ALPERN AT LARGE-It shouldn't be that hard to figure out how to enamor, and how to infuriate, voters when it comes to public investments--be they Angelenos, Californians, Americans or anyone else.
Alpern's Law of Taxes (and certainly a law shared by many, if not most, taxpayers) is as follows: There is only one issue that bothers taxpayers more than the amount of the taxes they spend--the perception on how appropriately their taxes are being spent.
Take, for example, the calculation that City Councilman Jose Huizar and his aides made when they "were reluctant to incorporate higher estimates (of the proposed Los Angeles Downtown Streetcar) into public discussions, partly because of concerns they could slow the streetcar's progress".
A price tag of $100-125 million price tag showed up, but we now know this was a "back-of-the-envelope" figure and not a proper figure based on the true cost of utility relocation and inflation. It was based on the cost-per-mile of the Portland, Oregon streetcar which opened over five phases from 2001 to 2012 and cost a reported $251.45 million, according to the LA Times.
Well, as so many of us have learned with respect to the reality of LA, our big city--with its larger size and longer infrastructure history--is just NOT Portland. It's a fair argument to say that New York City, Los Angeles and other larger cities get unfairly treated when it comes to costs because they get compared to medium-sized cities like Portland, Salt Lake City and Phoenix...but it's also a fair argument to say that voters don't like to be deceived. Does this sound familiar?
Kind of like an otherwise venerable notion of California joining the ranks of nations and states throughout the planet and getting an expensive but necessary High Speed Rail project for $33 billion or so dollars. A very, very slim majority of our state's voters favored it in 2008 (like me), and we've been hideously lied to ever since. The cost and the project have morphed significantly since then, to the fury of voters.
Do I favor a Downtown transportation initiative? Do I favor higher-speed rail trains in our state? Of course--most of us do. And we also favor puppy dogs, cuddling with our kids, sunshine, and beautiful music to boot. But we don't like being lied to--and a bait-and-switch is just that, whether it be from Downtown Los Angeles or from Sacramento.
Governor Jerry Brown has a very strong chance of re-election, but his GOP challenger will be able to really make him sweat about the California High-Speed Rail Project...because we were lied to.
And for those pro-transit, pro-Democrat, pro-Downtown LA zombies who will put themselves and the rest of us through hell (and trash our municipal and political credibility in the process) for their Politburo-like establishment leaders, perhaps a dose of "shut up for a change", or a dose of "I'm horribly sorry to lie to you" would be good to restore the vital credibility we need to re-establish a credibility that we all deserve from our elected leaders.
Some of my pro-transit, pro-Democrat, pro-Downtown LA zombie friends may not like my comments, but perhaps they can think for awhile about how past-President Bush lied to us about Iraq, and we were forced to endure a huge "change order" and a divided, infuriated nation in the process. Saddam Hussein didn't have nuclear weapons, and if we needed to take that bastard out then we certainly didn't ask to spend $1 trillion and thousands of American lives in the process of creating a democratic Iraq in a region of the world where democracy was the last thing that the majority really wanted (or, sadly and tragically, were truly ready for).
Ditto for our infrastructure projects. Roads and rail projects are exactly what our nation needs, but being lied to up front--knowingly--hurts the cause of creating a 21st Century America! In contrast to the California High Speed Rail initiative, Governor Brown did a great thing by killing the Community Redevelopment Agencies that are so rife with corruption and political cronyism and fiscal malfeasance that they were destroying our cities. The attitude and paradigms that created the Community Redevelopment Agencies still does rot our municipalities to the core, and it should be noted our CRA (now gone, and may it rot forever in Hades) was the source of the Downtown Streetcar initiative.
We had the CRA-types convince the Downtown region pass a tax district to tax themselves about $62.5 million, and the vote won by 72.9%. Yet now we know that the cost overruns of utility relocation and other operational and engineering issues will be up to $200 million or more, and we're at serious risk of losing federal matching funds altogether for the Downtown Streetcars. And we have to live with the fact that we were lied to. Really.
Had the honest assessments of our Downtown Streetcar Initiative been something like "it'll be $275 million, and it'll pay for itself over the years and decades", then it very well could have succeeded...or at least started in phases to keep the sticker shock down. Really.
Voters will pay taxes if they're not being lied to--particularly if they're for the right causes, and even during a great economy. Really. Yet the bait-and-switch of any project, no matter how venerable it may be, will shred its credibility beyond the point of recovery for just about any voter with a sense of decency and self-respect. Really.
What to do now about the Downtown Streetcars? Well, it should be reminded that the Red and Yellow Cars of yesteryear were replaced with a modern bus system that transports hundreds of thousands of commuters a day--all without utility relocation. Provide some of them with a special paint job and promote them, and you'll get lots and lots of happy riders (especially tourists). Really.
The thought of a special paint-and-promotion job has been promulgated by many of us on the Westside for the current Venice Blvd. Rapid Bus line, because that rapid bus line would, could and should be the "Expo Line to the Beach" transit line to attract beach-bound and other commuters and push the capacity and potential of the Expo Line to its fullest. Really.
Certainly, the talking point of streetcars as being more attractive and effective than buses has merit, and if we're willing to spend more under honest and transparent circumstances, then it's all worth it.
But for anyone wondering about other City of LA initiatives, such as the LAX/Metro connection that will hopefully involve both an Intermodal Transportation Facility and a LAX People Mover to connect to the airline terminals and help establish a first-rate business district near LAX, let me pronounce--as an unabashed advocate of this project--the following: The ITF/LAX People Mover will--as with all Metro Rail to LAX alternatives--cost $1-1.5 billion or so to create the north-south and east-west connections needed to get folks from all over the county a first-rate access operation to our huge, modernizing airport. Other alternatives to LAX cost much more.
And it will be worth it--amortized over a century, this cost is peanuts, and the business and tourism it helps attract to our city and county will make us all forget about the costs in no time. The Wilshire Subway to the Westside is already thrice that figure or more. The Expo Line and Crenshaw Lines each are roughly twice that. I do question the need for a connecting Metro line to go underground at the ITF, when it could be at ground level with the People Mover being elevated, but that's a debate for another time...but that is a small debate when it comes to the overall costs of a true LAX/Metro Rail connection.
So, in short, public transportation and public works projects...good. Being lied to or misled...bad.
And when the City of LA comes up with idea to create a duplicate and unnecessary public health agency, then let's kill it.
If we need to bash the county health agency to come up with better health care operations, then let's do that--fix what works, and not create and spend more on governmental duplicative waste. Really.
And, on a final and happy, note, we've got City Controller Ron Galperin coming up with a new website to make the City of Los Angeles' fiscal processes and expenses as transparent as possible to the general public. Way to go, Ron--I'm glad I voted for you, and my guess is that most of the city voters feel the same way now. Really.
Results, not just stupid and unhelpful spending. And when we spend, make it smart, honest and transparent. Really.
(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected] This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us . The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 86
Pub: Oct 25, 2013