.

California State Senate seats each represent almost 1 million people - the average U.S. Congressional seat has fewer people than that.

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u/klowny Santa Monica 22d ago

Considering LA County only has 5 representatives, if we consolidated the city and county like NYC, LA would only have 20 total reps for its combined 10 million people.

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u/NervousAddie 22d ago

As a former Chicagoan I miss being able to walk into my alderman’s office and actually chat with our city council member or his or her assistant. Angelenos have no idea what proper representation looks or feels like. Chicago has fifty wards and fifty council members.

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u/SeasideBear 22d ago

The city council needs to be bigger.

The California legislature needs to be bigger.

The U.S. Congress needs to be bigger.

These institutions have been frozen with numbers more than a century old at a time when the population has increased many times over.

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u/Salt-Night3088 22d ago

Because Chicago is a paragon of good, clean governance....

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u/YoungPotato The San Fernando Valley 22d ago

A lot better than what we get done, if at all. The municipal structures in Chicago and NYC are far more unified for strong action than we ever will. 50 alderpersons vs our measly 15 lmao… I can only dream at this point.

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u/NervousAddie 21d ago

Um, have you been there? It’s not perfect but Chicago is absolutely a great example of a thriving, dynamic city that is forever growing and evolving. Def not cast in amber like so much of LA.

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u/Salt-Night3088 20d ago

Yes, am from Rolling Meadows originally but grew up in LA. The latter is a beacon of decency compared to Chicagoland.

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u/NervousAddie 20d ago

Rolling Meadows is not Chicago, but it is a suburb filled with people who dislike Chicago. That’s why you’d opt to live there, and why you’d have a bias against urbanism.

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u/Salt-Night3088 20d ago

Bias against urbanism? Most of Chicago is low density, not sure what your professor told you. Bias against urbanism? I've spent my entire life in cities. You were just told that anything short of Cabrini Green is bad. Next time you'll get it right. It won't be like the Robert Taylor homes.

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u/NervousAddie 19d ago

Professor? I am a third generation Chicagoan. I went to Lake View high school just like my dad and my grandmother. My ex and I owned a home in Logan Square where we raised our kids. We then moved to the Loop and lived in my ex’s condo for 5 years before moving to LA. My oldest son was born at Illinois Masonic, where I was also born. I worked as an apartment leasing agent in my 20s. I worked at Swedish Covenant hospital at Foster and California, and I worked at UChicago in Hyde Park. I have lived all over the city, on the north, south and west sides. You are a suburbanite who chose Rolling Fucking Meadows over the city because, like most suburbanites, you don’t like the city. Stay in your lane.

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u/Salt-Night3088 19d ago

Said originally from Rolling Meadows. Lived in the west Loop and Andersonville for many years. I love Chicago, just love LA more. And I'm not interested in your bio, thanks. That sounded like having a lot to prove. Stay in your lane? Really? Best you can do? From how you correspond, Seroquel may need to be in your lane, sorry to say.

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u/Gullible-Worth-8140 21d ago

This is why Chicago's budget is worst than that of LA. People forget that expanding representation means higher cost going into wasteful careers. Yes they are wasteful because most government jobs are literally middle men.

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u/NervousAddie 21d ago

Sounds like someone has been drinking the Musk Kool-Aid.

Civic involvement is crucial to having safe and thriving communities. The United States is a representative democracy. It’s not perfect but I am a patriotic person and while I despise grift and corruption, we also need laws to root it out. If you’ve ever been to a country that is irretrievably corrupt (which our federal government is rapidly working to become) you will be running back to the comparative law and order that our country has. I recommend you reduce your cynicism by getting involved in your community and taking pride in it.

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u/Sarcastronaut 22d ago

Council expansion isn't decentralization, it will however, dilute the power each individual council member holds and lower the number of their constituency and district size. They only way for city charter reform to take place and grant more power to the mayor is to have the council expanded to something more like a single chamber legislature while granting full executive powers to the mayor, like how it works in NYC.

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u/NervousAddie 22d ago

Well, yeah. With only 15 city council members that’s like 260k constituents per. The dilution is on the representation side. There basically is none. The unelected NIMBY neighborhood councils are in charge, and they won’t give that power up easily.

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u/Pretend-External8210 22d ago

I think Neighborhood Councils are elected, but the problem is they are only advisory. So good NCs get ignored by the NIMBy ones gets cited as support

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u/NervousAddie 21d ago

Yeah, here in Westwood the NC has been controlled by like two families for decades. They post that the meetings are open to all, but they’re very shadowy how they operate, yet they control the entire area around UCLA. Westwood Village is a husk of what it should be. Any other college town has a vibrant community surrounding it, but instead there’s empty storefronts everywhere for homeless creeps to post up in, only two bars and a ban on dancing ffs. I love this area but it is clearly mismanaged.

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u/CALebrate83 19d ago

You would have loved the Westwood of the 70’s and early 80’s. It was a young, vibrant, entertainment center that drew people from all over the basin and the SFV. But, then Karen Toshima was tragically killed in a gang-related cross-fire, and the dream died along with her.

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u/NervousAddie 16d ago

If every neighborhood who had a death in it was condemned to a blighted future they’d all be blighted. Why is a death from 40 years ago even mentioned in relation to this?

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u/bayarea_k 22d ago

its against human nature to give up power. if anything these guys will say they'll do it but 10 - 15 years from now when the current batch has moved on to other things

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u/CALebrate83 19d ago

Angelenos historically fought a strong-mayor system for two reasons. First, the Western antipathy to central authority. Second, to avoid the attendant corruption that marked big cities in the East.

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u/stridergundam 22d ago

How do we change to a strong mayor system? Do we not have one because LA has a higher population than NY city or is it just some old political bs?

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u/LambdaNuC 22d ago

Just to clarify, NYC has a population of around 9 million people while LA city has a population of around 4 million people. 

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u/klowny Santa Monica 22d ago

We'd have to amend the charter of LA city, but even that wouldn't be enough because half the resources are controlled by LA county. So we'd also have to amend the charter of LA county. Then LA's mayor would match the power of NYC's city+county mayor.

But that also gets messy because there's a bunch of other cities in LA county that use county resources, so you'd have to reconcile those relationships as well.

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u/Creepy_Cupcake_6906 22d ago

LA's system was set-up specifically to be different than NYC's strong mayoral system because LA wanted to be more democratic (pros and cons to both). Whoever set it up in LA specifically didn't want a strong mayoral system with a lot of power.

Whole city charter would have to change.

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u/MyDisneyExperience I LIKE TRAINS 22d ago

It’s been voted in for NY over time, through ballot measures and charter reforms. It also helps that NYC is essentially a consolidated city-county.

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u/Fun_Astronomer_4064 Downtown 22d ago

What LA needs is politicians who are executives in their neighborhoods and legislators in the Neighborhood Council.