Flushing Taxpayer Money Down the Toilet

Re “Panel Backs Surprise Inspections of Schools,” Dec. 3: Unbelievable. No wonder the cost of government is so high. Basic common sense is gone. Our city attorney puts forth a plan to have city health inspectors inspect the Los Angeles Unified school bathrooms. The City Council has to discuss and vote on the plan. The school system has to respond and position itself so it doesn’t relinquish control. While the underlying objective is to have clean and functioning bathrooms available for all our public school students, does it really take all this bureaucracy to accomplish such a simple task?

City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo says that five schools can be surprise-inspected next year. The code enforcement department says it will take two months to research the standards. Two months to determine what the standards are! Toilets that don’t flush, faucets that won’t work, broken doors and peeling paint are pretty easy to detect and don’t require an engineer to report. Does the school system not have a building maintenance department? Does it not listen or reply to individual school personnel when a problem is reported? How many taxpayer dollars are spent in all this grandstanding? Just go fix the problem; it is obvious.

Richard Fisk

Granada Hills