There's no better example of the kind of work we honor at these luncheons than that of Bob Camou and his team at the Department of Transportation. When a young girl was killed crossing Santa Monica Boulevard, I demanded that we overcome the considerable bureaucratic hurdles to installing a traffic light on that stretch of roadway before a new elementary school opened and even more lives were put at risk. Bob and his team got the job done, and at the beginning of the school year, the new light went in.
The work my staff and I do is made possible by the work of the more than 50,000 employees of the City of Los Angeles. At our luncheon, we honored custodians, redevelopment professionals, green building designers, parking enforcement officers (that's right!) and community development project managers. It takes a lot of magic to keep a city like Los Angeles running, and there was a lot of magic in that room.