Faced with a mounting municipal deficit and major layoffs of public school teachers, the 15 members of Los Angeles' City Council are holding firm when it comes to one essential city service: ceremonial calligraphy scrolls.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) and the council, not ready to sacrifice the important weekly Friday ritual of honoring constituents, celebrities and campaign donors with ornate handmade scrolls, are opting to make the tough cuts elsewhere. Recently the budgets for paramedic captains and library books were trimmed instead, according to the L.A. Weekly.
How much can a city possibly spend on ceremonial scrolls?
More than $1 million in a year, if you're Los Angeles. That's the bill that Mayor Villaraigosa and city council amassed in the 2007-08 fiscal year alone, which paid for 27,978 scrolls.
Ed Fong is one of the calligraphers on the city payroll. Part of the 8-person "Creative Services" staff, his job is to churn out the fancy certificates, plaques and proclamations that commemorate such things as Sea Otter Awareness Week. Demand for Fong's handiwork is so high sometimes that he must finish a scroll every six minutes just to keep up.
It's good to know that the citizens of Los Angeles are doing commemorative-worthy deeds at such a pace. Or is it that the council's standards for handing out scrolls has fallen?
Already this year, the mayor's office has ordered 4,215 scrolls and other city council members have averaged well over 1,000 each.
“It’s a little piece of sugar,” Councilman Bill Rosendahl, a member of the Budget and Finance Committee, told L.A. Weekly. Council President Eric Garcetti, who trails only Mayor Villaraigosa in his patronage of the calligraphy services, said through his spokesman, “Some recipients have told me it’s one of the most meaningful recognitions they’ve ever received.”
Indeed it should be. With a majestic-looking City Hall depicted among colorful flowers and garlands, gold lettering, and assorted ribbons, seals and official signatures, the scrolls are truly works of art. Truly unecessary works of art, that is, at a time when California is suffering from budget woes not seen in half a century.
But L.A.'s City Council is mostly immune to the pain, being the highest paid elected city officials in the country. At $178,789 per year, councilmembers outearn U.S. Congressmen and federal judges, not to mention have taxpayer-funded cars and gas costs, and a staff of 320 people.
Every Friday, they take an hour or more of their day to preside over the handing out of the calligraphy scrolls to eager crowds. Boy scouts, Star Trek actors, Southern California Mediation Association members, and of course the Sea Otter gang are all there to be recognized in pen and ink by the City of Los Angeles.
This year's Sea Otter Awareness Week, by the way, is Sept. 27 to Oct. 3. Mark your calendars.
Can you spot the red ink?
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