Choking on the Bill
While the cost to the city of Los Angeles for its participation in Jackson’s funeral fell well under the original estimate of $3.8 million, many argue that the big day still cost way too much. The final cost estimate? $1.4 million. Still a bit steep of a bill for L.A. to foot. But will media exposure help cover the balance? L.A. Times has this story:
City Atty. Carmen Trutanich said this week that he was investigating how the city ended up with a $1.4-million bill. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s office conceded that a city effort to solicit online donations to cover the memorial costs yielded only $17,000 before being upended by “frequent and prolonged server crashes.”
Some argued that it didn’t matter — the city would get its money back, and more, as a result of the global attention focused on Los Angeles for the better part of a week.
But the new city controller, Wendy Greuel, seemed more concerned with the $48,826 that the Emergency Management Department spent on 3,500 boxed lunches from Jensen’s Finest Foods in Wrightwood, in San Bernardino County. The lunches were intended for emergency personnel at the Jackson memorial, but Greuel thought it seemed excessive, especially after her staff called a nearby Subway and was given an estimate of $17,491 for the same number of lunches.