Paved With Good Intentions, but Lined in Red Tape

In a classic example of a bureaucratic fumble, two branches of the Los Angeles city government clashed this week over the repaving of a Fire Department parking lot at Van Nuys Airport.

During a visit last month to Fire Station 90 at the airport, Mayor Richard Riordan noted the worn mechanical condition of equipment and the sorry state of a crumbling parking lot where the equipment is kept.

So Riordan directed city employees to order a new fire engine and to see that the lot was repaved.

Before the work began Monday, firefighters requested permission from airport officials to park equipment temporarily in a vacant airport hangar while paving was underway. But the request, left with a secretary, was never passed on to officials who could make the decision, according to sources who asked not to be identified. When pavers arrived on Monday, the equipment was hastily moved to the vacant building anyway.

Hours later, officials of the city-owned airport called supervisors at the city-owned fire station and ordered that the city-owned equipment be removed immediately from the city-owned vacant building. Turns out that the vacant building had just been leased to--yup, you guessed it--another city-owned agency, the Department of Water and Power.

And the airport officials were peeved by the paving. By the way, they asked the Fire Department, who gave you permission to repave the parking area, which belongs to the airport? Nobody in the Fire Department had talked to the airport’s engineering office, a requirement even if it is a city-paid project, airport officials said.

A series of calls among various higher-ranking administrators on Tuesday eventually smoothed things over.

Meantime, the Fire Department equipment is sitting out in an unprotected parking lot adjacent to the fire station. But that area is leased by the Fire Department.