Over Budget and Behind Schedule

Karen Basura’s Impotent LA is a Far Cry from Our Historic Prowess

So the City of Los Angeles wants to renovate the Muni Plunge, a disintegrating relic of an era when we used to get things done. According to Karen Basura’s staff at Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, the overhaul will inexplicably cost $40 million and take 3 years to complete. The Griffith Park Pool, originally known as the “Municipal Plunge”, opened with great fanfare in August, 1927, as one of Los Angeles’s more bold public works of the late 1920s. Built at a cost of $80,000, (just $1.5M in today’s dollars) the massive 50-by-225-foot outdoor pool stood as the largest aquatic facility in the city (and Southern California) at the time, tucked along Riverside Drive and Los Feliz Boulevard in the heart of Griffith Park.

It featured a remarkable Spanish Colonial Revival bathhouse with arched arcades and served as a veritable public oasis through the Great Depression, offering affordable recreation, children’s swim lessons, and lap swimming for all kinds of Angelenos. During the unmitigated heat and drought in the 1930s, it buzzed as a cooling refuge amid economic hardship, drawing families who’d picnic nearby and cool off in its waters. The pool endured for decades as a beloved neighborhood staple.

During the COVID lockdowns, city government shuttered the facility, drained the pool, and it fell into disrepair. Of course, every competent pool owner knows to never leave a pool empty for any length of time, as the sudden absence of hydrostatic pressure leaves the structure vulnerable to fracture. Sure enough, 2 years later, when the city went to go refill the neglected plunge, the pool’s foundation was riddled with cracks, and it was red-tagged. Once slated for a quick fix, the historic site is now set for full demolition and replacement under a $40 million project, aiming for two smaller pools and a rehabbed bathhouse replete with gender-neutral bathrooms (of course), on a head-scratching timeline that stretches all the way to mid-2029, marking the headstone for a facility that symbolized the city’s earlier era of swift, ambitious public building. When you compare this project to those from a century prior, the impotence of our current government comes into stark contrast.

Los Angeles in the roaring 1920s was a city bursting with ambition after the Great War. They were awash with oil, sunshine, and the most enviable scenery in the country. Patriotic Angelenos wanted a monument to the fallen soldiers, something grand that would endure and host crowds for many years. So they broke ground on the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in December, 1921. Just 16 months later, by May 1923, it was done. Imagine that. Total cost back then: $955,000. Adjusted for today, that is about $18 million. No endless studies, no gender-neutral add-ons, no armies of consultants, nor shamanic rituals, land acknowledgements, the usual glut and fanfare we expect with every event today. Just steel, concrete, and git-r-dun spirit.

The LA Coliseum opened to the world as the centerpiece of the 1932 Olympics. LA became the first city that ever hosted the Games twice when they returned in 1984. Super Bowl I roared there in 1967, then Super Bowl VII in 1973. The Dodgers played their 1959 World Series games under those arches. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of his most powerful speeches there in 1963. Popes said mass. Billy Graham drew 134,000 souls in a single night. I loved watching our Trojans defend our home field when I was at USC. Presidents stood on that field. It still stands today, undeterred by earthquakes and time, hosting college football and concerts like it was built for eternity. That was old Los Angeles. That was what competence looked like. 16 months of work for $18 million.

LA Memorial Coliseum Over the Years

Now fast-forward to Karen Basura and her city council cronies, like Nithya Raman, in 2026. The Griffith Park pool, a beloved neighborhood staple that has been leaking and closed since government shuttered it in 2020, is finally getting a facelift…36 months for $40 million. And we all know it’ll take twice as long and cost twice as much, because…California. Permits drag on. Environmental reviews pile up. Contractors come and go. This is not a complex engineering marvel. It is a dang swimming pool. In a sane city it would take months and a fraction of the cost. Instead, it is another monument to bureaucracy and grift, a literal sinkhole filled by taxpayers who are told to be patient while Karen and Nithya’s connected allies get rich. Is anyone surprised, though? This isn’t the only aquatic facility they’ve failed to manage…

The same crowd that can’t fix a pool also couldn’t keep the Santa Ynez Reservoir ready when the Palisades Fire exploded in my town in January, 2025. That reservoir sits high above Pacific Palisades, feeding the hydrants that protect some of the most expensive real estate in America. After skipping routine maintenance for years, the city-managed Department of Water and Power (LADWP) discovered small tears in the floating cover. City crews drained it, lazily shopped the repair job around for months, leaving the reservoir empty through the entirety of fire season. What’s worse is that the Palisades’ other reservoir, just above my home on Chautauqua was offline, too. Much like the Griffith Park Pool, it was found to be structurally unsound, so they never refilled it, leaving us with zero contingency water source. When the fire hit, fire copters couldn’t reload at the Santa Ynez helispot, forcing them to fly miles away for water. Because of the prolonged load-and-return cycles, the fire escaped, and pushed into the community. With multiple structures burning, the hydrants quickly ran dry, and the rest is history. Firefighters stood there with empty hoses and watched as thousands of homes burned, including mine.

The day after the fire, facing scrutiny over the empty reservoir, the LADWP was suddenly inspired with a sense of urgency, sending e-mails to their contractor stating their interest in getting the reservoir back on line as soon as possible, while homes were actively burning throughout the town. It would be comical, were it not for the immense tragedy that resulted from their incompetence. They finally got the floating cover patched 6 months after the fire. The emergency fix held for a while, but now in 2026 they are draining the damn thing all over again for a full cover replacement. It will sit empty straight through this fire season, with water not expected back until December 2026 at the earliest. Their current contingency is a massive plastic hose that’s running through miles of flammable brush in Topanga State Park; that’s our current water supply. What could go wrong? Ultimately, weeks of competent work could have kept the Santa Ynez Reservoir online. Years of Basura incompetence turned it into a $261,000 embarrassment that left families without water pressure when they needed it most.

It’s worth noting that this is not exclusively a city problem. Gavin Newsom’s California runs the same playbook statewide. Look at the $114 million wildlife bridge in Agoura Hills, once budgeted at $92 million, for a project that other states have pulled off for $5-$10 million. California’s boondoggle is now years behind schedule and still not open as of late 2026. It is supposed to let cougars and deer cross the 101 freeway safely. Noble idea. But like everything else here, the costs ballooned, construction stalled, and it’s become another taxpayer-funded monument of a state that cannot execute. Delayed. Over budget. Mired in the same red tape and grift that chokes every project.

We used to get hard things done. We built icons that hosted history in a fraction of the time and money it now takes to patch a pool. There was swagger to that old LA, a sense that big dreams were worth the sweat, and there was a sense of urgency behind everything Angelenos did. Today it feels like one long con. Permits, studies, diversity checkboxes, and no-bid contracts for friends of politicians. Empty reservoirs when fires come. Closed pools for kids who just want to swim. Bridges for animals that somehow matter more than people. Karen Basura, Nithya Raman, their friends on the city council, and Gavin Newsom have turned government into a jobs program for the connected and an excuse machine for everyone else. The nostalgia hits hard when you drive past the Coliseum and remember what this city once was. The rage burns hotter knowing we are stuck paying for the decline while they pat themselves on the back for another embarrassment. We deserve better. We used to be better. God willing, if I’m blessed to helm this great city, we can restore that great spirit that carved paradise into these coastal valleys.