For the second time in four months, the LA City Council had to scrub a meeting.
The reason: several members were late, leaving the council without a quorum.
"It's important that we show you the respect that you've shown us by being here on time," said Council President Eric Garcetti.
Garcetti said he refused to put up with members being more than 15 minutes late for the 10 a.m. meeting. He apologized to the public.
By the time the scheduled 10 a.m. meeting was canceled -- at exactly 10:17 a.m. -- Councilmen Jose Huizar and Paul Koretz still had not arrived at City Hall.
Koretz's spokesman explained the councilman got "stuck in heavy traffic.'' Huizar conducted a news conference at 9 a.m. at the Orpheum Theater on Broadway.
According to the LA Times:
At least 10 members are necessary to constitute a quorum, and only eight were present Tuesday: Richard Alarcon, Paul Krekorian, Tom LaBonge, Jan Perry, Ed Reyes, Greig Smith, Tony Cardenas and Herb Wesson.
The rest of the council -- Janice Hahn, Bernard Parks, Bill Rosendahl and Dennis Zine -- had all been previously excused from the meeting. Rosendahl is recovering from surgery and Parks was holding a news conference in his district.
"I stay consistent with my policy,'' Garcetti said. "We need to respect the public's time as they respect ours. Our constituents came here at 10 a.m. Our council rules say that we should be here at 10 a.m. People can't be perfect so we give a little bit of time, there's families and emergencies and traffic, but if people can't get here enough ahead of time to make sure that at least by 10:15 a.m., they're here, I don't believe we should waste the public's time."
Fast-forward to about 32:50 in this video to watch Tuesday's meeting that never happened.
And don't say Garcetti didn't issue a warning about this months ago.
In October, Garcetti waited about 15 minutes for a members to show up at a meeting before he had to cancel. That was after a series of meetings that started 30 to 45 minutes late.
So what did we miss this time?
Tuesday's agenda included a proposed "cooperative agreement" that would essentially allow the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles to transfer nearly $1 billion to the city, out of reach of Gov. Jerry Brown, who wants to use the money to help close the state's budget deficit.
Jose Aguilar, president of the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council, said he was disappointed the council did not take up the matter, which is now scheduled for Feb. 9.
"We don't get paid to be here at City Hall,'' he said. ``We can only be here when there's issues of great importance to our community and we feel we need to take time off from work, from our jobs, or from whatever else that we have to do.''
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Working with chronically late colleagues is rough, but don't tell that to Bell Councilman Lorenzo Velez. Three fellow council members called in sick, one resigned earlier in the day, and another was still in jail during an October meeting, meaning Velez was the only council member at the meeting.
