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Just when it seems that city government is for the birds, along comes a bureaucrat who proves it.
Imagine Robert W. Birk earlier this year, minding his own business as the San Fernando Valley's prince of sewage processing.
He's got his head buried in budget documents. He's trying to explain Total Quality Management to his electricians. He's studying better aeration optimization techniques. Basically, he wants to make the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant the most efficient refiner of effluent in the state.
And then along comes some guy who suggests that he also make it a swell place for swallows.
Did Birk quail? He did not.
In an attempt to give the Mission San Juan Capistrano a run for its tourist money, Birk authorized his engineers to make the Tillman plant a haven for Hirundo pyrrhonota-the common cliff swallow which a saccharine song back in 1939 turned into a tourist draw for the little town on the Orange County coast.
And so far, he's got no . . . umm . . . egrets.