This cartoon sums up my concern that G&L Realty is just using Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital as a front to build office buildings and parking structures for its own gain.

Their bat to the public is the false promise of a 120-bed hospital tower, which they still word their way out of with "no oblibation to develop" (Section 4.6 of the development agreement posted on the city's Web site).

My cartoon focuses on the City Council's responsibility to tighten up the wording so that more than start-up "steel in the air" for the hospital tower is required.

If you want my opinion, I think that our city manager is anxious to get the thing approved so he can show something (anything) in writing to remedy the shortfall of the hospital beds in the city so that he can go on with his plan to build out the entire valley.

If the tower is never built, he'll deal with that much later.