By Diana Guiterrez / Staff Writer
By Diana Guiterrez / Staff Writer
Seniority usually rules, unless you know the right people.
Wouldn’t it be nice if people could get promotion and raises based on their performance and abilities?
Even the Bell elections in Los Angeles are guilty of having the best apple polishers around.
Fortunately, there are still people out there who wish to do the right thing.
Four out of the five city council members have been arrested on numerous charges.
Elections were run on Tuesday to appoint new council members.
Violeta Alvarez, a council election winner, was quoted saying, “I want to remove whoever is at City Hall who’s not working for us. I want to know who put them behind those desks. I want to know what qualifications they have.”
According to authorities, $5.5 million was stolen for Bell by the city officials.
They would use this money to pay themselves outrageous salaries.
Making $100,000 a year and handing out thousands of compensation packets made the citizens of Bell a bit suspicious.
Teresa Jacobo will be replaced by Danny Harber; Luis Artiga will be replaced by Ana Maria Quintana; and the other three council members will be replaced by Ali Saleh, Nestor Valencia, ad Violeta Alvarez.
Ali Saleh commented on removing City Administrator Pedro Carillo and City Attorney Jamie Casso.
While Carillo and Casso were not found to be guilty revolving the salary scandal, they were very close to Robert Rizzo, the ring leader in the scandal.
Even the police department was will be investigated for possible civil rights violations and predatory law enforcement.
The police department will also be taking pay cuts to ensure that many of the officers are not removed.
It is unfortunate that we live in a world full of corruptions.
A world where our government fails us and even our police department must be mistrusted.
Surely not every council member and not every police officer is unjust or corrupt.
Sadly, because people who only care about themselves and having money many must suffer the consequences.
Workers who actually do a good job and go beyond the call of duty are many times pushed aside by brown nosers that get on the bosses good side through compliments and unnecessary gifts.
As bad as it was on the accused and arrested councilmen, the people of Bell should not place all the blame on them.
Records show that in this election on 33 percent of the registered voters actually vote and that was a huge increase from last year.
If the Bell residents do not take it upon themselves to vote for who they want or what the city needs how can they get so angry and aggressive?
Many people complain when the official they don’t want takes office, yet do little or nothing to prevent it. Most of these people don’t even vote.
Regardless, it is necessary to remove the accused city council from their position.
Anyone who was involved or knew about the happenings and did nothing should be removed as well.
If an official is connected because they knew about it and did nothing, what kind of hope can the Bell residents have for someone who is not willing to stand up to the corrupt?
Also, all the people who were involved, like the thousands of employees that received many bonuses, should also be removed.
This process is needed to give that city a fresh new start where they have something to look forward to.
It is needed so that the newly elected officials can plant new roots and begin from scratch.
Hopefully with this new set of council members the city of Bell can prosper, even if it takes a lot of work.