A summary of selected City Hall actions this past week affecting Central Los Angeles.

CITY COUNCIL

* BUS PASSES: Approved the transfer of $35,700 from the city’s Transit Assistance Fund to a new fund of the Los Angeles Unified School District that will be used to buy bus passes for 850 students in the district’s Special Education Program.

* CESAR CHAVEZ AVENUE: Approved the closure of Indiana Avenue at the Five Points intersection in Boyle Heights from 7 a.m. to noon Thursday during the ceremony of the installation of the first street sign renaming Brooklyn Avenue Cesar E. Chavez Avenue. The entire length of Brooklyn Avenue, which extends from just east of the Los Angeles River to Atlantic Avenue, will be changed.

* DWP CATERING: Approved city controller recommendations aimed at reducing the catering costs of the Department of Water and Power in the event of an employee strike. The recommendations included developing lists of vendors with their estimated costs and checking with other city departments to see if existing catering contracts could be expanded to provide services to the DWP. City Council members expressed disgust with the DWP’s catering practices during a recent eight-day strike. The DWP reported more than $870,000 in catering costs to feed its managers and executives, who kept the department’s offices open during the strike.

HOW THEY VOTED

How South-Central and Eastside City Council representatives voted on selected issues. * TENANT ELIGIBILITY: Approved a motion that would suspend the Community Redevelopment Agency’s housing policy for selecting tenants to live in the 32-unit Crescent Courts Housing Project at 1423 W. 12th St., just west of the Harbor Freeway. The motion, pushed for weeks by Councilman Mike Hernandez, would limit participation in the lottery selection process to residents of the Pico-Union neighborhood. Federal and state laws ban restrictions on tenant eligibility at such projects unless there is a “compelling reason” to impose restrictions. The city attorney’s office advised the council that the overcrowding that exists in the Pico-Union area qualifies as a compelling reason. Passed 10-1. Voting yes: Jackie Goldberg, Hernandez, Mark Ridley-Thomas. Voting no: Nate Holden. Absent: Richard Alatorre, Rita Walters, Rudy Svorinich Jr.

* SMOKING BAN STUDY: Instructed the chief legislative analyst to conduct a survey to determine the economic impact of the city ban on smoking in restaurants and at the new Convention Center. In supporting the study, Holden said some groups have rejected Los Angeles as a convention site because of the ban. Passed 8-7. Voting yes: Alatorre, Hernandez, Holden, Svorinich. Voting no: Goldberg, Ridley-Thomas, Walters.