Slow Lifts Drag Spirits Down at City Hall East

It’s the most common complaint murmured in Los Angeles City Hall’s new temporary digs on Main Street: slow elevators.

Long waits and occasional malfunctions are a constant headache for the building’s some 1,440 workers, making everyone from council members to clerks late for meetings, shortchanged on lunch breaks and reluctant to trek between floors for all but the most necessary trips.

Enter the controversial remedy--a swifter “official-use-only” elevator set aside for the mayor, council members, some department heads and certain other privileged higher-ups.

Starting in mid-July, the designated official elevator will be locked and off-limits to regular city employees, allowing the privileged few to travel at will.

The plan is part of an overall upgrade to speed elevators.

But this is City Hall, and a perk for the few is not likely to pass unnoticed. The plan has unleashed hosts of rumors, given populist-minded politicians something to posture about and sent employees into transports of outrage at the prospect of waiting while their superiors ride.

“It sucks,” groused one 10th-floor clerk jostling with a dozen others for a lift down to lunch. “It’s bad enough that we have to wait. We can’t get home, we can’t get to work. Now this.”

Another woman squished against the wall joined in, “He [the mayor] is a person just like us,” she said. “Let him ride the elevator just like us.”

The 27-year-old City Hall East building, a rectangular white tower just across the street from the old City Hall, has always been what city general services manager Randall Bacon calls “under-elevatored.”

Previously, the problems were kept in check because there were fewer employees in the building.

But in recent months, all employees in the old City Hall have moved into the east tower so the main building could be renovated. Hence, the elevator problem has gone from a vague annoyance to a constant aggravation.

Employees linger for seemingly endless minutes for one of the 12 main elevators, with their institutional vinyl floors and flickering fluorescent lights.

But the new reserved elevator will end the days when everyone in the building--from the humblest custodian to the mayor himself--suffers the wait equally.

Moreover, it will serve to divide what until now has been the building’s unofficial commons. In the elevators, gossip flies freely, strangers meet, old friends hook up and just about everyone gets frustrated and asks if it wouldn’t be easier to just take the stairs.

On Wednesday, as it became evident that locks were being installed on one elevator, talk was all about the “officials only” ride.

Some employees thought the mayor had sought a separate elevator just for himself--a rumor the mayor’s press office staunchly denied.

A council deputy joked that if more than one council member rode together, they would form a committee quorum in violation of California’s laws requiring open meetings. Others suspected the council members, or Ron Deaton, the city’s chief legislative analyst, were behind the plan.

None of the above, said Bacon, of the general services department. City Council President John Ferraro asked that the problem be reviewed. But Bacon said he made the decision to set one lift aside for the simple reason that old City Hall traditionally had a small executive elevator too.

But there are differences. There are many more floors to traverse--18--in the temporary building.

Moreover, the old City Hall executive lift was left unlocked, and it wasn’t in plain view as this one will be, located right next to a sign advising less-fortunate riders to take the stairs for short trips.

Reactions from the council were varied. City Councilwoman Laura Chick was quick to discern an anti-democratic impulse.

“I’m not using it,” she declared. “I’m not sure my rush is more important than other people’s.”

Chick called the slow elevators “the great leveler . . . I’ve met and talked with a whole range of people I’ve never met before,” she said.

Said City Councilman Joel Wachs, “I think it’s terrible. It’s the totally wrong message to send. Instead of increasing the distance between government and the people, we should be decreasing it.”

But where some saw injustice, others rejoiced. City Councilman Nate Holden gave a thumbs-up sign at the news. City Councilman Hal Bernson was also blunt, saying, “I’m not wedded to the idea, but if they have an official elevator, I will use it.”

Bacon promised that a new computer dispatch program will soon speed the elevators enough that even nonofficial riders will get the benefit of the equivalent of an extra elevator.

And at least one City Hall worker said the change would eliminate a recurring problem.

“What’s bad now,” she said, “is when you get into the elevator with the mayor and don’t recognize him.”