Too Many Holes in the City Budget Dike
CITYWATCH
By Ken Draper

Active Image
There are so many holes to fill in the City’s budget dike and so few fingers and so little time to stop the hemorrhaging.

The Mayor and Controller combo issued a citywide spending freeze [LINK] on Thursday. No furniture or equipment purchases or food and beverage purchases for employee events or office remodeling effective immediately.

No travel expenses except to Sacramento or Washington DC.

Prompts the question: What took so long? People are losing their jobs here.
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Cuts in City Services Fuel Anger, Distrust
SOUTH LA POV
By Shelia Nelson

CurActive Imagerently the city of Los Angeles finds itself in shambles.  The lack of adequate resources to meet the needs of the residents has placed the city on the verge of bankruptcy.  A reduction in services that would pose an inconvenience in most areas of the city translates into a major crisis in South Los Angeles because the normal service delivery in our area is already substandard. 
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Budget Busting DWP is Costing You Thousands with More on the Way … Now the Spin Begins
LA WATCHDOG
By  Jack Humphreville
 
YoActive Imageu need to be a Phi Beta Kappa from Cal Tech in order to understand your bimonthly DWP bill.  But homeowners do not have to be light bulbs to know that something is very, very wrong when their DWP bills have increased by many thousands of dollars a year. 
 
Mr. Mayor, those increases are not, to use your own words, “relatively modest.”
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Transpo Commission: Caught in the Blind Spot
BOX SOAP
By Stephen Box

LActive ImageA's Transportation Commission has a rich legacy of "consent agendas" that routinely rubber stamp the LADOT's proposed speed limit increases with out so much as a question, a bit of discussion, a suggestion for traffic calming or even an acknowledgment that our streets are getting fast, very fast.
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LA’s Budget Shortfall Could Kill You!
GUEST WORDS
By Harold Katz       (Posted first in the Century City News)
 
As Active Imageyou read about the city’s budget shortfall, have you ever considered the fact that you or some one you love could die as a result of city’s inability to manage its money? 
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Who will Pay to Trim the City’s Trees? You Will!
LA LABOR
By Art Sweatman

MActive Imagey name is Art Sweatman. I started working with the City of Los Angeles as a Tree Surgeon Assistant in 1997. I became a Tree Surgeon about three years later.
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Congressman Berman Tries to Buy District Lines
POLITICS
By Paul Hatfield   (Posted first at Villiage to Village0

HoActive Imageward Berman is my Congressman and lives in my community of Valley Village.  I suppose he is my constituent as much as I am his owing to my post on the Neighborhood Council Valley Village. It saddens me he is putting his self interests above respect for the people he serves.
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Monopolies Should Still Care About Their Customers
EMPOWERMENT REPORT
By Greg Nelson

ReActive Imagecently I circulated a survey to as many neighborhood council board members and community activists as I could find given my limited resources as a fixed-income senior. 
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Confessions of an Expatriate
DONE IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR
By Former DONE Employee

(Note:Active Image The name of the author of this article has been withheld by agreement. An earlier attempt to report irregularities in the Department resulted in demotion. And he/she plans to continue a government career.)

If the walls could only talk today we would hear voices from the past.

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Time to Re-Invent the LADOT?
Moving LA
By Ken Alpern

LaActive Imagest night, I saw a presentation that was sad on so many levels that I cannot but help think that the LADOT might need a total makeover.  Not that it’s necessarily the fault of LADOT employees, but either we’ve all got to change the paradigms in which it operates or we’ve got to make a change at the level of the City Charter.
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A Way to Keep Our Daughters Safer … and Alive
MY TURN
By Diana L. Chapman

The Active Imageminute the flasher began appearing in the tiny coastal  town of El Segundo – targeting mostly females from ages 9 to 19, officers didn’t sit around second guessing.
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East Hollywood NC Frees the Street!
NEIGHBORHOODSLA
By Stephen Box

The Active ImageEast Hollywood Neighborhood Council is taking over Santa Monica Boulevard on Sat the 13th, from 2pm to 10pm, celebrating the local art community and LA’s growing bike culture. The EHNC is one of the most densely populated communities, bordered by some of LA’s busiest streets but for one day, the street will belong to the people, [LINK] not to the motor vehicle.
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Stand Up to the Redistricting Wars
LA BUSINESS
By Gary Toebben

VoterActive Images beware: A group of California Democratic lawmakers is attempting one of the most cynical power-grabs in recent memory. The goal is to overturn voter-approved Proposition 11 in order to give themselves the authority to redraw their own district boundaries and choose the voters they want to represent.
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One Thing the Neighborhood Commissioners Don’t Need: The Authority to Enforce!
CONSIDER THIS
By Doug Epperhart

Active ImageAt a recent BudgetLA meeting, Deputy Mayor Larry Frank told a crowd of neighborhood council volunteers they were “over-regulated, over-lawyered, and over-bureaucratized.” At the City Council’s Education and Neighborhoods Committee last week, he said advising the mayor and council members—not beautification projects and street fairs—is the core mission of neighborhood councils. It’s a hopeful sign that Frank is saying the right things.

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There is Death but there are No Accidents
BOX SOAP  (VIDEO)
By Stephen Box

  A 13-year-old girl attempting to catch her school bus began to cross Sunset Boulevard at Cliffwood Avenue. She stepped off the curb, into the crosswalk and against the red light just as two cars approached.
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$1 Billion in Rate Increases Isn’t Enough!
WATCHING YOUR $$$
By Jack Humphreville
 
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is planning to impose a “Carbon Surcharge” of $2.50 a month ($30 a year) on Power System customers to help the Department of Water and Power finance its Renewables program, according to a
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Better Bylaws
NC WATCH
By Doug Epperhart

While it seems everyone involved with neighborhood councils is focusing on elections and budgets, there’s also a group working on offering recommendations for better bylaws.
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Will a Badly Mismanaged City Department take LA’s Neighborhood Councils Down with It?
DONE ON THE EDGE
By Max Tves   (Posted first at LAWeekly.com)

Stephen Box can neatly trace his metamorphosis from guy helping the Greater Echo Park–Elysian Neighborhood Council to organizer of a middle-class insubordination cum revolution, which began with an un...
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City’s Costly Conventional Thinking
MORE BUDGET MESS
 By Harold Katz

The city of Los Angeles appears to be getting ready to do another questionable thing, which is to privatize the operation of the Convention Center.
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LA has No Choice: Must Build More With Le$$
Perspective
By Ken Alpern

When it comes to living within our means, and testing our personal and societal limits, we really ARE our own worst enemies, aren’t we?  After all, don’t we all know it when we drink too much, eat too much, party too much…or ove...
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Did DWP Really Say That?
LA WATCHDOG
By Jack Humphreville
 
In July 2008, the City Council approved the Rate Restructuring Plan (the “Plan”) for consumers which increased the Energy Service Charge for Tier 2 rates to 8.5¢ per kilowatt, a 21% increase over Tier 1 rates of 7¢.&n...
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An Open Letter to LA’s Dysfunctional City Council
VOICES
By Jim Alger
 
Americans coast to coast are angry at their government and while Congress is doing its level best to corner the market of dysfunctional legislative bodies, sadly you folks in the Los Angeles City Council have them beat.
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Mr. Cortines, Tear Down This Wall!
SICK  AND  TIRED
By Ken Alpern

Just because the old Soviet Union is now confined to the history books, it doesn’t mean we don’t have any “Evil Empires...
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Do I Hear $300 Million?
AND ANOTHER THING …
By Jack Humphreville
 
In January, DWP recommended a transfer from the Power Revenue Fund of $147 million to the City’s Reserve Fund. This am...
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Latest on NC Rollover Dollars
NC WATCH
By BongHwan Kim

As a result of City Council's decision on February 18, 2010 (CF-09-0600...
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No Interruption in 2010 NC Elections
NC WATCH
By Sara Epstein

It’s OK to exhale now neighborhood councils, the 2010 elections are on again.
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Union Marches on Banks: “Do Your Part”
LABOR
Edited by Sara Epstein

Banks need to do their part to help the LA Budget crisis.
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