LOS ANGELES

GUEST COMMENTARY--The state cannot continue to ignore the fact that homelessness in Los Angeles has reached critical mass. 

Growing public attention to the issue has prompted city leaders to ramp up efforts to address it; but without immediate support, homeless Angelenos are unlikely to experience much-needed relief. The state government, however, has been reluctant to dole out the money needed to kickstart substantive efforts for short-term housing and assistance despite repeated overtures from city and county leaders. 

The most recent count of Los Angeles’ homeless population in May found almost 47,000 people in the county without permanent residence, an 11 percent increase since 2015. Of those counted, 74 percent were unsheltered. The situation is so severe that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors urged Gov. Jerry Brown in June to declare homelessness a statewide emergency – the Los Angeles City Council did the same last month.  

Brown’s declaration would unlock up to $500 million in emergency funds, but the governor’s office has insisted that homelessness is a local problem for local government to address. 

While local government should be responsible for implementing long-term solutions, such as permanent supportive housing, the state must use its emergency monies to address the current, real crisis. 

[Related: LA should fulfill its budget proposal to fight homelessness]  

So far, city leaders have been doing their part by approving Proposition H, a $1.2 billion bond measure designed to spur construction of housing for homeless Angelenos, to appear in the ballot this November. If passed, the bond would focus on permanent housing and in-house social services. 

But the cost of homelessness in the interim is high. The hospitalization, police intervention or incarceration of each homeless person can cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars per year. 

Meanwhile, homeless people still struggle to find short-term housing and, for those who have simply fallen on hard times, assistance to help them get back on their feet. The Los Angeles Times noted that transitional housing establishments have seen their funding cut as the focus shifts toward permanent solutions, leaving their clients with nowhere to go. This not only prevents the unemployed or economically pressed from having the time or resources to hold them over, but it denies those with substance abuse issues or mental illness much-needed treatment, and instead, leaves them on the street. 

It’s clear the state must declare a homelessness emergency. Local officials have extended their resources toward developing longer-term solutions, but the state needs to help address the current emergency and help cover the costs for shorter-term efforts to keep homeless people off the streets and get them the help they need while permanent housing and services are developed.

(This editorial appeared in UCLA’s Daily Bruin.)   Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

COUNCIL POWER CREEP-Notwithstanding Herb Wesson’s pledge to keep a watchful eye over District 7’s “purse strings” and his claim to “love the Valley too much to let its residents go without representation,” the LA City Council President’s recent self-appointment to the Council seat just vacated by Felipe Fuentes violates both the spirit and the letter of the LA City Charter.  

LATINO PERSPECTIVE--Should we have a Latino Smithsonian museum? Some think so some others don’t. Congressman Xavier Becerra from Los Angeles said last week that American Latinos aren't reflected in the country's most well known museums. He wants a museum. 

Becerra (D-Los Angeles), joined by Rep. Ileana Ros-Leighten (R-Fla.), reintroduced a bill Tuesday — they've now sponsored it three times — to create a National Museum of the American Latino on the National Mall. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) sponsored the Senate version. 

"It's bad enough that we're missing from television, we're missing from the books that we read in school, that in so many ways we're missing from the things that people in America see day to day," Becerra said. "The more that we give people a chance to see the full depth and dimension of what it means to be an American, I think the better off we all are." 

The proposed museum would be inside the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building, which reopened as a special events space this year after extensive renovation. 

The bill would start the planning process. But that doesn't mean the museum would open quickly: The African American museum was approved in 2003 and opens next week. It would be built with a combination of federal and private funds, as other museums and memorials on the Mall have been. 

But others don’t think we need a museum. Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation said that it’s an idea that sounds good — until you think about it for about three seconds. 

He argues that this is not just because museums are for dead things (“The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends,” the French artist Jean Cocteau famously complained), but because it would breathe life into concepts from which we need to move away. 

Becerra told the Post that “It provides inspiration, and it really does give you locomotion to try to move this forward. So many [of the African American Museum’s supporters] have come to me and said, ‘You’re next.’ It pumps you up.” 

Gonzalez asks if that is really the only reason for a Latin Museum. If so, the idea is in trouble. We can start, Gonzalez thinks, with the fact that the experiences of African Americans cannot be compared to those of any other group — especially immigrants and their descendants. 

That would include the vast majority of the 56 million people the Census Bureau instructs to identify themselves as “Hispanic” — who can’t all be descended from the estimated 100,000 people who chose to remain in the Southwest at the conclusion of the Mexican War in 1848. 

The notion that they constitute an ethno-racial pentagon along with African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans and non-Latino whites is a dubious social construct of very recent pedigree. That a museum would help perpetuate this division — literally cement it — is a second reason to oppose it. 

Gonzalez continues, “dividing the country along these cleavages — an official policy that began only in the late 1970s and quickly migrated to the academy, the labor market and the culture — has contributed to a degree of social fragmentation that is only now becoming apparent.” 

As a Latino-American, agree with Gonzalez assessment. There is no need for a museum for an ethnicity created by 1970s federal bureaucrats. Defenders of immigration make the case that today’s immigrants will assimilate as members of previous surges did — which is what undoubtedly will happen, but only if they are treated as those earlier arrivals were. 

That is, as immigrants on their way to being Americans, not as members of a permanent national minority. We don’t need a museum. 

What do you all think?

(Fred Mariscal came to Los Angeles from Mexico City in 1992 to study at the University of Southern California and has been in LA ever since. He is a community leader and was a candidate for Los Angeles City Council in District 4. Fred writes Latino Perspective for CityWatch and can be reached at: [email protected].)

-cw

DEEGAN ON LA-Rick Caruso has a long and sentimental history with his property at 333 S. La Cienega Boulevard (currently the site of the shuttered Loehmann's department store.) It’s the first property he owned. It’s where he washed cars as a kid at his dad's dollar-a-day car rental business. And, it’s where he dreams of building his newest project that will make a statement about contemporary high-end housing by including an affordable housing component that could make it a landmark building in more ways than one. (See above photo of rendering.) 

Rarely have developers allowed low income housing units to be part of the mix in their high-end luxury buildings, preferring to subsidize affordable housing at off-site locations in return for the zoning variances they receive. But Rick Caruso, founder and chief executive officer for Caruso Affiliated, has a new take on that. 

Already a pioneer in trend-setting, open-air shopping experiences like the Grove and the Americana, Caruso could become a leading figure in egalitarian housing if he’s able to deliver on a pledge he made to a community group a few weeks ago, when he went on public record at the Mid City West Community Council's land use committee meeting, stating, “The affordable units will be treated like all other units, and serviced like all other units. There will be a lot of pride about the project, a lot of dignity and respect for the affordable housing tenants that will be interspersed throughout the building. They’re going to be just like everybody else. The same level of service, for free.” 

He’s a man with a dream to have his luxury housing tower shared by all walks of life -- rich and poor – in a residence building that is both elegant and equitable, where the 1% and the 99% come together. If Rick Caruso pulls this off, it will be groundbreaking; it will change the development and affordable housing paradigm, and could make him the very first billionaire-populist in the city. 

Caruso’s struggle to bring the community along into his over-scale dreamscape, that will make his tower one of the tallest buildings in sight, was evident at Mid City West Community Council’s recent land use committee meeting. 

As democratic-sounding as this may be -- housing the rich and the poor in the same building, with equality of service for all -- there’s a big downside: Caruso wants to build a 240 foot tall building in a zone that has a maximum height of 40 feet (see graphic, left.) That’s a huge increase in what’s permitted, which has many asking how much is too much? It requires a “spot zoning” variance which is anathema to many. In fact, “spot zoning” is one of the key reasons the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is on the March 2017 ballot, having qualified with more than one and a half times as many signatures as necessary, illustrating the public’s hunger for zoning redress that has tapped the very nerve that Caruso is trying to soothe. 

There’s a very good reason he must go up: he cannot go down. As he told the community meeting, “I cannot go underground with parking because of a massive storm drain. That forces parking to go above ground, and increases the height of the project. The parking will be three floors above grade and two floors below grade,” explained Caruso as the reason he is proposing a twenty floor building in an area that is zoned for four floors. And, he says, he cannot lose units. “I need the height because it’s very expensive to build there. I need 145 units. It’s already down from 165 units.” 

“The way to bring the building down [in height] is to use more of the site, but lose setbacks,” said Caruso. “The alternative would be to make an office building, taking the existing building and re-leasing it, or taking it down and making a new building.” 

“I would be disingenuous to say there is no leeway [on the height.] My strong preference is for 20 stories. I can’t lose units. When I lose floors I lose units. Then I’d have to decide not to build the building. There are ten units per floor. I can make the height of the floors less high.” 

How the community reacted to this, and how much of a gap between what he wants and what they will be comfortable with came out in over three hours of presentations, deliberations and a full court press by Caruso himself, who faced a sharply divided community audience. It took an hour just to hear all the public comment for and against the project. It was a passionate exchange, with Caruso spending lots of time at the microphone answering questions and putting forth his case. Questions keyed mostly to the height of the building and how Caruso would accommodate affordable housing. 

In the end, the gap between what he wants, and how much the committee is willing to give, was mostly about the height question, although the on-site affordable housing element was also subject of much debate. 

When the committee finally took a vote, it was deadlocked on a motion that would have advanced the project. Key elements of that motion were: 

Height:

• The building should be ten stories maximum (currently projected at 20 stories.)
• The maximum height should be 120-125 feet (not the projected 240 feet.)
• The floor to area ratio should be doubled from 1.5:1 to 3:1. Floor area ratio (FAR) is the ratio of a building's total floor area (gross floor area) to the size of the piece of land upon which it is built.
• It should be zoned “general commercial” instead of “regional commercial.” 

Affordable housing:

• Should be consistent with SB1818 type conditions.
• Should be mixed-income community of 50% very low and 50% low, representing 15% of total units in building.
• Units should be on site, not off-site or a payment to the housing fund.
• Affordable housing should be run as affordable by LA Housing Department.
• A 55-year commitment to affordable units.
• Parking included in rent, not a separate charge. 

The land use committee vote was a deadlock and the matter was tabled. The next scheduled meeting is on October 6, when a motion can be created to send to the full board for its October meeting. Not reaching consensus at this meeting squeezed the window for community review. At least two more sessions (another land use committee meeting and then a full neighborhood council board meeting) will be required before Caruso knows how much support he will receive from the neighborhood council. And, he must play Beat-the-Clock with the March 7 vote date for the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative which, if passed by voters, will result in a moratorium on “spot zoning.” 

A few weeks after that community meeting, Rick Caruso met with CityWatch to present some new information that specifically addresses some of the concerns raised in the deadlocked motion at Mid City, especially the affordable housing element. This may go a long way toward helping him align with the community -- that is, if he and the community can ultimately agree on height. 

He began by revealing a change in plans: “In response to community input, two years ago, we cut the retail square footage in half and reduced the number of proposed apartments from 162 to 145. In addition, we committed to creating new open space, building new crosswalks and bike lanes, and landscaping and maintaining the city medians. We are planning for a neighborhood-serving restaurant and market, ensuring community use of 333’s board room, and making a 55-year commitment to affordable housing. We also changed our entitlements to eliminate the Regional Center issue and become an SB 1818 project.” 

CW - Why are you dropping the “Regional Center” designation? 

R.C. - “The 333 La Cienega parcel is a unique island surrounded by four major streets (San Vicente, La Cienega, Burton Way, and 3rd Street) and is immediately adjacent to Cedars Sinai Hospital and the Beverly Center. It was logical to extend their Regional Commercial designation to the 333 parcel without negatively impacting single family residences or setting a new precedent. However, we take community stakeholder recommendations seriously. They asked how we could both build this project without the Regional Center zoning and ensure that the affordable housing would be monitored as if it were an SB 1818 project. The new entitlements accomplish both.”

CW – Are you changing the zoning so it will match that of your Burton Way building? 

R.C. - “We seek to extend the zoning for 8500 Burton Way to its sister property across the street, 333 La Cienega. Instead of a GPA to Regional Commercial, the project would be amended to “General Commercial” which is consistent with nearly every other adjacent property on 3rd Street and San Vicente. The result is no new precedent for zoning, the entitlements simply bring 333’s zoning up to that of its neighbors. As with 8500 Burton Way, 333’s [zoning] will be height district 2.” 

CW - Are you switching to SB 1818 (the state's density bonus law) status? How will that impact the number of affordable units? 

R.C. - “Yes, the change is to both enshrine the affordable housing as an SB 1818 project and allow for the number of units needed to make the project work. This includes funding millions of dollars in street and safety improvements as well as building the new open space. 

The SB 1818 calculations are 5% “very low income” housing as seven (7) units. However, we have already committed to eight (8) units and that will be in our agreement with the City. These units will then be monitored by the City’s Housing and Community Investment Department (HCID) to ensure public oversight.”

CW - Why is there no affordable housing at 8500 Burton Way? 

R.C. - “8500 Burton Way was entitled years ago. Our region now has a significant housing crisis. Thus, changing times led us to include those units in this project.” 

CW - How important has been community feedback to your plans? 

R.C. - “This world-class project will be one that the community is proud of and the market-rate for building units allows us to provide millions of dollars of public improvements and the ability to have affordable housing. Furthermore, I believe 333 La Cienega will set the new standard where these types of public commitments and community collaborations are the norm rather than the exception.” 

“I want the buildings (at 333 La Cienega and 8500 Burton Way) to be a brother and sister -- sympathetic to each other,” concluded Caruso. 

The dreamer-developer had one final word about the project: “I want to make it work for everybody.” 

Caruso will find out if that dream can come true in the next few weeks, as the neighborhood council again weighs in on his plans.

(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Graphic: Rosalie Wayne. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

@THE GUSS REPORT-In any political campaign, there are legions of highly paid professionals who know every nuanced rule about campaign finance, and it is their job to maximize that knowledge for their clients.

Sometimes, this political set makes patently absurd interpretations of those rules to give their clients an unfair and sometimes illegal advantage. When they do, the local elections arbiter is supposed to enforce the rules and rectify the transgression. 

Welcome to the Los Angeles County 4th District Supervisor’s race between Republican Steve Napolitano and Democrat Janice Hahn, both of whom seek to replace incumbent Don Knabe, Napolitano’s former boss who has endorsed Napolitano, a former Manhattan Beach Councilman, in the race. 

The story goes like this. For the primary season, Napolitano chose the “unlimited personal funds” option to fund his campaign, while Hahn chose the “$50,000 personal funds limit.” In Napolitano making that choice, it lifted the $1,500 limit for donations from individuals to Hahn’s campaign for the primary only. That limit would be reinstated if and when her campaign continued toward the November 8th General Election, which it has, and in which she will face Napolitano. The details were outlined in a March 16, 2016 letter from Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/LA County Clerk, the subject of which was revisited in a July 12 communique from Logan’s office.

When Hahn’s fundraising update was filed on August 1, it showed hundreds of thousands of dollars raised from political action committees (PAC) beyond the limit of $150,000 for the primary and $150,000 for the General Election. Napolitano’s campaign immediately jumped on the issue and, on August 10, Logan’s office advised the Hahn team that the aforementioned removal of the $1,500 individual donation limit did not lift the $150,000 PAC limits. Logan’s letter added that the Hahn campaign would not be penalized for this campaign finance violation if those funds were returned within 30 days, which was September 9. The penalty for not honoring the 30-day deadline could be triple the amount of funds raised illegally.

Since Logan’s August letter and with the November 8 General Election rapidly approaching, the Hahn campaign (which has not responded to CityWatch requests for comment for this article) has employed pretzel logic to hold on to these excess funds … apparently okay with the penalties they would face should their client win the runoff. 

These campaign finance rules were established in 1996’s Proposition B, the details of which can be found in Logan’s January 2016 updated pamphlet to candidates on the subject. 

“The rules are the rules, the Hahn people know them, refuse to honor them, and are way past the deadline to return these illegally raised funds,” says Napolitano. 

In an August 31, 2016 LA Times article, Hahn campaign spokesman John Shallman stated that Logan’s earlier letters about the lifting of personal donation limits also applied to the $150,000 PAC limit, a sentiment that was refuted in Logan’s September 19 reply to Hahn’s people.

“While we recognize that the letters sent on March 16, 2016 or July 12, 2016 do not specifically state that the aggregate PAC limit in 2.190.040 C remained in place,” Logan’s letter stated, “the letters describe the intent of LACC section 2.190.070 D, which is to remove the $1,500 individual contribution limits only.” 

In other words, the Hahn campaign says that because Logan’s earlier letters did not specifically state that the $150,000 PAC limit remained, they were free to raise as much PAC money as they wish.

But by that tortured perspective from the Hahn campaign, none of the other campaign finance rules should apply either, since none of them were addressed in Logan’s letters. 

In fact, there do not appear to be any circumstances which would lift the $150,000 PAC limits, a rule that may irk Hahn’s people, but that they no doubt have long since known. 

Napolitano points out his frustration that Logan’s September 19 letter gives the Hahn campaign even more time to cure the violation, 30 days from that date, which is 40 days past the originally established repayment date. “I am running to represent everyone in this District, regardless of whether they donated to my campaign, the Hahn campaign, someone else, or nobody at all. But we all must live by the same set of rules. Right now, those rules are not being enforced,” he said. 

That lack of enforcement and extended deadlines might be due to pressure from some of Logan’s other bosses, the other County Supervisors, some of whom have endorsed Hahn in the race, showing once again that in politics, the rules don’t always apply and that influence (a friendly way to say corruption) almost always rules the day.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a writer who contributes to CityWatchLA, Huffington Post and KFI AM-640. He blogs on humane issues at http://ericgarcetti.blogspot.com/. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His views do not necessarily reflect those of CityWatch) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LABOR AND ECONOMIC POLITICS-If you’ve been paying attention to the news in California at all for the last year or so, you could be forgiven for mistaking the left wing of the California Democratic Party as a pro-labor institution. 

In the summer of 2015, the City of Los Angeles passed a groundbreaking phased $15 minimum wage, to be implemented by 2020. As the most recent legislative session closed, a whole raft of workplace protection legislation was passed. And most recently and memorably, Governor Jerry Brown signed landmark farmworker overtime protections into law, correcting the eight-decade-old exclusion of farmworkers from standards enjoyed by industrial and white-collar laborers. 

All of these initiatives have been spearheaded by California Democrats, against heavy opposition by Republicans and their big and small business backers. All this is exemplary of what might be termed the “wage strategy,” the effort to reduce poverty and inequality by artificially raising the wages of California’s poorest and most vulnerable laborers. 

Business interests deride the wage strategy for slowing job growth, arguing that it increases costs for both small and large businesses. This critique has merit, but the unspoken reality behind it is that if labor acts as a free and fluid market where employers can adjust costs solely based on market forces, rather than a protected or unionized force unto its own, there is nothing guaranteeing a basic standard of living and pay for workers, who are not mere economic forces but living, breathing human beings with needs and passions of their own. 

So the wage strategy of artificially inflating workers’ wages and adding worker protections, while harmful to businesses, is conducive to income stability if properly executed. 

We could argue until the cows come home as to whether or not a $15 minimum wage in Los Angeles or an 8-hour workday in the Central Valley is the best way of doing that, or whether market-based measures like the Earned-Income Tax Credit and agricultural sector-specific labor policies would be better alternatives. But sometimes in legislation, establishing the principle is more important than perfecting the administration of policy; and as of September 2016, the principle that the state of California ought to guarantee laborers a decent wage has generally been secured. 

But that is not enough, and indeed, that can be harmful in the long run if pursued on its own, without addressing other economic factors. The most pressing of these other factors is the skyscraping California cost of living, in all its forms -- high energy prices, high housing prices, high costs of doing business, and the rest. 

The California Democratic Party, while adamantly pursuing the wage strategy, has done nothing to pursue a “cost strategy” of reducing the cost of living across the board. Absent a cost strategy that makes business and overall living easier in the state, pursuing a wage strategy alone is tantamount to progressive self-congratulatory backscratching. 

Democratic elites can make themselves feel like they’re doing good for the working class, without doing anything significant to reduce the cost of living for the working class, and let workers keep more money in their pockets. Pursuing one strategy is not enough -- both must be pursued in tandem, or the state risks becoming either a low-job wasteland or a low-wage serfdom. 

But not only have left-leaning Democrats failed to pursue the cost strategy -- they have in many cases impeded and even reversed its advancement by Mod Caucus Democrats. Shortly after farmworker protection measures were passed, other measures were instated to divert more water to fish, and thus away from farms. 

Generally agricultural interests -- both management and labor -- are better off and more productive with more water flowing to the farms, and diverting water for conservation purposes raises the cost of doing agricultural business and productivity, thus making life harder for farmers and their employees. 

This glaring hypocrisy -- raising farmworkers’ wages while increasing their cost of doing business -- is a drop in the bucket compared to other Golden State cost-of-living stories. 

One particularly egregious example is the Brown regime’s relentless pursuit of climate legislation to increase the percentage of energy California derives from green, renewable, unreliable sources like wind and solar. This emphasis on low-productivity fuel-less energy sources, coupled with the planned closure of reliable energy producers like the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, only raises the cost of electricity for every Californian, impacting the poor and working classes the most. 

Democratic proposals to increase the gas tax to pay for much-needed road infrastructure, rather than repurposing transit funds to repave the roads, has a similar impact on transportation costs for drivers -- who disproportionately come from lower-income backgrounds. 

Another beast the California Democratic elite refuses to tackle is the cost of land and housing, which is largely buttressed by abuses of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and general NIMBYism on the part of wealthy coastal homeowners who like seeing their homes increase in value, at the expense of less well-off newcomers. 

Study after study across the board suggests that the best solution to the price of housing is not rent control, but increasing supply -- building more houses to lower prices for more people. But draconian regulations and NIMBY activism preclude this from becoming reality, and as such, the people of California remain hitched to high housing costs. 

Thus, regardless of the increases in real income for workers that the California Democrats have been advocating, the California working class will continue to labor under relatively low profits simply due to the high cost of living and doing business which is buttressed by California’s high costs of housing and energy, which are largely influenced by its regulatory code. 

Elite coastal Democrats can congratulate themselves all they want for being a “party of the people” and “supporting workers;” but it certainly is a uniquely Californian way of supporting workers, barely increasing their pay without decreasing their costs. Then again, the Golden State has never been known for its consistency.

(Luke Phillips is a political activist and writer in California state politics. His work has been published in a variety of publications, including CityWatch, Fox&Hounds, NewGeography, and The American Interest. He is a Research Assistant to Joel Kotkin at the Center for Opportunity Urbanism.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams

ANIMAL WATCH--Everyone in America has a coyote story. Or if you don’t, give it time. You will.

The tawny, golden-eyed, sharp-nosed wild dog of the American deserts is now our backyard predator, everywhere from Miami to Toronto and San Diego to Seattle.

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW--Earlier this month, I wrote in CityWatch about two bills that would have improved transparency at the Coastal Commission failed to pass, paving the way for more pay to play between commissioners, developers, business interests, labor unions, lobbyists, environmentalists and anyone that might benefit from the commission’s decisions.

Senate Bill 1190, sponsored by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara), would have banned ex-parte contacts between commissioners and developers, lobbyists, environmentalists and others with an interest in the commission’s decisions. 

Assembly Bill 2002, sponsored by Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) and Assemblyman Mark Stone (D-Monterey Bay), would have required anyone who lobbies the Coastal Commission to register with the state and to disclose clients with business before the commission. The bill would also have fast-tracked reporting of ex-parte meetings and made the disclosures more accessible to the public.

But the buck does not stop here. This past August, Spotlight on Coastal Corruption, a nonprofit formed to pursue allegations, filed a suit in San Diego County Superior Court against Commissioners Erik Howell, Martha McClure, Wendy Mitchell, Mark Vargas and chairman Steve Kinsey in what seems to be the new game plan for grassroots activists.

If the suit prevails, each of these five commissioners could be faced with millions in civil penalties for alleged transparency violations. The suit, served at the panel’s September 7 Newport Beach meeting, points fingers at the commissioners for 590 counts of violating disclosure laws for ex-parte communications. Yes, that’s right. 590 counts over the past two years.

This lawsuit is just one of at least four questioning coastal development permits charging commissioners failed to properly disclose their contacts in a timely manner or that the commissioners used communication to hold behind doors meetings prior to voting. Tsk Tsk.

Case in point. Chairman Kinsey withheld his vote on a controversial proposal that would permit hundreds of new homes on land overlooking the Newport and Huntington Beach coastline on September 7. The chairman had two ex-parte communications about the proposal. Commissioner Vargas consulted with the Commissions general counsel before voting in favor of development.

It would seem these communications should be verboten and in fact, they are. Communications that fall under ex-parte communications include phone calls, meetings, emails, and other written material concerning the issue at hand conducted outside of public hearings.

Here’s where it gets fun. Commissioners under state law must report these interactions in writing within seven days. If these private pow wows happen within a week before the topic at hand will be on the commission’s agenda, the commissioners are charged with disclosing the communication from the dais at the hearing.

The devil’s in the details. The commissioners must disclose the date, time, type and location, as well as who initiated in and participated in the ex-parte, as well as a comprehensive description, including text and any graphic material presented. And all of this must appear in the commission’s official record, which the public can review.

Believe it or not, the commissioners aren’t allowed to influence peddle by knowingly keeping ex-parte contacts off record. Each time a commission violates the disclosure requirement, he or she can face a maximum fine of $7,500. The Spotlight suit tags on additional fines of $30K for each violation, considered separate offenses under the Public Resources Code.

How did Spotlight choose which lucky commissioners to target? Spotlight’s attorney Cory Briggs says the group looked at all written and oral ex-parte reports from January 2015 through August of this year. The five defendants appeared to have the greatest number of violations with Vargas coming in at 150 violations; Kinsey,140 times; Mitchell, 120; Howell, 96; and McClure, 82.

Pending the outcome, here’s the tally of fines. Vargas, up to $5,625,000; Kinsey, up to $5,250,00; Mitchell, $4,500,00; Howell, $3,600,00; and McClue, $3,150,000, hardly chump change.

We applaud the efforts of the Spotlight’s lawsuit to reign in what is an out of control scenario in which the Coastal Commission serves special interests instead of the tasks they are charged with, which is protecting our coastline and serving Californians.

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

-cw

GUEST WORDS, ELECTION 2016--After years of dysfunction from the billing fiasco to mismanagement of our precious water during the drought, Angelenos are understandably concerned about the failures of the Department of Water and Power. As such, this mishandled department is in serious need of real, meaningful and lasting reform. Here’s the problem. The status quo clearly isn’t working, but the proposed Los Angeles Charter Amendment RRR, a so-called “reform” measure, is in fact counterproductive and dangerous, making the utility less responsive, accountable and transparent to voters, and at the same time will increase the likelihood of corruption within the DWP. 

Although proponents of the misleading measure claim it would make the DWP more accountable and halt rate increases, the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead of bringing the real and transparent change we need, Charter Amendment RRR is in fact a power grab by DWP insiders that paves the way for deregulation of the nation’s largest municipal utility, nearly eliminating the oversight by ratepayers while giving enormous, unprecedented power to the DWP’s faceless and unelected bureaucrats. 

The suggested measure proposes to have the City Council and the Mayor virtually relinquish their oversight over the DWP’s Board of Commissioners and the department’s General Manager outside of approving a “strategic plan” every four years. Once the plan is approved, the DWP General Manager and Commissioners will be able to unilaterally implement rate hikes without any checks and balances from the City Council or the Mayor, an extraordinary power for any unelected official who isn’t held accountable to the voters. 

Charter Amendment RRR would also give the new seven member Board the authority to enter into a contract with any corporation to share in ownership, operation, and the maintenance of the facility for the generation, transformation, and transmission of electric energy for up to 30 years without notifying the city council or the Mayor. Additionally, the DWP Board would be able to approve multi-million dollar contracts without Council oversight. These disastrous changes to the charter would help open the door to deregulating the people’s owned utility, the DWP, by providing an unchecked path for massive privatized facilities. 

These proposals aren’t necessarily new, but they have proven to be destructive. Soon after the state’s energy industry deregulated about 15 years ago, cities throughout California began experiencing rate hikes, power shortages, and blackouts due to the cost cutting nature of private utilities like Southern California Edison and PG&E. However, the DWP was spared from the crisis because it did not opt into the state’s deregulation program and instead produced surplus energy during this time that helped the state and other municipalities. 

Passing RRR would repeat the state’s mistake and virtually guarantee that rates will rise and power outages will be more frequent. LA residents need to avoid this path. Instead, we must preserve the checks and balances in place to ensure that the nation’s largest municipal public utility is accountable to the residents that use its services. The way to accomplish this is to ensure that LA City Council and the Mayor maintain full, unhampered oversight over the DWP. 

Beyond rate hikes and contracts, Charter Amendment RRR also enables the DWP to opt out of the civil service system, which is a recipe for disaster. The system requires merit-based hiring and has assured women and people of color equal opportunity in applying for city jobs. It also prioritizes veterans and provides transparency to the public about hiring practices. Removing these requirements for DWP employees would eliminate vital protections against corruption that all other city agencies have in their employment process, and could lead to unethical, politicized hiring. 

Although the DWP certainly needs to be significantly overhauled and reformed, Charter Amendment RRR is a wrongheaded measure. It destroys existing checks and balances and puts residents at risk of rate hikes and shady contracts that will lead to deregulation, without genuine recourse. If we go down the path of deregulation, voters should expect more blackouts and brownouts in addition to greater rate hikes. 

Voters shouldn’t be fooled by the so-called DWP “reform” measure and elect to give their decision-making power to unelected bureaucrats. While DWP is in desperate need of major structural changes, this isn’t the change we need. These structural changes should be done by ordinance. A charter amendment is not the answer! That’s why I and many other former LA City Council members are urging voters to reject Charter Amendment RRR, the DWP power grab.

(Nathaniel N."Nate" Holden served four years in the California State Senate and 16 years on the Los Angeles City Council.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THE PLANNING REPORT INTERVIEW--Cecilia Estolano,  co-founder of Estolano LeSar Perez Advisors, advises public & private sector clients as well as foundations and urban stakeholders on how to build thriving, healthy and vibrant communities. Prior to this, Estolano both led the city of LA's Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA/LA) and practiced land-use law at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher. In this TPR interview, Estolano draws on her nationally recognized real estate and community engagement expertise to opine on the City of LA’s historically flawed planning and development process, and to diagnose the current policy landscape in Metro Los Angeles and state that inhibits the production of workforce housing. She also expands upon her personal mission to address inequitable economic development.

"Los Angeles is not a city that actually believes in planning. It doesn't respect community plans ... Comprehensive planning around a district or a community area is what it’s going to take to achieve our sustainability goals in Los Angeles." —Cecilia Estolano

As someone with nearly unequalled experience in inner-city housing and city building, what public policies—accepting the disappearance of redevelopment—are currently depressing the supply of new affordable housing?

Cecilia Estolano: Number one: We need a permanent source of money to help fill the gap for low-income housing, specifically.

Number two: We need a much easier process for doing infill housing. Folks have been talking about this for years; The Planning Report has certainly followed it.

I think one of the most exciting prospects right now is the state legislation that was just approved for accessory dwelling units (ADUs). It’s really the easiest and least painful way to increase our supply of workforce housing, and it might be a way to fill in that middle gap that nobody’s addressing right now.

Why wasn’t the production of more workforce and affordable housing addressed when Community Redevelopment Agencies (CRAs) dominated urban planning and reinvestment?

From the CRA’s perspective, we were trying to get our money out the door for low-income housing. Our mandate was to fill that gap, and we had a fantastic track record: We built something close to 30,000 units over the lifetime of the agency.

But now, with those sources gone, local government—and frankly, state government—have to be a lot more creative about the land-use strategies available to increase the supply of housing in the low-to-moderate-to-workforce levels.

That’s why you see legislation like the ADU bill coming out of the Legislature: because at some point, we have to get local government to move quickly on making it possible to do things like accessory dwelling units.

To the chagrin of affordable housing advocates and developers, much of the housing built in our metropolis since the 2008 economic collapse has been high-rise and expensive. What explains the paucity of affordable housing being built since CRAs were dissolved?   

It’s expensive to build in California, so if there are no subsidies and no mandate to build workforce or affordable housing, the market will go to high-end housing.

The entitlement process, particularly in the city of Los Angeles, is quite complex, and it requires a lot of predevelopment costs, lawyers, and folks at City Hall to help you lobby to get your project through. That adds a lot of cost, so to get your rate of return from your investors, you’re going to go to the luxury side.

Given the costs of LA’s entitlement process, why, in your opinion, has the city’s uniquely uncertain planning approval process not been reformed to offer more certainty—such as building by-right—to those wishing to build workforce and affordable housing?

Candidly, I don’t think there’s the will among the elected officials in the city of Los Angeles to take that seriously. This is not a city that actually believes in planning. It doesn’t respect community plans.

But Los Angeles is not the only city in the county of Los Angeles. Other cities and jurisdictions can and have led the way in showing how to facilitate the production of workforce-level housing.

I look, in some ways, to the county of Los Angeles. Regional Planning Director Richard Bruckner, and leadership on the Board of Supervisors, are looking at innovative things like getting a few model types of accessory dwelling units preapproved—so that if you used one of these set floor plans, you could get free approvals and not have to go through any kind of discretionary approval process. The county is right on board with trying to make it easier to generate these units.

That’s not the case in the city of Los Angeles, however. The city’s having a very difficult time getting out of the way of this source—notwithstanding Mayor Garcetti’s interest in piloting some of these approaches with the Innovation Team. It’s been unfortunate to watch the city of Los Angeles create roadblocks.

When you were the executive officer of the LA City redevelopment agency and Gail Goldberg was the city’s Director of Planning, you both collaborated to save industrial land and to update the city’s zoning and community plans. What have you learned since then about the challenges of land-use reform in the city of LA? 

It’s such a different landscape now.

When Gail proposed updating 10 community plans right out of the gate, we at the redevelopment agency actually provided the funding to ensure that the three plans in South Los Angeles—which had not been updated for 20+ years—would receive the same amount of attention as, say, Hollywood. But that was a different era, when we had more resources and more flexibility in the use of those resources.

There are still tools available for cities to use, but it takes some bold thinking. Some cities have looked at Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts or the Community Revitalization Investment Authority as potential sources of funding for things like housing, or even the LA River Revitalization. But I think what we need is a source of money for planning. 

Comprehensive planning around a district or a community area is what it’s going to take to achieve our sustainability goals in Los Angeles. In fact, those two tools can be used for this type of planning, which Gail and I were trying to do.

One example of a place where I think we need to apply this kind of thinking is the area right around Union Station. ELP Advisors is working on a feasibility plan for the Park 101 project, which would cap three blocks of the 101 Freeway as it goes through Downtown Los Angeles.

That investment would create an amazing amenity: parkland right in the middle of the city. It would also knit together the Historic Core, the Civic Center, and the largest transportation hub in the region.

As we look at that, we also have to look at other investments going on in the area, including the Union Station Master Plan; the eventual advent of high-speed rail; the Regional Connector; and private investment going on in Chinatown. Altogether, we can see that this is a district that needs to be comprehensively planned.

It might be a great place to implement an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District. We’re investing a lot in the public realm that will create value for private property owners. We should be able to capture that value and use the proceeds to fund benefits like affordable housing.

Let’s put that EIFD in place now and begin to do integrated planning among the county, the city, Metro, Caltrans—and together, make that one of the most sustainable portions of the region. We could pull that off—but it would require big thinking beyond just little fixes at the level of the corridor or the intersection.

I think people are ready for this vision. There’s interest at Metro, at the county and in the city. People are ready to think big again in Los Angeles, and we finally have some tools to do it. So let’s apply them in a way that addresses our need for housing of all types, new visions of sustainability, and new connections for bike and pedestrian modes of transportation.

This is the place to do it, and it could become a showcase for the region.

Could you elaborate on the contrasting approaches that local jurisdictions other than the city of LA have taken to encourage the building more housing—for example, in Santa Monica, Pasadena, or Culver City?

ELP serves as the executive director of the Westside Cities Council of Governments, so we have familiarity with the work happening in Santa Monica, Culver City, West Hollywood, and Beverly Hills. Those cities have had a very strong commitment to the production of affordable housing.

We went through a planning process with a team at the Westside Cities COG, and found that the No. 1 priority for those cities is to address the issue of homelessness. In a few days, our Board of Directors will get a presentation from the regional representative for the county’s homelessness initiative to see how the Westside cities, as a sub-region, might work to address homelessness issues. Some of those cities are already digging in. They’re working on rapid rehousing and vouchers. They want very practical solutions.

It’s certainly easier to work at a smaller scale than that of the city of Los Angeles, but there’s also a strong commitment to addressing the need for housing at all income scales, and not just at the luxury level.

But let’s also give the city of LA credit—particularly CAO Miguel Santana—in proposing Prop HHH as a way to fund the production of housing to accompany the county’s enhanced services effort. We’ve seen an unprecedented level of coordination and cooperation between the city and county on homelessness. That gives us the best hope for a comprehensive approach than we’ve seen in many years.

 What reforms need to happen in the city of LA, in your opinion, to meet and surpass what Santa Monica and West Hollywood are doing to encourage the building of more affordable housing?

It comes down to leadership and building a constituency for support for affordable housing policy. We just haven’t seen that in a consistent way over the last few years.

There have certainly been efforts to address the homelessness issue, but in terms of using any of the tools still available to the city related to affordable housing —even land-use tools—there’s been a pretty laggard response.

There’s also been talk about having a fee associated with new development. But it’s probably the third time in my career that I’ve seen the city of Los Angeles debate this, and I just don’t know what the prospects are for success.

 Clearly, a strong commitment to city planning has not interfered with Santa Monica and West Hollywood’s ability to encourage the building of affordable and workforce housing. Some critics have suggested that the motto in the city of LA seems to be: “We don’t need planning; planning gets in the way of building.” What’s your take on this argument?

 The issue is: What is your vision for the city? What is your vision for how it will look and what we expect of development in the city?

The cities we’ve mentioned on the Westside have a very clear vision. They have high expectations of the quality of life that they want to achieve and maintain in their cities, and they use planning to do that.

They go through a rigorous process of community planning with deep, extensive community engagement. These are difficult battles at the time. But once that plan has been adopted—precisely because of that rigorous process and community engagement, and because it’s a process that everyone has agreed on—they stick to it. That planning document becomes the guidepost, and city councilmembers defer to it.

That is not at all what happens in the city of Los Angeles. Here, there’s a much more politicized approach. Councilmembers zealously protect the extraordinary discretion that they have over how developments will move forward.

Los Angeles is a city that grew on real-estate speculation. It’s always been a source of quite a bit of power for councilmembers, and they haven’t been willing to give it up.

In an interview with The Planning Report last month, Bill Witte of Related—the largest developer of affordable housing in the region—dismissed the Build Better LA ballot measure, which is touted by labor as a solution to growing the supply and affordable housing. What are your thoughts on this ballot measure?

I think it’s a very Los Angeles approach to force this issue by putting it on the ballot.

It’s interesting to see labor unions—which are probably one of the strongest constituencies outside of developers—come together with some aspects of the business community and the affordable housing community to take this approach.

Certainly, it’s a response to the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative—the potential March ballot measure that would put a two-year moratorium on development in the way the city of Los Angeles does it.

It’s not nuanced. But it’s born out of a sense of desperation that if someone doesn’t move forward with an idea that’s better than zero growth, the council won’t come up with an alternative.

Of course, there’s desperation on both sides. There’s a sense that the city on its own just can’t find ways to use their planning tools effectively, and to respect those tools.

These initiatives are a reaction to generations of dysfunction in Los Angeles. We’ve had the greatest run-up, and one of the greatest real estate builds in the last few years, after one of the greatest crashes. Yet we’ve had no appreciable increase in the amount of affordable or workforce housing—because of complete paralysis by the city council and the mayor.

I am not a proponent of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative; I think it’s the absolutely wrong approach. But it certainly has focused the mind of the elected officials.

Mayor Garcetti has now proposed banning ex parte communications from the Planning Commission. Sadly, that would not have happened but for the threat of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative.

Cecilia, if someday you were to seek to be LA’s mayor, what would you do over the course of four years to create a planning process in the city that would bring relief to those who are exasperated?

You’d have to build a broad political movement that could transcend city council boundaries.

You’d have to spend a lot of time building an enduring coalition of labor, affordable housing advocates, and some of the reasonable elements of the development community, and make the case that Los Angeles cannot prosper without a balanced economy and a balanced residential population.

You’d have to outline a plan to construct, not just low-income housing, but workforce housing.

You’d have to combine regulatory reform, entitlement-processing reform, and a genuine community planning process—and it would have to be accelerated. We can’t take 10 or 15 years to do community plan updates; that’s exactly the problem we’re in right now.

I think you have to do all of the updates within five years. Otherwise, there’s no legitimacy to the process.

That may seem like a Herculean and impossible effort. But that is what it will take to tackle this. Otherwise, why would anyone lend any credibility to the city’s commitment to planning?

Before closing: TPR covered community planning and wealth-building in East LA in our last issue. You’ve been working on a bioscience hub in East LA; talk about what motivates you to be involved in this project. 

The vision for a bioscience or biomedical hub in the area has been there for at least 15 years. We looked at it when I was at the redevelopment agency. We combined two project areas—the county’s and the city’s—to create it, and then redevelopment went away. But we never lost that commitment.

There’s a clear concentration of uses in the area: the LAC+USC General Hospital, the Keck Medical Center, the USC Health Sciences Campus, Cal State LA, which has a terrific STEM program, and Grifols, which is an international biopharmaceutical company. Those are the makings of what ought to be an industry cluster.

During the recession, while private industry and other sectors were declining, biotech actually gained jobs. It has strength in this region, but it could be stronger. It’s a sector that could grow and create jobs—and more importantly, create an avenue of opportunity for folks on the Eastside.

We partnered with East LA College this year on a program called the Biotech Leaders Academy. We were very fortunate to get an LA2050 challenge grant to fund it. We placed 10 East LA College students in industry internships in the bioscience sector, many in startup companies. We also gave them training on entrepreneurship—what it takes to start a biotech company. This fundamentally transformed these students’ views of their careers and what they could do with the degrees they were attaining.

This is the nuts and bolts of equitable economic development: hitching the economic opportunity of disadvantaged communities to the rising tide of a growing industry from the start.

These companies now see East LA College and Cal State LA as sources of talent. They typically recruit from graduate programs at UCLA, USC, or Caltech. But after the program, employers told us that these students were focused, mature, and motivated—some of the best interns they’ve ever had—and that they would consider taking future interns from East LA College.

That is equitable economic development, and that’s the kind of work we need to continue to do if we want Los Angeles to thrive throughout the region and not just in pockets on the Westside.

(This article was posted originally at the excellent Planning Report. CityWatch is reposting it because The Planning Report does exceptional work and because few things affect the lives of Angelenos or dominate the city conversation as thoroughly and dramatically today as passionately debated planning future of Los Angeles.)

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EDITOR’S PICK--The powerful economic resurgence that has swept Southern California is on display almost everywhere here, visible in the construction cranes towering on the skyline and the gush of applications to build luxury hotels, shopping centers, high-rise condominiums and acres of apartment complexes from Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles.

But it can also be seen in a battle that has broken out about the fundamental nature of this distinctively low-lying and spread-out city. The conflict has pitted developers and some government officials against neighborhood organizations and preservationists. It is a debate about height and neighborhood character; the influence of big-money developers on City Hall; and, most of all, what Los Angeles should look like a generation from now.

This is a city that has long defied easy definition — at once urban, suburban and even rural — filled with people who live in homes with year-round gardens and open skies dotted by swaying palm trees, often blocks away from gritty boulevards, highways and clusters of office buildings. And it is no stranger to battles between entrenched neighborhood groups and well-financed developers seeing opportunity in a wealthy market; the slow-growth movement thrived here during the 1990s.

But the debate this time has reached a particularly pitched level, fueled by a severe shortage of affordable housing, an influx of people moving back into the city center and the perception that a Southern California city that once seemed to have unlimited space for growth has run out of track. “What’s that old cliché?” Mayor Eric M. Garcetti said in an interview. “The sprawl has hit the wall in LA” (Read the rest.) 

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THE SNUB RUB--Ah, Council District 5’s so-called representative, Paul Koretz (photo above right), is at it again. As the Daily News reports.

Jonathan Weiss published a letter two weeks ago in the Los Angeles Daily News slamming the councilman’s leadership on the Westwood Greenway, a planned 800-foot park in Koretz’s district.

The park, first proposed by Weiss in 2009, would rise near the Expo Line’s Westwood/Rancho Park stop.

Weiss’s letter outlined his support for Jesse Creed, Koretz’s opponent in next year’s race for City Council District 5, because Weiss believes Creed would be better at getting projects completed.

NC ELECTIONS RE-BOOT-We take issue with “Build Bridges Instead of Firewalls…”, Jay Handal’s CityWatch article that contains his NC Election Report. In it, he distorts the facts and offers little by way of practical solutions for future elections. 

Issues with the voting process are not the fault of the Neighborhood Councils (NC) or their Bylaws, but of the dictates delivered by the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE). Much of what has been outlined disregards the real issues facing NCs and their relationship with DONE. Neighborhood Councils are the bridges for the stakeholders to the City and DONE has become the firewall. 

The Los Angeles City Charter (Charter Section 900) in 1999 intended “to promote more citizen participation in government and make government more responsive to local needs….” The purpose of the Neighborhood Council System is to bring self-governance to the local level and engage stakeholders in that process. But standardization is the bane of NCs as it limits their individuality. Some NCs are round pegs and some NCs are square holes. This is hard for the bureaucrats to understand. Basically, NCs are like individual states in our country and are unique within themselves; no two states have the same election requirements or voting laws. NCs must have this same autonomy over their bylaws and elections. 

Since the elections were taken away from the NCs, problems have increased exponentially. Every election cycle has been run differently with changes to election procedures, election dates and forced requirements that do not always comply with individual NCs’ Bylaws. Originally, NCs ran their own elections under the direction of DONE. Then they were given to the City Clerk. Then they were given back to DONE and the City Clerk, which is where we stand today. It is time for the experimenting to end. Stakeholders deserve better. DONE and the City Clerk are supposed to be the support for the NCs, not the master. 

Handal misses the point when discussing the individual NCs’ Bylaws and their attempts to limit or exclude certain stakeholders within their districts. All NCs adhere to the definition of a stakeholder: “A ‘stakeholder’ shall be defined as those who live, work, or own real property in the neighborhood and also those who declare a stake in the neighborhood as a community interest stakeholder….” NCs may have different criteria for specific seats or categories on their board but no one is excluded, including non-citizens, the homeless, or the village gadfly. What works in Sunland-Tujunga or Studio City or San Pedro, may not work in Westwood or Chatsworth or Encino. One size does not fit all.

As far as the online voting debacle is concerned, California State Law prohibits electronic or online voting statewide, yet it was deemed by the powers-that-be in the City of Los Angeles that this does not apply to NC elections. The law applies to City elections, County elections, and State elections so why is a City government entity which receives taxpayer dollars excluded? 

DONE courted the NCs to get them to approve online voting. In order to enlist the services of Everyone Counts, DONE reported they needed 35 participating NCs to cover the costs. They achieved that number but in the process gave wrong and misleading information to the NCs. None were advised that documentation requirements for online voters was not advised by the City Clerk. 

The Studio City NC, for example, voted for online voting but added the documentation requirement out of fear of potential voter fraud issues with a new, experimental online voting system. Their fears were well-founded but for different reasons. Other NCs faced similar problems. A major issue with online voting was the impossibility of doing election verification after the election. No actual ballots were kept for the online votes and no final tally that reconciled the ballot count issued. Contrary to Handal’s calling the online voting a success, it was a huge failure and most NCs that participated would not do it again. 

What faith can anyone have in an election outcome if it cannot be verified, especially when there are challenges of voter fraud? 

Many NCs that used online voting had a decrease in voters compared to previous elections. Much of this is attributable to the difficulty of registering and voting online, disenfranchising the stakeholders. Some then came to the polls to vote but many did not. The actual figures do not exist, or DONE has not released them.

Duplicate voting was not the major issue surrounding the elections, whether online or at the polls. In at least two elections, Studio City and Sunland-Tujunga, these NCs’ specific documentation requirements and the proper completion of the voter registrations, were not followed. DONE enabled this lapse in protocol and tried to blame the NCs for their documentation requirements being too complicated. Election Day was not the time to make this allegation, particularly to complaining stakeholders. As far as it being easier to vote for president than in a NC election, it is important to remember that you must be registered in advance to vote in all City, County, State and Federal elections and you can only vote in the district in which you live. NC stakeholders do not have to live in their district, and can vote in as many NC elections for which they may qualify. In other words, it’s apples to oranges. 

Another major issue is the misguided rules and enforcement of election challenges. Seamless is hardly the adjective that applies. There were no clear-cut guidelines and no specific election challenge panel(s) established. DONE relied on Regional Grievance Panels which were not really applicable. The rules fluctuated, and there was no transparency in the process. Challenges were dismissed without explanation and by an unknown entity. A specific case-in-point was the deplorable handling of the Studio City NC challenges and the reversal of an “unappealable” ruling. DONE maketh the rules and DONE breaketh the rules. 

Due to the flawed elections, these motions by Councilmember Paul Krekorian are pending before the Los Angeles City Council:

File Number 04-1935-S1 motion (Krekorian-Wesson, Jr.) – instructed the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) to report on improving the voting environment for future elections and on the actions that DONE intends to take to train staff, engage stakeholders to create uniform policies across all neighborhood councils, and insure a safe environment for voters free of electioneering. 

File Number 15-1022-S2 motion (Krekorian-Wesson, Jr.) – instructed the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) to cease the implementation of the online voting system for future elections until DONE completes a report with information about the experience of online voting for candidates, voters, staff and other stakeholders and on the actions that DONE intends to take to improve the implementation process, outreach, training, data security, and other processes. 

There is much more that can be discussed but we will leave that for another day. In the interest of brevity, we have chosen to offer our experiences on the most serious issues addressed in Handal’s election report. In conclusion, if DONE really wants to empower LA, it should engage with the NCs before issuing new rules or changing the rules. DONE’s sole role should be to provide support to the NCs in building the bridges to empower LA.

(Lisa Sarkin is the current past President of the Studio City Neighborhood Council and has participated in the Neighborhood Council System since 2005. Judy Price is a past President of the Greater Valley Glen [Neighborhood] Council and has participated in the Neighborhood Council system since its inception.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

POLITICS--Not many politicians have risen as fast as Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego. She just scored the 35th spot on Politco Magazine’s annual list of the Top 50 politicians in America, its “guide to the thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2016.” She’s listed as “The progressive ideas lab.” 

“If states are the laboratories of democracy, then Lorena Gonzalez might be the nation’s most ambitious progressive scientist,” Politico enthuses. “After decades of lurching from crisis to crisis, California has emerged as a test case in how progressive government can work. And since 2013, Gonzalez, an assemblywoman who represents the state’s southernmost district, has become the brain trust for California’s most ambitious policy ideas – in the process, mobilizing liberals across the country too.

Her polices: The “Motor Voter” law for voter registration. Co-authoring the rise in the state minimum wage to $15 an hour. [The nation’s strictest law aimed at closing the gender pay gap, as well as proposing a bill this year to expand overtime for farmworkers. But it’s Gonzalez’s trailblazing advocacy of mandatory paid sick leave that could make the biggest difference nationwide.”

And let’s not forget the former cheerleader’s bill that designated part-time cheerleaders as full-time employees earning full-time benefits. Rah Rah Rah! Cis Boom Bah!

Except that all the economic policies impose higher costs for hiring people. As you learn in Economics 101, if the price of something rises, demand goes down. So the demand for workers will go down, raising unemployment.

But in politics, being lucky counts more than being right. And these policies occur as the country’s economy is growing, albeit at a slow pace. And in California, Silicon Valley’s extraordinary growth is paying for the higher cost of state government.

But the growth largely is in stock and real estate values, which artificially are pumped up because of the Federal Reserve’s zero-interest-rate policy, or ZIRP, now in its eighth year. When that ends, which might be next year, the economy will contract as it did in 2007-08. California’s unemployment rate will rise back to 10 percent – or higher, thanks to the new Gonzalez legislation.

And state deficits will soar back above $20 billion a year, despite (or because of) the two massive tax increases on this November’s ballot, which likely will pass. They are Proposition 55, $7 billion on those making incomes over $250,000 a year, which number actually puts one in the middle-class in California, because it’s already so expensive to live here. (This shocks folks from other states, but it’s true. What’s left after paying sky-high state taxes and a $4,000 monthly mortgage payment on a dinky home?)

And Proposition 56 ignites taxes $2 a pack, primarily on poor people, about the only ones left who smoke here. It also will boost a larger black market to fund terrorists.

But nobody will blame a mere state legislator for any of those disasters. The politicians at the top will get blamed. So, if a massive recession hits, it will be Gonzalez’ hour.

Her rivals: As the lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom will get much of the blame, even though his influence in that position is less significant than Jerry Brown’s dog, Colusa. Treasurer John Chiang, the other announced candidate for governor, will be hit with less blame, especially because of his reputation for frugality; but he’s still part of the state bureaucracy. And Antonio Villaraigosa’s mayoralty of Los Angeles (2005-13) is not remembered with fondness, as the latter part coincided with the Great Recession and the great city’s near bankruptcy.

Republicans, of course, are out of the running for statewide offices.

Voters also seek a fresh, cheery face. Gonzalez is a kind of Democratic Ronald Reagan, who actually was a Democrat the first part of his life. Add to that Democrats’ desire to advance women (see: Hillary Clinton, and the California Senate race) and Latinos/Latinas, and Gonzalez’ candidacy for governor seems inevitable.

(John Seiler is a former editorial writer at the Orange County Register. He is a veteran California journalist and can be reached at The Seiler Report. This piece was posted most recently at Fox and Hounds.) 

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CHARTER WARS-Oh, edu-friends! Sometimes I can hardly keep a straight face at the forces trying to destroy public education. So, this time, I didn't even try. I hope you'll laugh, too. 

I wish you could have been in LA LA Land with me last weekend! I made a video for you in case you missed the charter rally in the valley! 

Now that headlines from across the nation, of the NAACP, Black Lives Matter, the Network for Public Education, and the ACLU have all made clear—and John Oliver made hilarious—that the charter emperor has no clothes, the California charter lobby took its carnival to its favorite corporate reform playground, Los Angeles. Pacoima to be exact. The last bastion of that little inconvenience of democracy, the largest school district in the country that still holds school board elections, LAUSD. 

Edu-friends, I thought I had stumbled into a Trump rally. It really made me feel like these folks are our only chance at making education great again. 

“When I say ‘parent’ you say ‘power’!” Corporate reform champion and LAUSD board member Monica Garcia shouted. 

There were t-shirts with catchy phrases like “Fierce Learner”. Although I don’t know who let the guy slip in with an off-message t-shirt that read, “Public education is not for sale.” Ha! 

There were t-shirts with metaphors like Phoenix! I could almost smell the smoke rising from the ashes. Although, let’s face it, that might have been the fresh aroma of bull****. Some hoped you’d forget they were any metaphor at all. Could the M.I.T. t-shirts actually, officially, almost be connected to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology? Oh, who cares? Details, details! 

The point is, these kids have a great shot at getting into a school like that because they received extra credit for attending this rally! Several of them told me so. 

There were other ways to tell this was no ordinary rally. It was literally on—wait for it—AstroTurf! That’s right, edu-friends. Mere grass isn’t good enough for these disrupters! 

It was like a carnival! 

Just listen to this charter school principal shriek -- I mean lead -- the crowd. 

“You have MORE accountability for MORE student learning! Can we do it? YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN! SI, SE PUEDES [sic],” she cheered. 

Only 5% of California’s students attend charters, but this rally looked like the whole world had descended to celebrate charters! They boasted 3000 attendees. The cop I asked estimated 900 to 1000. 

So how did these folks get here? Nothing is left to chance by the charter lobby. They had buses! But it was billed as a march, so a march it will be! Buses dropped folks off three blocks away so they could march into the rally! 

And at the pilgrimage to Pacoima, the messianic theatrics did not disappoint. 

The charter principal tells the story of “throwaway schools” and trashes the idea of integration. 

And if you think anyone in LAUSD has the solution, you just don’t know how to let private enterprise capitalize on a good old fashioned crisis. I couldn’t find anyone in LAUSD there to set folks straight. 

Chan ends her dramatic oratory with the 1993 miracle of miracles, the charter school law. That’s the law that lets some students into a charter if they win the lottery. 

By the way, what rally could be complete without a drawing of its own? Just fill out the address card and give it to CCSA Families. Gotta capture your personal data somehow. 

And it’s going to take a lottery—or maybe that principal’s miracle of miracles—for our public school system to survive charter schools sucking them dry. 

What are our district leaders doing about this? What of LAUSD Board member Monica Ratliff, a headliner at the charter rally? 

“I believe that parents should have the right to choose the school that they think is best for their children: Charter schools, magnet schools, pilot schools, private schools, traditional public schools…” Ratliff said. 

And if you think a debate about opposing views was a good idea, think again. 

“Rhetoric that turns discussions about education into an ‘us against them’ narrative is never, ever helpful,” Ratliff finished. 

A narrative. So it seems that it’s all about a story. Is the story about re-segregation of schools? Or discriminatory enrollment practices? Or the bilking of millions of public dollars into private hands? 

Edu-friend, that rhetoric is never, ever helpful! Especially with a new campaign beyond LAUSD where the charter debate is just icky. In fact, maybe she’s right. Maybe the real problem is those of us who talk about the problem. 

But hey, politician’s speeches are nobody’s favorite part of a rally. And at this rally, EVERYBODY loves charters! In fact, they’ll pledge their allegiance to them, and that’s exactly what they did before boarding the buses to return home.

(Karen Wolfe is a public school parent, the Executive Director of PS Connect and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY--One of these Tuesdays the LA County Board of Supervisors plans to vote on whether to grant a 60-year lease to MDR Boat Central, L.P. and so remove the final obstacle to that company’s construction of an 80 ft. high automated dry stack boat storage facility which will extend 11,600 square ft. over the water. (Photo of proposed project above.) 

The vote should be continued until after the forthcoming election and subsequent installation of District 4’s next County Supervisor. It’s the people of District 4 who will be most directly affected by the project. 

The dry stack boat storage facility is an ineffective solution in search of a problem. As we reported in an earlier CityWatch piece, Marina del Rey doesn't happen to have a shortage of affordable dry stack facilities and boat slips; and contrary to what the Coastal Commissioners were led to believe (during a festival of ex parte meetings with the applicant,) there's only one operational, fully automated dry stack boat storage facility in the world. It's associated with the neighboring luxury condominium complex and does not even have the ability to store non-luxury sized boats. We could go on. 

Far more important are the voices of the people who use and love Dock 52. No one is more eloquent on the topic than one of the public speakers at a recent public hearing on the project. What follows are the words of Dr. Patrick O'Heffernan, edited only for space:  

“Dock 52 is more than a parking lot and a boat ramp. It is a community resource used by people from around the county. On any given Sunday morning you will see my club there with thirty or forty people. You will see other bike clubs, many who are African American, as is my club. You will see groups of people in buses and vans from Koreatown to go fishing. You will see church groups who use this as a stage for their fundraising. This is more than a parking lot. It is a community resource. 

“I did a little survey of my own and found that people come from at least five different congressional districts in Los Angeles to be here. They come from Menlo Park, from west Adams to east Compton to the Valley, all over. One of the reasons that they come here is this is the only free parking lot in the Marina and there are many, many families and many, many groups that get together to come down there with their children and can spend the day over on the bridge, over by the Ballona Creek fishing, teaching their children how to fish, and they won't do it if they had to pay for parking. 

When you look at social benefits of Dock 52 and begin to calculate those, and there are many of you that do that, you see that any benefits that might accrue to the 235 people that might possibly use some of the slips in this, some of the storage in this -- there is no question. It fails a cost benefit analysis for the same reason it fails the social benefits. The social benefits accrue to 200 people or less, depending or whether or not the facility is used and to the investors, but thousands of people use Dock 52 over the year. They use it for parking to go into the path. They use it for fishing. They use it for boat launching. Thousands of people use it, so when you balance that against the possible utility of 200 people with their boats, there is no question." 

(Eric Preven is a CityWatch contributor and a Studio City based writer-producer and public advocate for better transparency in local government. He was a candidate in the 2015 election for Los Angeles City Council, 2nd District. Joshua Preven is a CityWatch contributor and a teacher who lives in Los Angeles.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EASTSIDER-Every so often I forget that there is City Hall villainy over and beyond the Northeast’s very own trio of Jose Huizar, Gilbert Cedillo, and Mitch O’Farrell. Although led by Jose Huizar, as the Chair of the PLUM Committee, I do believe that this gang has approved enough mega-development to make the land subside by at least ten feet, and maybe even cause a shift in the tectonic plates. Heck, Eric Garcetti was a piker compared to these guys -- at least until he became Mayor and had more land to sell off. 

On the other hand, a CityWatch reader contacted me with yet a different dastardly bend over, kiss the developer and sell out the community mega-development act perpetrated by another one of our model-of-integrity City Council members -- this time, Mike Bonin (CD 11). Take a look at the picture of the Martin Expo Town Center (photo above.) It reminds me of some planetary headquarters of the evil empire in a Star Wars movie.

Located on Bundy and Olympic Blvd., this monster ought to permanently block the ability of anyone to get from downtown LA to the Westside and vice versa. Not to mention that the folks who live there won’t be able to get anywhere at all. Proponents note that it’s being built near the Expo Line extension, I suppose implying, yet again, that mass transit will eliminate the need for cars in Los Angeles. But I seem to remember that the Expo Line is already overburdened with riders, so maybe this project can create a first in LA: Metro gridlock on one of their routes. 

So back to Mr. Bonin, the replacement for Councilmember Bill Rosendahl. Bonin really makes some of us rue the untimely demise of his former boss: he isn’t a Bill Rosendahl. For those of you who remember the Airbnb wars, Mr. Bonin was the author of that fatuous statement that he supported “good short-term rentals” and opposed “bad short-term rentals.” What a guy. 

You might also remember Mr. Bonin for being the second to Herb Wesson’s original Airbnb motion, even while his constituents in Venice were being illegally evicted from their rent-controlled units that were replaced with Airbnb hotels. In fact, Councilmember Bonin is so beloved in Venice that some there are attempting get out of Los Angeles completely and form their own city, a move referred to as Vexit.  

Bonin’s Deal Hits a Bump 

So what’s new with Bonin’s dialing for dollars on the Martin Expo Town Center? 

Here are the details: In order to build the monster Martin Expo Town Center, the Council has to fiddle with the City’s General Plan to change the designation of the area from Light Manufacturing to General Commercial. This is not trivial, especially since the General Plan has not been changed for something like 20 years and going from a Cadillac dealership to a huge mixed-used mega-development is a huge change. We won’t even get into Community Plans. But there is a process that should be followed. 

On the same PLUM Committee agenda that lists the Martin Expo item is another item, 14-1719, regarding possible zone changes for a project in the Valley. In this case, it looks like they got it right by making the Planning Department, in conjunction with the City Attorney, prepare a report regarding possible zone change options. 

So why didn’t they do the same for the Martin Expo project? How about because Mr. Bonin has already partaken of the developer’s kool-aid? 

Tuesday, September 20, was the last day for Council action on the General Plan Amendment/Zone Change for the Martin Expo Town Center. If the Council didn’t act by then, it would be goodbye to whatever goodies Bonin stands to get. But it turns out that there was a big “boo boo” in the PLUM Agenda: Planning filed a new Addendum to the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) on the day of the PLUM meeting. This meant that the items were out of compliance with the Brown Act so the PLUM Committee wouldn’t be able to discuss or vote on the items. And the last day to act was coming up, which meant they wouldn’t be able to fix it by having the PLUM Committee re-agendize the item and get Council to act before September 20. 

For those who think I’m imagining things, the project was already set for the City Council meeting of Friday, September 16 -- obviously, assuming that the same PLUM Committee would have approved the project. 

But this is the City of Los Angeles, so there’s always a way to fix the error and still ram through the project. The “powers that be” had the PLUM Committee “waive consideration of item” and quickly put the project directly on the City Council agenda for September 20, the last day for action. And guess what the vote was? 

For a more detailed look at manipulation of the General Plan and planning in general in the City of Angels, take a look at Dick Platkin’s recent CityWatch articles. I particularly enjoyed, “Who’s In Charge at LA’s City Planning, the Queen of Hearts?”  

And why, pray tell, would a City Councilmember resort to such obviously disingenuous behavior, evading the very spirit of open government and the Brown Act? How about pushback from the affected communities that are refusing to roll over for this repurposing of a Cadillac dealership that will cause the wholesale destruction of their deeply affected neighborhoods? Irony intended. 

All you have to do is take a look at the coalition that organized to see why Mr. Bonin is trying to sneak this project by. It’s a pretty potent, activist set of folks -- the West of Westwood Homeowners Assn, West LA/Sawtelle Neighborhood Council, the Brentwood Homeowners Association and the Westwood South of Santa Monica Homeowners Association, to name a few. 

The Takeaway 

Sadly, Bonin is just a symptom of City Hall dysfunction. If you add up all of the recent actions by the City Council, I think the conclusion is inescapable. City Hall has contempt for our neighborhoods and Neighborhood Councils. Oh, they will have a Congress of Neighborhoods, and the elected officials will take pictures and hand out scrolls, but that’s it. Input not welcome. Charter reform? What Charter? 

In addition to our own experiences in Northeast LA, and the current Martin Expo Town Center contretemps of Mr. Bonin, here are a couple of other recent developments which demonstrate my point. 

First, as an exemplar of hubris, Council President Herb Wesson has announced that he will personally run Felipe Fuentes’ Council District (CD7) until next March when an election will take place. For those who missed this news item, Mr. Fuentes recently resigned his position to become a full time lobbyist in Sacramento. And no, I’m not making this up. 

But Herb says “not to worry” because he will not vote on items for Council District 7. In short, many of our best and vocal Neighborhood Councils in the Valley and foothill areas will be disenfranchised until we have results for next year’s election. Talk about taxation without representation. I thought Fuentes’ throwing the Sunland/Tujunga Neighborhood Council out of City offices was reprehensible. But, boy, did I underestimate Herb’s ability to manipulate the system. This one was so raw it even took the LA Times by surprise. 

Second, Mike Bonin’s next door neighbor, Joe Buscaino (CD15,) recently blew off the San Pedro Neighborhood Council to unilaterally do his own “homeless deal.” 

It’s really a shame. Mr. Buscaino, a former LAPD officer, got elected on an honest, open and transparent platform back in the day when he replaced Janice Hahn. 

I am at a loss to explain the behavior of our elected officials. Honest. We pay them close to $200,00 a year (the highest in the U.S.) They really don’t have to do much except collect a paycheck, and yet they all seem compelled to bend over for real estate developers and billboard companies, betraying their fiduciary obligations as public servants.

Anyhow, to end on a more positive note, there are a couple of things we can do. On the development end, sign up and vote for the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. Campaign Director Jill Stewart’s very good article about it is here.  Second, the Neighborhood Councils have to figure out how to get together and organize on their own, knowing that BONC, DONE and the City Attorney are not our friends. LANCC is the logical place, but to make that work we need a charismatic figure who is willing to step up and reinvigorate the NCs into being the check and balance on City Hall that Charter Reform envisioned. 

Any takers?

(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

SPORTS POLITICS--You may have heard that the National Football League’s Rams are back in Los Angeles. The football is no doubt exciting, but the team’s presence has also elevated Southern California conversations about parking, congestion, transit, and traffic. 

Now through 2018, the Rams play home games at the Coliseum in Exposition Park, a stone’s throw from the Metro Expo Line. (see photo above) In the future, the Rams will be playing at a new stadium under construction in Inglewood. The new stadium, expected to be completed by 2019, will be just over a mile from Metro’s under-construction Crenshaw/LAX light rail line. 

At the Rams first regular season home game, the Los Angeles Times reported parking prices surging well over $100. Rather than proclaiming parking doom, the paper interviewed parking expert Don Shoup, explained “congestion pricing,” and declared high prices to be “good news for mass transit backers.” Metro’s The Source reported that 26 percent of Rams attendees, 21,000 of the 80,000, took transit to the game. This is nearly quadruple transit’s seven percent share of LA County commute trips. 

Though SBLA will offer some advice after the jump, first a couple of caveats: 

• First, kudos to Metro for already doing a good job managing football crowds. During pre-season games, Metro anticipated and managed serious crowds. Metro promoted transit to get to games, added signage, increased service on the Silver and Expo lines, and deployed staff to manage queues. According to a staff report, Metro transit carried 10,600 and 12,200 riders to the Rams preseason games, representing 13 and 20 percent of the attendance. 

• Second, crowding expectations (and transit promotion) should be realistic. Fans should expect post-game transit to be packed, as it is around the world when big events let out. The goal is crowded trains and buses full of fans. Too many riders is a nice problem to have – it makes transit operate in a more efficient, more cost-effective way. 

• Third, though these crowds are big, 20,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to 1.4 million weekday boardings systemwide. Football stadiums are important to serve, but they deliver up riders only a half-dozen or so Sunday afternoons a year. This tail should not wag the entire dog. Adding tons of service could mean tons of cost to Metro, given that transit rides are subsidized. It is important not to mortgage the system’s daily ridership to chase a massive infrequent bolus. Nonetheless, like CicLAvia, game day ridership can be a sort of gateway drug. Ride a bus to a Rams game today, then maybe ride a bus to work in the near future. 

The Source asked for suggestions on what Metro can do differently. SBLA has some ideas below. 

These are all relatively low cost programs, not infrastructure-intensive people-mover construction. None of these will carry tens of thousands of riders on day one, but expanding transportation options for game day can give people choices. Diverting a thousand fans here and a hundred fans there can take the edge off of the surge that occurs at the end of the game. In expanding options, it is important to benefit not only sports fans, but also provide ancillary benefits to the rest of Metro’s riders, and to the neighborhoods impacted by car-choked streets around the stadium. 

1. Promote Walking – From the Coliseum, it is a two mile walk to LA Trade Tech Blue Line station, or a three mile walk to downtown LA’s 7th and Metro Red Line station. Those walks will not be for everyone, but if a couple hundred fans walk, then they are healthier, happier and the Expo Line peak crowding is reduced. Perhaps Metro and the Rams (perhaps partnering with public health community groups like LA Walks) could form some sort of Rams Walking Club. The club could operate a sort of walking school bus that would have regularly scheduled walks on pre-arranged routes. Perhaps there could be incentives, such as Rams Walking Club caps or T-shirts, or even some kind of promotional event along the way. It is probably too much to ask that a Rams player might make a guest appearance along the way, but perhaps walks could be led by a costumed mascot giving out Rams pennants, so the walk becomes a sort of moving pep rally for the team. Walk trips could be logged and entered into a drawing for prizes. Even if walkers did not walk the entire way, organized walk trips could open additional much-lower-cost car parking, such as at or near LA Trade Tech College. 

• Extend downtown L.A. Metro Bike Share – Metro’s current bike-share system already extends to LA Trade Tech, two miles from the Coliseum. It may be worthwhile to add a bike-share hub near the stadium. This would serve to connect Rams fans to downtown LA where they could connect with extensive rail and bus networks there. This could relieve eastbound Expo Line crowding, as riders could bike to the Blue, Red or even Gold lines. Perhaps there is a way to set up a staffed temporary bike-share drop-off/pick-up area to test the idea. This has been done in other cities, including in New York City during their open streets events.

• Bike Parking – In San Francisco, the SF Bicycle Coalition runs valet bike parking for Giants baseball home games.  A similar arrangement could be made with an L.A. bicycle non-profit, such as the L.A. County Bicycle Coalition. Bikes would need a convenient parking area, but bike parking takes up a lot less space than car parking (a standard car parking space easily accommodates a dozen bikes)  so the space would not need to be massive. If the rams are able to provide space for free, a nominal parking charge (say $1-2 per bike) could cover staffing. It might make sense to combine private bike parking area and the public bike-share docking mentioned above.

• Shuttle Buses – Similar to Hollywood Bowl shuttles, Metro’s Dodger Stadium Express, and programs in other regions, Metro could operate fixed-route, potentially pre-paid shuttle service to the stadium. This service makes sense only if it does not require major subsidies. Better to improve existing rail and bus lines on game days than to create low ridership boutique new service.

• After-Game Activities at Exposition Park – One way to reduce peak traffic for transit (and for cars) is to get people to stick around after the game, and get home later. Metro and/or the Rams could work with Exposition Park museums to host special open house extended hours that coincide with game-end times. Perhaps there could be a rotating schedule between various museums to focus attendance to make it worthwhile. Alternately, there could be entertainment (a small concert, a mascot) for transit riders while they wait to board.

• Promote Taxi and Ride-Hail ride splitting – From comments, some transit riders looked at large lines for Expo and decided to take Lyft or Uber instead. Ride-hail cars contribute to traffic congestion around the stadium. To the extent that taxis and ride-hail companies can encourage fans to pile in and pool their rides and fill these vehicles, they will serve fans more efficiently and lessen their adverse impact on nearby streets. 

While these recommendations apply to Rams games, they also apply to other sports and other stadiums, and even concerts and other events. Even though the Rams will be moving in 2019, Exposition Park will continue to host large-scale events, including, soon, Major League Soccer.  Programs piloted now could be transposed to Inglewood in 2019. 

What do you think readers? Would these programs work? How do you think Metro should serve game day crowds?

(Joe Linton is the editor of StreetsblogLA ... where this perspective was first posted. He founded the LA River Ride, co-founded the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, worked in key early leadership roles at CicLAvia and C.I.C.L.E., served on the board of directors of Friends of the LA River, Southern California Streets Initiative, and LA Eco-Village.) Photo: Metro.

VOX POP-Last week, Los Angeles music fans were shocked to learn that development firm GPI Companies may demolish the Amoeba Music building and construct a glass-and-steel skyscraper in its place — effectively ending Amoeba’s existence in Hollywood. But that, in fact, wasn’t the whole story.

What reporters didn’t reveal is the exact name of the developer, its big-money ties to City Hall and its involvement in a controversial mega-project in North Hollywood — which may signal what lies ahead for Amoeba Music and how the politically connected developer will be a difficult adversary if Amoeba devotees try to save the cherished cultural treasure from destruction.

GPI Companies is another name for Goldstein Planting Investments, which is based in Los Angeles. According to its website, Goldstein Planting describes itself as “a real estate investment and development firm that pursues a targeted range of properties where value can be enhanced through repositioning, redevelopment, or increased operational efficiency.”

In other words, the developer doesn’t often buy a property and simply let it sit. Goldstein Planting does something with it — like build the kind of 20-story glass-and-steel skyscraper that may go up at 6400 Sunset Boulevard, where Amoeba Music currently stands. The developer bought the Amoeba Music building, located on a stretch of Sunset Boulevard that developers have been actively seeking to construct tall mega-projects, for $34 million in 2015.

Goldstein Planting would be a powerful, politically connected, deep-pocketed opponent for any grassroots movement trying to save the Amoeba Music building.

Since 2009, and especially within the past few years, the developer has spent at least $258,621 in high-priced lobbyists and campaign contributions to L.A. politicians, according to the city’s Ethics Commission. It’s a longtime method used by many development firms to get special favors from LA elected officials and bureaucrats — spread around big cash at City Hall.

The Amoeba Music building stands in the heart of City Council District 13, which is represented by Mitch O’Farrell. Council members have incredible power and influence at City Hall when it comes to planning and land-use policy in their individual districts, and developers know that all too well.

Since 2013, Goldstein Planting Investments and its representatives have given a sizable total of $7,700 to Councilman O’Farrell — a sure-fire way to grab a politician’s attention. O’Farrell received $3,500 in campaign contributions and $4,200 for his “legal defense fund.”

Goldstein Planting Investments and its representatives also contributed $4,700 to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s 2017 re-election campaign.

In total, according to the city’s Ethics Commission, Goldstein Planting Investments forked over an eye-popping $45,700 in campaign contributions to LA politicians since 2009 — 17 percent of which went to O’Farrell.

In addition, the developer has spent a total of $212,921 on high-priced, City Hall lobbyists, who then curry favor with LA politicians and bureaucrats. It’s the kind of insider access that everyday Angelenos can never afford to buy — and they shouldn’t need to.

But that’s how LA’s rigged and broken planning and land-use system works in favor of deep-pocketed developers like Goldstein Planting Investments.

Goldstein Planting Investments is currently teaming up with another wealthy developer, San Francisco-based Merlone Geier Partners, to build a controversial mega-project called NoHo West in a low-slung, middle-class neighborhood in North Hollywood.

The two developers stand to make a whopping $25.2 million in annual revenue from 642 luxury, rental units at the proposed site — and millions more from retail and office space. Community people have complained that the mega-project will overwhelm their neighborhood with traffic. Although Goldstein Planting and Merlone Geier stand to make hundreds of millions off NoHo West over the years, the developers have not offered substantive measures to mitigate the traffic.

LA Councilman Paul Krekorian, who represents North Hollywood, completely supports the mega-project — and has not used his power and influence to help the NoHo West-adjacent residents.

NoHo West is one of the largest mega-developments in the San Fernando Valley — and Los Angeles County. It signals the kind of gigantic projects Goldstein Planting may continue to build in the future — like replacing the Amoeba Music building, a vital, culturally important independent music and film store, with a corporate 20-story skyscraper.

The Los Angeles Times tried to play down the possible demolition of the Amoeba Music building, but judging from Goldstein Planting Investments’ track record, the developer has the political clout and business inclination to do exactly that. 

(Patrick Range McDonald writes for Preserve LA. Read more news and find out how you can participate: 2PreserveLA.org.) 

-cw

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-A reporter’s question about real estate trends in Los Angeles led me to ask and hopefully answer two questions. 

Q:  What do we mean by “development?”

A:  Development includes the entire built environment. It is not strictly private speculation in real estate projects by individual and institutional investors. 

Q:  Does Los Angeles need more “development?”

A:  LA absolutely needs more development, but it should be the right type of development. When it comes to private investment, density is not an issue, as long as it is it planned development. When it comes to public investment, development should also be linked to the City’s planning and budgeting processes. 

Now, the longer version: 

Development is a misleading term for all investment in the built environment. The term is intended to give private real estate speculation a veneer of respectability. The role of this euphemism is to camouflage the impetus of private development: speculative investment with a high rate or return regardless of adopted laws or neighborhood context. 

In contrast, when public investment creeps into view, whether water mains, fire stations, schools, or hundreds of other municipal facilities, “development” suddenly goes missing. Apparently the primacy of the public sector in planning, implementing, and maintaining this part of the built environment does not generate enough return on investment for the private sector and our public officials to consider these projects to also be “development.” 

Most of what they consider to be “development,” probably around 90 percent of private projects, straightforwardly complies with the City’s legally adopted zones, building codes, and General Plan land use designations. But, some of these projects are not consistent with zones and plans. They require a special review by the Department of City Planning.  Most of these cases are small, such as over-height fences. But a tiny fraction is over-sized mega-projects. They are straightforwardly illegal, and only the City Council can legalize them through special ordinances that change the underlying General Plan designation, zone, and/or height district. These legislative actions are the spot-zoning cases that the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative intends to stop. This Initiative would spell the end to parcel level projects that get approved because of slick lobbyists and lawyers, AstroTurf organizations, political contributions, and unverifiable promises of jobs, transit use, air pollution reductions, and off-site quasi-public improvements.

Los Angeles needs much more development: As for the developments that Los Angeles needs, investment in the city's public areas should be the highest priority. (Photo above: My Figueroa, a new public development, ready to break ground.) These developments make the most difference, especially for mitigating and adapting to climate change. This is where Los Angeles is most vulnerable, especially when compared to the unconvincing need for more luxury high-rise apartments serving occasional ultra-rich visitors. 

This is why Los Angeles needs many billions dollars in public development, and why it needs investment in projects that can dramatically change the character of the entire city. While the following list is hardly definitive, it should help you understand some of the investment that our elected officials should proactively prioritize, instead of unplanned, ad hoc mega-projects hawked by private investors wearing expensive tailored suits. 

In my list I have focused on public investments that are low hanging fruit and that will either slow climate change or help us adapt to climate impacts already underway. 

• Los Angeles urgently needs a drought tolerant urban forest in its public and private areas. Median strips, sidewalk planting areas, and parks are in dreadful shape, as well as most yards. Many of the city’s trees are dying because they are not drought tolerant, and in to many areas there are long, bare stretches without any trees at all. But, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and Culver City have all demonstrated that a drought tolerant urban forest is possible. Therefore, the only question is how to make trees, not real estate speculation, the priority of our elected officials. 

• In conjunction with a drought tolerant urban forest, Los Angeles urgently needs to reinstate and upgrade the LADWP program to replace lawns, whether in parkways, front yards, or back yards, with drought tolerant gardens.

• Decentralized rooftop solar is begging for a massive roll out because of LA’s sunny climate. It not only makes houses and businesses energy independent, but excess power flows back to the LADWP’s grid, reducing its need to burn highly polluting coal and natural gas in distant power plants. 

• Natural disasters, whether fires or earthquakes, are waiting to happen. Our vast network of overhead utility wires and aging underground water, gas, and sewage lines are highly vulnerable. It might be expensive, but LA needs an integrated public works program to underground above ground utilities, while replacing and upgrading the systems that are already undergrounded. If streetlights and gas lines are already buried, why not electricity and telecommunications? 

• METRO’s plans, now on the ballot through Measure M, will go a long way to accelerate the transition from private cars to many alternative transportation modes, including repairing LA’s beat up sidewalks to promote walking. But, why should these improvements depend on a regressive sales tax, when trillions have already been thrown down the rat holes of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya  – with no end in sight, regardless of who wins the Presidential election?

Of course, none of this public development happens by itself. We cannot depend on a private tycoon to knock on the door of your local Councilmember with an offer to repair miles of broken sidewalks on his dime. Instead, it requires a rigorous planning process, including taking LA’s old infrastructure and public services General Plan elements out of mothballs so they can be updated. It also requires an annual monitoring program, and finally it requires that these plans be integrated into the City’s annual budget. 

It might also require a few fiscal changes, such as fixing Proposition 13, reprioritizing the City’s budget, and reinstating many Federal urban housing and transportation programs that slowly bit the dust during and after the Vietnam War. The money is undoubtedly there, and our elected officials need to tap into it.

(Dick Platkin reports on local city planning issues for CityWatch. He is a veteran city planner and welcomes comments and corrections at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

RANTZ & RAVEZ--Did the City of Los Angeles ever promise to provide you with efficient and timely service? 

Since preparing the RantZ and RaveZ articles, I have been on the lookout for stories that illustrate the functions of Los Angeles. Good and/or Bad. Unfortunately, I keep finding problems and very few positive items to illustrate to the readers of my column. 

A recent simple phone call to 311 is a prime example of the poor service the city provides taxpayers. 311 is the phone number to call in Los Angeles when you need to connect with a city department or elected official. It is an information service for LA City residents and business owners. 

On September 12, 2016, at 3:40 in the afternoon I phoned 311 attempting to obtain the phone number of an elected official’s valley office. I waited a total of 6 minutes until the operator answered the call. Six minutes waiting for the operator to simply answer the call and provide me with the contact number. I have no idea how many operators work the 311 system, but I do know that the city can do much better in serving the people who pay the taxes and fees in Los Angeles. 

The next time you need to connect with an LA City Dept., try using the 311 System and see how efficient it is for you. It is truly a RantZ this time around.

What the Hell is City Controller Ron Galperin doing to protect the city’s tax dollars? 

The LA Times has rated Mr. Galperin, the elected City Controller, as a “C in Leadership and Effectiveness.”With that type of rating by the most Liberal and bankrupt LA Times, what can we honestly expect from the elected official charged with maintaining Integrity, Honesty and Efficiency in all city operations? 

Shortly after being elected to the Controller’s Office, Mr. Galperin challenged the council approved agreement between the DWP and the Union representing the workers that provides funds for the safety and training of DWP employees. The matter was a major news story at the time and ended up in court. In the end, the union received all the funds they were due and Mr. Galprin ran back into his office and realized that he tackled a powerful union with a legitimate safety and training fund and lost the battle. The Controller spent huge sums of money and personnel on his crusade that fizzled like a balloon without helium. 

While Mr. Galperin counts the pebbles at the asphalt plant and cans of paint at the paint shop, the city is on track to continue losing millions of dollars in all types of lawsuits. Has the Controller done anything to stem the tide of millions of dollars lost in all the lawsuits? The simple answer is NO. The following list is an example of payouts in litigation against the city and the taxpayers of LA. These claims have all been paid while the Controller’s office has been run by Mr. Ron Galperin who truly lacks Leadership and Effectiveness.   

1. $ 23.7 Million paid out in a Dangerous Intersection Death.
2. $ 950,000 in two cases involving homeless people.
3. $ 1.1 Million in a homeless case.
4. $ 725,000 in legal fees to lawyers in a homeless case.
5. $ 450,000 settlement by USC Students.
6. $ 750,000 settlement with former City Official.
7. $ 50,000,000 to DWP Customers.
8. $ Millions to multiple LAPD Officers involved in ticket Quotas.
9. $ 5.9 Million to a group of officers in a ticket quota case.
10. $ 10 Million paid out in ticket quota cases.
11. $13 Million is attorney fees involved in DWP Case. 

While the cases mount and the city continues to pay millions upon millions of dollars in case after case, Mr. Galperin completes audit reports on the amount of overtime city employees are paid for the work they do. 

With a reduced work force in the past, it is often necessary to work overtime to get the job done. Instead of working with the numerous city departments engaged in city projects and programs, he spends his time spinning his wheels trying to justify his position. I hope someone comes around that will turn the Controller’s office into the watchdog it is designed to be. 

For the record, I am viewing various elected offices to possibly run for in the future. Could it be Neighborhood Council, Mayor, Controller, State Senator or Assemblyman? Time will tell. I will keep you informed as the days roll along. 

ZINE ELECTION CARD, Cont.

While most of you will agree that transportation in the Los Angeles region is totally and unquestionably at a gridlock stage most of the time, what is the answer to free up our local roads and freeways so we can drive our vehicles at or near the speed limit.   Freeway congestion is a fact of life on all Los Angeles Freeways. Take for example the 101 in the San Fernando Valley. It is listed as the most congested freeway in America. 

Then we have the 405 Freeway with the Billion plus Dollar improvements. If you ever have the opportunity to commute on the 405, you will find that it is at gridlock stage most days just like many of the freeways in the Los Angeles area. 

The solution coming from the elected officials and Cal Trans involves lots of money. More and money to correct a situation that is not going to change as long as Los Angeles and the cities in this region have growing populations. 

Glendale and every other city in the Los Angeles Area are planning more and more housing developments. Thousands of new residential units are in the planning, development and building stage all over Southern California. 

The answer from elected officials is naturally more money. More of your money to fix a problem that is out control and just getting worse. Transportation officials are attempting to have hundreds of thousands of Southern California motorists give up their cars and opt for public transportation. 

One thing is for sure, in our generation and into the future, we are not going to give up our cars like other cities in America that have had efficient and public transportation for years. The cities on the East Coast have very efficient public transportation that the public uses on a regular basis. It will not happen here in my lifetime or yours. 

A transit tax of ½ cent sales tax added to the already approved ½ sales tax that was added a few years ago will bring our sales tax to 9 ½ cents. This is only the beginning. There are additional taxes being proposed by the City and County of Los Angeles. I say enough with the pie in the sky solutions. 

I urge you to read the ballot measure on the ½ Cent Transportation Sales Tax and VOTE NO. We must send a message to City Hall and say NO NEW Taxes …Vote NO on Measure M.

(Dennis P. Zine is a 33-year member of the Los Angeles Police Department and former Vice-Chairman of the Elected Los Angeles City Charter Reform Commission, a 12-year member of the Los Angeles City Council and a current LAPD Reserve Officer who serves as a member of the Fugitive Warrant Detail assigned out of Gang and Narcotics Division. Disclosure: Zine was a candidate for City Controller last city election. He writes Rantz & Ravez for CityWatch. You can contact him at [email protected]. Mr. Zine’s views are his own and do not reflect the views of CityWatch.)

-cw