For a while it seemed like a...

For a while it seemed like a race to see who would win the Municipal Grinch award:

--Santa Monica, which has hung holiday banners festooned with seaweed and dolphins instead of Santa and reindeer, or,

--Los Angeles, which recently wrapped City Hall in a fence topped by three rows of barbed wire.

L.A. City Councilman Nate Holden, startled by the cellblock-spirit of the latter display, said Friday: “That fence is not going to stay up.”

And when the council met Tuesday, Holden demanded that the L.A. Wall be taken down, growling: “They’re ripping down walls in Germany and all over the world, and here we are separating the citizens from our City Hall.”

But Holden, told by Recreation and Parks officials that a temporary fence was necessary to keep people from tripping over a landscaping project, agreed to drop the motion after he learned that the boughs of barbed wire had been removed.

Fa la la la . . .

There’s no question that Monrovia is bursting with holiday spirit, judging from the display outside one of the city’s intimate apparel shops.

While the L.A. City Council was able to achieve a quorum Tuesday, there have been times--as on one occasion last week--when a session was canceled because not enough members were present.

And even when enough lawmakers do show up, there are invariably a few stragglers that delay the start for 20 minutes or so. Snagged, no doubt, on the new barbed-wire fence.

Dreamers who thought that the presence of cable television cameras would eliminate tardies were mistaken. Councilman Hal Bernson went so far the other day as to raise the possibility of fining the delinquents.

“I think it’s time we started doing something ,” he said.

In the meantime, the council’s thrice-weekly TV show should be called, “The Late Show.”

Tardiness also has plagued the supervisors, inspiring Pete Schabarum to come up with an ingenious solution: Start the sessions half an hour later at 10 a.m.

But colleague Deane Dana, usually an ally, objected, reasoning: “You’d soon find we were starting at 10:20.”

And colleague Mike Antonovich, usually an ally, complained that a 10 a.m. start wouldn’t leave the board enough time to accomplish its business.

Schabarum lashed back at Antonovich: “You don’t show up at 9:30!”

The motion failed, despite Schabarum’s declaration that “I got better things to do than waiting around here for everyone to get their act together.”

Might we suggest a solution: Move the starting time from 9:30 to 10 a.m., but don’t tell the supervisors.