The last thing Tom Bradley said to me as he was closing out his record 20-year tenure as mayor of Los Angeles was: “Make sure Mark [Ridley-Thomas] repairs the sewer and water lines in South L.A.” Talking to me face-to-face in the underground City Hall garage, the outgoing mayor went on to tell me: “The city’s infrastructure is crumbling. Those lines are 100 years old and they won’t last much longer. I have already told Mark that it is imperative that South L.A. get its proper share of $400 million allocated to those sewer and water line repairs. I told him the Valley and West L.A. want to take all the money and he is not to let them do it. I want you to make sure Mark takes care of this crucial piece of business.”

I put on my Butterfly McQueen dress and whined: “I can’t tell Mark what to do. He’s a city councilman. I can’t make elected officials do anything!” Bradley replied: “Yes you can. You two work well together; you influence each other and you must not let him fail to do this.” I promised Bradley I’d do whatever I could. At a subsequent farewell gathering for Bradley, I told Mark what the mayor had said to me and admitted that while I didn’t fully understand what he was talking about, the key words the mayor used were sewer, water and infrastructure and those were the words I’d be hoping to hear come out of his mouth a lot in the future. Mark said he knew exactly what Bradley was talking about and he promised he would take care of it.

Shortly thereafter, Mark and the City Council began working on a project called ECIS that had to do with sewers, water and infrastructure and periodically I’d ask Mark, “How’s that ECIS thing coming?” He’d reply, “Great!” and then he’d hand me a batch of boring papers about it, which, frankly, I never really read because the reports were so dull they made my eyes cross. The subject of sewers and such are not sexy. Not at all! At any rate, I just kept asking the question and Mark and them kept doing the work and before we knew it, South L.A. had a new sewer system and some ancient water lines were replaced. The water lines are now rupturing like crazy all over the Valley and West L.A. and I don’t understand why, because Mark did not take all the money. He left them some. He only took an appropriate share for South L.A., which he used to strengthen its infrastructure. The question is: What did the Valley and West L.A. do with their share of the money? Spent it on something else, I guess.

EX-CON FOR HIRE — Inglewood City Councilman Danny Tabor has taken steps to get the city to hire convicted felon, Cresia Darcel Green-Davis, as his assistant council member. He’s already made the employment request of City Manager Timothy Wanamaker, who is proceeding with the paperwork, including the taking of Green-Davis’ fingerprints, which are already well situated in the database of criminals’ identifications.

While a member of the Inglewood Unified School District Board of Education, Green-Davis was convicted in 2005 for grand theft, welfare fraud, perjury and campaign violations. On Feb. 24, 2005, she was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to make full restitution of $162,788 to four local, county and state agencies: the Compton Unified School District, the Centinela Valley Union High School District, the California Department of Health Services and the Los Angeles Department of Pubic Social Services.

According to the District Attorney’s Office, Green-Davis was convicted of two counts of grand theft by false pretenses for claiming to have a bachelor’s degree from Eastern Michigan University when she was hired as a teacher by the Compton and Centinela Valley school districts. She also was convicted of one count of welfare fraud and six counts of perjury by false application in connection with receiving aid from 1995 to 2001 for her twin sons. Green-Davis, who served as president of the Inglewood school board, was also convicted of four misdemeanor counts of violating campaign laws, including failure to file a campaign statement, failure to disclose campaign contributions exceeding $1,000, failure to disclose campaign contributions, and commingling campaign and personal funds. Green-Davis was taken into custody upon her conviction and remained in prison for most of her five-year sentence. Surely, Tabor can find a person with a shorter rap sheet than this to assist him with his civic responsibilities.

DUH! — A most peculiar thing happened at the recently held annual meeting of the National Baptist Convention USA, the largest African-American Baptist organization in the nation: The man who served five years in prison for stealing $4 million from the organization ran for president of it — and lost. The arrogance of some people knows no bounds. That’s like Bernie Madoff seeking a seat on the Securities and Exchange Commission! The Rev. Henry Lyons, the former president of the National Baptist Convention USA, was forced out of office in 1999 when an investigation revealed that he had stolen $4 million of the convention’s money, for which he was imprisoned. He’s out now, so he decided to regain his convention presidency. Last week, down in Tennessee, convention delegates were faced with two presidential candidates: the Rev. Julius R. Scruggs and Lyons. Scruggs received 4,108 votes to Lyons’ 924. Lyons then went to court and tried to challenge the vote, claiming it had been conducted unfairly, but the court, as is its wont, sent the preacher to church and told him to handle his business there, where it belongs. Now, accustomed as I am to preachers with humongous egos in all denominations behaving in some pretty strange ways, I just can’t get my mind around the 924 delegates who voted for Lyons!

JUST TERRIBLE! — There is some really terrible, terrible talk going on in the state right now: Yesterday, the University of California regents began discussing President Mark Yudof’s proposal to increase UC undergraduate fees by a jaw-dropping 30 percent. That amounts to another $2,514 next year on top of the increases already put into effect this year. In fact, this proposed 30 percent increase marks the fifth year in a row that UC fees have gone up and the students are looking at fees totaling $10,302 by the fall of 2010 — which is 44 percent higher than last year! Hell, if the state can’t do any better than that, we need to just get out of the public education business altogether. We need to just throw in the towel, as it has become crystal clear that the public’s children can no longer afford a “public” higher education at California’s state universities or UC system — only moneyed USC and Stanford hopefuls looking for bargains can now easily handle the cost of going to UCLA or Cal State L.A., whose fees have increased five fold in nine years. This is a terrible mess.

THIS AND THAT — State Sen. Curren Price — the one who volunteered to take a pay cut so he could share in the pain most Californians are suffering because of the state’s economic downturn — will honor the election pledge he made in May to donate his campaign funds to five more community charities in his 26th District Friday. Price will hold a ceremony in the Rose Garden in Exposition Park at noon during which he will give money to Karen Earl, executive director, Jenesse Center; Kaitya Bozzi, executive director, Star ECO Station; Elissa Barrett, executive director, Progressive Jewish Alliance; Michael Flood, president, L.A. Food Bank; and Sam Joo, director of programs, Koreatown Youth and Community Center.

The 19th annual Jazz at Drew cultural festival scheduled for next month as been canceled. Dr. Keith Norris, interim president of the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, sponsor of the annual event, cited the fiscal difficulties facing Drew and the tumultuous economic climate affecting music festivals worldwide as his reasons for foregoing this year’s event. “Despite this setback, Drew is not giving up,” Norris said. “The university is poised to immediately move forward with plans for next year’s 20th anniversary jazz festival. The additional time will allow us to realign our event priorities with the university’s mission and re-establish the original vision for Jazz at Drew as an alumni association homecoming event.”

An Atlanta judge has ordered the children of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King to convene a shareholders’ meeting to discuss their father’s estate. The Rev. Bernice King and Martin Luther King III sued their brother, Dexter King, last year to force him to open the books of their father’s estate, which is set up as a corporation but which has not had a shareholders’ meeting since 2004. This week, the judge ordered Dexter to have such a meeting. In the meantime, Dexter has sued his sister, who administered their mother’s estate, asking that she turn over Coretta’s personal papers.

AND FINALLY — Wells Fargo executive Cheronda Guyton was fired Monday for having hosted a series of splashy parties in a $12 million dollar mansion in Malibu on which Wells Fargo had foreclosed and she didn’t invite me. Everybody knows I love to hang in the Colony, and Cheronda, girl, you know that wasn’t right — certainly not without me.