Council's Main Investment In Little Saigon: Time

OK. Seriously this time. Little Saigon is done. Over. No more protests, rumbling stomachs or unending public comment. No more swamping of Council schedules and no more live feeds from CBS. It's done. There's a sign. Great.

And not a moment too soon. We went back and took a look at exactly how much of the Council's time this issue has taken since it was first brought up at the November 20th meeting. And though we deal in snark and, to a lesser extent, cynicism - the answer was still surprising.

Council Meeting Time Allocation since November 20, 2007

Quick key: the red areas are time that was spent during Council meetings hearing testimony or discussing the issue. The blue area is everything else.

And, yes, that's correct. A full 20% - one-fifth - of the Council's meeting time has been occupied by this issue since November. Of 61 hours of meetings, over 12 hours were spent on this one issue.

On a meeting-by-meeting basis, it looks like this:


All of the Saigon time came in three meetings, on 11/20, 3/4 and yesterday, 3/25.

So good riddance, issue. Glad it is resolved, and glad the Council finally led where the Mayor balked. But just imagine if that 20% of their time had been spent on the budget, or on addressing the City's homicide problem.

Final thought: how on earth was the February 5th meeting only 23 minutes long? It takes Pierluigi longer than that to shave!