LOS ANGELES

MEASURE S … A PLANNER’S ANALYSIS--In the past few days the foreign media, like the Guardian, and even most of the U.S. media, have blasted out the story of the 9,000 CIA hacking documents that WikiLeaks made public after redacting critical information. 

Based on press reports, these documents reveal a long list of cyber tools that invade computers, cell phones, and smart TVs. The release’s long-term impact is hard to know, but before WikiLeaks went public with this information, one scholar already concluded that World War III would likely be a cyber-war. 

In the words of the University of Wisconsin historian Alfred McCoy, a WW III conflict between the United States and China will end with an electronic whimper, not a bang: 

As the Chinese virus spreads uncontrollably through the F-6 satellite architecture, while those second-rate U.S. supercomputers fail to crack the malware’s devilishly complex code, GPS signals crucial to the navigation of U.S. ships and aircraft worldwide are compromised. Carrier fleets begin steaming in circles in the mid-Pacific. Fighter squadrons are grounded. Reaper drones fly aimlessly toward the horizon, crashing when their fuel is exhausted. Suddenly, the United States loses what the U.S. Air Force has long called “the ultimate high ground”: space. Within hours, the military power that had dominated the globe for nearly a century has been defeated in World War III without a single human casualty.  

But, without WikiLeaks and Professor McCoy, in Los Angeles we can figure out the city’s deep politics and players without a City Hall deep throat. Even though Measure S, the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, lost in the March 7 election, it allowed us to learn the following about the inner workings of LA’s urban growth machine:  

• Based on the extensive research of the Los Angeles Times and Patrick McDonald for Measure S, real estate developers and City Hall’s elected officials engage in extensive pay-to-play. We now know who exactly make the payments, who receives the payments, and what goes on between them: money buys discretionary planning and zoning approvals. 

• We also have a better idea of what these many land use entitlements are worth to property owners and investors, although more research would be helpful for the certain planning-related fights to come. 

• We also know who financed the no on S campaign to ensure that the cozy and lucrative status quo continues. The big funders were 10 large real estate companies, who openly contributed $8 to $10 million. Furthermore, their accomplice was Rusty Hicks, the well-paid director of the LA County Federation of Labor, who ponied up more than a $1 million of his members’ dues. According to the LA Times, Hicks is also close to Parke Skelton whose SG&A firm lead the campaign against Measure S. 

• We also know that the no on S campaign strategy focused on LA’s housing crisis, an approach SG&A gleaned from focus groups. 

• For that matter, reading between the lines, we also know the “economic” theory that the no on S funders wear as a fig leaf to justify their private greed. It is neo-liberalism, especially its belief in trickle-down economics. Its other principles are deregulation of land use and elimination of Federal and CRA urban programs, except for policing. Even though City Hall’s elected officials are nearly all corporate Democrats, they are fully onboard with this once Republican approach to municipal governance. 

• For that matter, without WikiLeaks the no on S campaign also revealed another supporting player for their “urban growth machine.” These are the non-profits that the SG&A campaign operatives drew into their top-down “coalition.” 

• We also learned about the contentious role of the non-profits. They maintain the status quo by (inadvertently) putting balm on the wounds created by their affluent funders and board members, especially those who maximize profits through real estate speculation. 

While the supporters and staff of the non-profits usually have the best of intentions, they rarely examine the cause of the problems they address, such as real estate speculation. Likewise, because of their close relationship to their funders, they have incrementally absorbed their trickle-down theories. As result, the non-profits no longer call for the restoration of slashed urban programs or local laws regulating land use. Even though it is still too early to know which non-profits experienced direct economic pressure to oppose Measure S, the broad outline is already visible. Most of them are ideologically lined up with the large real estate companies and City Hall politicians who ardently campaigned against Measure S. 

How should we now use all of this information? 

One of the most useful long-term lessons from this campaign was, “There are no permanent defeats, and no permanent victories.” I interpret this to mean several things: 

First, the election results are obvious; the status quo prevailed, so the no on S boosters now need to put up or shut up. Based on what we have learned, my crystal ball tells me to expect the following, all of which conflicts with their often-vituperative no on S message. 

• City Hall's soft corruption will hardly miss a beat. 

• Despite a glut of luxury housing, home prices and rents will continue to rise until the next great recession hits and/or rampant foreign speculative investments in local real estate dries up. 

• As for LA’s housing crisis, the city’s inclusionary zoning programs, existing and proposed, will not keep up with the loss of affordable housing through demolitions, displacement, and gentrification. 

• Ditto for Measure JJJ since its loopholes will prevail over it promises. 

• Measure HHH will also prove to be a disappointment. Cronies will get fat contracts through insider deals, followed by relaxed scrutiny. 

• Traffic congestion will worsen because nearly all new projects, both by-right and spot-zoned mega-projects, are automobile-centric. 

• Bicyclists will still face dangerous roads with serious accidents because LA is not following the example of cities, like NYC, where the City builds separated bicycle lanes. 

Second, the resurgent status quo creates enormous opportunities for the organization, energy, and knowledge that the Yes of S campaign mobilized to morph into a permanent organization, such as United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles. Even without a City Hall WikiLeaks, we know more than enough to take on many important tasks, such as: 

• Strategic support for the many future local campaigns against City Council approved but un-planned mega-projects. 

• Networking these local ad hoc organizations together into a permanent, citywide organization focused on good city planning, especially through the (promised) updates of the General Plan’s different elements. 

• Strengthening CityWatch and other alternative news and information outlets so they can engage in relentless exposes of City Hall’s continued skullduggery, including pay-to-play and the exceedingly poor planning outcomes it inflicts on Los Angeles neighborhoods and residents. 

• Developing a progressive planning agenda based on three principles: sustainability, equity, and community-based planning. In future columns I will attempt to flesh-out this agenda, such as a focus on public improvements in lieu of private real estate deals. 

Your help is greatly appreciated in all of these efforts.

(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles city planner who reports on local planning issues for CityWatchLA. Comments and corrections invited at [email protected].)  Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LA IS NOT NEW YORK--According to the LA Times, LA Metro ridership is still falling -- even though billions have been (mis)spent on extra capacity over the last 30+ years. By my count that's the second time this year that the Times has broached this tender topic. As a member in good standing of the LA "good government" (googoo) establishment, the paper had for many years chosen to tip-toe around the bad news. 

Readers may know that some of us began flogging the dead horse in the mid-1970s. Go to the attached proceedings and read the contribution by the late UCLA Prof. George Hilton. He was among the first to write sensibly and clearly that LA is not NY -- and trying to make it so would be a phenomenal waste. But even LA Times’ coverage will be for naught. Billions more will be spent. Pouring good money after bad is what the great and the good in City Hall do for a living. 

We are in the early years Uber/Lyft and all manner of ICT information sharing. These are the game-changers. For the past two months, my wife and I have graduated from a two-car household to a one-car-plus-Uber-plus-walkable-neighborhood HH. The game-changers are here. Conventional transit was never a game-changer.

(Peter Gordon is Emeritus Professor, USC Price School of Public Policy. His current research addresses how the nature of cities impacts economic growth prospects. This perspective was posted first at New Geography.)  Photo by John Schreiber/MyLANews.com   Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

SPECIAL TO CITYWATCH … NEIGHBORHOOD INTEGRITY JUST GETTING STARTED--In our huge and wonderful Los Angeles, the "civic conversation" is often said by academics to be weak. And it's true that I can point to only a few times in which LA residents engaged in and led a big, brawling conversation about where the city should head. 

One such brawl was the successful blogger-led fracas (remember bloggers?) over whether the hated Department of Water and Power should control much of the solar-installation industry. Another was the unsuccessful Valley Secession movement, which asked voters whether 1.6 million people should form their own city to free themselves from a City Hall that repeatedly cheated them on services and political clout. 

In both cases, it turned out that the residents were not disinterested or weak. But in our livable LA, made up of many villages and numerous downtowns, residents could not to find a way to be heard. And their frustration finally exploded into healthy ballot box wars that proved, once again, that true democracy is not only crucial, it's messy. 

Measure S, which was defeated at the polls on March 7, falls directly into that category. That's why it has inspired the most robust civic conversation in Los Angeles in years. 

Measure S was soundly defeated — our numbers fell from a neck-and-neck race shortly before Election Day, when billionaire developers poured in a last-minute $5 million to dominate the airwaves, and even Gov. Jerry Brown came out against Measure S. 

But it's clear from post-election media coverage that while our reforms failed, Measure S won the argument.

Mayor Eric Garcetti and the City Council have promised many reforms in reaction to Measure S — almost all stuck in committee or gathering dust on a shelf. 

On Thursday, Garcetti again proposed a vague plan without any deadline for updating the long-stalled Community Plans. He finally signed an Executive Directive enacting a very limited reduction in "ex parte," or backroom meetings, aimed solely at his Planning Commission — and only after a developer formally files an application to get around zoning rules, an action that often happens long after numerous backroom meetings.

Many of Garcetti's planning commissioners deny they hold private meetings. According to city officials who were asked to produce records of the Planning Commissioners' private meetings under the California Public Records Act, none of his planning commissioners bothers to maintain any record of who they meet with.

At his Thursday press conference, under questioning by journalists, Garcetti again refused to adopt the key reform, of ending backroom dealmaking between City Council members and developers and himself and developers. 

Garcetti is no doubt relying on a convenient opinion from the City Attorney last year that developers and their lobbyist are "residents" of LA and elected leaders need to hold private meetings with residents. Aside from the fact that many key billionaires who get backroom deals do not live in LA, it's absurd to conflate these private deals with informational meetings with LA residents. 

As a lifelong LA journalist-now-campaign manager, I was also pleased to read a media report that quoted Michael Weinstein, president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the key funder of Measure S, as saying, “This will go down in history as a campaign that didn’t win the vote that had the best results. Nobody in this campaign has defended the current system.” 

The website, known for its "skyscraper porn," and avidly pro-developer bent, then went on: 

That’s true. Even Mayor Eric Garcetti, who handily won reelection Tuesday night, acknowledged that, “the diagnosis is agreed upon by all of us.” But he opposed Measure S, calling it the wrong “prescription.” The election results are not likely to put to rest a heated battle over the future landscape of Los Angeles. 

And that brings us to what happens next. 

Despite public agreement that City Hall's development process is broken, elected leaders continue to let mega-developers, from the Lowy mall billionaires to the Lowe resort billionaires, treat LA communities like pieces on a chess board. The City Council and Planning Commission repeatedly override LA zoning as if the rules are a mere annoyance. 

Important reform sometimes needs more than one cathartic effort. 

Gay marriage took more than one try on the ballot, a fact that is almost impossible to believe today. The far more wonky "redistricting reform" — a statewide vote to stop seat-warming legislators from gleefully custom-drawing the voting district lines around their preferred voters, to ensure their own re-elections — was a robust debate. Until voters approved redistricting reform, few Californians were certain what a "voting district" even was. 

Los Angeles is a great city, and it's worth making sure we get it right. 

Getting it right may mean a second ballot measure. Or it may mean free training so that neighborhood leaders have as many tools to fight City Hall as lobbyists have tools to manipulate City Hall. 

Or it may mean that powerful people who privately agreed with Measure S will now join us in tilting the balance of power. 

"Getting it right" won't be a debate over what types of towering buildings get built where. This is far more fundamental. It's about who decides how and where LA's infrastructure, housing, parks and services are planned and intertwined, as required, to best serve residents. 

That's not radical. It's crucial. 

Getting it right means that the City Council and mayor must relinquish the secrecy to which they are addicted — and which obscures from the public eye LA's wildly non-democratic planning and zoning system. 

More than 77,000 people voted for Measure S because backroom deals cut between our individual City Council members (yes, your City Council member, too), the mayor, and rich developers are repugnant in a democracy. 

Not surprisingly, they are creating an imbalance between what LA really needs, and what it's getting. 

As then-LA City Planner Gail Goldberg famously warned in 2006, "In every city in this country, the zone on the land establishes the value of the land. In Los Angeles, that's not true. The value of the land is not based on what the zone says ... It's based on what [the] developer believes he can change the zone to." 

Gail Goldberg went on: "This is disastrous for the city. Disastrous. Zoning has to mean something in this city." 

We agree. (Please read the Yes on S campaign's report, here, Pay-to-Play in Los Angeles City Government.) The Pay-to-Play report details years of secret meetings between developers and city council members, council staff, city planning officials, and other city staff.  

Under this system, City Hall can only produce more of the mess that Gail Goldberg foresaw: 

-massive traffic backups on our streets, created by bad planning

-pushing out our working families through ill-advised gentrification

-skyrocketing rents set off by a foolish frenzy of approvals of luxury housing that, clearly, does not trickle down. 

We are hearing from residents citywide asking "what's next? How does this get fixed?" 

We will continue to press our elected leaders to reform themselves. But meanwhile, we at Measure S will keep the faith with residents, by tapping their energy and their new awareness. 

Measure S during the past year held dozens of meetings, town halls, debates, rallies and press conferences, from Chatsworth to San Pedro to Baldwin Hills to Westchester to Koreatown to Woodland Hills to Studio City to the Palisades and beyond. 

We made the case that the City Council, by putting our zoning system up for sale, has fueled an unprecedented level of land speculation and greed in LA After the defeat of Measure S, we wrote in an open letter to our supporters:
"The Measure S campaign succeeded, completely, in challenging City Hall to be worthy of LA's residents.

"LA elected leaders now widely agree that wealthy developers should of course not get to write their own environmental impact reports, a glaring conflict of interest, nor should developers hold private meetings to try to influence LA city planning commissioners.

"LA elected leaders also now agree with Measure S, that the City Council must return to its long-abandoned job of updating our 20-year-old General Plan and Community Plans. They also agree that the Council's frequent rewarding of special exemptions that let developers ignore these Plans must be a very rare act.

"It is now up to us, to see that City Hall does not bury these promises in committee, or otherwise delay these reforms. In the wake of this hard-fought election, they know we're watching them."

(Jill Stewart, a former journalist, is campaign director for the Coalition to Preserve LA, sponsor of the Measure S.) 

-cw

CAPITAL & MAIN SPECIAL REPORT--Fernando E. Hurtado scrolled through photos on his mobile phone in a pristine new examination room of South Los Angeles’ federally funded St. John’s Well Child and Family Center. Nearby, his wife, Amy Areli, waited with two of their four children as the younger boy fidgeted nervously. 

“He’s getting his immunization shots today,” Hurtado grinned at the 3-year-old before pausing at a close-up of a woman’s forearm and what looked like a mosquito-bite-sized bump surrounded by a patch of ruddy inflammation. The next image revealed a gaping, half-dollar-sized crater where the bump had been.

“My wife got a tiny cut on her arm that became infected,” Hurtado explained. “It was [Methicillin-resistant] staphylococcus. She spent nine days in the hospital. They told me that if we hadn’t had Medi-Cal, the bill would have been more than $100,000. If this would have happened without medical coverage, there would have been no way for us to afford to pay that kind of expense.” 

On the same day that congressional Republicans set the stage to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the 35-year-old father, who installs artificial lawns, grimly reflected on the shadow that his family and the majority of St. John’s patients have been living under since the election of Donald Trump signaled the coming end of the law that has dramatically transformed California’s health-care landscape. 

“Before my wife got the infection,” Hurtado said, “our 2-month-old baby was also in the hospital, with an infection for [chicken pox], when he got an infection in his head and he was hospitalized for four days for the same [staph] bacteria. I imagine them not having medical coverage. Yes. Of course I’m worried.” 

(Photo: Fernando Hurtado and his wife, Amy Areli, with two of their four children at St. John’s Well Child and Family Center.) 

Though the form that Trumpcare will take remains vague, for Hurtado and his family — and the more than 50 percent of their newly insured South LA neighbors who now rely on the state’s ACA Medi-Cal expansion for their health coverage — the future remains frighteningly uncertain. They are not alone. 

Over five million Californians have received coverage under Obamacare — 3.7 million through Medi-Cal and 1.4 million through Covered California — and the state has logged the largest percentage-point decline in its uninsured rate of any state, dropping from nearly 17.2 percent in 2013 to 8.6 percent in 2015. 

St. John’s alone has enrolled over 18,000 previously uninsured Angelinos, nearly all of them black or Latino, and more than doubled its insured-patient base. The health center has aggressively embraced the new ACA population to dramatically expand preventative and primary care throughout the region, which before the law had been ground zero of California’s uninsured crisis. 

“We provide free medical, dental, mental health and support services, and case management in about 300,000 patient visits a year at 14 sites and two mobile [clinics],” St. John’s Well Child and Family CEO Jim Mangia told Capital & Main. “We provide health-care services to the homeless. We serve thousands of homeless folks through two mobiles that go into the riverbeds and to help buy homeless shelters. And we’re the largest health provider in South LA, which is the largest area of contiguous poverty in the United States.” 

But with Trump now in the White House, those gains are in the crosshairs of the new president and the Republican congress. At stake for Californians is $20.5 billion a year in federal ACA subsidies. The murkiness surrounding what will happen next has left the state’s political and public health leadership with little choice but to brace for the worst and hope for the best. 

“It is almost impossible to develop a contingency without knowing exactly what we are dealing with,” state Senate Health Committee Chair Dr. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina) told Capital & Main in an email. “A loss of federal funding would be devastating for low-income and middle-class Californians who rely on the ACA for their health insurance. We plan to do everything we can to protect the people of our state and ensure stability in the health insurance market and Medi-Cal program.” 

St. John’s spotlights a lesser-known aspect of the Affordable Care Act — namely, its role as a conduit for $12 billion in construction infrastructure spending and operational funding for the expansion of private nonprofit health centers, which are known as Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC). These provide low-income and immigrant communities with quality health care, regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. That makes the center both an exemplar of how much California stands to lose, as well as an unexpected harbinger of what resistance to the abolition of the ACA might look like. 

“I started that literally the day after the election,” Mangia said about planning for the Trump era, “and now I’ve got all of these players. There’s a lot of special interests that benefited from the Affordable Care Act. … We’re talking about, ‘Okay. What’s our advocacy need to look like? Who do we need to be talking to? Who do we need to bring to the table to craft a solution in the state?’” 

(Photo: Jim Mangia, President and CEO of St. John’s Well Child and Family Center.) 

Forty-five percent of St. John’s patients are ineligible for insurance under ACA because of their immigration status. According to Mangia, who was part of President Obama’s health policy committee when the Affordable Care Act was first being drawn up, addressing the plight of those ineligible for Obamacare because of immigration status was always part of the plan. Care for the undocumented is partially paid by My Health LA, a no-cost health-care program run by LA County. Private fundraising makes up the rest. 

The FQHCs have been instrumental in braking the country’s decades-long expansion of America’s health-care inequality gap, which continues to be one of Obamacare’s most significant achievements. 

Even more transformative, perhaps, is the quality of the medical care and the innovations that ACA has delivered. The law reorganized payment methodology and radically re-prioritized the health-care system with pay-for-performance measures that shifted the focus of providers from end-of-life and sick care to prevention and primary care. It encouraged innovations like the patient-centered “medical home” — a holistic delivery model designed to improve quality of care through team-based coordination of care, for the “whole” patient. Tying Medicare payments to the quality, rather than the quantity, of care that characterized the pricey, pre-Obamacare fee-for-service model, created efficiencies and surpluses for health centers like St. John’s that could then be used to serve California’s estimated 3.3 million uninsured, along with its undocumented population. 

“These relatively modest reforms actually ended up being revolutionary in all sorts of different ways,” recalled Anthony Wright, executive director of the advocacy coalition Health Access California. “There was all this really exciting work to provide people medical homes, and have early intervention to keep people healthy before they got sick in the first place. There was exciting work about how to treat issues around substance abuse and behavioral health medically, rather than criminally, which was starting to have profound benefits to not just our health system but to our criminal justice and corrections systems. If we undo the Medicaid expansion, we undo all that progress in one swoop.” 

Preserving that expansion has been the focus of California resistors, including consumer groups, labor unions and Democratic lawmakers, since election day, both in the current campaign by patient advocates, to bring public pressure on Trump and Republicans, and in anticipating the full extent of the damage to California’s Medi-Cal expansion that will need to be controlled. 

Nevertheless, it’s difficult to resist what is still unknown. And the extent of that damage won’t be clear until the plan is unveiled sometime after Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, Georgia Representative Tom Price, is approved by the Senate. 

Recent promises by Trump for a speedy and concurrent repeal and replacement of ACA with “insurance for everybody” that is “much less expensive and much better” have only further muddled the picture. The broad strokes remain at odds with what has been outlined in separate ACA alternatives by Price, who opposed ACA’s fundamental reforms, and by House Speaker Paul Ryan. And Price’s Tea Party antipathy to federal entitlements makes future attempts to cut Medicare and Medicaid likely. 

“Both of [the plans] would repeal most of the regulations under the ACA, but they would restore some aspects of the law, including subsidies for people to buy health insurance,” explained Gerald Kominski, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and director of the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Health Policy Research. “But their subsidies would be substantially lower than those currently available under the ACA, and would [go] back to a market that’s largely regulated at the state level rather than [have] the layer of federal regulations [that has standardized] the individual insurance market. So it’d be a little bit of a free-for-all.” 

California resistors are divided as to whether the state would have the political will or financial wherewithal to make up the federal government’s $20 billion share of the Medi-Cal expansion and Covered California, should it be cut, or to even go it alone with a version of single-payer. 

“I have always believed that health care is a right for everyone in California and the country,” state senator Ed Hernandez said. “The dilemma arises on how to finance it and whether the public supports it. … The state would be unable to backfill the loss of $20 billion in federal funds without massive tax increases or major program reductions.” 

Wright illustrated California’s difficulty in translating a moral imperative into a health-care entitlement by pointing out that the recent passage of Proposition 56, the two-dollar cigarette tax that, beginning in April, will generate a billion dollars annually for Medi-Cal, had faced three ballot fights — and $200 million in opposition spending by tobacco companies — to become law. 

“Before we get to what California does,” he cautioned, “we all need to be focused on the federal fight. The framework and financing that they provide is going to be very determinative about what is possible for California to do, whether it is an Obamacare lookalike or single-payer or anything else.”

Mangia expressed what might be the ultimate vision of California resistance. “I think it would make a very, very strong political statement across the country if the Republicans repeal [Obamacare] and California says, ‘Okay. Well, we’re going to keep it.’ Democrats control two thirds of the legislature. There’s a Democratic governor. I think we have a real opportunity.”

(Bill Raden is a freelance Los Angeles writer. This article was first posted at Capital & Main.)  Illustration by Lalo Alcaraz. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

MY TOWN--One upside to the acrimonious debate over the ill-fated Measure S is the number of people who have been pulled into the discussion over the future of our City. Of course, this new engagement didn’t seem to translate into actual voter turnout, but … baby steps, right? 

The resounding victory of the No on S campaign – even without the benefit of a catchy, rhyming slogan – places the burden squarely on that unlikely coalition of billionaires, Berniecrats, bankers, and bicycle advocates to come up with solutions to the various crises we face as a result of the status quo.

After all, Measure S sought to change that status quo – the opponents fought to keep it in place. And by status quo I mean the longstanding practice of granting zone changes to specific projects contrary to the language of the City Charter. I don’t mean to imply opponents of Measure S want to keep the City as it is.

To the contrary, the No on S crowd seems to want a development-driven Utopia, where housing is cheap and abundant and the homeless cease to exist. If you, like me, actually kind of like Los Angeles as it is – you are in a distinct minority. Apparently, a majority of the ten percent of registered voters who actually vote in Los Angeles would prefer LA to be more like Houston – where the absence of zoning laws have kept rents low and developers happy. 

We know what Rick Caruso, CIM Group, and Wells Fargo want: more development. And for the armchair activists so recently engaged in local politics, that should be good enough. With each new glitzy skyscraper, the pro-development-at-all-costs people can pat themselves on the back secure in the knowledge that they’ve done their part for the poor, the displaced, and the homeless. Well done people!

But for those of us more engaged in the actual struggle of the poor, undocumented, and homeless in our communities, we all should be able to agree that Phil Anschutz has not exactly been waiting for an excuse to ride in on a white horse and save us.

Nonetheless, the No on S coalition have pointed to several specific actions designed to help the poor, the young, renters, and the homeless that otherwise would have been stymied by passage of Measure S.

For example, the opponents of Measure S argued that many essentially shovel-ready affordable housing units would have been stopped by Measure S. Since Measure S no longer poses an obstacle to those projects, we should be able to track their progress. 

The same can be said for rising rents and home prices as well as loss of rent-controlled units and displacement of long-term low-income residents – all of which the opponents of Measure S told us would be increased by the measure’s passage. The removal of Measure S from that equation should be expected to result in a decrease in that type of activity around the City. Let’s see how that works out.

Finally, we’ve been told that the City has committed itself to updating the zoning laws on a regular basis in order to respond to the changing needs of our communities. In fact, the City has recently passed an ordinance requiring update of the community plans every six years. Let’s see if the City Council lives up to that commitment.

Since the opponents of Measure S consistently told us that updating the zoning laws was a long, onerous process – and, therefore, we couldn’t afford Measure S’s moratorium in order to pressure the City to update its plans – this particular goal should be something we see progress on fairly quickly. We shouldn’t need to wait six years, in other words, to know whether the City is going to update its community plans.

Although every ounce of optimism has been wrung from my soul by the long slog to make some positive change in this City, those who opposed Measure S seems fairly giddy at the sea change this election has brought. Let’s see if they can deliver.

(David Bell is a writer, attorney, former president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and writes for CityWatch.)

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Los Angeles should drop its bid for the 2024 Olympics -- before it gets chosen. It’s true that Paris has long been the favorite to be awarded the games during an upcoming vote in September. The Paris bid has broad international support, the City of Light has come close to winning the games in recent bids, and sentiment is on its side. 2024 would be the 100th anniversary of the last Olympics in Paris, the 1924 Games portrayed in the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire. 

But the contest is changing. All other contenders for 2024 have now dropped out (Budapest hung on the longest before bailing last month,) leaving just LA and Paris. And after reviewing documents from and about both bids, it looks to me that LA has the superior bid, with greater public support, stronger management (led by two of LA’s most skilled civic operators, Casey Wasserman and Gene Sykes,) and a better plan for producing an exciting event without the organizational meltdowns and cost overruns of previous Olympics. 

Indeed, what’s most promising about LA’s bid is also what makes it perilous. Los Angeles is bidding not merely to hold the Olympics but to transform them. Specifically, LA pledges “to create a new Games for a new era” and to “refresh” an Olympics brand. 

There’s plenty of transforming and refreshing to be done. The Olympics over the last generation has become more associated with corruption than sport: There’s the constant doping by individual athletes and nations’ sports federations. There’s the vote-buying by previous bid cities, including Atlanta and Salt Lake City. There’s the propagandistic use of the Games by the world’s worst human rights violators, from Russia to China. There’s the displacement of poor people, from East London to Rio, that has come with Olympic facility construction. And there’s the overspending and overpromising that has left generations of Olympic cities with debt and dead Olympic-related infrastructure. 

(Photo left: Mary Lou Retton celebrates her balance beam score at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Retton, 16, became the first American woman ever to win an individual Olympic gold medal in gymnastics. Photo by Lionel Cironneau/Associated Press.) 

All of which raises the same hard questions you might ask of a wonderful neighbor who romantically pursues a dashing foreigner even though the foreigner’s previous relationships ended badly. 

Do we really want the Olympics? How can we be sure that Olympic corruption won’t sully our reputation? And most of all, if an LA Games did succeed in hosting a profitable and “clean” Olympics, what’s to prevent the Olympics’ wheeler-dealers from exploiting an LA triumph to revert to their old tricks and take advantage of other global cities for future Games? 

Such questions may sound peculiar, but California has a peculiar relationship with the Olympics. While the rest of the world has become a sea of discontent with the corrupt Olympic movement -- in this cycle, Toronto, Hamburg, Rome, and Boston all have dropped bids -- we remain an island of Olympic love. One poll in Los Angeles showed 88 percent support for the Games. 

California’s Olympics love is rooted in nostalgia, for both the 1932 Games and for the famously well-run and profitable 1984 Games, which remain one of LA’s proudest civic moments, when we embraced a vision of ourselves as an international city. I attended those games as an 11-year-old (I saw Edwin Moses win the 400-meter hurdles) and remember them fondly. 

But the Games we’re bidding for now are not those Olympics. Today’s Games are bigger and bloated, with too many sports and expense. They also come with more baggage. The most recent Summer Olympics, held in Brazil last summer at twice the anticipated cost, were a disaster for that developing country, contributing to economic and political turmoil, and leaving behind useless infrastructure. 

The budget for the next Summer Games, in Tokyo in 2020, is now projected at four times the original estimate. And these recent problems come on the heels of other disasters. The 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, were beset by state-sponsored doping and massive construction corruption, with Vladimir Putin’s government rewarding friends with lucrative contracts. The 2008 Games in Beijing provided a pretext for China’s rulers to crack down on dissent and demolish important neighborhoods. The 2004 Games in Athens left massive debts that contributed to that country’s economic collapse. 

These games all centered on the “Development Model” of Olympics -- using the bid to transform cities by building. LA’s bid is a welcome departure because it relies on existing facilities for nearly everything, which helps contain the projected budget at just over $5 billion. (Sochi spent a reported $50 billion.) 

Viewed purely as a question of LA’s self-interest, the case for seeking the Games is strong. 

California’s economy depends so heavily on international trade and tourism that an Olympics could serve as advertising for our global connections and openness, particularly as much of America turns isolationist. And a 2024 Games would allow LA to show off its rapidly expanding transit system.

Plus, the Olympics, for all of its problems, still offers opportunities to volunteer (an LA Olympics would need tens of thousands of volunteers,) to root for your country, to promote the value of physical exercise, and to take a two-week respite from contentious politics during an election year. 

The Olympics would be fortunate to have us host. No city in the world is better suited to the games, from our dry and temperate summer weather to our wealth of sports facilities to our expertise in handling mega-events. “Make Los Angeles the permanent host of the Summer Olympics,” the sports economist Andrew Zimbalist advised last year.  

Most of the typical concerns about a Los Angeles Olympics -- about cost overruns, about traffic, about terrorism and security costs -- are overblown, and are well planned for in LA’s bid documents. The Games would be run by LA 2024, a separate organization, which means Olympic planning shouldn’t be a distraction for local elected officials who need to focus on Southern California’s everyday needs, from ill-repaired roads to the housing shortage. 

Some news reports have suggested that President Trump and his bans on travel and refugees and immigrants could hurt LA’s chances of winning. But the French have their own anti-immigrant, racist populist -- the leading presidential contender Marine Le Pen -- to defend. And Olympics politics is much more about the politics of the International Olympic Committee and the federations for all the different sports. 

No, the real question about LA’s bid is whether we’re too good for the Olympics. Our association is likely to sully us, and require moral compromises. For example, The New York Times reported last month that the U.S. Olympic Committee was soft-pedaling its response to the Russia doping scandal because of fears that a hard U.S. line could hurt LA’s Olympic bid. 

Such compromises pale in comparison to the moral hazard of saving the Olympics with an excellent LA bid. Hollywood warned us about a situation like this. If we win, our Games could become an Olympic version of The Bridge on the River Kwai, a 1957 film classic about Allied prisoners of war who dutifully build a railroad bridge that serves the interests of their Japanese captors. In the same way, an Olympic movement, restored by Los Angeles’ dutiful work, would be newly free to go back into the world and grant the Games to repressive regimes and developing countries that can’t really afford it. Do we really want to make that possible? 

Nope. It’s not our job to save the Olympics. Instead, Los Angeles should preserve its Olympic ideals -- by dropping our bid. Yep, that means handing the 2024 Games to Paris. C’est la vie. We’ll always have 1984.

(Joe Mathews is Connecting California Columnist and Editor at Zócalo Public Square … where this column first appeared. Mathews is a Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (UC Press, 2010). Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CORRUPTION WATCH-On Tuesday, November 8, 2016, Americans elected Donald Trump President on the basis of the Politics of Rage. Millions of Americans, albeit less than 50%, were out for revenge. Although the Democrats’ hubris coupled with an inability to count votes in the Electoral College tipped the scales in favor of Trump, without the passion for revenge throughout much of the nation, Trump would not have won. 

On Tuesday, March 7, 2017, Angelenos re-elected Eric Garcetti Mayor of Los Angeles on the basis of the Politics of Ignorance. 

Garcetti was already the longest serving politico at LA City Hall. The voters first elected him as councilmember for Council District 13 in 2001. In 2006, he became City Council President which in LA is an extremely powerful position anyway, but even more so then because Mayor Villaraigosa was seldom in town and when he was, Tony V was primarily concerned with chasing skirt. Thus now, more than anyone else in LA, Garcetti can take credit for the city’s current condition. 

During Garcetti’s tenure, Los Angeles has declined from being a Destination City to which people aspire to an Exodus City from which people are fleeing. Every day in every way, life is LA is becoming worse. Yet, Angelenos are ignorant of the connection between city government and the deterioration in the quality of their lives. 

1. The infrastructure is decaying with about three water mains bursting a week and creating sink holes into which cars disappear. 

2. Traffic congestion has gone for bad to terrible to second worst in the nation to worst in the country to worst in the U.S. and Europe to having the worst traffic gridlock in the entire world. (Inrix 2017 Traffic Scorecard.) 

3. There is an outward migration of the middle class that has to aggravate to split between the very poor and very wealthy since the middle has picked up stakes and moved away. The lack of a vibrant middle class also kills the opportunity ladder and the middle class is to step out of poverty. 

4. The City’s Dependency Ratio is progressively worst each year. The Dependency Ratio is important to gauge a city’s future since it measures the percent of people working versus the percent of dependents. Generally, that is the number of young people between 0 and 18 added to the number of over age 65 versus everyone in the middle. Since the young and the elderly do not generate income, they are a drag on the tax base. The smaller the middle class, the greater the tax burden on the middle class. 

5.  The City’s homeless problem is escalating due to Garcetti’s Manhattanization of Los Angeles which has destroyed over 22,000 rent-controlled units since 2001. When veterans, the disabled and the poor are evicted, they often cannot afford market-rate housing and thus they end up on the street. An increasing number live in SUVs and cars. The services for the homeless are very expensive for the LA, but Garcetti does not provide extra funds to make up for the loss of police and paramedics because of the need for them to tend to the increasing problems of homelessness. 

6. Garcetti promoted Measure HHH to allegedly build affordable housing, but via Measure JJJ, that money can subsidize luxury apartments -- of which the city has a glut, over a 12% vacancy rate. (As the UN reported on March 1, 2017, it is worldwide trend to construct dense housing units for money launderers and oligarchs to hide and cleanse their money. Thus, LA provides money to construct “investments” for wealthy Russians. I guess in some respects, Garcetti is not all that different from Trump.) 

7. Housing prices in LA are beyond out of control due to the developers’ practice of “being nice to” councilmembers to get whatever Up Zoning they desire. Once a friendly councilmember places any Up Zoned project on the city council agenda, it automatically passes unanimously – even if no councilmember votes for it. The City Council vote tabulating machine is programmed to Vote Yes for everything all the time. 

8. In the 15 years of Garcetti’s tenure, LA has gone from a world class destination City to a failing city which is again insolvent -- and yet a whopping 81% re-elected Garcetti for Mayor. 

9. The City is insolvent – again —with a $250 million deficit. 

10. The crime rate is ratcheting upwards. 

11. LA is the most park poor large city in the country. 

12. The density in DTLA and Hollywood and the Westside has only just begun to escalate. Once it is under way, it will make traffic even worse and housing prices continue to rise. As traffic worsens, it seems that more people use cars because mass transit is very slow; in addition, it goes very few places while cars go everywhere and it is increasingly dangerous with unreliable timetables. Thus, the mere prospect of an arduous commute results n people seeking the comfort and relative safety of their own vehicles. 

The Difference between Trump and Garcetti 

Unlike Trump, who is a mentally disturbed, twitter-addicted braggart held aloft on the wing of resentment and rage, Eric Garcetti speaks softly and carries a big war chest. He is a low-keyed political genius who skims along on a cloud of misinformation and misdirection. Also, he is backed by the LA Times which has been the master of Alt-News since its inception in the 1800s. The LA Times’ secret motto is “All the News the Elite Wants You to See.” Thus, Angelenos swim in a vast sea of ignorance. They know things are worse every day but they are clueless as to the cause. 

The results of the Politics of Rage and the Politics of Ignorance are essentially the same – deterioration.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CITY HALL EXPOSED--This is a timeline of City Council and LA City Staff backroom meetings with developers and lobbyists; campaign donations to City Officials; and “spotzoning” approvals for controversial projects. 

A Special March 4, 2017 Report on Backroom Governing and Undue Developer Influence Upon LA Elected Leaders 

Sourcing: All facts provided by Los Angeles City Ethics Commission or contained in official documents released by Los Angeles City Council members as required by the California Public Records Act. 

Released by the Coalition to Preserve LA, Yes on Measure S 

Summary:

Yes on Measure S today releases a special report of official city information that has been released publicly, but unpublished to date. It reveals how LA City Hall works behind closed doors, on behalf of developers and usually without the knowledge of the public, to get around an area's zoning rules.

Most developers donate to LA elected leaders throughout the backroom process. 

"Pay to Play In Los Angeles City Government" contains a comprehensive timeline of private meetings and dinners involving billionaire developers, elected City leaders and their staffs. It reveals that private meetings are rarely granted by elected leaders to LA residents who question the developments. 

The timeline, entirely made up of official city documents released under the California Public Records Act, or official city campaign finance and lobbyist data published by the L.A. City Ethics Commission, includes: 

- Dates and people present at private backroom meetings between developers and City Council officials and city employees. 

- Donations received by elected officials from these developers during the process. 

- City Council approval of projects achieved by badly bending LA zoning rules, often after private meetings and/or donations from the developer. Nine Los Angeles City Council members were asked by the Coalition to Preserve LA to divulge this public information. All nine failed to release the

subject of these backroom meetings with developers. They divulged only the fact that the meetings happened, in response to California Public Records Act requests by the Coalition. 

The nine LA City Council members, of 15 on the City Council, were asked for their official appointment calendars regarding these large-scale developments, because their Council Districts contain a significant number of projects that have been allowed, by vote of the City Council, to ignore city zoning rules. 

Some of the nine City Council members responded long after the 10-day deadline under the California Public Records Act (CPRA). 

City Councilman Jose Huizar failed for several months to provide his meeting calendar. Councilman Huizar complied with California state law only after attorneys for the Coalition demanded that he divulge this public information. 

The official city data provides a direct look at the campaign and lobbying cash spent to influence City Hall leaders as they decide, in a non-transparent and money-influenced system, how and where LA and its neighborhoods should absorb large-scale developments. The official city campaign and lobbying data, and the official calendars released by City Council members, show that collusion between megadevelopers and elected officials is endemic. Zoning is for sale at City Hall. (Read the complete report here.)

-cw

IMMIGRATION WATCH--California legislators have filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn what federal immigration authorities are up to in their state. 

The request was filed this week by California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon, both Democrats, for “information about recent Department of Homeland Security policies and Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities.” 

Federal authorities appear to be cracking down on immigration with a recent “surge in enforcement activities,” the lawmakers said in a statement. But federal authorities have provided “limited information,” despite repeated requests, the statement continued. California is home to 5.4 million non-citizen immigrants, and almost half of all children in the state have at least one parent who is an immigrant. 

“When the safety of Californians is at stake, we must demand greater transparency, with the backing of federal courts if necessary,” the lawmakers said. “The lives and physical safety of many thousands of Californians — citizens and immigrants, documented and undocumented — depend upon knowing this information.” 

Immigration authorities arrested hundreds of people in February in raids across the country. Dozens of those seized had no criminal record. An ICE official said the activity was “routine.” 

Rendon and DeLeon seek details on recent federal enforcement in California, including the massing of immigration agents outside a Southern California church shelter in order to “ambush, arrest and detain homeless individuals seeking warmth there.” They also cite the case of an immigrant woman attempting to obtain an order of protection against her husband in a courthouse, where agents escorted her out and arrested her. 

The lawmakers demand information on ICE and Department of Homeland Security enforcement in California near “sensitive” areas, such as at schools, hospitals and churches; detainees’ access to lawyers; and treatment of young people in the Dreamers program who were brought to the U.S. as children. 

The request also seeks information about people detained and deported in an intensive five-day sweep in Los Angeles County last month that netted some 161 individuals. 

An ICE spokeswoman provided a link to the agency’s policies concerning sensitive locations, and cautioned that some information about detainees may not be available because of privacy concerns, the Sacramento Bee reported. 

Santa Cruz police blasted federal officials last month for lying, using a crackdown on a local gang as an excuse to secretly round up undocumented immigrants. 

Immigration enforcers said they felt constrained under former President Barack Obama. But now, after President Donald Trump campaigned on an anti-immigration platform, agents are feeling emboldened, according to unions representing Border Patrol agents and ICE officers.

(Mary Pappenfuss is a Trends reporter for the Huffington Post where this piece was originally posted.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ANIMAL WATCH-LA Animal Services GM Brenda Barnette informed the Commission at a West Valley meeting this week that it is safe and recommended by UC Davis to surgically sterilize six-week-old kittens at only 1-1/2 pounds in order to adopt them out of the shelter at their highest level of “cuteness.”

She also announced that the City is implementing a “pilot program” with this new policy at the Chesterfield Square shelter in South Los Angeles. If it is successful, in three months it will be extended to all city shelters. 

If LA’s desperation to reach the elusive “no kill” goal continues, this could also soon mean these tiny, helpless creatures may be given away “free.” That is what happened recently under a grant by the ASPCA, which paid adoption fees for cats and eliminated the need for adopters to make an investment. This does not say much about sustainability of the “no kill” plan. What happens when the mythical metric is met and those who benefit from the acclaim and increased donations move their subsidies out of Los Angeles? 

Under the Hayden Law, California policy for shelters, states, “Adoptable animals are those over eight weeks of age…”  Barnette did not discuss the violation of this provision.

The plan to perform surgery on barely weaned kittens became the topic of impassioned opposition by distraught shelter volunteers and rescuers at the meeting. 

The pilot program for this “experiment” at a shelter in one of the most economically challenged areas of Los Angeles did not include any long-term study or data that indicates performing sterilization surgery on barely weaned kittens and releasing them to uncontrolled and unmonitored adopters at public shelters has been successful. As a public, tax-funded shelter, LA Animal Services cannot refuse adoption to anyone without proof of past violations of laws regarding animal care or cruelty.

The Chesterfield Square shelter is located in a blighted, semi-industrial area of South Los Angeles, where stray and diseased feral cats roam the streets and starving kittens cry for help from behind a fenced lot across the street from the shelter. It is mystifying to rescuers and advocates why this shelter would be chosen for a “pilot program” to release vulnerable 6-week-old kittens with immature immune systems. A few have suggested cynically that a high post-adoption mortality or illness rate might be less likely to be reported in this community. 

It is necessary to understand the limitations and challenges of this area to fully grasp the mind-boggling decision to start such a precarious program in South Central LA, where the largest part of the surrounding population has limited income for potential veterinary bills or special pet care. And, it is unlikely many adopters from other parts of the city will drive to Chesterfield Square. 

In 2013 Eric Brightwell wrote on Amoeblog, “Chesterfield Square is without a doubt, one of Los Angeles’ most obscure neighborhoods. The obscurity is somewhat surprising given the neighborhood’s longstanding and dubious distinction of having the city’s and county’s highest violent crime rate.”

The latest LA Times Mapping Tool shows Chesterfield Square still ranked No. 1 in the city for violent crime. The median population age is 31 years, and more than 30 percent of residents have not completed high school. Average household income is $37,737, with over 50 percent at less than $20,000 year, according to the Times. 

Residents of this area represent various ethnic groups. Most are hard-working, honest people, but many who own pets also struggle with the constraints of poverty and are plagued by the hazards of their daily lives. Thousands of dogs and cats run loose in the streets and have open sores resulting from mange, parasites and untreated wounds. Many starve to death in alleys or are killed by cars.

Xaque Gruber wrote in a 2013 Huffington Post article, “Nowhere is Los Angeles' homeless dog population a more chronic problem than in South Central where thousands of canines run wild. And nowhere is a blind eye turned more than in this section of the city.” 

Do we wonder how cats fare in this desperate and disease-ridden environment for animals? GM Barnette admits in her Board report dated February 7, 2017, that, "South LA Chesterfield Square shelter has been struggling with an inordinate influx of cats and kittens infected with life threatening virus infections..." 

DOES “CUTENESS” JUSTIFY SURGICAL RISK? 

Cuteness? If this is the criteria for choosing a pet kitten, what happens in a very few weeks when it becomes a cat? Kittens grow quickly and are not toys. They need to learn bite-inhibition and non-injurious play from interaction with siblings. If “cuteness,” rather than personality and affection, is the criteria GM Barnette is using for adoption-appeal, it appears the audience is families with young children, rather than adults who are more concerned with long-term bonding. 

“Kittens at this age, by necessity are focused on their own survival,” says early-age spay/neuter expert Dr. W. Marvin Mackie, who advises waiting until eight weeks of age for surgical sterilization. “At six weeks they are being thrust by Nature from dependency on their mother or a ‘foster’ into a world where they must be able to provide for their own subsistence and safety. Adopters should look for a kitten old enough to develop interests beyond its basic egocentric needs so that they can forecast the basic personality and desire for human interaction of a pet that will share their home for the next 15 to 20 years.” 

While veterinarians agree on the importance of getting kittens out of the shelter environment as soon as possible, Dr. Mackie, who pioneered contemporary early-age spay/neuter in the late 1980’s, expressed shock that a shelter would not do all possible to assure the safety of these tiny juveniles -- not only from the surgical-aspect, but also from a developmental and socialization perspective. (View kitten growth progression here.)   

The Best Friends blog states, “Eight-week-old healthy kittens are fully weaned and should soon be ready to be spayed or neutered and to find their new forever homes.” 

WHY IS BARNETTE SUDDENLY IN SUCH A RUSH TO ALTER KITTENS? 

Brenda Barnette, a former dog breeder and AKC legislative representative in Seattle, is on record opposing mandatory spay/neuter laws. Her December 2016 Woofstat report shows 492 breeding licenses have been issued to unaltered-dog owners in Los Angeles, with a 42% increase this year. 

During Barnette’s tenure in LA, there has been no consistent city-wide media promotion or enforcement effort to stop backyard and in-home breeding of dogs and cats. Barnette and Councilman Paul Koretz of the Council’s Personnel and Animal Welfare (PAW) Committee have blatantly rejected microchipping or licensing of cats to stop overpopulation and provide accountability for ownership of owned outdoor cats.  

Why the sudden rush to alter infantile kittens? Maybe because Barnette has repeatedly said kittens and cats keep her from reaching “no kill.” She admits in her February 7 Board report that the "South LA Chesterfield Square shelter has been struggling with an inordinate influx of cats and kittens infected with life threatening virus infections..." (Emph. added.) So, why institute a risky surgical program in that facility? 

Here are some questions/comments proposed by skeptics and cynics: 

--“Is the purpose of six-week surgeries and adoptions to place feral kittens as pets without having to disclose their background?” 

--“For each one-pound kitten that dies from a spay, Brenda counts as a spay for her credit and not as a euthanasia -- also to her credit. Fake metrics.” 

--“If they die during or after surgery, it will reduce the shelter’s cat population.” 

--“Whether adopted into homes without experience (or even those that are former cat owners) the possibility of post-surgical complications is much more likely in these very fragile animals. Will they be able to afford the care?” 

--“Will they report morbidity or deaths to the shelter? Does Brenda Barnette really want to know?”

And some questions/comments from veterinarians: 

--“Can shelter staff determine age? This needs to be done on dentition and choosing those under 6 months of age could put the animals at more risk. Is there adequate shelter staff to monitor recovery?” 

--“Testicles drop into the scrotal sac around 6 weeks, so many may still be retained, which will cause the surgeon to go deeper to look for them-- more invasive surgery and increased time under anesthesia for these kittens.” 

--“If the gas is delivered by intubation the tiny tubes plug up easily with even a small amount of mucous and the animal can suffocate.” 

--“My guess is that someone needs data to publish a paper regarding spay/neuter at this age, so you can get data fast through a large agency with a huge number of cat impounds. In academia, it is publish or perish.” 

OPINIONS ON FACEBOOK AND ELSEWHERE 

Many veterinarians commented on a Facebook page started by Dr. Robert Goldman, highly respected veterinarian and specialist in spay/neuter who worked for LA Animal Services. Some support this program, but most wrote that they felt six weeks is too young and articulated their professional concerns. 

Dr. Kate Hurley of UC Davis wrote: “…[T]his recommendation came from me and my team and is well supported by science and an enormous amount of experience…A number of shelters have now spayed thousands of kittens at this age with no documented increase in morbidity or mortality.” 

Brenda Barnette also joined in with a rather caustic comment and Dr. Goldman replied:

“Brenda Barnette: The pilot we are planning to try at one shelter is supported by UCDavis Koretz (sic) Shelter Medicine Program, Maddies Shelter Medicine Program in Florida and the Shelter Medicine Veterinary Assoc. I am disappointed to see you making this public grandstanding on Facebook rather than through you (sic) professional associations. Seems decisive I’m sorry to say.” 

“Robert Goldman:  Sorry if this seems like grandstanding to you. This is me reaching out to friends on professional associations as well as other stakeholders concerned. My question to Dr. Julie Levy is to the heart of the issue: if Veterinary Medical Professionals are to make the best decisions for their patients but in a municipal setting are judged by non medical personnel who hold sway over their employment but also set the conditions for the patients, how is that conflict resolved in the best interest of all?” 

There is another exchange between GM Barnette and Dr. Goldman, who wrote a public letter addressed to the LA Times in regard to LAAS shelters and Barnette’s contention that “…by the end of the end of this year Los Angeles will achieve 90% live save for shelter dogs and cats.” 

He states (in part), “As a veterinarian who performed spays and neuters for the Department on a part time basis from August 2015 to October 2016, I witnessed first-hand how the focused (and often falsified) pursuit of these numbers, called "metrics," has taken the focus off the shelter animals themselves and resulted in animal neglect that is at times tantamount to animal abuse.” 

Dr. Goldman writes that he was informed on July 13, 2016, there was no more funding for his spay-neuter vet position after he supported the position of a volunteer who spoke about shelter conditions.

There has been no shortage of spay/neuter funds. The LA Animal Services report shows a balance of $5,193,971.40 in the Animal Sterilization Fund during the period July 1 – July 31, 2016. 

IS LA REALLY REACHING “NO KILL”? 

What is really going on at LAAS to cause a sudden rush to do spays and neuters most vets consider inadvisable? Why push kittens that may not be completely weaned into adoptive homes with unknown experience and resources? Is it related to the fact that Best Friends is already past its promised deadline to make LA “no kill”? 

Barnette announced at the Feb. 28 meeting that Best Friends will be paying its NKLA rescuers from $75 to $150 each to “pull” cats from the LAAS shelters to reach “no kill.” Relocating animals is not the same as adopting them from the shelters directly to permanent local homes. How will “no kill” be sustained in Los Angeles after the funding by Best Friends and ASPCA moves on?

(Phyllis M. Daugherty is a former City of LA employee and a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST WORDS--Will Los Angeles finally admit it’s a metropolis? And if so, what kind of metropolis does it want to be?

That may seem a strange question, given the size of the LA region. But Los Angeles is of at least two minds. Yes, we’re home to world class universities, two pro football teams, the nation’s largest port complex by volume, the third-busiest airport in the U.S., more manufacturing than any other American city, and we’re bidding to host the Olympic Games for the third time. But many people in LA also expect the city to be as open and livable as any suburb.

How we Angelenos see our city, and what we want for its future, is coming to a head not in a pitched street battle out of West Side Story, but at the ballot box. On March 7, Los Angeles voters will consider Measure S, an anti-development ballot measure that proposes to put a moratorium on certain types of building projects for two years.

Many of the measure’s details address rather arcane urban planning codes that are admittedly outdated. But the campaign for Measure S has secured a base of support by tapping into a sentiment closely held by older residents, suburban dwellers within in the city limits, and NIMBY (“Not In My Backyard”) constituencies that Los Angeles is changing too rapidly into a dense, mega-city.

As Los Angeles residents experience record-high rental rates and property values, developers are constructing larger infill projects, building multi-story apartment complexes akin to more traditional urban forms. The way Measure S supporters see it, these denser developments create more traffic, change the character of neighborhoods, and create more luxury housing at the expense of more affordable housing in older, smaller complexes. In short, LA is becoming too much of a metropolis.

But the coalition opposing Measure S—developers, businesses, affordable housing advocates, urban living enthusiasts, and most of the political establishment—have a fundamental disagreement with the basis for Measure S. These opponents say L.A must preserve any and all avenues for construction of schools, hospitals—and especially scarce housing. Cutting off the supply of housing with overly restrictive regulations in the midst of a well-documented housing shortage is a prescription for land use malpractice. Without needed supply, rents and property values increase to match housing demand. It’s a simple argument, which also happens to make tremendous sense.

Maybe the answer is even simpler than we wish to acknowledge: We’re not just metropolitan; we’re a metropolis. We just need to be a better one.

Reality, if not perception, is with the opponents. Angelenos don’t realize it, but LA is already the densest urbanized area in the nation, with some 7,000 people per square mile. (New York is in third place, at a mere 5,319 people per square mile.) But the enormous growth of the suburbs in post-WWII Los Angeles gave Southern California an ethos that’s been hard to shake, even in the 21st century: The relic of a notion that we’re entitled to two cars in every driveway and a Weber grill on every backyard patio.

Los Angeles is of at least two minds. Yes, we’re home to world class universities, two pro football teams, the nation’s largest port complex by volume, the third-busiest airport in the U.S. … But many people in LA also expect the city to be as open and livable as any suburb.

Of course, LA has evolved into a metropolis as it has grown in population, driven by domestic migration, immigration from Asia and the Americas, and the simple math of the birthrate for Angelenos already here. But it can be hard to understand that because, as Reyner Banham wrote in his 44-year-old book, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, the city is so multifaceted. Banham saw his four ecologies—the hills, the flatlands of the coastal plain, the beaches, and the freeways—as being so disparate that there was no shared narrative about the place.

“Los Angeles does not get the attention it deserves,” Banham wrote. “It gets attention, but it’s like the attention that Sodom and Gomorrah have received, primarily a reflection of other people’s bad consciences.” Could it be we have finally matured as a city so that we are no longer seeing reflections, but a new urban reality?

Today, it can feel as if different generations are living in very different LAs. While older residents cling to suburban neighborhoods, young people are living more urbanized lives, with Lyft and Uber and Metro trains coexisting with fusion restaurants and food trucks. Downtown Los Angeles loft-dwellers—a species that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago—walk their dogs, zip around via our expanding transit system, and enjoy a thriving culinary scene that’s nationally—and internationally—recognized as one of the most vibrant anywhere.

I’m not young anymore, but I appreciate how this newer metropolis allows me to live in Valley Village, an increasingly urban environment near Studio City and North Hollywood that is less dependent on the automobile, and that has more to offer as a result.

From my San Fernando Valley neighborhood, I take the Metro Red Line to my office in downtown Los Angeles’ Historic Core, getting to work faster than I did driving surface streets from where I previously lived in the Miracle Mile. I walk to my local grocery store, the dry cleaners, and my daughter’s elementary school.

I’m also within walking distance of the Los Angeles River Recreation Path, and I’m about a six-minute drive from hiking trails maintained by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. Another two minutes in the car (yes, I own and use a car) and I can take Parker, our family’s terrier mix, to one of the city’s largest dog parks. And I’m comfortably within the delivery radius of a brand new restaurant that’s easily the best Thai food I’ve ever had. (Measure S would have been smart to exclude ethnic restaurants from its building moratorium, don’t you think?)

To be sure, my neighborhood has all the plagues that Measure S supporters worry about: traffic, police and ambulance sirens, and, yes, noise from construction sites building much-needed housing. But on the whole, I feel fortunate to live in a place where I’m not stuck in the backyard. I feel connected to the city, literally and figuratively.

For me, that’s progress. And the moment we realize that we are a metropolis, restrictions like those proposed by Measure S will be seen as a relic, too.

(David Gershwin is a Los Angeles-based public affairs consultant, Zócalo Public Square board member, and teaching fellow at UCLA Anderson School of Business. This perspective was posted originally at Zocalo Public Square.) Photo by Reed Saxon/Associated Press.

-cw 

TRANSIT IN TRANSITION--In case you haven’t noticed, as the city has increased the density in the Basin Los Angeles traffic has become much worse. According to the measures used by Inrix’s 2017 Traffic scorecard, on a worldwide basis, Los Angeles now has the worst traffic gridlock in the world. 

Tom Tom places Los Angeles as fourth worse and in some ways, Tom Tom is more useful. Each urban area with worse traffic congestion than Los Angeles has more density, so it is clear that making LA Basin more dense will make LA’s traffic worse. 

Traffic congestion makes cars more popular. 

As Judge Allan Goodman ruled in January 2014, Garcetti uses Lies and Myths to deceive the public. (The judge’s actual legalese was “fatally flawed data, wishful thinking that subverts the law.”) Thus, the claim that making LA denser will reduce traffic congestion is the opposite of the truth. Kellyanne Conway is envious that Garcetti can spew forth Alt-Fact after Alt-Fact and never get caught. He succeeds where Kellyanne failed because Garcetti only has to deal with the LA Times which has been in the Alt-Fact business since its inception. 

One huge Alt-Fact is that people will use the subways if the city makes traffic unbearable. Our traffic congestion has become the worst in the world, yet cars more popular than ever. The use of mass transit has been decreasing since 1985. Although the Expo Line ran service to Santa Monica and the Gold Line went to Azusa in 2015, usage between 2015 and 2016 fell. People were fooled into voting $200 billion for mass transit because the vast majority of voters expected that others will use the buses and subways, thus making the streets and freeways clearer for them. 

Transit usage fell because increased density which created worse traffic congestion makes cars more popular. So we are experiencing the obvious: more density in the Basin attracting more people into the Basin, increasing traffic congestion, causing more people to use their cars. 

We love our cars for good reason. 

(1) The Metro is slow. 

Metro ignores the time it takes a commuter to get from his home to the train or subway station and the time it takes to walk to his destination. A car starts at one’s home and ends up at most destinations. Even if the office is in DTLA, the person may have to park and walk a couple blocks, it takes 27.9 minutes for a one way commute by car and 52.2 minutes by rail, so a car is much faster. 

(2) The Metro does not go where people need to go. 

Using car, 43.3% of people can reach work within 30 minutes, while only 0.7% can reach work in 30 minutes via transit. The reality is that the overwhelming number of jobs are not reasonable accessibly via transit. 

(3) Cars are more comfortable. 

Not only is a car almost twice as fast as transit, cars are much more comfortable. Taking a subway or a bus means dealing with the weather. Although LA generally has nice weather, people do not like to be rained on or to have to walk an extra half mile in 90 degree heat. Also, the car’s driver seat can be adjusted to fit perfectly; and with a car, there’s no need to stand inside a crowded transit bus or subway car. 

(4) Cars are more convenient. 

Cars are the most flexible mode of transportation, making side trips easier. The subway will not change its route to take you to Ralphs or the cleaners on your way home from work. And a car lets you carry a lot of stuff. Getting off a bus to go to Ralphs, then walking back to board another bus, you are is limited as to what can be carried. It’s not realistic to carry a 50 lb. bag of dog food on the subway or bus; with a car, you can load in 200 lbs. of dog food and four bags of groceries plus stop at the cleaners. Anyway, buying the largest bag of something like dog food is generally cheaper. So grocery shopping is overall cheaper when you can load up your car with a few hundred pounds of goodies. It’s also easier to snack on those cookies on the way home. 

(5) Most cars will be electric. 

Within the foreseeable future, most cars will be electric. While short-term auto emissions are a problem for people who walk or ride bicycles along major thoroughfares, long range planners have to realize that cars will not be polluting the city as much within ten years. Thus, the ecological bias against cars will disappear. 

(6) Cars will become self-driving. 

At some time in the future, cars will become self-driving. This means that commuters will be free to do other things than pay attention to the road. People will be able to work on their computers and have video conferences with others around the world while driving to work. Of course, a huge portion of physical commuting will already have been replaced by Virtual Presence aka Cisco type Telepresence ©. Planners will need to work out the future interactions between physical transportation and virtual transportation. 

(7) Advances in automobile technology will make homes less expensive. 

When electric, self-driving cars are combined with Virtual Presence, homes will become less expensive. Virtual Presence will reduce the need to physically leave the home which will reduce traffic, and at the same time, self-driving cars will allow passengers to do things other than drive. As a result, the annoyance factor of traffic congestion will disappear. The experience of driving is much different on a stop ‘n go bumper-to-bumper freeway where you have to be alert every second than it is in a situation where you can watch the evening news and not even notice a slowdown in traffic. 

When you combine the impact of self-driving cars and Virtual Presence, people can live farther apart. Yes, we can return to sprawl — and sprawl is the key to decent housing at a decent price. Homes are always less expensive and usually more spacious on the periphery. 

Our wonderful, fantastic love affairs with cars. 

Our love affair with the cars is unlike other love affairs – it is based in reality. Cars may be the greatest invention of mankind, and there is every reason to believe that our passion for cars will only deepen in the future. A city that makes itself car unfriendly will have made itself inhospitable to human beings.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

RESISTANCE CALENDAR--Since November 8, activists have been mobilizing to get in front of Donald J. Trump’s agenda. We’re working to put out fires on so many different fronts, civil rights, immigrant rights, health care, the environment. We’re writing postcards, making phone calls, sharing information via social media. We’re attending town hall meetings in far greater numbers than before. March 8 will be A Day Without A Woman, following the lead of the Day without Immigrants.  

On April 22 from 9 AM to 4 PM, over 50,000 are expected to participate in the March for Science starting at Pershing Square, which has become Ground Zero for such activity in our city. LA’s March is one of over 300 independent satellite marches for the national March for Science in Washington, DC happening the same day. The LA March will also feature a science and technology expo. 

According to the umbrella website, the mission of The March for Science is to “champion robustly funded and publicly communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity. We unite as a diverse nonpartisan group to call for science that upholds the common good and for political leaders and policymakers to enact evidence-based policies in the public interest.” 

While sharing the overall goals of the umbrella March, the March for Science Los Angeles also asserts the diversity of scientists in Southern California, a crucial driver of economic growth, protector of resources, and important to the health of the region’s citizen. 

The LA March organizers are a team of more than fifty volunteer with diverse backgrounds and expertise, from organic chemistry to business, all concerned about the increasing mistrust in science and applying evidence to policy decisions, as well as the growing lack of transparency in federally-funded research communications.

I sat down with March for Science LA lead organizer Alex Bradley to talk about the March and the importance of safeguarding scientific research for all of us. Bradley, a PhD candidate in Molecular Biology at UCLA, shared how he got involved in the LA satellite march, which is expected to be among the largest worldwide. 

Around the time the national group was getting support, I was at lunch with a friend, discussing how uncertain the funding climate was for science. I was frustrated by the recent changes in the way science was perceived by the public. It seemed like my friend didn’t find this too interesting -- he was looking at his phone. It turned out he had received an invitation to join the National DC Group’s Facebook page from a friend in biotech in San Diego. It looked like we were going to have a Science March.  It struck me as an opportunity to play a role in understanding the role of science. I was tired of not standing up to do something. -- Alex Bradley 

Bradley adds that members of the scientific community connected early on, despite not knowing each other before but were on the same page quickly. “We synergized well with our skills and were honest about our failures along the way. Jennifer Wheeler, Program Director of the Los Angeles March and her husband were a “formidable organizing force,” says Bradley, coordinating with over fifty people working on various committees as a “well-oiled machine.” 

Stakeholders use a communal Slack platform and private channels for local and global efforts. Designers across the world bounce ideas for logistics, fundraising. “Lots of us spearheading don’t have event planning experience so we’ve had to rely on experts in their respective fields. Lots of people who are great at their jobs are volunteering their time. It’s awesome to watch,” adds Bradley. 

What motivated the group to commit themselves to this mission? “Our primary goal is to emphasize science in driving policy decisions. We want to drive that home. We’re concerned that there’s been this trend that the pursuit of ideological agenda is superseding the appreciation for scientific fact in the interest of environment and public health. We want to reverse that trend,” says Bradley. 

Current crowd estimates are based off people who have expressed interest and the word of the march has spread by word of mouth and social media. The stakeholders are starting to establish an infrastructure that will include ambassadors representing various communities to further spread awareness. Ambassadors will be provided with resource packets, fliers, and other tools. Bradley hopes to drive people to the March’s website and Facebook page. “Once people have read our mission statement and our core values, it’s hard not to want to be part of this,” he says. 

Amazingly, I think maybe 10 percent of the team are scientists. The vast majority are non-scientists. Science is an integral part of all of our lives, embracing the purest of truths. We are also humanizing scientists. We’re notoriously good at distancing ourselves from the layperson, which we don’t intend to do. The fact that we use terms like “layperson” suggests elitism. I think all the scientists I’ve spoken to in academia recognize that the public plays an integral part. It’s not us and them. It’s all of us together embracing the pursuit of truth. 

There’s a systemic mistrust or misunderstanding of science and we need to work from the ground up to educate the public on what science is and how valuable science is to society. It’s a beautiful thing. We need well-rounded STEM education and this is the first step in that effort. 

Science is not a belief system. You can have a religious belief system -- whatever compels you to have faith is your individual experience. Science is something we all participate in. It’s not an opinion of whether you’re inhaling oxygen. It’s a scientific fact. It’s really important that children are able to make that distinction. 

The March for Science Los Angeles is likely to be the largest number of pro-science advocates ever assembled. We’ve never felt the need before. This will be a monumental occasion. -- Alex Bradley 

NEED TO KNOW: 

Visit the March for Science LA website for more information about the March and how you can help. Companies and organizations interested in endorsing or financing the March can also find information at the site, as well as anyone interested in being an Ambassador. 

Currently, the fiscal sponsor is being secured so the group may not utilize funds as of yet as a non-profit. Tax-free donation links and an apparel store will be up as soon as the relationship with the fiscal sponsor is formalized. 

People can commit their interest for shirts by filling out a pre-order apparel form for a 15 % discount once the store is launched. A pre-order form, as well as all other forms, are in the FAQ section of the site.

For more information about the March for Science and other satellite marches across the country and globe, visit March for Science.

 (Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.)

-cw

@THE GUSS REPORT-On Friday, March 3, Dakota Smith, writing for the LA Times, referenced my article in CityWatch in her report on the bigamy allegation swirling around District 9 City Councilmember Curren Price. 

Smith noted that Price, whose opponent Jorge Nuño was endorsed by the LA Times for the city’s March 7 Primary Election, was scrambling to prove that he is actually divorced from his first wife, Lynn, stating:   

“Price and his legal team are trying to locate records that would prove the divorce was finalized.” 

Since Smith had access to the entire divorce file and could see that no such document exists in it -- and Price has refused to tell Smith whether he filed for divorce elsewhere -- she shouldn’t hold her breath waiting for those “missing” records to surface from Price’s people. 

Smith then quoted Josh Pulliam, Price’s campaign spokesman: 

“Mr. Price has been operating on the belief that his divorce is full and final,” said his campaign spokesman, Josh Pulliam. “Based on the questions raised in the past few days, he immediately requested all of the files and records regarding the divorce so we can get this resolved.” 

Did Smith ask Pulliam how can that be, since records show that Price and wife #1 did not split real estate they co-owned and never resolved other financial or spousal support issues? 

Does Smith blindly accept that Price (who has a law degree, but not a license to practice) and his divorce attorney both forgot to address this since the case’s last hearing in 2012?

What divorce lawyer forgets to split assets? 

Last week, I challenged Mr. Pulliam on his assertion that Price immediately asked for his divorce file upon hearing of the bigamy allegation. In fact, it was way back in a January 20 email exchange that I first asked Price’s City Hall media relations person, Angelina Valencia, in what state, county and year did Price divorce his first wife? She never provided a date. Pulliam replied, “that’s news to me.” 

An impromptu face-to-face I had with Price before the February 3 LA City Council meeting in Van Nuys went as follows: 

DG: Can you please tell me in what state, county and year you divorced your first wife, Lynn? 

Price: Why do you want to know that? 

DG: Because it’s an interesting question.           

Price: Why do you think it’s an interesting question?

DG: Because the court shows that your divorce was never finalized, and that you are, and have for a long time, been married to two women. 

Price turned and walked away without saying another word. 

These two exchanges were one and two months ago. 

I also repeatedly raised the subject in public comments at several City Council meetings. Price, Pulliam told Smith, only asked for his divorce records from his attorney just the other day…after the first of my two earlier articles on the subject. Price sat on the subject for months; he did not take immediate action to find out what is going on. Is that because he already knew?

In her Times article, Dakota Smith also quoted Price’s divorce attorney Albert Robles as saying: 

“Curren Price is divorced, end of story,” Robles said in a statement. “I was Curren Price’s attorney; my office filed the paperwork. As far as Curren Price is concerned, his divorce was settled years ago and that’s what was communicated to Mr. Price at the time.” 

This is the exact quote Robles gave the LA Sentinel a few days after my first article was published. Smith also failed to write about whether Price perjured his Los Angeles Ethics Commission financial disclosure forms. Had she examined Price’s ethics forms, she could have asked him why he listed no spousal assets from either wife on his 2012 form, or why Price failed to list wife #1’s financial assets in any subsequent year’s disclosure forms since he had to have known – according to his own legal activity – that he was still married to her. 

More glaringly, Smith did not mention that in Price’s divorce file in 2012, he, his attorney Albert Robles, and their process server swore (on a misdated document) that they unsuccessfully tried to serve divorce papers on Lynn Price, wife #1, at 4519 Don Arturo Place in Los Angeles. 

Astonishingly, that is an address that Price’s wife #2, Del Richardson, has owned since 2001, according to real estate records and Price’s City Ethics forms, which says that the income from that house came from “Dr. and Mr. Earl Jones.” 

How does that math work? Pardon the pun, but that is Price-less.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is an Active Member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

PERSPECTIVE-I yearn for the days when I covered the CD2 special election back in 2009, one that pitted three insiders against seven average citizens. I attended almost every forum (there were at least a dozen) and provided the most comprehensive coverage of any outlet. 

The seven grassroots candidates were instrumental in forcing a runoff; unfortunately, the top two finishers were insiders. At least the two had to dig deep in their pockets in what was one of the most expensive council races in the city’s history. 

In recent years, I have traveled extensively for business reasons. I miss attending the forums; I miss writing about them even more. 

Measure S is the headliner of this year’s ballot; the citywide races offer little drama, although it would be worthwhile for voters to consider an alternative to Eric Garcetti, whose promises of DWP reform and fiscal responsibility have fallen well short of what is needed to support sustainable services. 

Measure S pits democracy against plutocracy. Either we have a city where the residents have a say in the shape and structure of development, or planning is left in the hands of wealthy developers and their proxies in City Hall – a plutocracy only Vladimir Putin could embrace. Their funding of the opposition to S amounts to the financial equivalent of hacking the election. 

If you want planning that facilitates community-wide needs and desires, vote Yes on S. We must stop straining our already over-burdened infrastructure any further, curtail the growing traffic on our streets and prevent mini-Manhattans from dominating the landscape. We want growth to be the result of smart planning – within our capacity to manage and control its effects. 

The one council race I have watched from afar is CD7’s. 

With 20 candidates vying for an open seat, voters – at least the few who bother to cast a ballot – are certain to find someone to their liking. I am at least somewhat personally acquainted with, or have followed the postings in social media of a few: Terrence Gomes, Bonnie Corwin, David Barron and Krystee Clark. I can say, with confidence, they are true activists whose motives are not political, but rooted in the best interests of their community. I am sure there are others as well. 

On the other end of the spectrum is Karo Torrossian. He is Councilman Krekorian’s land use deputy who, if elected, will be certain to do the bidding of developers at the expense of residents. He has done a poor job of advocating for the residents in my part of the Valley. 

You have important choices in other races as well, but these two are the most competitive and offer the best chances for a positive change in how the city operates.

(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and serves as President of the Valley Village Homeowners Association. He blogs at Village to Village and contributes to CityWatch. The views presented are those of Mr. Hatfield and his alone and do not represent the opinions of Valley Village Homeowners Association or CityWatch. He can be reached at: [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Both sides of the debate over Measure S have inflated expectations of what their vote will produce on March 7, especially those voting no. This is why I admonish both camps to be careful what they wish for. 

What yes on S voters should expect after a victory 

To my fellow supporters of Measure S, do not think that if S wins on Tuesday, Los Angeles’s skewed and dysfunctional planning system will quickly self-correct. This is a long war, and this will only be one victory. Future struggles will be over the following: 

• The General Plan is only as good as its monitoring program. The General Plan Framework requires a special monitoring unit in the Department of City Planning to develop and track measures of the General Plan’s successes and failures. This unit was charged with presenting these findings in an annual reporting leading to revisions of the General Plan’s elements. City Planning never created this monitoring unit, and since 1997, City Planning staff has only presented five incomplete reports. None examined the successes or failures of the programs intended to implement the General Plan, and none resulted in any mid-course corrections. 

• City Hall’s in-fill density hawks are already hatching schemes to circumvent Measure S if it passes. These presumably include accelerated Community Plan updates that will apply extensive ordinances up-zoning and up-planning to large swaths of Los Angeles. 

• Re-code LA has already quickened some of its five-year program, and these zoning code revisions can become still another Measure S work around. 

• The Department of Building and Safety’s turn-the-other eye approach toward real estate speculation and its low staffing levels ensure that contractors easily game the system. The mansionizers have already been doing this for years, and there is little stopping the mega-projects in the sights of Measure S from doing the same. 

What no on S voters should expect with a victory 

As for those no on S advocates (whose claims I have repeatedly rebutted through CityWatch), you particularly need to be careful what you wish for. We have heard your extravagant claims about tackling homeless, creating affordable housing, and generating jobs, but all a no on S vote does is maintain the City Hall status quo. On March 8 you will simply get more of what LA already has. This includes all of the following, plus more, since the 10 large real estate firms funding the no on S campaign will feel their oats with a victory. Likewise, the SG&A campaign firm they hired will have learned how to pitch all manner of trickle-down economic programs as answers to homelessness, displacement, gentrification, traffic congestion, suburban sprawl, and job creation. 

But reality will soon assert itself, and City Hall will quickly forget these no S claims. In fact, they will be replaced by the following: 

• City Hall’s pay-to-play system of soft corruption, that allows large real estate firms to make their illegal projects legal through City Council spot-zoning and spot-planning ordinances, will quickly reappear. 

• Gentrification resulting from many forms of urban infill, including displacement through projects requiring City Council legislative approvals, will continue until the faucet of foreign investment in Los Angeles real estate finally runs dry. 

• The magical, trickle down belief that luxury housing produces affordable housing through supply-and-demand and filtering will continue to produce more expensive housing, but nothing more. The rich will have abundant housing, while middle and low-income residents will still continue to double up, live in cars and converted garages, and flee to distant suburbs where developers have raw land to build middle class housing. 

• The few affordable rental units built after a Measure S defeat will still result from SB 1818 density bonuses. And, the Housing Department will still refuse to inspect any of these affordable units to assure that low-income renters occupy them. 

• City Planning’s accelerated General Plan updates will slow down, and the Department will continue to prepare and adopt new and updated elements out of sequence. 

• Developers will continue to select their own EIR consultants, and the City Council will continue to ignore adverse EIR findings through boilerplate Statements of Overriding Considerations. Furthermore, these Statements will still claim that any structure built on near an express bus-line or a mass transit station is automatically transit-oriented. No decision maker will ever request verification of these pie-in-the-sky transit claims.

What liberals who hopped on the no on S campaign wagon should expect

As far as I can determine, your main argument to oppose Measure S was a repetition of the no on S campaign’s major talking point. “Measure S is a housing ban and an affordable housing ban.” 

But, over the last year through my CityWatchLA planning columns and private communications, I have repeatedly asked for the addresses of any affordable housing constructed through the spot-zones and spot-General Plan Amendments stopped by Measure S. During this year only one person gave me an address that checked out. City Planning, however, has (inadvertently?) published the underlying reason for this lack of evidence for the claim that Measure S is an affordable housing ban. 

As I have previously reported, according to City Planning’s CITYWIDE POLICY PLANNING 2016 PERFORMANCE METRIC REPORT, the amount of affordable housing built in LA through discretionary actions is tiny, only two percent of all new housing. Furthermore, developers build this housing through density bonuses when they include 10 to 20 percent low and moderate-income rental units in a market or luxury project. Because this inclusionary zoning process does not require any City Council ordinances, Measure S will leave it intact. 

Second, Measure S is fully consistent with Measures H and HHH. This new supportive housing for the homeless can be constructed on all commercial lots in Los Angeles and R-3 and R-4 lots without any City Council ordinances. This includes parcels owned by the City of Los Angeles. In fact, City Controller Ron Galperin identified 9000 city-owned parcels, and they include over 200 commercial parcels, all of which could become a location for new by-right affordable housing. 

The third reason undermining the alleged no on S affordable housing claim is that private developers can already legally build by-right affordable housing throughout the entire city of Los Angeles. They are not choosing to build this low-priced housing for a simple reason. They can't make enough profit at it. This means the real culprit in LA’s housing crisis is their profit-maximization business model. It has nothing to do with existing zoning or claims they need zone changes to build affordable housing. 

Apparently the organizations and individuals aligning themselves with the big real estate companies opposing Measure S have forgotten a basic feature of large, free-market capitalist cities, like Los Angeles. Housing is a scarce commodity, not a right, under capitalism. Since developers will not build more than a few units through inclusionary zoning, there is an obvious progressive lesson. Either capitalism must change or the public sector must step in to build the low-income housing that the free market cannot and will not build. This was U.S. housing policy from the 1930s to the 1980’s, and the subsequent trickle-down market gimmicks (inherent to no on S) to replace these slashed programs have been an abysmal failure.

Debates about density 

Some liberals have also cast Measure S as a homeowner-driven anti-density campaign.  In their view homeowners want low density because they supposedly financially benefit from it. These liberals are, therefore, opposed to Measure S because they believe it is really a low-density voter initiative to oppose higher densities in Los Angeles. Some even argue that Measure S is a pro-urban sprawl measure. 

But, these claims are not correct. It is a straw man argument, totally misrepresenting the proponents of Measure S before rebutting these imaginary advocates. 

Since 1970 all legally adopted Los Angeles General Plan elements have called for planned density carefully linked to much denser public services and infrastructure, especially mass transit. This adopted vision requires a strong General Plan. City Hall must not only adhere to it, but also apply it to the City's capital and operating budgets. But none of this has happened because real planning is one City Hall’s lowest priorities. Without enormous pressure from below, it does not happen, and this is the open agenda of Measure S. 

Instead, the alternative land use model behind no on S is greater density if it coincidentally appears through in-fill real estate speculation. This model is totally oblique to planned density. It also oblivious to where there is an unmet demand for greater density, as well as the supportive public infrastructure and services to support larger buildings, and more residents, employees, shoppers, and visitors.  

As for who benefits from a defeat of Measure S, many liberal advocates have missed what is right in front of their eyes. It is not tenants, but the large real estate companies and their allied politicians who engage in pay-to-play. As for owners of single-family houses, they have little power in Los Angeles, as revealed by their interminable 11-year campaign to stop mansionization, as well as the closely related campaign against Small Lot Subdivisions.  If homeowners were really in the driver’s seat, these two forms of real estate speculation would have been nipped in the bud long ago, not allowed to fester through one flawed ordinance after another. 

Furthermore, other land use restrictions have the most tenuous relationship to home prices. For example in the late 1980s, AB 283 forced the City of Los Angeles to make sure that its plans and zones were in synch with each other. This resulted in some areas being downzoned, but according to the General Plan Framework Element, there were and still are more than enough parcels in Los Angeles zoned for residential and commercial uses to accommodate all growth scenarios in the entire 21^st Century. 

The City Council has also created about 30 Historical Preservation Zones, five Residential Floor Area (RFA) Districts, and many specific plans. But they cover about 15 percent of the residential areas in Los Angeles, and most deal with design review, not zoning restrictions. For that matter, even if the City Council rescinded these overlay zones, as well as all single-family zones, real estate developers would still not build affordable housing. They would simply overbuild expensive houses, such as the luxury high-rises and mid-rises, McMansions, and small lot subdivisions they are already building. Their profit maximization business model is set in stone. 

Next? 

For these reasons and more, the liberal organizations and advocates who attached themselves to big real estate’s no on S campaign should be particularly careful about what they wish for. I have no doubt that their analysis and expectations will soon hit the ground with a loud, trickle-down thud if LA’s voters reject Measure S. 

But if Measure S wins, they will also have a chance to see if the sky is really falling. When it doesn’t, they might even become advocates for a well-planned Los Angeles that will finally tame City Hall’s infatuation with real estate speculation.

(Dick Platkin is a former LA city planner who reports on local planning issues in Los Angeles for CityWatch LA. Please send your comments and corrections to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ELECTION PERSPECTIVE--Eric Preven is not your average duck.  

He will upend Eric Garcetti. 

The public will have a chance to compare how the two Erics spend their time. 

They will get to follow Eric Preven as he takes the subway downtown every morning, diligently searches  through the agenda for things that undermine the public interest and then goes to bat for that interest. 

They will get to see the incumbent slapping liens on poor people to raise revenue he lost by inappropriate litigation and then see Eric Preven getting those liens taken off by shaming the Council members in public comment.  

Eric Preven, if in a run-off, would obviously get professionals to help with a real campaign; nonetheless, Eric Garcetti’s war chest of funds becomes unattractive to the public in the face of Eric Preven’s ethos. 

Isn’t Eric Preven a watchdog? That’s different than being a mayor … 

Yes he is a watchdog and frankly that’s a big part of the mayor’s job too. The mayor should be reading every contract etc and vetoing them when appropriate. Eric Preven has been doing that except that he doesn’t have a veto. 

Garcetti has 3 million dollars! He’s unbeatable … 

If Eric got into a runoff, the press would be forced to cover him, and Garcetti would be forced to debate. The need for 3 million dollars becomes less important in that case. 

Does he have the temperament? Being a watchdog is pretty confrontational … 

Yes. Otherwise he wouldn't have been able to have jobs his whole life. And also, again, a mayor needs to be able to stand-up to powerful special interests. 

Even if Eric Preven got into a runoff and didn’t win, a public service will have been done. Eric Preven knows Garcetti’s transgressions well, and the public would get to see them challenged. 

Eric would generate enthusiasm, because he is passionate and an underdog. 

If you think Garcetti is an inevitable win, then vote for Eric Preven to provide him support in his watchdog work. It helps establish legitimacy. 

(Joshua Preven is an educator, a CityWatch contributor and the brother of mayoral candidate Eric Preven.)

-cw

PEOPLE POWER-It has been my honor and pleasure to help coordinate your on-line debate. Ken -- and all of us at CityWatch -- thank the candidates and campaigns that participated by submitting videos and accompanying info. If you’ve not checked it out, here’s the LA Election 2017: The Great Online Debate page as of the weekend before the election. 

While many of LA’s candidates (Zuma Dogg, for example) used the free opportunity quickly and wisely, I’m personally not all that happy with the engagement. I’m not sure we met our aims, and I’d like to hear from our readers in anticipation of the next election. 

Is this an idea worthy of further work? How can we make it more engaging? 

When I told him I was writing a final just before Election Day piece, Editor Ken Draper suggested I answer this question: “…why should anyone bother voting in this poor excuse for an election?” 

He went on about the dilemmas facing the LA voter: “…incumbents that have been involved in so-called soft corruption (Sea Breeze, Rick Caruso, etc.); homeless population remaining at 45,000, sidewalks unfixed, trees toppling; jobs are scarce, affordable housing non-existent; crime numbers continue to grow, cops are still shooting mentally disturbed people with pipes in their hands, etc. ... vs. a candidate list that is mediocre at best.” But you know me. I’m just too much of an optimist to go that dark. Plus, I just re-planted seedlings I grew from seed and next week we turn the clocks ahead. If it’s not raining or too cold (below 65 degrees, that is) I’ll attend my first Indivisible meeting tonight. 

And, oh yeah, the page got between 750K and a million hits, he tells me. Oh. 

Just in case anyone cares about my election recommendations, here they are: 

County Measure H:             YES!!! 

City Measure S:                  NO!!! 

Measures M & N:               Yes on M; no on N (this is a consensus opinion of all interested parties -- and me) 

LA Charter Amendment P:  Yes 

Mayor:                              Eric Garcetti 

Controller:                         Ron Galperin 

City Attorney:                    Mike Feuer 

CD 1:                                Gil Cedillo 

CD 3:                                Bob Blumenfield 

CD 5:                                Paul Koretz 

CD 7:                                Karo Torossian 

CD 9:                                Curren Price 

CD 11:                               Mike Bonin 

CD 15:                               Joe Buscaino 

If you’re not convinced about Measure S, I recommend the LA Times editorial and pretty much anything written by the Times about the initiative and its backer. Or read this thorough treatment from Capital & Main, Strange Bedfellows Unite to Stop Anti-Development Ballot Measure in Los Angeles.  

For me, it’s hard to be pessimistic about the future if you spend any time with people under 30. Also, again, I’m retired and living in La Crescenta. Don and I have the beginnings of a small, lovely garden. And a grandchild and his wonderful Mama and Papa in Highland Park. Besides writing here, I’ve covered several meetings of the local Land Use committee for the Crescenta Valley Weekly News and even witnessed community approval of a potentially controversial condo project. Because the developer came to the community and its genuine organizations early and openly, and then listened to real concerns he heard, the sub-development won widespread support. The battered owner will likely have to add more rock to the front of the finished project (not a problem in this rocky foothill.) Still, I anticipate new housing will be built on Foothill Blvd. 

I also covered the passage of a “Safe Haven” resolution by the Glendale Unified School District strongly asserting support for every student without regard to immigration status. The only opposition raised at the packed public hearing was that the language wasn’t strong enough. Many members of the exceedingly diverse community anticipated administrators barring the doors to the schools from INS officials. The discussion was welcoming and supportive; community members produced their own lawn signs, in English, Spanish, and Armenian: “No matter where you are from, we’re glad you’re our neighbor.” 

Community activist Sharon Weisman testified about the signs and their origins: 

Strong, active community support for GUSD’s Resolution No. 17: Reaffirming all GUSD Campuses as Safe Haven for all Students 

This original black-and-white wooden sign (photo left) at Immanuel Mennonite in Harrisonburg, Va., has inspired thousands of yard signs. It was written by Pastor Matthew Bucher and translated with the help of congregation members and friends.   (Courtesy of Immanual Mennonite.)  

In Riverside, my old friend John Russo, former Oakland City Attorney, Alameda City Manager, now the esteemed City Manager of Riverside, announced this week that the City is moving customer service forward even beyond its front desk concierge! Happy or not? (Can you imagine this in Los Angeles City Hall?) 

Our ballots only had one item on them: Los Angeles County Measure H. We voted yes and our ballots are long in the mail. Yours? 

If you vote in Tuesday’s municipal election, you’ll be making history: it is the last city election in an odd year. Vote! Vote! Vote!

(Julie Butcher writes for CityWatch and is editor of the CityWatch Great Online Election Debate project, is a retired union leader and is now enjoying her new La Crescenta home and her first grandchild. She can be reached at [email protected] or on her new blog ‘The Butcher Shop - No Bones about It.’) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

SAVING THE SYSTEM-Having read General Jeff’s CityWatch article about online voting for Neighborhood Council elections, it is clear that both sides have a good argument.

From Jeff's perspective, online voting has its challenges. 

But, denying online voting to all of DLTA and Historic Cultural is disenfranchising all of those who do have computers and smart phones and would like to use them to vote. 

I personally believe that in order to have a fair and equitable Skid Row NC election -- since both the DLANC and Historic Cultural all vote -- the following should take place: 

1) Online elections should occur with two weeks advance voting. 

2) Pop-up polls should be pre-designated throughout the three areas. 

3) Vote by mail should be available for anyone who wishes to vote. 

4) Three onsite polling locations should be set up: one in skid row, one in DLANC and one in Historic Cultural. 

5) Since the homeless are not documentation voters, then all three locations should use self-affirmation. 

6) All polling locations should be open for six hours and be centrally located within each of the three districts. 

If there is an issue with the timing being too soon for the above to be instituted, then I think everyone would agree that the elections should be postponed for 60 days. 

As for online voting, here’s my two cents. The reason the beta test was not as big a success as the department wanted is because: 

1) The LA City Council under-funded the entire project, thereby not allowing the department to order and use the equipment that would have streamlined the process. (For the record, the medical marijuana industry uses a system to register patients by IPad using "Indica,” a cloud based service that registers patients in two minutes.) 

2) We were all led to believe that online voting would dramatically increase the number of voters. This is not true. The lack of outreach by DONE, as well as the resistance to spending neighborhood council money by the NC's, led to only 14 of the 35 NC's having an increase in voters -- and the department realizing a less than a couple of hundred voter increase over 2014. This is certainly not what was expected. 

The Skid Row and Hermon elections will also be lackluster if there is no concentrated effort to market the campaign, which DONE is woefully poor at doing; that is under-funded as well. 

As I see it, the Skid Row election is heavily weighted toward Skid Row, having only one polling location, and with the Skid Row Formation Committee responsible for the outreach, which, based on my conversations with both Downtown and Historic Cultural, has been minimal to non-existent. There are claims of falsehoods being told about what was done in areas quoted within the Skid Row application. 

And as for Hermon, my only question to all is the following: 

How do you give $42,000 to an area with less than 3,300 people, when you also give $42,000 to Koreatown that has more than 100,000 people? 

So, something is dramatically wrong with the NC System and it’s time for President Wesson to fulfill his promise to fix it. 

Herb, step up and step in. Make the tough decisions and begin the process of fixing the best thing that could have happened to our City -- as opposed to watching it cave in under its own weight.

(Jay Handal served at the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment for ten months as Election Manager for the 2016 Neighborhood Council elections. He is Treasurer of the West Los Angeles Sawtelle Neighborhood Council, Co-Chair of the Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates Committee for the upcoming 2016-2017 fiscal year, and a hearing examiner for the Los Angeles Police Commission.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GELFAND’S WORLD--Over the weekend, demonstrators numbering in the hundreds carried out rallies in support of the Trump presidency in several cities. That's not quite at the level of the hundreds of thousands who participated in anti-Trump protests, but we have to concede that the motivation is different. The pro-Trump side isn't spurred by the fear of Trump. (Photo above: Viet Nam war protest.) 

In several of the places where these demonstrations occurred, an approximately equal number of counter-demonstrators showed up in opposition. What's interesting in a morbid sort of way is the response of the pro-Trump side to the anti-Trump side. As news stories reported, the pro Trump groups chanted, "USA, USA" at their opponents. It's nothing new, actually. The right wing has been wrapping itself in the symbolism of American patriotism for a long time now, as if only right wingers are entitled to love their country. 

From the right wing point of view, it's a chance to insult the liberals by suggesting that only right wingers are true patriots. What the right wingers fail to realize is that their action is damaging to the idea of American patriotism because it rules out, if nothing else by insinuation, that anybody to the left of Ronald Reagan can't be a patriot and doesn't love America. 

From the standpoint of national unity, this is potentially disastrous, because it drives a cleft between people who differ mainly on domestic policy. But what happens when all of us, left right and center, have to come together over some major emergency such as a natural disaster or a foreign attack? We managed to do so after the September 11 attacks. Would the nation rally around the Trump administration following a similar attack, considering the contempt that his movement expresses towards the majority of American citizens? Some people would feel free to wash their hands of the whole patriotic thing, considering how they've been taught by the right wing that they can't really be patriotic. 

That chant of USA, USA is obviously meant as a taunt, and a mean-spirited one at that, but it is an illegitimate attack. The right wing is trying to rob its opposition of the symbols of American pride. The proper response to this chant is to chant, "USA, USA" right back at them. Don't let them steal the symbols of democracy from the rest of us. The liberal side should not allow this to happen. 

The current generation of American right wingers either forgets or is too young to know that in the aftermath of the Viet Nam War, overt displays of American patriotism were inhibited to a substantial extent. The chant of USA, USA that we have heard in recent broadcasts of the Olympic Games represents a switch from that previous era. It shows the slow acceptance that the national differences generated by the Viet Nam conflict are largely past us. The USA chant belongs to all of us, even people who just want to root for their team in an international setting. The chant should not be perverted in the service of political malice. If the right wingers had true patriotism, they would be working to create a sense of unity among all Americans, not just among their closest allies. 

Remembering Watergate 

The current situation with regard to Trump's connection to the Russians is eerily reminiscent of the Watergate affair. The older generation remembers how that series of events eventually sorted out. For them, it's like a movie they've already seen. They know that a presidential resignation is the appropriate ending. 

As revelations accumulate, a sense of inevitability isn't quite there yet, but it is building. Right now, it's at the level of it could happen. Trumpgate (or Kremlingate -- what will we finally call it?) is no longer just a low level embarrassment or a minor scandal. The number of top level resignations is building. Attorney General Sessions might as well be numbered as a resignation, considering how his credibility has been destroyed by his own lying. 

We can even expect to be hearing the original Watergate question, "What did the president know, and when did he know it?" A few pundits have already dusted it off. This question is of interest, but may I suggest that it is secondary to the main question: What deal did Donald Trump cut with the Russians prior to the election? 

It's not hard to speculate on a few possibilities. We've already seen and heard Trump's attempts to undercut the Nato alliance and to undermine the Republican platform language on American policy towards Russia. Perhaps those efforts were the result of a (so far) secret deal between Trump and Putin. The other prize for Putin would be a chance to take over Ukraine without American resistance. If Russian aggression in the eastern part of Ukraine escalates, we will have a pretty good idea of whose strings are being pulled. 

A note on the March 7 election 

We're still reeling from the November elections and now we have a city election and ballot measures to deal with. Voter fatigue doesn't begin to describe what isn't happening out there. The mayor is spending huge amounts of money on television ads mainly designed to explain to us that there is an election. That's because March 7 is an odd day for an election. He is also taking credit for bringing filming back. He doesn't mention that it's done using your tax dollars as bribes incentives to the production companies. My mail box is filled each day with slick political ads that I mostly don't read. 

There couldn't be any better argument for moving the city elections to the November time slot. (Hint: We did change that rule, which is why the City Council winners will be elected to terms ending more than five years from now.) 

One thing to remember: All of those television ads and political mailers have to be paid for. It takes lots of campaign donations dollars. This is one reason that real estate developers are so influential in Los Angeles politics. Theoretically we can fix this, but it will take a collection of ballot initiatives. We could write the initiatives and get the signatures we need. We should talk about doing this. 

I figure that we could get the initiatives on the ballot for a million dollars or so -- people who stand in front of your local supermarket with initiative petitions get paid by the signature. It's possible. 

Therefore, may I suggest that in our next Neighborhood Council Congress in September, we have a session on re-imagineering LA city government.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected].)

-cw

MEDIA WATCH-The mere fact that Dustin Lance Black’s When We Rise is on the air, even in 2017, is remarkable. Running a seven-hour miniseries covering the LGBT movement is a courageous endeavor for ABC in a time when a significant number of viewers still find its subject matter divisive and offensive at worst, and uninteresting at best. 

This sad fact has provided the creators a unique opportunity to not only entertain, but to also enlighten people who are less tolerant and understanding. And that’s what makes their missteps that much more disappointing. 

A tale that both honors LGBT heroes but also introduces these champions and their causes to the masses, When We Rise has been undermined by uneven writing and direction and, perhaps more important, by a failure to reach across the ideological divide. 

Creator Black is seemingly the right man for the job, having already penned the acclaimed Milk biopic about the legendary San Francisco city supervisor/activist Harvey Milk, for which he won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. His participation gives immediate credibility for those already familiar with the topic. Black could have gone high and introduced his characters by emphasizing robust personalities and their passion and struggles, making them underdogs for whom to root in our age of egregious intolerance. Instead, he goes low. 

Black focuses on three seminal figures in the gay movement, all played by a young actor and then an older one, as they journey to San Francisco and pass through nearly half a century, illuminating a cross section of those fighting for LGBT causes. There is Cleve Jones (Austin P. McKenzie and Guy Pearce), a wide-eyed young Caucasian with model looks who would eventually become a student intern working for Milk, and who was one of the first people to see the assassinated supervisor’s lifeless body. We also watch legendary woman’s rights activist Roma Guy (Emily Skaggs and Mary-Louise Parker), a woman whose radicalism and sexuality are awakened all at once. Rounding out the triptych is Ken Jones (Jonathan Majors and Michael Kenneth Williams) an African-American sailor who went on to become a pioneering activist, but not before having to subjugate his sexuality in the service, deal with racism in both the straight and gay worlds, and endure extreme homophobia in the black community. 

Before Black decides to show these figures and their epic stories of personal struggle, he makes a curious choice: They each appear locked in a libidinous and illicit embrace with a separate lover. It’s a bold creative choice, made rather less profound by the fact that the objects of their lust all look like Abercrombie and Fitch models. Every time things boil over, it’s as if a Bruce Weber doc has suddenly broken out on primetime. To viewers, this comes across as a shocking start for sure, but also emerges as a disservice, a harsh and facile distraction from these heroes’ coming exploits. 

Once the lips and limbs unlock, the 90-minute pilot then follows our triumvirate on its burgeoning journey of private sexuality and public activism. The directing and writing bounces between riveting scenes of societal discomfort and awkward dialogue during activist meetings that is less special and more Afterschool Special. One minute Ken watches in horror as patrons are roughed up as they are forced out of a gay bar in a powerful scene of confusion and chaos, and then the next Cleve watches San Francisco cops beat a gay colleague in a clunky scene right out of a comic book. Speaking of comics, Rosie O’Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg have supporting roles and their broad acting is only obscured by their atrocious coifs, which suggest they shop at the same bad wig shop. 

Meanwhile, the three primary figures hurtle through history until they eventually encounter each other in a convenient and presumptive collision of purpose. It’s so pat, one can almost see the lesson plan passed out in schools across America to accompany screenings of the miniseries. 

Black has said he made this piece for all of America. If that is truly the case, he should have at first focused more on the thorny issues these heroes faced rather than homing in on the horny. When We Rise does to some degree elevate exploits that have far too long remained in the shadows but, sadly, Black wastes the opportunity to have them soar into the collective consciousness where they so rightfully belong.

(Alex Demyanenko has created, developed, sold, and produced over 500 hours of television, including close to a dozen hit series and specials. In the past year he has sold shows to multiple networks and has also consulted for companies both in the United States and abroad. This piece was posted most recently at Capital & Main.)  Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.