Phone Bill Disagreement
- Share via
San Gabriel Mayor John Tapp is complaining that Vice Mayor Frank Blaszcak is dialing a wrong number.
The two, who were elected in April on a slate of slow-growth candidates, are engaged in a spat about whether the city should pick up the tab for a phone Blaszcak has installed in his car.
Blaszcak, who works as a public affairs director for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, has billed the city $2,000 for the purchase and installation of a portable phone.
“I think it’s an extraneous expense for an item that’s for the personal convenience of a council member,” Tapp said. Councilman Sabino Cici, the only holdover from the previous council, is also opposed to the expense.
Blaszcak insists that the phone is a necessity for him to conduct city affairs. “Initially I rejected the idea,” he said. “But then I began to have second thoughts because of the number of calls I was getting and having to make related to city business.”
The council will decide what to do about the phone at its meeting Tuesday.
More From the Los Angeles Times
Podcasts
The latest effort is coming from the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. They just announced a $3 million program in conjunction with some nonprofits groups to test and clean the soil at homes still standing in the areas impacted by the Eaton Fire.
The Hillside Strangler murders terrorized Los Angeles in the late 1970s. The killers were a pair of sadistic cousins. One confessed. The other was set to stand trial—until L.A. prosecutors flinched.
Hosts Fidel Martínez and Suzy Exposito sit down with Dr. Vanessa J. Díaz, professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at Loyola Marymount University and co-author of P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance.
