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What are the challenges in maintaining public spaces around municipal buildings?
The upkeep problem around places like City Hall is often a budget structure thing more than a management failure. Grounds crews get funded through one department while the sidewalk and plaza fall under another, so nobody owns the whole block and small stuff like overflowing trash or dead landscaping sits for months. Downtown LA has tried BIDs, business improvement districts, to fill that gap, and they do help, but they only cover certain streets. Honestly the fix that seems to stick is giving one entity clear authority over a defined zone, otherwise it just cycles back to poor condition.
one angle nobody's mentioned is the actual design of the spaces. a lot of these plazas around civic buildings were built in the 60s and 70s as hard concrete expanses with zero shade or seating, so nobody lingers and there's no natural eyes-on-the-street pressure keeping things tidy. compare that to Grand Park which got redone with lawns and benches and it basically maintains itself because people actually use it. imo the fix isnt more cleanup crews, its redesigning these dead zones so theyre worth caring about in teh first place.
Homelessness and trash get the attention, but a lot of the decline around municipal buildings is deferred maintenance on hardscape. Cracked pavers, dead irrigation lines, broken bollards, and burned out pedestrian lights never get fixed because they fall below the threshold for a capital project and above the threshold for a routine work order. Around LA's civic center I've seen the same shattered planter wall on Temple stay broken for over two years. The practical fix is a standing small repairs budget with a short approval chain, so a crew can just fix the thing instead of routing it through three departments.
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How can I find mobile hot dog vendors for a private event?
honestly the SGV has a ton of licensed cart operators who mostly do private stuff now. look up "hot dog cart catering San Gabriel Valley" on Yelp and you'll get a handful that are fully permitted, which matters if your venue needs a health permit on file. expect around $400 to $700 for a few hours plus a per person minimum, usually 50 or so. the ones based in Alhambra and Rosemead tend to be cheaper than Pasadena because they're not paying that rent.
fwiw the county health dept keeps a public list of permitted mobile food operators, its searchable by city on the LA County Public Health site. filter for "pushcart" or "MFF" and you'll get vendors cleared for SGV zip codes, which saves you the headache of a venue asking for paperwork later. also worth checking with the Old Town Monrovia or Alhambra farmers market folks, the carts there are usually booked solid but they know who's free and they'll pass along names. just dont wait till the last week, good ones book out 2 to 3 weeks in teh summer.
You could try hitting up the folks who set up outside Home Depot or the DMV in El Monte on weekends, a lot of those carts are owner operated and they'll do private gigs if you ask. Just walk up and grab a card, they usually have one taped to the cart.