Bradley’s Mandate

Mayor Tom Bradley, symbol for many of the hope and opportunity that Los Angeles offers, has won resounding reelection. It is a tribute to Bradley’s popularity and stature in the city he has served long and diligently that he is the first mayor elected to serve a fourth term and that he won by the highest margin ever in a mayoral race. Graceful in victory as Councilman John Ferraro was in defeat, Bradley now has a mandate for action on pressing city problems.

This city of opportunity draws people by the thousands from around the world, all seeking to share in that Southern California dream. They bring diversity and new ideas, but their very numbers create burdens of growth that must be faced and managed. If Los Angeles is truly to lead the nation into the 21st Century, as the mayor suggests, it must have a clear vision of the kind of a city it will be when it gets there.

Managing growth demands skillful planning. Planning is not something that you do once and forget about. It is a hands-on, never-ending process in which the community is as deeply involved as the planners in setting goals and meeting deadlines. Anything less will produce chaos, because Los Angeles will continue to grow. Unfortunately, the city Planning Department has demonstrated with its mishandling of zoning mandates that it cannot cope with the present, let alone think creatively about the future.

A tidy housecleaning seems out of the question. Bradley was rebuffed when he sought voter approval for a Charter reform that would have made department heads more accountable to the mayor, and thus easier to fire. With that avenue blocked, he and the City Council should hire the most talented planner in the nation as a consultant to start addressing the long-range questions while Calvin Hamilton and his agency wallow in their accumulation of paperwork.

The city that Bradley wants--a city that works, a city in which people can readily get from one place to another, a city that encourages both culture and commerce--cannot exist without a planner able to tackle the problems of growth immediately, imaginatively and energetically.

Los Angeles has not quite completed its municipal election cycle, with runoffs still to come June 4 for city controller, one City Council seat and one school board seat. But the message at the top is clear: The voters like their city and its leadership. They want it to continue to prosper, and they expect Tom Bradley to make the most of his opportunity.