LOS ANGELES

PLANNING FOR THE PEOPLE-Not long ago I published a piece on the need to stop the LA City Planning Politburo because City Planning has long ago stopped becoming a force for rules and bylaws and started becoming a "build-build-build" shill. 

Similarly, I just published a piece on promoting both the Wilshire Subway and reconsidering a long-overdue Metro Rail/Metrolink connection in the City of Norwalk. 

And no, the two pieces are not in contradiction, or mutually exclusive. 

In general, those who fight for more transportation options are not interested in overbuilding the begeezus out of our city, county or state. They want mobility and options and an overall increase in environmental/economic improvement, happiness and quality of life for those of us who pay for New Starts projects. 

Yet we have too many vultures (often quite politically-connected) who figure out all sorts of creepy, sneaky ways to turn transportation advocates into "useful idiots" and justify all sorts of overdevelopment that no one in their right mind would want. 

After all, if we're trying to catch up in our congestion and mobility issues, why would we want to overdevelop and worsen our traffic problem? Or even just worsen our quality of life? 

A little bit of development is a nice compromise that makes a cute, sweet new (maybe affordable to most, maybe not, depending on the locale and development) neighborhood of homes or apartments. 

A whole lot of development where we build to the moon (THE MOON, DAMMIT, THE MOON!) just infuriates and insults the intelligence of all of us -- including the taxpayers who fund new transportation projects and get their rights taken away from them in return. 

So would anyone in their right mind want the arts district of Bergamot Station to be shut down just to create a monster development next to the Expo Line in Santa Monica? Maybe a "chill pill" … or three … is needed for the Santa Monica Council and Planning to create a very small housing project with commercial to make a real nice trip generator for that city...and tell the drooling developers and density-warriors to take their body parts elsewhere. 

Similarly, while I think the Norwalk Green Line Extension to connect LAX and LA County to the rest of Southern California region is a darned great project, I am very sensitive to the concerns of the Norwalk City Council and to Norwalk residents, and we should all take heed to those well-placed concerns. 

After visiting Norwalk last night, and hanging out with fellow Friends of the Green Line veteran Daniel Walker, we learned from the SCAG officials (who, happily are done with a quixotic MagLev campaign and are now spending their taxpayer-funded efforts on relevant issues) that the locals have lots of negative feelings and fears about this project. 

One look at the map shows that city to be right smack-dab in the middle of the I-5, I-105, I-605, and SR-91 freeways, and between the soon to be LAX-connected Green Line and Metrolink. Norwalk really is a "gateway city.” The freeway access to the eastern terminus of the Green Line is reportedly substandard, and access to the Metrolink station is a problem. 

So if we want to help Norwalk and enhance ridership/access/quality to the Green Line and Metrolink, we need to create a freeway/road fix that prevents cut-through residential neighborhood traffic to the current and future stations, establish a transit-oriented residential/commercial development near Firestone/Imperial that fits into that region, and a station that is near the county governmental hub at Imperial/Norwalk that makes sense. 

It's likely that part or all of this would have to be a subway, as considered before in the 1990s when this was last studied, and there's already about $1 billion funded for this "county light rail connector project.” And more will be needed to allow Norwalk to be enhanced, and not destroyed, by this project. 

So what does this have to do with Los Angeles and Measure S? I am guessing that Norwalk, unlike Los Angeles, isn't going to let any pro-transit sentiments allow creepy, sneaky developers (and their Planning and other density warriors) overdevelop Norwalk in the name of "transit oriented development" or "affordable housing" or "urban infill.” 

Los Angeles, like Norwalk, needs homes and neighborhoods, not projects or spot-zoning. Los Angeles, like Norwalk, needs to obey its laws and not be bought out by developer money -- and it sure as HELL shouldn't need the Sea Breeze scandal and Measure S to finally, finally say no to developer campaign contributions.. 

Let's revisit Measure S: 

• Developers will have to have to pay for their traffic and environmental impact reports to be done by independent experts, and not by their own hired guns. EIR's have to mean something, and they have to be credible. 

• Backroom deals between billionaire developers and City Councilmembers will be made illegal, and City Council rules and laws will be adhered to and enforced. 

• Developers will have to prove to impacted communities that their new megaprojects can absorb the new development with respect to traffic and other environmental impacts.  

• Despite claims by mega-developers that they want to create affordable housing, the opposite has been the result of these at-market and oversized, over-tall projects (which often have over 50% vacancy) that ultimately leave fewer, and not more, truly affordable housing for Angelenos.  

• The City Council will have to (finally) update the City’s legally-required Community and General Plans that balance growth and environmental impacts. 

You know ... follow and obey the laws! 

We need a Transportation Infrastructure for the 21st Century -- and we made big progress towards that with Measures R in 2008 and M in 2016. 

We also need a Planning Infrastructure for the 21st Century -- let's make progress in that direction as well with Measure S in 2017.

(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties.  He is also a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at  [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THE PEOPLE SPEAK--On March 7, Los Angeles residents get one last chance to assert their fundamental right to shape what our city becomes before our wonderful city of towns and villages is paved over by glass box mega-developments, the terrible traffic they cause, and the glut of empty $3,500 apartments nobody wants, now marching across LA. 

Measure S, the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, is the fix to this broken and rigged system at City Hall. 

A “yes” on Measure S puts planning back in the planning department, dismantling the current system of backroom real estate dealing by City Council members -- 15 individuals who are utterly unqualified to engage in private and inappropriate "spot zoning" deals with some of the world's richest and slickest developers. 

As the Los Angeles Times has repeatedly reported in recent months, elected leaders at City Hall are accepting huge amounts of cash, gifts and wining and dining from wealthy developers. Then, those same City Hall elected leaders are handing these same developers special exemptions from our protective zoning rules. 

Winning an exemption from LA's height zoning rules, for example, can mean an instant, unearned, $20 million profit to a developer who suddenly is allowed by a councilmember to build 20 stories instead of 4 stories. 

A single exemption from the General Plan -- those are granted by City Councilmembers to let a developer use the land for something that's entirely inappropriate and not allowed by the city's own laws -- can mean an instant, unearned $40 million or larger profit for that developer. 

That's what happened when City Hall agreed to let a rich developer squeeze the Sea Breeze luxury housing project between a couple of noisy warehouses, a Houston-style approach to planning. Which is to say, no planning at all. 

City Hall's gross misbehavior is at the heart of this system of free money, big money -- and corrupt money. Our City Council is selling its votes. They do so at the expense of all of us. 

Measure S strikes directly at the heart of this dysfunctional, New Jersey-style mess. So our opposition, the defenders of this status quo are up in arms, New Jersey-style. 

Funded largely by the Chamber and three billionaires -- the Lowy global mall kings of Australia, the multi-national skyscraper-building Kahn family of Miami, and the Lowes global resort kings in LA -- powerful lobbyists are running a cynical campaign designed to trick Los Angeles residents into voting against their own self-interest on March 7. 

The billionaire mega-developers and their cronies know that they can’t beat us using the truth. So they’re saying, doing and spending whatever it takes to win -- at all costs. 

Let's conduct some myth-busting here, with the understanding that the lies issued by opponents of Measure S are going to get much more extreme and out of this world. 

According to their fantastical accounts, Measure S, the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, would “stop the building of everything -- from affordable housing, to hospitals, schools, and parks.” We at Measure S even apparently view “new toilets” as over-development. 

We also have a secret "housing ban" tucked somewhere in our back pocket. A Westside City Councilman and a Valley City Councilman are telling their constituents that we, ahem, "ban all development." (We got calls from people who were upset about being spoon-fed these obvious whoppers while meeting with the councilmembers.) 

A Hollywood Councilman has been running around saying we will stop projects already underway (another ahem), and the mayor is flirting with trying to claim that LA's entire economy is teetering atop a coterie of rich land developers who must be allowed to break the zoning rules. 

The Chamber of Commerce president, emboldened by this fake news from on high, illegally lied about Measure S in official ballot literature (Measure S is going to ruin the economy), as did a well-known economist who was paid to do so by the three billionaires. Both the Chamber president and the economist had to retract their lies, just last week. 

As I wrote in the Los Angeles Daily News back in August, "Sadly, our measure also bans rainbows, outlaws donuts, and deports the tooth fairy." 

What's going on here? What's going on is that voters are about to force City Hall to do its job and play by the rules. 

And that will leave a lot of instant wealth for some of the world's richest developers sitting on the table, and crimp the fundraising ability of some of California's most cash-needy politicians. 

The truth is that in Los Angeles, 95% of developers play by the rules. The truth is that 95% of developers do NOT give money to the City Council, mayor and other officials. The truth is that 95% of developers do NOT engage in these greedy bidding wars that have driven our land values sky high, in turn driving our rents into the stratosphere. 

The truth is that only about 5% of developers active in Los Angeles drive the actions of elected officials at Los Angeles City Hall, just as they own and drive nice cars. 

The truth is, 95% of development will continue to flourish under Measure S, because Measure S is about working out the rules in a transparent setting with strong input from residents, then following those rules. And 95% of developers actually honor our local zoning. 

The truth is that affordable housing will flourish under Measure S, because Measure S exempts from most of the city's zoning rules those developers who will build 100% affordable housing -- an exception that we ourselves carved out, due to the great need. 

The truth is that Measure S does NOT halt any project underway, for any reason, even if it's one of the hideous glass boxes that is helping Los Angeles each day look more and more like Charlotte, NC. 

Instead, think of Measure S as "the gift of time for our City Council and mayor." 

Suddenly, instead of spending hundreds of hours cutting backroom, closed-door deals to let developers get around the zoning rules, our city leaders can spend those recaptured hours doing right by the residents and taxpayers. What at treat that will be. 

The City Council and mayor can spend this recaptured time figuring out how to end the wanton destruction of 1,000 units of affordable rent-stabilized apartments by developers every single year. So far, 22,000 irreplaceable, sound, older low-rent units have vanished since 2000. 

Suddenly, on March 7, our elected leaders will have loads of new free time to actually create a plan for spending the badly needed bond money we voters approved in November to build homeless housing with support services. 

(At a city hearing a few weeks ago, a city official let slip that, ahem, they are already toying with requiring that only 50% of the housing financed by we taxpayers provide the full shelter and services City Hall promised in the bond measure.) 

Suddenly, instead of spending hundreds of hours being lobbied and wined and dined by developers seeking ways around our rules, the City Council and mayor can spend it addressing our exploding water mains, our cracking sewer mains, our bodacious potholes and our long-promised parks. 

Our opponents know they can’t win on March 7 on the merits. They know that voters want affordable housing and reasonably priced housing, not the City Council's luxury rental housing glut with its 15% to 20% vacancy rates. Our opponents know voters want less gridlock, not worse traffic backing up as far as three miles from absurdly oversized projects. 

And most frightening to our misbehaving status quo, they know we’re onto them. Voters have realized that City Hall is rigged, thanks in no small part to recent coverage by the Los Angeles Times, and also thanks to our own stories by award-winning journalist Patrick Range McDonald at VoteYESonS.org. 

As I wrote in the Daily News, "Voters aren’t going to stand by as the character, culture, and connectivity of our city gets washed away in a sea of unwanted and unaffordable luxury housing mega-developments."

(Jill Stewart, a former journalist, is campaign director for the Coalition to Preserve LA, sponsor of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ELECTION 2017--My name is David (Zuma Dogg) Saltsburg. I'm running for mayor of Los Angeles and I will be using all the mayoral campaign platforms allowed me to raise awareness of and to urge CityWatchLA readers to vote for … and get out the vote for … "Yes On S!"

My mayoral campaign is already a success because I get to write this article for CityWatch … whom I consider to be the front line of LA watchdog activism. I began my own LA watchdog(g) activism ten years ago and there are not nearly as many platforms for city activists as there were when I started.

I'm probably not going to say anything that CityWatch readers don't already know (many of you, who tell me what I know, know more than I do) but I'm a public figure and decided to get on the ballot. The people of LA need a voice a City Hall now more than ever. We need to be a CityWatch Army between now and March 7.

So, first of all, please do all you can to raise awareness that there is, indeed, a citywide election this March 7th. People are "electioned-out" and I'm fearful that if someone sees an election campaign sign they assume it's from the election we just had. So, with this local, under-the-radar election just letting people know the date of the election is a priority.

Secondly, I of course want you to vote for me and tell everyone else to vote for me because I believe I'm LA's only hope to keep this ship from sinking into something we no longer recognize. (Check out my video. See if you agree with me.)  

Next, get out the #YesOnS vote. Tell everyone you know, "Yes on Measure S” … because even if LA skyscraper developer Eric Garcetti is re-elected, Measure S will prevent him from selling-out LA to China developers for a Shanghai Surprise on the city and its residents.

The skyscraper issue is central to many other issues people are outraged about:

Traffic gridlock getting worse. Skyscrapers cause more traffic jams. When they are being constructed and then when 1000 more people are living on street that isn't any wider and multiply this over a decade of Eric Garcetti's, "Smart Growth."

Garcetti actually said that the goal is to make traffic so bad, that people jump out of their cars and take mass transit. But these people moving into million dollar (plus) condos drive cars and are not going to hop out to take the bus or rail. We all know this.

The city has to STOP doing things to make traffic worse. Garcetti justifies that everyone is gonna take the bus, so he can sell out LA to China developers for Skyscraper City. New York and China were built around mass transit. Los Angeles was not and is not a city that lends itself to mass transit and I'm not gonna waste precious column space explaining why anymore because you know.

Skyscrapers also have driven up housing costs and the overall expense to live in LA and it has caused an increase in homelessness. And, when I say "increase" I mean we have a triple alarm emergency on the streets (sidewalks, actually) of Los Angeles -- and Garcetti and City Hall CONTINUE to ignore building affordable housing and are still all about skyscrapers.

If you flew in from another world and evaluated city hall you would think they are a skyscraper development firm. Do they do ANYTHING else? Sorry, Garshady; EVERYTHING needs to STOP and we need to address the homeless issue.

Even if you aren't caring or compassionate about homeless people, as a city we can't have encampments on sidewalks, all over. Does Garcetti think the Olympics are going to come here?

It is going to take new and innovative approaches in ways the city is not used to and has never done before. HHH isn't going to be a drip in the bucket in actual number of people off the streets; compared to how many we have (and more are coming). I met a company at a neighborhood council meeting that takes portable shipping containers and converts them into home units. I am IN LOVE with these units; and you can see a video, about them on my website).

All the density of skyscrapers taxes LA's infrastructure, way too much. Water is a limited (and increasingly expensive) resource. They say we don't have enough emergency response/police on the street as it is … and they keep on adding more skyscrapers that allow more people to jam into the area.

I am not of the belief that people are coming here, anyway so we have to keep building more and more and more and more luxury housing to accommodate. The community decides what kind of city they want and we don't want China or Manhattan. It won't work in LA because of geographic layout alone. I wasn't a science wiz but remember "Law of Diffusion." So, stop building skyscrapers and people will have to live their lives in other communities.

Can't have a bunch of millionaires zipping around LA in Maserati's while we the people have to walk in the streets because the sidewalks are filled with tent encampments. STOP THE MADNESS! Vote Yes on S. And Yes on Zuma Dogg!

(David (Zuma Dogg) Saltsburg is a candidate for Los Angeles mayor. He has been a community activist in Los Angles for more than 10 years successfully taking on City Hall on numerous occasions. Learn more here.) 

-cw

TRUMP RESPONDS ‘STREEP OVERRATED’--Occasionally entertainment and politics intersect, often hitting a false note. You never want your screenplay to be, as they say in Hollywood, “on the nose.” You have to step sideways away from ordinary news and address some dimension of the human condition to make art.

But in moments of national crisis, stars feel a need to speak out. Nick Gass [[http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/the-oscars-most-politically-charged-moments-115392 ]]   has reviewed some of the major such incidents at the Academy Awards. Jane Fonda used her moment on the stage at the Academy Awards in the 1970s to denounce the Vietnam War. Marlon Brando declined to appear and had a Native American activist accept for him, making a statement about Indian rights.

Robin Corey tells the story of how in 1978 Vanessa Redgrave was picketed by the Jewish Defense League because of her support for Palestinian rights, and when she won her category anyway, she said, “I think you should be very proud that in the last few weeks you’ve stood firm and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression.”

Michael Moore denounced the Iraq War.

So we now have another such moment, as Meryl Streep tearfully addressed the stars assembled at the Golden Globes about her anxieties and distress at the advent of the Trump era in the United States. 

She pointed out, as Hugh Laurie already had, that those assembled at the Golden Globes award ceremony (put on by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association) were Hollywood, foreigners, and the press, the very sort of people who have been vilified for the past 18 months by Donald J. Trump. (Laurie had wondered if last night’s ceremony would be the last, as all the foreigners were kicked out of the country).

(Donald Trump responds instantly: Calls Streep ‘overrated Hillary flunky’) 

She pointed out the diversity of the origins of the actors in the room, saying that Amy Adams, Natalie Portman, Ruth Negga, Ryan Gosling and Dev Patel were born abroad: “Where are their birth certificates?” she asked.

The essence of the acting art, she affirmed, is to get inside a character who is foreign to us and make us feel what they feel. “And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that, breathtaking, passionate work.”

She was making two points against the xenophobia, the irrational hatred of foreigners, at the center of the Trump campaign and at the center of his Neonazi fringe, such as the Breitbart thugs. One is that key American industries, including the entertainment industry, often attain their excellence through openness to talent from abroad.

The second is a far more subtle and powerful point, which is that no human experience is really foreign to us as human beings if only we can find the tools to understand it, emotionally and intellectually. She was standing up for her craft, acting, as xenophilic, as involving a love of the foreign, insofar as the falling away of strangeness is the goal of great acting.

Her most powerful intervention, however, referred to Donald J. Trump’s mocking of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who is challenged by a congenital joint condition.

By the way, the mocking was provoked by Kovaleski’s having stood up to Trump over his false and monstrous claim that large crowds of Muslim-Americans celebrated the September 11 attacks in New Jersey. She called Trump’s antics a “performance” but lamented that it was in “real life.” She thus drew attention to the similarity of the political speech, which spins a narrative and often involves some mugging for the camera or even doing impressions of people, to the actor’s performance. Her complaint is that when Trump bully Kovaleski in public, he gave permission to all Americans to be mean to the weak, to become a nation of goons.

CNN: "Trump mocks reporter with disability": 

Streep is in tears because a Fascist is about to take the helm of our country. And her apprehension over how the tone set by the White House could coarsen the fabric of everyday life is well-placed. Her call on the press to confront these tendencies may be a bit forlorn. The television media, at least, appear to view Trump as a cash cow because he attracts eyeballs, which allows them to earn more from advertising.

But I think the situation is even more dire than just a president who encourages bullying by example. I think there is a danger that Neo-Nazis and Klansmen and other such gangs may start beating up Jews, and Muslims and Latinos and African-Americans. I think there is a danger that Attorney General Jeff Sessions will encourage this racialized violence, and that local police will be encouraged to wink at it. I fear a tear in the fabric of the rule of law. Fascism doesn’t begin with a big military machine, it begins with gangs of brutes.

Ms. Streep left us with the most wonderful advice, relayed from the late Carrie Fisher: “the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once, take your broken heart, make it into art.”

Art yes. But also resistance.

(Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan and an occasional contributor to CityWatch. He has written extensively on modern Islamic movements in Egypt, the Persian Gulf and South Asia. This post originally ran on Juan Cole’s website.)

-cw

DEEGAN ON LA-Is METRO mocking us? The regional public transportation giant that moves tens of thousands of people across Los Angeles every day, says that the recent voter approval of Prop M, and the billions of annual tax dollars it will bring to them forever (there is no sunset for this special tax) is not enough. They say Prop M is just for construction and not operations. We need more money from some other source to help keep fares down, they plead. Otherwise, it seems, transit riders may be asked to help make up the difference through fare increases. 

Coming out of their December board meeting, Metro directors want us to believe they must have what they call a “Property Naming-Corporate Sponsorship Policy” and the sales from it to help pay their operating expenses. 

This presents an interesting dichotomy: wealthy corporate interests splashing their names all over transit “products” in a pay-to-play scheme on one end, targeting mostly Latino and Black riders on the other end. Metro’s latest “Biannual Onboard Survey” indicates Latinos make up around half of all bus and train riders, with Blacks making up about one quarter. So, 75% of all riders fit a specific ethnic profile that is attractive for advertisers and corporate sponsors. These leading racial groups, as well as other transit riders, may be asked to pay higher fares if other sources of revenue like corporate sponsorships are not available. 

For Metro, a public agency stewarding a public resource, to activate the sponsorship program could trigger a slippery slope leading to the crass commercialization of an otherwise very good public transit system. Leveraging corporate branding by condescending to minority riders, telling them that it will save them a rate hike, is bad policy and bad public relations. 

Here are the naming rights Metro says are up for grabs in the categories of Facilities, Transit Services, Programs, and Events:

• rail or bus stations
• parking lots and parking structures
• maintenance buildings and structures
• the Metro headquarters building in downtown Los Angeles
• light and heavy rail lines
• bus service lines and routes
• transit way service lines and routes
• established Metro-operated efforts/initiatives for the benefit of customers and communities
• seasonal, annual or one-time events led and initiated by Metro 

Apple paid the Chicago Transit Authority almost $4 million several years ago to refurbish the Clybourn Red Line station that, coincidentally, happened to be the location of the new Apple store. In fact, the new plaza for the subway platform connects directly with the Apple store, giving riders the opportunity to exit the train and enter the store within just a few feet. While Apple hoped for the stop to be renamed the “Apple Red Line” stop the city demurred, offering instead the right of first refusal if they ever decide to sell naming rights to stations, which so far, they have not. No other major city, admits Metro, has gone even as far as the platform deal between Chicago and Apple. 

Los Angeles, a leader in so many ways, does not need to take the lead in this form of commercialization by giving corporations naming rights to our transit system 

Hopefully Metro will learn from the public beating and disastrous lesson suffered by the Department of Recreation and Parks last summer, when they authorized a hip hop clothing manufacturer to receive naming and logo placement rights to a basketball court that the hip-hoppers would build in Runyon Canyon Park. Like Metro, Rec and Parks is seeking additional revenue through corporate sponsorships, but is now taking a much harder look at the consequences. They cancelled the b-ball sponsorship deal after a huge public and political outcry. 

Metro directors may want to take some time to reflect on David Foster Wallace’s brilliant and sometimes satirical novel “Infinite Jest” about a dystopian near-future in which each calendar year is sold off to corporate sponsorships, including the “Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar,” the “Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster,” and the “Year of the Whopper.” 

Let’s hope that 2017 doesn’t become the “Year of the Jumbo Mistake by Metro.” 

(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].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST COMMENTARY--On December 19, Mayor Garcetti, accompanied by City Attorney Mike Feuer, announced that $5 million of Los Angeles taxpayers' money will be used to pay defense costs for undocumented immigrants facing deportation. Experts immediately challenged this gift of public funds, because deportation is a civil matter. They also claim it is discriminatory because it applies to only one group of individuals.  

Garcetti's chest-pounding response to Donald Trump's threat to enforce federal immigration law may have been staged during the holiday shopping frenzy and religious observances due to an ulterior motive. It distracted watchdogs' and the major media’s attention from announcements of the final versions of hiring mandates for both the City and private businesses – something that should alarm every Los Angeles resident, business owner, taxpayer, consumer and investor. 

On December 14, former Councilmember Jackie Goldberg, head of the Workforce Restoration Working Group, gave a progress report to Paul Koretz' Personnel and Animal Welfare committee on the Mayor's Executive Directive to hire 5,000 new City employees, which is launching in January 2017. The primary goal is to assure that those traditionally turned away due to criminal records or other issues have an increased opportunity to be hired.  

To accomplish this, Garcetti ordered all City Department heads to ensure that no applicant for "non-executive positions that do not involve public safety" is asked to disclose criminal convictions until after a conditional offer of employment has been made. It also admonished that credit history cannot be considered for non-executive positions "where the only basis for using the report is that a position is managerial." 

Garcetti described this Targeted Local Hire Program as, "an unprecedented opportunity to rethink the way we deliver services to meet the 21st Century demands of our residents.”

It is definitely unprecedented. It ignores that all City employees are at some level involved in "public safety." LA's historic tough background checks were to assure that personal and/or confidential information provided to the City is not improperly used or disclosed by employees. Another concern is that, even if not assigned to jobs deemed unsuitable due to criminal history, City badges can provide employees entry to private property and access to families and children.

Goldberg listed, in order, those who will soon be targeted for hire as City workers: (1) the homeless; (2) formerly incarcerated, including those on parole or probation; (3) "former" gang members; and (4) troubled and "disconnected"/fostered youth. These individuals will be recruited to replace the 46% of current City employees eligible for retirement within two years. 

Veterans are No. 5 on the list, followed by transgender individuals, the disabled, and the elderly. The application will not ask about criminal background, drug use, or credit history. The only requirements are to speak English well enough to be trained and have a legal right to work in the U.S., Goldberg said.  

These employees will earn $15 per hour, plus full benefits, as office trainees or in field jobs and will be permanent after six months or be eligible for promotion. Goldberg used the Mayor's analogy of this providing a "pathway back." 

KFI listeners may recall that on Memorial Day last year, KFI talk-show hosts John and Ken relentlessly chided Garcetti for his statement equating jail time with military deployment and veterans' service. During his announcement of a $9 million partnership between the City and CalTrans to employ the formerly incarcerated, Garcetti urged, "When people have paid their debt to society...we should be not just thanking them for serving that time, but allowing them a pathway back in."

Although the Mayor later claimed this was an error, he had just exposed his intention to force hiring of individuals with criminal records. But, he did not reveal they would be given preference over veterans for City jobs. 

No explanation has been given as to why LA residents and youth who have not been incarcerated, not joined gangs or become homeless are not provided an equal opportunity for entry-level City employment. 

Even more disturbing, Garcetti's "pathway back in" does not stop there. His Fair Chance Initiative resulted in Ordinance No. 184652 - "to limit employers' consideration of the criminal history of applicants for employment." This very restrictive law was signed by the Mayor on December 7 and posted in City Hall beginning December 13 for ten days. It applies to all private businesses with ten or more employees, located in or doing business in Los Angeles, and becomes effective January 22, 2017. 

Here is a brief introduction to this very complex law: 

It applies to any individual, firm, corporation, partnership, organization, group or association that is located or doing business in the City employing ten or more employees, including owners, managers and supervisors. 

Applicants can't be asked about their criminal background, nor can employers conduct any “direct or indirect” (including internet) search or ask any question that, “seeks the disclosure of an applicant’s criminal history” until after a conditional job offer is made.  

There are a few narrow exceptions for those carrying firearms on the job or otherwise prohibited by law from holding the position.  

If employment is then denied, the employer must perform a “written assessment that effectively links the specific aspects of the Applicant’s Criminal History with risks inherent in the duties” of the job. The assessment must satisfy all factors set forth by the City. 

Non-selected Applicants can file a civil action against the Employer. 

Fines for violation of this ordinance include the questionable provision that an "administrative fine paid by an Employer for a violation of this article may be awarded by the City to the Applicant or Employee up to a maximum of $500 per violation." Has the City become a collection agency for individuals to receive funds garnered as city revenue? 

Ironically, SEC. 189.14. AUTHORITY, states "This article is adopted pursuant to the police powers vested in the City...and is intended to promote the general welfare." 

Even in the holiday bustle, most Angelenos heard the Mayor's well-publicized and broadcast pledge to defend immigrants facing deportation. Why was Garcetti less forthcoming about his new hiring mandates for the City and private businesses? He just sent out a campaign email itemizing reasons to support his re-election. Why was this not on his list?

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

SPECIAL TO CITYWATCH--The story of saving Parker Center is nearly as entangled as the history of the place itself. The former LAPD headquarters, designed by Welton Becket and Associates and built in 1955 in downtown LA’s Civic Center, has been threatened with demolition for years. 

Its fate has become mired in matters having less to do with preservation than politics. In and of itself, the political nature of this effort is not surprising. What does set Parker Center apart from other preservation advocacy issues is the lack of a real plan -- by the City and for the City -- other than to get rid of Parker Center. 

Can Parker Center be saved and be re-purposed for a new use? Yes, the Los Angeles Conservancy strongly believes that it can and should be, but will it? Given the current direction set by the City administration, it looks more likely that Parker Center will be demolished and for all the wrong reasons. Here’s why. 

Plans Designed to Fail 

When the Los Angeles police headquarters moved from Parker Center to its new facility in 2009, the preservation community knew that the historic building’s future was very much in question. Yet no clear plan emerged until 2012, when the City, through its Bureau of Engineering (BOE), first released an initial study looking at ways to house upwards of 5,500 City staff near City Hall. The City’s stated need for over a million new square feet of office space is based on a now-dated study calling for 200 square feet per employee. 

While preservation and reuse were considered, the environmental review process leaned heavily toward what has become the City’s preferred project: to demolish Parker Center and build a new 450-foot high-rise tower on the site. 

Plan 1: Too Small 

Besides leaving Parker Center as is -- which wouldn’t come close to meeting the City’s stated project objectives -- the only reuse alternative called for keeping most of Parker Center intact and building a new addition and short tower at the rear. Yet this alternative was essentially designed to fail. 

For no apparent reason, the new addition was capped at eleven stories, falling far short of the City’s stated project goal to provide at least a million square feet of office space. 

Clearly, this alternative couldn’t meet a basic goal defined by the City. We asked the City, “Why not plan a taller addition that provides more square footage, and why was this the only preservation alternative provided?” We asked these questions repeatedly for the next three years as the process continued to play out. We are still waiting for a response from the City. 

Plan 2: Too Expensive 

In May 2015, City Councilmember José Huizar instructed the BOE to study another preservation alternative that would more likely deliver what the City wanted: a 750,000-square-foot building. Now joined in the preservation effort by the City’s Cultural Heritage Commission, we were pleased and looked forward to working with the BOE to develop a “win-win” alternative to demolition. 

Instead, the BOE quietly developed a new alternative on its own, with no involvement by the preservation community or architects experienced in preservation. Without any advance notice, the BOE took its analysis to the City’s Municipal Facilities Committee in August 2016, which voted to recommend the initial plan to demolish Parker Center. 

The committee rejected the new preservation alternative as being too expensive. The City claims that this alternative will cost nearly $107 million more than the City’s preferred project (all-new construction.) 

This significant cost differential is surprising, as we know from experience that adaptive reuse often costs much less than all-new construction. We asked to see the detailed analysis to understand how the City arrived at this figure. Apparently there is no such analysis -- nothing substantive has been provided to date. 

With no substantiation from the City, we asked experts in private development and adaptive reuse to take a look at the alternative to examine what little details they could. 

We believe that the cost estimates in the new alternative are heavily inflated -- described by some as the City “putting their thumb on the scale.” The City makes several assumptions that indefensibly disadvantage preservation, and some just don’t make sense. 

For instance, the alternative places a fifteen-story building atop eight stories of above-grade parking, which no private developer would do. It also makes the preservation option nearly 65,000 square feet larger, requiring more parking spaces for the same number of people and further driving up rehabilitation costs. 

The City also assumes that the contractor’s fee and general conditions require $14.2 million more for preservation than for all-new construction. There is no basis for this assumption. These types of cost premiums appear throughout the plan’s summary, adding up until the number is so big that no one would ever choose it over a much less expensive option. 

UPDATE [January 7, 2017]: Based on a convening on January 6 by the Conservancy of a panel of preservation experts (comprising highly experienced developers, architects, cost estimator, and seismic engineer), we strongly believe the reuse of Parker Center can actually result in a savings of nearly $50 million, and possibly far more. This directly contradicts claims made by the City stating preservation will cost $107 million more than all-new construction. See this fact sheet for details.

Missed Opportunity for Civic Center Master Plan 

When City Councilmember José Huizar made his motion in 2015 to study a new preservation alternative, he also directed the City to undertake a plan for the Civic Center. The Conservancy and others had urged the City to develop a cohesive vision for the Civic Center before deciding the fate of Parker Center. 

A master plan for the Civic Center is a great opportunity to provide a thoughtful framework for meeting the City and private sector’s needs for years to come. For instance, even if Parker Center were replaced, the City has stated a desire for even more space for City staff. There may be more efficient and thoughtful ways to add this square footage throughout the Civic Center, without relying solely on the Parker Center site to provide more than half of the space the City says it needs. 

Most master plans are large-scale, visionary, and based on extensive public input. By contrast, this has been a quiet and quick process involving a limited group of community stakeholders. The community advisory committee (CAC) contains representatives of nearby business improvement districts, including in part Little Tokyo and the Historic Core. The City declined requests by the Conservancy and the Cultural Heritage Commission to participate on the CAC. 

Despite the fact that Parker Center’s fate has yet to be decided, the Civic Center master plan process assumed that the building is gone. The absence of Parker Center is a foregone conclusion and a central premise of the master plan -- despite the plan having a stated objective to “balance past and present” as part of a legacy goal for the Civic Center. 

This deeply disappointing approach puts the cart before the horse, rather than studying all options from the beginning. It also presumes that the City Council will vote for Parker Center’s destruction before they even consider the master plan. 

In many ways, this is not a true master plan for the entire Civic Center. It addresses only the core of the Civic Center, primarily the city-owned properties. The plan focuses mainly on three blocks consisting of the Los Angeles Mall, City Hall East and South, and the block containing the 911 Call Center, Metro Detention, and Parker Center. From what we have been able to assess, the plan proposes a series of high-rise towers, as a companion to the one envisioned at the Parker Center site. 

We anticipate a final plan for the Civic Center to be released in January 2017. We also anticipate members of the CAC to support the plan, in part because of how the new development will be limited and what it can offer as a buffer. 

For some, particularly members of the Little Tokyo community who are most directly affected, Parker Center is essentially a pawn in a game of chess. Agreeing to support the demolition of Parker Center can help ensure that no new development spills over into Little Tokyo in the future. The “master plan” would also provide more than a thousand new parking spaces for the area. 

Reluctance by members of the Little Tokyo community to preserve Parker Center is understandable, given the neighborhood’s negative association with the building. Parker Center came into being through urban renewal and the destruction of two of the most vibrant blocks in the community. 

In 2014, the Little Tokyo Historical Society joined the Conservancy in urging the City to support a preservation alternative, in part to tell the story of what happened to their community. At the time, members of the society expressed a desire to own their past, rather than wiping it away through yet another demolition. Yet in recent months, as part of the Civic Center master plan process, the Historical Society has changed its position and now supports Parker Center’s demolition. 

We Can Do Better by Working Together 

The likely demolition of this highly significant building will happen not for valid reasons, and certainly not from a lack of trying by the Conservancy, the Cultural Heritage Commission, and many others. It will happen as the result of a misguided, flawed, and opaque government process designed in many ways to ensure the destruction of Parker Center.

In a one-two punch, the replacement project will likely go before the City’s Entertainment and Facilities Committee on Tuesday, January 10, 2017. We expect the committee to recommend the project, and for the full City Council to cast its final vote very soon thereafter—perhaps within days.

Meanwhile, the Historic-Cultural Monument nomination for Parker Center is still pending, waiting to be scheduled before the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee. The Cultural Heritage Commission (CHC) re-submitted the nomination in September 2016, after a procedural error by the City essentially voided the initial nomination submitted by the CHC in 2014. Yet the proposed project calling for the building’s demolition will likely be approved before its designation as a landmark. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a better option for everyone than what’s now on the table. By working together, we can find a solution for Parker Center. Let’s engage and bring in the preservation expertise to begin addressing the various challenges and opportunities for this project, from rehabilitation and costs to community connectivity as part of a larger Civic Center vision. 

How You Can Help

Please call and request a meeting with Councilmember José Huizar, Council President Herb Wesson, and Mayor Eric Garcetti and strongly urge their support for Parker Center and its preservation through an adaptive reuse project. Parker Center is located within Councilmember Huizar’s district and his position especially matters as other councilmembers are likely to support his stance. 

City Councilmember Jose Huizar
Phone: (213) 473-7014
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/huizar.jose/
Chief of Staff Paul Habib, [email protected] 

City Council President Herb Wesson
Phone: (213) 473-7010
Email: [email protected] 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HerbWessonJr/
Chief of Staff Deron Williams, [email protected] 

Mayor Eric Garcetti
Phone: (213) 978-0600
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/garcetti

(Adrian Scott Fine is director of advocacy for the Los Angeles Conservancy.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ALPERN TALKS TRANSIT--There is no reason to choose between more options for mobility and commuting. Improved roads, freeways, rail systems, bus routes, etc. need not be created at the expense of the others--it's like choosing food versus water.  Similarly, it's pointless and immature to choose between transportation infrastructure and planning infrastructure--without one, the other falls apart. 

Similarly, local versus regional versus federal help for our roads and freeways and rail systems need not be independent of the other.  Those who want more high-speed rail and yet give the cold shoulder (or even a more pejorative expression) to highway construction/upgrades are not part of the answer, they're part of the problem--and, of course, vice versa. 

On the Eastside of LA County, and in the Southeast Cities of LA County, that region benefits from both an I-5 widening and I-605 upgrade as well as with new Metro Rail lines planned to link into the current Gold and Green lines. 

And it sure wouldn't hurt to have a double-barreled approach to the South Bay Cities of L.A. County, in that a new Major Investment Study to extend and expedite the South Bay Green Line to Torrance, San Pedro and the Long Beach Blue Line is as timely as any potential freeway enhancements to the I-405 South Bay curve. 

And if some of us who foam at the mouth at any discussion of new freeways would just "take a chill pill", here's another reasonable question: would a freeway to connect LAX to the I-10 freeway via the La Cienega corridor, or an upgrade/expansion of the Downtown I-10, be any less desired by commuters than a direct LAX-Downtown train without the Crenshaw and Expo Line detour? 

So let's talk about regional rail efforts that might APPEAR local, but yet enjoy regional planning and consensus, and (no thanks to Sacramento) are getting regional and federal support. 

Regional Rail Example #1: The Wilshire Subway 

One of the best nominees of the outgoing presidential administration is one Anthony Foxx, the U.S. Transportation Secretary (photo above) who was unanimously nominated by the Senate and who is an advocate for both automobile and transit funding, and is a powerful advocate for both public and private funding for New Starts in transportation. 

Secretary Foxx was present for a ceremonial signing of $1.6 billion in federal funding to extend the Metro Purple Line (a.k.a. "the Wilshire Subway") to Century City.  This Wilshire Subway/Purple Line is used by commuters all over the county and Southern California region to access their jobs, and is already undergoing extension to La Cienega. 

The La Cienega extension is phase one of the Purple Line westward push to the 405 freeway, and the Century City extension is phase two. Measure R, the half-cent sales tax approved by LA County voters in 2008, is already dedicating $747 million for this second phase. 

The whopping $1.6 billion for the second phase allows all sorts of projects (including the third phase of the Wilshire Subway/Purple Line to the West LA Veterans Center) to be moved up the planning ladder at Metro as money becomes available for these other projects as a result of the federal grant. 

And although Sacramento has been dedicating by far too much money away from this locally-preferred project, the Purple Line continues to draw bipartisan support both from Washington and throughout LA County.  Let's hope that another grant is forthcoming for the third phase of the Purple Line. 

Regional Rail Example #2 

There are three main gaps of the Green Line--the first light rail line that didn't have a direct connection to Downtown, and which helps connect the peripheral regions of LA County to each other--to LAX, to the South Bay Cities, and to Norwalk. 

In that order, the attention, focus, and priority of both planners and budget directors at Metro exists to correct these "Green Gaps".  Of note is that--when the old Friends of the Green Line project did their outreach fifteen years ago--the local consensus was also in that same order. 

First, LAX.  Second, the South Bay Cities to Redondo Beach and Torrance.  And third, gone but not forgotten, is Norwalk.   

There is a major Metrolink train station at Norwalk that serves commuters from Orange and Riverside counties, and years ago an eastern Green Line extension was planned to connect this 2.8 mile gap between Metro Rail and Metrolink. 

It's no secret that when major connections and destinations are reached via train (or even bus) transit routes, ridership explodes incrementally.  That happened when the Red Line Subway connected to Universal City and North Hollywood, and when the Expo Line connected to the Westside. 

So it's long overdue that this "Green Gap" connecting LA, Orange and Riverside counties be revisited.  The locals in Norwalk and Santa Fe Springs did not show us a lot of love at all fifteen years, ago, but at least the interest has returned in a new generation of mobility-minded experts. 

And it's not just the locals who are interested.  Mayor Garcetti, Metro, and the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) are also taking note that this critical connection be ignored no longer. 

As predicted by Friends of the Green Line, the connection of the Green Line to LAX would suddenly turn NIMBY's into YIMBY's for Green Line expansion.  Both LAX workers and commuters would love to park or be dropped off a long way from LAX to access that destination, or even to access the entirety of the expanding Metro Rail network. 

Who would pay for this project, which could easily reach up to $600 million or more if it were placed underground or were elevated?   

Arguably, despite its entire location in LA County, the project was proposed for Orange and Riverside County funding in the past, and the same should hold true in the future.  L.A. County cannot reasonably fund and build all of its projects that benefit non-LA County residents and commuters.

But at least the overdue project is being re-explored...and this time, hopefully pursued by a multicounty agency that will be unstoppable in its attempts to plan, fund, and build it.  The next community open house (and the last for now) is at 12239 Sproul Street in Norwalk this Wednesday, January 11th from 6-8 pm. 

And for those of you who want our freeways and planning/zoning upgraded for the 21st Century as well as a rail upgrade...don't stop fighting and demanding for those as well. 

Because transportation of all modes and locations has never been a "mutually exclusive" sort of issue.  That's only for the short-sighted and petty, and we've no time nor patience for that in traffic-clogged Southern California.

(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties.  He is also a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at  [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)

-cw

@THE GUSS REPORT-On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council will unanimously approve an extension of its contract with Best Friends Animal Society to continue occupying the animal shelter the city built, but could not afford to operate, in the northeast portion of the Valley, also known as the Mission Shelter. 

This deal was rigged literally from its 2011 inception, primarily benefitting the city’s politicians and the uber-wealthy Best Friends, at the expense of the taxpayers, animals and clarity on what – exactly – happened to scores of them who were passed through to Best Friends without the same accountability required of all other rescue groups. 

How wealthy is Best Friends? According to its most recent tax return, in the five-year period ending in 2015, it took in $313,676,006 in total support -- tens of millions of dollars more than when it came to LA in 2011. That is not Best Friends’ worth; it is just its income, while it grovels for money in advertisements. 

The taxpayers of Los Angeles do not collect rent from Best Friends for occupying the Mission shelter, or adoption fees, or dog licensing revenue, or fees that other, genuinely poor, rescue organizations pay to bail shelter animals. The taxpayers also provide Best Friends with free utilities, maintenance and security at the shelter. In 2011, and to this day, the city did its best to prevent a competitive bid from other well-established rescue groups for that tenancy. 

In a controversial, marathon-length City Council meeting on August 16, 2011, other LA-area rescue groups said they were blindsided when they learned that LA Animal Services GM Brenda Barnette said she sent out a (still unverified) RFP to more than 1,500 humane organizations to bid on occupying the Mission shelter, but that only Best Friends submitted a proposal. 

Teri Austin, who runs the well-respected animal charity Amanda Foundation, claimed (at the 05:15:38 mark of the video) that neither she nor any of the other leading, local humane groups ever received the RFP. Despite her plea, and those from other groups, the City gave the contract to Best Friends without investigating the claims of a rigged RFP process or Best Friends’ relationship with Barnette’s daughter, Mary Alice Davis. 

At the core of this rip-off is Los Angeles City Councilmember Paul Koretz, who embodies corrupt government bloat as the lawmaker who forever promises aid to suffering animals, but who always misses the mark like he did with LA’s porous, irrelevant spay/neuter law, licensing and cruelty laws, like his elephant bull hook ban that was so inept, the circus stopped exploiting elephants long before it ever kicked in. 

“I will call for an audit of LAAS and (Paul) Koretz will second it…to give him cover,” is what LA City Council president Herb Wesson said when he called me on July 3, 2014 after I collected thousands of signatures for an audit that would largely (but not solely) focus on the city’s dubious dealings with Best Friends. 

What Wesson meant by “giving Koretz cover” is very inside baseball. But it runs the gamut on fraudulent Garcetti claims like how LA Animal Services used Best Friends to falsify thousands of pet adoptions as I exposed in this CityWatch article from last October. 

The city’s relationship with Best Friends amounts to this: an unaccountable black hole where the city sends thousands of animals, counts them as “adoptions,” while all other groups taking in shelter animals are listed as “transfers.” The city does not require Best Friends to explain exactly where those animals went as all other rescues must. Note: Best Friends ships many of those animals to high-kill shelters in other states. By using this black hole as an illusion for helping homeless animals, LA politicians, including Mayor Eric Garcetti, falsely claim that “adoptions are up, kills are down,” when in fact they have no idea what became of the animals. And City Hall is about to, again, handsomely reward Best Friends for shielding the truth. 

The bogus “audit” that LA City Controller Ron Galperin eventually conducted was supposed to be based on a 72-page report requested by Wesson from me, following our lengthy January 3, 2014 meeting in his City Hall office. “Show me where the bodies are buried and we’ll audit it,” Wesson told me. But instead of using the report as a blueprint for exposing corruption, Galperin, Wesson, Koretz – and Mayor Garcetti – used it like a film negative; as a list of things they did not audit. 

And even with this rigged game, Best Friends has continued to cheat the city by using the Mission Shelter for activities that are strictly prohibited in its agreement with the city…..and with Koretz’ blessing. 

For example, the Mission shelter may only be used by Best Friends as an outlet for adoptions of animals that must first come from the city’s other shelters. Best Friends is explicitly prohibited from using it for animal intake, and the rule is there for a reason: to ensure that city property is used to help city animals. It is a secret known throughout the humane community that if you find an animal in another community, you can dump it with Best Friends, no questions asked. This is why the rule is there. 

In this 2013 email and accompanying impound record for a neonatal kitten improperly taken in by Best Friends, you can see the communication between a Best Friends employee and an LA Animal Services supervisor generating false impound numbers, a practice done thousands of times over. This activity was known to Koretz and the other city officials, including Galperin, who refused to audit it. The impound sheet shows the empty page in the city’s animal inventory system for one of those kittens. If the kitten had, as required, been processed through a city shelter, this page would have a photo, intake notes, a microchip number, inoculation and veterinary information, and the date when the kitten left the shelter. 

It is blank because the kitten never came in through the shelter….as required. 

It isn’t that Best Friends was ignoble in doing this. It is that they and City Hall were dishonest with the public, and it resulted in the deaths of scores of city animals whose turn it was to be taken by Best Friends, but weren’t because they were deemed “less desirable,” which means they require more love and veterinary care than a kitten to get adopted. And it costs money, even when Best Friends sits on a mountain of gold. 

At the final 2016 meeting of Koretz’ Personnel and Animal Welfare Committee, Koretz said that these two documents were “not credible” and that he “had not seen them before.” 

But which is it, Mr. Koretz? If you had not seen them before, how do you know they’re not credible? 

In fact, Koretz is lying in both instances because these two documents are on pages 21 and 22 in the 72-page report requested by Wesson from me in 2014 and provided to him, Galperin, Wesson and Garcetti at that time.

For two and a half years, Koretz actively ignored this and a wealth of other Best Friends-related corrupt practices and now recommends that Best Friends gets its contract renewed with the city on Wednesday. 

In the spring, Koretz will ask the voters of Council District 5 for another term in office. Before the primary, I will publish the 72-page report in its entirety in an interview with Jesse Creed, Koretz’ opponent, who is a public interest attorney, and an LAUSD product who graduated Princeton summa cum laude before graduating at the top of his Columbia Law School class. 

Creed has been endorsed in the CD 5 race by former City Controller Laura Chick. 

Koretz, Mayor Garcetti, Best Friends and LA Animal Services have refused to respond to direct questions regarding this matter.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.)Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-As those of you who regularly read CityWatch know, the LA City Council seems to engage in “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” vote-trading, as CityWatch’s Richard Lee Abrams wrote here back in July. “No councilmember will vote “no” on any project in his or her district. As a result, any project which a councilmember places on the City Council agenda unanimously passes. They’ve got a 99.9 percent unanimous passage rate,” which is statistically impossible. The passage rate isn’t just a majority vote but requires that every single councilmember present must vote “yes” every single time, no matter how many laws a project would break. 

Despite coverage by media outlets including the LA Times, the Council continues to do business as usual, citing that members are immune to Penal Code § 86 because the mental processes of councilmembers “confidential and privileged.” The result? Runaway projects, spending, and a Council that serves the needs of developers far more than it serves constituents. 

Caney Arnold has thrown his hat in the City Council race in District 15 to turn this around. Arnold, who has a background in Air Force acquisition and program management, is fed up with what he’s witnessed in the Council. Grassroots democracy, government transparency and accountability are the cornerstones of his campaign. I sat down with Arnold to discuss why he decided to run and the details of his platform. 

Arnold says, “The main thing that got me excited in politics again was Bernie, a progressive candidate to get behind. At the same time, I went to (Councilmember) Joe Buscaino’s town hall on homelessness. I was trying to advocate for a mom and her two kid but there was so much red tape. The paperwork was daunting.” He also noticed that Buscaino was moving homeless people out of encampments in San Pedro. (In September, CityWatch reported on the Council Homeless Strategy Committee’s authorization of $615,000 for the leasing and construction of storage facilities for the homeless in San Pedro, without prior notice being given to the Harbor Area’s neighborhood councils.) 

“The focus on moving people from place to place doesn’t help anybody, [it’s] just costing the city more money on police, sanitation, mental health workers. People are already in the system or on a waitlist for help. This is just a newspaper or photo op,” he added. “The system is inefficient. The method should be to secure housing first to help get people off the streets. Taking them out of the environment would take care of them and reduce nuisance on the street. It’s a win win for all and what is used in many other cities.” 

The frustration Arnold met as a volunteer addressing the homeless crisis in San Pedro and surrounding areas led him to run for Neighborhood Council. Once he was on the Neighborhood Council, he says he started to receive CityWatch and became aware of other issues that concerned him, such as campaign finance. 

“I started to look at campaign contributions on ethics websites and was amazed. A little after that, I had seen an article in the LA Times on an investigation involving the Sea Breeze apartments in Harbor Gateway,” he adds. (The LA Times reported over 100 donors directly or indirectly connected with a developer had contributed over $600,000 to politicians while the $72 million Sea Breeze apartment complex was up for approval.) 

“On one side, I was excited about this weakness but on the other side, I was discouraged. Every councilperson seemed to be in the same situation. It wasn’t like Joe was different from anyone else,” Arnold says of his decision to run. “We spent 84 hours, gathering 839 signatures, door to door, at shopping malls to get on the ballot. We don’t have $300,000 like Joe does but I have an appointment to talk to the city councilperson in West Hollywood. I’ve talked with loads of people in Watts.” 

“This is grassroots. Someone like me can decide to get off the couch. All it takes is someone with energy and motivation to get out there and do it. There are lots of excuses why things cannot get done. I thought someone needs to run. I looked in the mirror and saw that I was that somebody so I ran,” says Arnold.

In my next column, Caney Arnold and I discuss his ideas to solve specific problems and issues in the city.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST WORDS-For over a month, I have been fighting to help more than 120 seniors, living in the Westwood Horizons (photo below) building in Westwood, from being evicted. I’ve met a number of them. Some are holocaust survivors. Some are veterans. They range in age from 70 years old to 100 years old. Many of them have lived in the building for decades. Serving eviction notices to our most vulnerable community members just before the holidays was outrageous. Since learning of the evictions on December 2, I have fought to do whatever I can to stop the process. 

Watermark took over the building in October 2016, and issued eviction notices a little over a month later. 

Under state law, the Ellis Act permits owners of apartment buildings to evict their tenants if they intend to take their building off the rental market. However, they must give proper notice and pay relocation fees pursuant to the City's rent control law of around $18,000 per resident. Furthermore, any senior facing an Ellis eviction can apply for a one-year extension, which the landlord must grant, if they’ve lived there for at least a year. After my involvement began, Watermark agreed to grant residents the one-year extension without having to apply, a positive step forward. 

In order to stop these evictions, I took a number of steps. First, I sent a letter to the General Manager of the Planning Department calling for a hearing regarding Watermark Retirement Communities’ proposal to renovate the facility and to change its use from residential to commercial. I also launched a pressure campaign on Facebook listing the names of each of the executives behind this unfortunate decision as well as phone numbers, email addresses, and mailing addresses, calling on outraged community members to demand they halt the evictions. 

Also, I was able to convince the City Council to immediately vote and adopt a motion I introduced asking the City Attorney's Office to look at seeking an injunction to stop the evictions, or ways to make Watermark apply for new permits to remodel based on their plan do a considerable renovation which would lead to the mass evictions of the senior residents. 

I’ve subsequently met with the City Attorney’s office, which has responded energetically to my concerns. I’ve also had conversations with attorneys representing some of the residents who are convinced that they would have a reasonable chance of winning in court over the question of whether or not Watermark is illegitimately using the Ellis Act to evict their residents. 

I also heard from residents that the company was going to lay off their employees in a few months, leaving them without necessary and vital resources such as a functioning kitchen for prepared meals. It turned out that they had never actually given layoff notices to their employees as was rumored.

Before the New Year, I received a letter from Watermark President and CEO David Barnes indicating that our demands are slowly being met. They promised to retain every employee needed to continue providing services for as long as the residents continue to live at the facility, even offering a retention bonus to the employees. With this action, Watermark took another step in the right direction. 

They have also agreed that every senior resident who leaves the facility will be able to return when it is completed and for the same rent they currently pay. 

Although we are making forward progress, our work is not yet done. The huge issue remaining is that Watermark has argued that they must renovate the building for life-safety reasons, and that it can’t be done without removing all the tenants during that period. Watermark appears to have a point that this over 50-year-old building needs renovation for safety purposes. I have a meeting scheduled this week with Watermark’s management, architects and engineers, experts from the City’s Department of Building and Safety, and possibly additional specialists brought in by the residents’ attorneys, in order to determine whether renovating this building can be accomplished without having to remove the residents. Other owners of similarly situated buildings have done it, and I strongly believe Watermark can too. 

I hope to work out an agreement with them that will allow the tenants to stay while still accomplishing the necessary repairs to the building. That would be the only way to protect their safety while keeping their lives intact.This whole episode is emblematic of the challenge LA, and society in general, faces as our elderly population grows. The shortage of affordable housing is dire enough for people of working age, but to subject our seniors to threats of eviction is almost criminal. The Westwood Horizons crisis should be a lesson to all of us on that score.

(Paul Koretz is councilmember for Los Angeles’ 5^th Council District. He is running for reelection in the Los Angeles primary this March.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CORRUPTION WATCH-Finally, someone is opposing Eric Garcetti in his bid for re-election as mayor of Los Angeles in March 2017. It is Mitchell Schwartz with his new side kick, The Developers’ Pig, Erika G.

Erika G first appeared with candidate Mitchell Schwartz on January 4, 2017 in front of the Department of Water and Power building in downtown Los Angeles. I found Ms. G, however, to be so fascinating that I decided to interview her for this CityWatch edition. 

First, I need to report that Ms. G clarifies that she is the former Developer’s Pig, but she is her own gal now. Her job was to help developers’ scarf up as many billions of tax dollars as possible. Ms. G explained, “Even a pig has to have some self-respect.” Adding that she thought her lipstick was just the proper shade of red, Ms. G complained that the Garcetti-DWP Bill of Rights was a lot of hog wash, and “I know hog wash when I see it.” She continued to explain that Los Angeles has become such a cesspool of corruptionism that she cannot stand it. “Development does not have to mean corruptionism,” she explained.

Ms. G continued that after wallowing in the developers’ muck all these years, she desired to take a bath so she trotted off to the DWP. “But at those prices, who can afford water?” she lamented. Ms. G related that the City Hall skims cash off the top of the DWP’s take from its customers. If the DWP hadn’t been paying tribute to the crooks at City Hall all these years, it could have afforded to fix the pipes beneath our streets without raising rates.” She added, “Every time you look at your DWP bill, you should realize that a considerable portion is being skimmed by City Hall. “Garcetti didn’t put that into his DWP Bill of Rights,” she snorted. 

Ms. G said that as the Developers’ Pig, she learned a lot of the inside dirt which she’ll be sharing with voters in the upcoming weeks. “Where’s the missing $424 million from the Hollywood-Highland Project? Hiding with Judge Crater?”   

Ms. G said the public wants answers to questions like, “Just what did Developer Leung buy with his $60,000 to Garcetti’s charity?” 

Why did Garcetti give $17 million to CIM Group for their illegal project at 5929 Sunset Boulevard? 

How do extortion and bribes interact with development projects in Los Angeles? 

Asked what she could do to fix corruptionism in Los Angeles, Ms. G pointed out that the new mayor has great power. “Yes, Virginia, there is a U.S. cavalry to ride to the rescue,” Ms. G shared with us. “It’s called the FBI.” 

Without going into detail, Ms. G said that we can see for ourselves that a new mayor will have great power. The new mayor will have access to all the city’s files including all the communications with the developers and their agents. The FBI has criminal jurisdiction over such corruption and Mitchell Schwartz, as the new mayor, can share all the information with the Feds. “I’m very good at finding dirt,” said Ms. G.   

When queried about that the Schwartz Administration would be like, Ms. G cryptically replied with the Mel Brooks’ line, “May the Schwartz be with you.”

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

Better to drive a stake through the heart of civic debate in Los Angeles than bleed it dry with more fundraising-obsessed election coverage.  

What’s so bad about a shoe-string candidacy? What’s so bad about an underdog facing impossible odds?    

War-chests of campaign funds are impressive, but it’s not clear how they benefit the public. After all, it’s not to give the public a clear, unbiased view of their options that campaign funds are deployed. 

If a member of the public is buying a car, he or she deserves an opportunity to inspect all the available models, have them lined up, so he or she can see them side by side, kick the tires, look under the hood.  

But the public is denied that opportunity in the context of elections when newspapers disqualify candidates who don’t make fundraising a priority.  

Even if those candidates are unlikely to get elected, maybe some of their ideas will inform the debate. Readers might find them interesting. It’s not easy to collect 500 signatures. 

As for viability, a single debate can change the dynamics of an election, throwing into disarray plans for a game-ending primary. A single article can start a wave of interest, rallying fund-raising sources and tactical support. 

Isn’t it more interesting--and more likely to build an audience--for the press to mix it up, foment the debate rather than smother it, make incumbents get in the ring and fight for a second-term?
The press should be merciless on incumbents who refuse to debate. Such refusal should be the unpardonable sin of politics. No elected officials are above the public. If we ask them to show up for a couple of hours for a debate, they better well do so—quickly and with a smile.   

If the press reports on a candidate’s fund-raising, it should be one factor among others. Media outlets that receive public funding—KCRW to cite just one example—should be required to give 2 minutes of airtime per candidate. The Elections division of the city should host debates, with candidates sitting in the seats used by Councilmembers during meetings. Cameras are pre-set in that chamber, so it shouldn’t be expensive. 

Besides, it's money well spent. 

(Eric Preven and Joshua Preven are public advocates for better transparency in local government. Eric is a Studio City based writer-producer and a candidate for Los Angeles mayor. Joshua is a teacher.)

-cw

NEW GEOGRAPY--In 1949 the historian Carey McWilliams defined California as the “the Great Exception” -- a place so different from the rest of America as to seem almost a separate country. In the ensuing half-century, the Golden State became not so much exceptional but predictive of the rest of the nation: California’s approaches to public education, the environment, politics, community-building and lifestyle often became national standards, and even normative.

Today California is returning to its outlier roots, defying many of the political trends that define most of the country. Rather than adjust to changing conditions, the state seems determined to go it alone as a bastion of progressivism. Some Californians, going farther out on a limb, have proposed separating from the rest of the country entirely; a ballot measure on that proposition has been proposed for 2018. [[ http://www.presstelegram.com/government-and-politics/20161224/is-california-splitting-away-group-believes-california-should-form-its-own-nation ]]

This shift to outpost of modern-day progressivism has been developing for years but was markedly evident in November. As the rest of America trended to the right, electing Republicans at the congressional and local levels in impressive numbers, California has moved farther left, accounting for virtually all of the net popular vote margin for Hillary Clinton. Today the GOP is all but non-existent in the most populated parts of the state, and the legislature has a supermajority of Democrats in both houses. In many cases, including last year’s Senate race, no Republicans even got on the November ballot.

Homage to Ecotopia

The election of Donald Trump has expanded the widening gap. The two biggest points of contention going forward are likely to be climate change, which has come to dominate California’s policy agenda, and immigration, a critical issue to the rising Latino political class, Silicon Valley and the state’s entrenched progressive activists.

Most of the big cities -- Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento -- have proclaimed themselves “sanctuary cities,” and the state legislative leadership is now preparing a measure that would create “a wall of justice” against Trump’s agenda. If federal agents begin swooping down on any of the state’s estimated 2 million undocumented immigrants, incoming Attorney General (and former congressman) Xavier Becerra has made it among his first priorities to  “resist” any deportation orders, including paying legal fees.    

Equally contentious will be a concerted attempt to block Trump’s overturning of President Obama’s   climate change agenda.   In recent years Gov. Jerry Brown has gone full “Moonbeam,” imposing ever more stringent environmental policies on state businesses and residents. The most recent legislation signed by Brown would boost California’s carbon reductions far beyond those agreed to by the U.S. in the Paris accord (which Trump has said he will withdraw from). All of this is being done along with a virtual banning of nuclear power, which, as the Breakthrough Institute’s Michael Shellenberger notes, remains the largest and most proven source of clean energy.

California’s draconian climate policies have been oft-cited by Obama and environmentalists as a role model for not only America but the world. However, they will not be widely emulated in the rest of the country during the next four years. Instead, California may be opting for a kind of virtual secession, following the narrative portrayed in Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 novel, “Ecotopia,” where Northern California secedes from the union to create a more ecologically perfect state.

Ironically, the state’s policies, which place strong controls on development, road construction, and energy production and usage, are somewhat symbolic; by dint largely of its mild climate, the state is already far more energy efficient than the rest of the country.  But to achieve its ambitious new goals,  most serious observers suggest, the state would lose at least 100,000 jobs and further boost energy prices -- which  disproportionately affect the poorer residents who predominate in the state’s beleaguered, and less temperate, interior.

The impact of these policies would be far-reaching. They have already reduced outside investment in manufacturing to minuscule levels and could cost California households an average of $3,000 annually. Such economic realities no longer influence many California policymakers but they could prove a boon  to other   states, notably Texas, Arizona and Nevada, which make a sport of hunting down California employers.   

A ‘Light Unto the Nations’?

Even with these problems, no other part of the country comes close to being as deeply progressive as California.  Illinois, President Obama’s home state, is a model for nothing so much as larceny and corruption. New York, the traditional bailiwick of the progressive over-class, is similarly too corrupt and also too tied to, and dependent upon, Wall Street. In addition, both of these states are losing population, while California, although slowing down and experiencing out-migration by residents to other states, continues to grow, the product of children born to those who arrived over the past three decades.

California’s recent economic success seemingly makes it a compelling “alt-America.” After a severe decline in the Great Recession, the economy  has roared back, and since 2010 has outpaced the national average.  But if you go back to 2000, metro areas such as Austin, Dallas, Houston, Orlando, Salt Lake City and Phoenix -- all in lower-tax, regulation-light states -- have expanded their employment by twice or more than that in  Los Angeles.

Indeed, a closer examination shows that the California “boom” is really about one region, the tech-rich San Francisco Bay Area, with roughly half the state’s job growth recorded there since 2007 even though the region accounts for barely a fifth of the state’s population. Outside the Bay Area, the vast majority of employment gains have been in low-paying retail, hospitality and medical fields. And even in Silicon Valley itself, a large portion of the population, notably Latinos, are downwardly mobile given the loss of manufacturing jobs.

According to the most recent Social Science Research Council report, the state overall suffers the greatest levels of income inequality in the nation; the Public Policy Institute places the gap well over 10 percent higher than the national average. And though California may be home to some of the wealthiest communities in the nation, accounting for 15 of the 20 wealthiest, its poverty rate, adjusted for cost, is also the highest in the nation. Indeed, a recent United Way study found that half of all California Latinos, and some 40 percent of African-Americans, have incomes below the cost of necessities (the “Real Cost Measure”). Among non-citizens, 60 percent of households have incomes below the Real Cost Measure, a figure that stretches to 80 percent below among Latinos.

In sharp contrast to the 1960s California governed by Jerry Brown’s great father, Pat, upward mobility is not particularly promising for the state’s majority Latino [[ http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/04/non-white-youth-population-growing-in-california-and-nation-report-finds.html   ]]   next generation. Not only are housing prices out of reach for all but a few, but the state’s public education system [[ https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-best-schools/5335/ ]]   ranks 40th in the nation, behind New York, Texas and South Carolina.  If California remains the technological leader, it is also becoming the harbinger of something else -- a kind of feudal society divided by a rich elite and a larger poverty class, while the middle class either struggles or leaves town.

Will America Turn to the California Model?

The new California model depends largely on one thing: the profits of the very rich. Nearly 70 percent of the state budget comes from income tax, half of which is paid by the 1 percent wealthiest residents (the top 10 percent of earners accounted for nearly 80 percent). This makes the state a model of fiscal instability. As long as the Silicon Valley oligarchs and the real estate speculators do well, California can tap their wealth to pay its massive pension debt, and expand the welfare state inexorably for its increasingly redundant working-class population.  

It’s highly dubious this model would work for the rest of the country. Due largely to its concentration of venture capital, roughly half the nation’s total, Silicon Valley may be able to continue to dominate whatever is the “next big thing,” at least in the early stages. Even parts of the tech community, such as Uber, Lyft and Apple, have announced major expansions outside of the state, in some cases directly due to regulatory restraints in California. Layoffs, meanwhile, are rising in the Valley as companies merge or move to other places. Google, Facebook and others, of course, will remain, keeping the big money in California, but the jobs could be drifting away.   

Under any circumstances, the rest of the country -- with the exception of a few markets such as Manhattan and downtown Chicago -- could not absorb the costs for housing or the taxes California imposes on its residents and businesses. Part of the reason stems from the fact that California is indeed different; its climate, topography, cultural life cannot be easily duplicated in Kansas City, Dallas or anywhere else. People will pay for the privilege of living in California, particularly along the coast. Would they do so to live in Minneapolis or Charlotte?

Nor, unlike during much of the postwar era, can it be said that California represents the demographic future.  The state -- even the Bay Area -- generally loses people to other states, particularly those in middle age, according to an analysis of IRS numbers.  Brown apologists suggest it’s only the poor and uneducated who are leaving, but it also turns out that California is losing affluent people just as rapidly, with the largest net loss occurring among those making between $100,000 and 200,000.  

Perhaps more revealing, the number of children is declining, particularly in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas. Children made up a third of California’s population in 1970, but USC demographer Dowell Myers projects that by 2030 they will compose just a fifth.

Nor is help on the way. Although boomtown San Francisco has maintained its share of millennials, most large California cities have not. And the number of people in their mid-thirties -- prime child-bearing years -- appears to be declining rapidly, notably in the Bay Area.   Coastal California is becoming the golden land for affluent baby boomers rather than young hipsters. Surfing dudes will increasingly be those with gray ponytails.

Instead of a role model for the future, the Golden State seems likely to become a cross between Hawaii and Tijuana, a land for the aging rich and their servants. It still remains a perfect social model for a progressive political regime, but perhaps not one the rest of the country would likely wish to, or afford, to adopt.

(Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com… where this analysis was first posted. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. He lives in Orange County, CA.)

-cw

EASTSIDER-I was reading an old special Issue of CityWatch (from July 2004, no less,) and guess what I found? The entire issue was devoted to affordable housing. Of course, back then, the issue was framed in the context of a proposed ordinance for Inclusionary Zoning. David Lowell described the matter of affordable housing as follows: 

“Leading the City’s solution list is a controversial concept called inclusionary zoning, which, to simplify, requires developers who are building new apartments, condos and homes to include some affordable housing units, generally in return for certain incentive benefits like a break on density requirements or expedited permit processing.” 

Sound familiar? Here’s the fascinating part: The City Council Motion for the Ordinance was made by none other than Ed Reyes (thank god, now termed out,) and our very own Mayor Eric Garcetti, then councilmember for the 13^th District. That’s right, our clever, smooth talkin’ Mayor has been riding this train since 2004. 

In fact, he and his buddy Jose Huizar (who replaced Ed Reyes on the PLUM Committee,) have both been milking this issue for bucks and power ever since -- even as they get a billion dollar bond measure through for their developer pals to build housing for the homeless. Because the truth of the matter is that for all of their work on the Inclusionary Zoning and other planning changes, there is less affordable housing than before, more people have lost their rent-controlled housing than before, and the housing that is billed as “affordable” is not in fact affordable. 

This is separate from a companion issue of the Council carefully looking the other way as many people in rent-controlled housing were inspected, rejected, ejected and just plain dumped on the street, so that politicians’ developer buddies could build, build, build. 

I have painful, personal memories of all of these shenanigans. Reyes and Garcetti decided to lock up land in Northeast LA through a series of “Interim Control Ordinances,” “Community Design Overlays,” and other indecipherable bureaucratic gobbledygook which really meant that no one was going to build anything unless and until they had the personal blessing of Reyes and Garcetti. And of course those blessings came with height variances, setback variances, glossing over density requirements, last minute plan changes, and even quick build expedites – all, generally, in the name of providing a few affordable housing units. Sometimes, even the PLUM Committee and the Planning Commission looked vaguely embarrassed as they toed the party line over any and all protests. 

In late July of 2016, CityWatch contributor Dick Platkin wrote a very telling article, “Getting Developers to Build Affordable Housing...Like Getting Blood From a Stone.” 

There were two important points in his piece. First, regarding any increase in affordable housing, he noted that “...as hinted at in the value capture report, LA’s amalgam of existing housing programs barely produces any net gain in affordable housing. This is because many market housing projects have extensively eliminated existing affordable housing through relentless demolitions and evictions.” 

The actual Value Capture Report can be found here. 

As Mr. Platkin notes in a “you can’t get there from here” moment: “...the Council and its value capture ordinance cannot avoid the essence of their conundrum: the need of developers to maximize profits from their real estate investments. The greater the City’s affordable housing requirement, the lower the resulting private investment and number of affordable units.” 

There you have it. The math of the reality that there isn’t much affordable housing in the City of Los Angeles. There wasn’t in 2004, there wasn’t in 2006, and there sure isn’t in 2017. As I noted in an earlier CW article, the City Council and the Mayor have been avoiding this truth as far back as 2006 when they tried to pass a big bucks affordable housing (Measure H.) 

The Takeaway 

It seems pretty clear to everyone from the LA Times to the Neighborhood Councils that developers own our Mayor and the City Council -- the PLUM Committee, the Planning Commission, and the Planning Department are all no more than an afterthought to the relentless destruction of our neighborhoods and our City itself. Where the communities have been able to generate the funds to challenge these developments in court, the City has lost most of the cases. But who has the resources to sue our own government all of the time? 

With virtually no opposition to re-electing the Mayor and the City Attorney, not to mention most of the City Council incumbants on the ballot in March, it is highly unlikely that anything will change, absent some outside force. 

Fortunately, such a force will be on the ballot in March -- Measure S, the Coalition to Preserve LA backed initiative, headed by Jill Stewart. 

I urge everyone to go to their website, read the summary of the initiative, the FAQs, and think for yourselves. If you live in or near a community which has had any of these outrageous projects foisted on you or your friends, if you read CityWatch, if you are in a Neighborhood Council, if you can’t afford rent -- in short, everyone outside of City Hall -- please take the time. You can bet that literally millions of developer and lobbyist dollars will be flooding in to stop this measure. 

For me two key provisions of Measure S tell it all. First, there is a two year moratorium on “spot zoning,” the favorite method of the City Council to throw out all of the planning rules for well-heeled developers. It would actually impact something like 5% of development projects. Second, and just as important, it would require the City Council to create a real General Plan and updated Community Plans, to reflect our City of 2017, not the LA of the 80s -- the last time the City paid any attention to the law. 

Hold Neighborhood Council meetings to discuss the measure. Get people involved. Remember, this is not a herculean task. Something like 10% or less of registered voters actually vote in these municipal elections. It therefore doesn’t take a huge shift in numbers to actually make a difference. 

If there is any lesson to be garnered from our recent Presidential election, it is that a relatively small difference in voter turnout, at the margins, can produce a huge change. 

So I say, go for it!

(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.

NEW GEOGRAPHY-- Across the country, white voters placed Donald Trump in office by a margin of 21 points over Clinton. Their backing helped the GOP gain control of a vast swath of local offices nationwide. But in California, racial politics are pushing our general politics the other direction, way to the left.

Some of this reflects California’s fast track toward a “minority-majority” state. Along with a few other states — Hawaii, Texas and New Mexico — California is there now, with minorities accounting for 62 percent of the population, compared to 43 percent in 1990. The shift in the electorate has been slower but still powerful. In 1994, registered Democrats held a 12 percentage-point margin over Republicans. By 2016, the margin had widened to 19 points.

The racial shift does much to explain why Trump lost some largely affluent suburban areas like Orange County, where 53 percent the population is Latino or Asian, up from 45 percent in 2000. Perhaps most emblematic of potential GOP problems was Trump’s — and the GOP’s — loss in Irvine, a prosperous Orange County municipality that is roughly 40 percent Asian.

California’s unique racial politics

Ideology plays a critical role in California’s emerging politics of race. Hispanic and Asian voters outside California — for example, in Texas — have tended to vote less heavily for Democrats. In 2014, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott won 44 percent of Texas Latinos. Florida’s Gov. Rick Scott garnered 38 percent of the Latino vote in his successful re-election campaign. In contrast, that same year, Neel Kashkari, Jerry Brown’s Republican opponent, won only 27 percent of the Latino vote in California. Only 17 percent of California Asians voted for Trump, nearly 40 percent lower than the national rate (27 percent).

These differences, ironically, have become more evident as California has become relatively less attractive to immigrants. Since the 1980s and 1990s, as California’s economy has become increasingly deindustrialized, the immigration “flood” has slowed, particularly among Hispanics. By the 2010s, other cities — notably Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston — were emerging as bigger magnets for newcomers.

These areas, with lower costs, generally work better for less-skilled immigrants. Latinos in Texas, particularly, do better than their counterparts in California — as measured by homeownership, marriage rates and incomes — and also tend to vote more conservatively.

Part of this reflects different political attitudes among minority leaders in the two states. “We’re not going to do it with welfare, we’re not going to do it with income maintenance, we’re not going to do it remaining contentious and divided,” notes Democrat Henry Cisneros, San Antonio’s first Hispanic mayor and later U.S. secretary of housing and urban development. “We’re going to do it if we come around a single theme: jobs.”

In contrast, California’s racial politics focuses more on serving an increasingly “stranded population” of poor people with limited opportunities for advancement. Indeed, a stunning United Way study found that half of all Latinos, and some 40 percent of African Americans, have incomes below the cost of necessities (the “Real Cost Measure”). Among non-citizens, 60 percent of households have incomes below the Real Cost Measure, a figure that deteriorates to 80 percent among Latinos.

Building a sanctuary for poverty

Zealous boosters of “diversity,” California progressives also embrace policies — in fields like energy, housing and workplace regulation — that place strong barriers to upward mobility. They have undermined what’s left of the industrial economy, and also opposed the production of new single-family houses. Jason Furman, the chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, has shown that the single-family house, on average, contributes 2.5 times as much to the gross domestic product as a multi-family unit.

Instead, today’s new-style progressives — who are primarily concerned with wealth redistribution, racial redress and climate change — have done little to address the ramifications of an increasingly deindustrialized economy that has cut into blue-collar opportunities. Rather than pushing growth, they have placed their emphasis on ever-increasing subsidies for the poor, including those working in expanding low-wage service industries.

To break this pattern, we need a different set of policies, whether they come from moderate, pro-business Democrats or what is left of the California Republican Party. The primary need is to replace welfarism with a strong, pro-growth agenda. This, critically, would include the expansion of single-family housing, something the American Interest’s Walter Russell Mead suggests could spark a new economic expansion. Since 2000, more than 95 percent of the minority growth in the 52 largest metropolitan areas has been in suburban and exurban areas.

If President-elect Trump succeeds in promoting policies that unlock growth, in part, by sweeping away the worst anti-economic growth regulations, it could create a new wave of opportunity for minority Americans. It would be a tragedy of historic proportions if California, long the object of so many immigrants’ dreams, ends up choosing dependency over opportunity.

(Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism (www.opportunityurbanism.org). Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, a St. Louis-based public policy firm, and was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. This article was posted most recently at New Geography.) 

-cw

RANTZ AND RAVEZ--The year 2017 has begun and we are all searching for ways to begin this year with a positive attitude and hopefully an improved quality of life for ourselves and our families as we sit down and read the logic and common cense by that veteran of the Los Angeles streets and political insider that can illustrate and bring to your attention the issues that impact you, your families and your overall quality of life. That is me ladies and gentlemen. The man-of-the-streets and of the Los Angeles political world. Waste in government spending, excessive taxation, massive traffic congestion, out of control homeless population, broken political promises and so many other issues currently face us from Sacramento to Los Angeles City Hall and all parts between. 

Let me begin with some of the new taxes that will be taking more dollars from your pockets and thrown into that deep hole known as the Federal, State, County and Local Governments. When you hear that government is there to help you, remember that while you are paying dearly into their elusive accounts, the money seldom appears to improve your quality of life. Take for example the traffic on the 101, 10 and 405 Freeways. From the San Fernando Valley to Downtown Los Angeles and to the Westside approaching the Los Angeles International Airport. It is a gridlock traffic situation 7 days a week. The frustration and billions of dollars spent on the local freeways has done little to move traffic faster than the pace of a Mollusk. I will save you the time to check and see what a Mollusk is. It is kind of like government. Very slow and hides when it perceives danger. It is a Snail. 

Where are those new sidewalks City Hall promised for your neighborhood a few of years ago? The same place many other City Hall promises have ended up. Lost in the committees and departments and various other hiding places where your tax dollars are stashed away and used for various programs and pet projects. Take for example the million dollars the city is providing to defend Undocumented Criminal Aliens facing deportation. While we all know that not all people in this country or city are criminals committing crimes, it is not the city’s responsibility to defend those committing crimes that happen to be in this country illegally. Those are your tax dollars that our elected officials want to use to fight the Federal Immigration Service. Your tax dollars are for city services and not for pet project ideas of a very liberal city government.  

As of January 1 we all get to pay a little more for everything we buy in Los Angeles. The sales tax has increased ½ cent for the Los Angeles County Traffic Improvement Plan. I am sure most of us will be dead by the time anything is done to the 405 gridlock to LAX. Then there is the 1.2 BILLION dollar Homeless tax that will appear on your future property tax bill. The city wants to use the funds to provide supportive housing for the homeless in Los Angeles. Locations will be situated throughout Los Angeles communities. Some in the valley and others spread throughout the city. 

There is the 3.5 billion dollar Community College bond measure that was passed in November. This fund will be used in the Community College District for educational purposes. There is the County of L.A. 1.5 cents levied annually per square foot of improved property in Los Angeles County to fund Safe, Clean Neighborhood Parks, Open Space, Beaches, River Protection, and Water Conservation Measures. All of the increased taxes and fees were all by the voters during the November Election.  

It would be good for the City Controller to look into where the projects are and where the money is located. Preparing Controller Reports on senseless projects is simply wasting money and doing nothing to improve local government or truly addressing those issues that would or could improve services in the City of Los Angeles. The only time the LA City Controller got any publicity was when he went after the DWP Union Leader on a Training Fund that was set up for city employees. The expensive and lengthy investigation did not reveal anything that resulted in any enforcement action against the DWP Union or their leaders. In the end, the Controller put his head back into the sand and has continued to do little to shake up any City of LA Departments or managers.      

+++++++

The LAPD and the MTA are working on a possible contract for police services … pushing the LA County Sheriff out the door! 

While millions of dollars are appealing to LA’s City leaders, the lack of current LAPD personnel to enforce the laws and patrol the streets of Los Angeles to reduce the growing crime trends remains a major problem for the LAPD. With only 9897 sworn officers short of the 10,000 in the police department budget, it will be hard pressed to take on the responsibility of patrolling the various transit lines throughout the City of LA. 

The LAPD has eliminated certain services it delivered to citizens in the past due to lack of personnel. In examining the preliminary year - end LAPD Crime Stats, we find the following information: Violent crime in LA has increased for the third year in a row. A 10% increase in violent crime over 2015 and a 38% increase since 2014. That means more murder victims, robbery victims and the other major crimes in the city. While there are many reasons for the crime increase the situation is not expected to improve in 2017. 

With this in mind, how can the LAPD handle the public transit lines along with the streets and neighborhoods of Los Angeles without additional personnel? Police recruitment is down in L.A. and throughout the country and not improving. The Anti-Police LAPD Police Commission has done nothing to demonstrate any type of support or encouragement for the LAPD Personnel that are not motivated or encouraged to do what they do best “Protect and Serve” the people of Los Angeles.  

Policing the bus and rail system is a daunting task at best. Being an infrequent rider on the public transit system Orange Line and Red/ Blue Lines in and around Los Angeles, I can tell you that there are many violations that are not being enforced by the Los Angele County Sheriff’s Department due to the lack of Sheriff Personnel riding the transit lines. While I will on occasion see a Deputy checking the riders for payment to ride the Metro Lines, I can count on one finger how many times I have seen a Deputy on a city bus or train in the past two years. 

With most of the LAPD field personnel are working 12 hour shifts 3 days a week, I am sure some officers will work overtime for extra pay to support their families. How much can an officer do without rest considering court and other police activities? Without additional personnel, it will be hard pressed to protect the passengers riding the Metro lines in this region.

+++++++

I Thank Mr. O’Henry for his kind comments about my articles. I happened to see Mr. O’Henry while dining at Uncle Bernie’s restaurant on Ventura Blvd. Uncle Bernie’s, not my Uncle, is a great place to dine for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Try it and I am sure you will enjoy the experience. 

If you have a situation you would like me to review, drop me an email at [email protected]. 

-cw

COMMERCIALIZING OUR PARKS-A controversial set of new rules quietly given final approval over the recent holiday -- allowing national parks in the United States to expand corporate sponsorships and commercial contracts with private companies -- is being called a "disgrace" by those who say the move is a betrayal of what the nation's parks should be. 

Despite outcry from citizens, documented in public testimony and hundreds of thousands petition signatures, the director of the National Park Service Jonathan B. Jarvis announced on December 28 that he had signed an order-- officially titled Order #21 on Donations and Philanthropic Partnerships -- which, among other changes, ends an outright ban on commercial advertising and lifts restrictions on naming rights in parks. 

"It is disgraceful that the parks service plans to sell our national parks to the highest bidder despite overwhelming public opposition to increased commercialism in our national parks," said Kristen Strader, campaign coordinator for Public Citizen, which organized against the proposed reforms. She cited more than 215,000 petition signers and hundreds of individuals who submitted official objections to the NPS. 

In his statement last week, Jarvis argued that public concerns over the changes were overblown. "Whether or not people and organizations fully understood the proposed changes," Jarvis said, "it was clear that people place great value on national parks and are insistent that they be protected as they belong to all of us." 

While he acknowledged the changes would allow "opportunities for limited donor recognition in parks," he pushed back against criticism by saying, "no one is going to commercialize national parks and park superintendents still won’t be allowed to solicit donations. We have federal law to back us up on that." 

While Strader gave the NPS some credit for removing a particularly noxious provision from the draft policy that would have allowed corporate logos to be placed on exhibits and waysides, she disagreed the new rules would not seriously change the look and feel of the parks. 

"Now that this policy has been finalized," Strader warned, "park visitors soon could be greeted with various forms of advertisements, like a sign reading 'brought to you by McDonald’s' within a new visitor’s center at Yosemite, or 'Budweiser' in script on a park bench at Acadia." 

Such a reality, she said, should worry anyone who cherishes the national park system. 

"In a society where we are constantly inundated with advertisements everywhere we go, national parks offered a unique and beautiful escape," Strader said. "Even in schools, students endure a constant barrage of billboards, social media advertising and marketing. Until now, national parks have remained relatively commercial-free, which is why they were such a valuable respite."

This order, she concluded, is "a dangerous shift toward opening our parks up to an unprecedented amount of commercial influence."

(Jon Queally is staff writer at CommonDreams.org where this report was first posted.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CORRUPTION WATCH-According to the “Osmosis Theory of LA’s Decline,” populations tend to move from areas of high costs and low opportunity (HC-LO) to areas of low costs and high opportunity (LC-HO.) Darwin’s survival of the fittest has a say here too. The smarter the person, the more likely he or she will move away from Los Angeles. In other words, the more talented middle class is “osmosisizing” itself away from “high cost-low opportunity” Los Angeles to “low cost-high opportunity” areas like Texas, the South, Nashville and Arizona. (Photo above: uncollected trash in Koreatown, Los Angles.) 

There are other factors in LA’s plight. Because babies cannot move out on their own, newborns are not renting apartments and buying houses. The elderly often own their own homes and have their costs covered. Thus, the new births and the “not-dying” of the Boomers do not mean LA is seeing an increased demand for housing. 

The crucial element of population mathematics is that Los Angeles is driving out the most vital segment of its population, that is, the family age middle class. As they leave the City, we lose our future. (We have previously discussed in CityWatch on December 29, 2016, why LA has a lower demand for housing while housing prices rise.) 

Two Productive Segments of LA’s Middle Class 

Los Angeles’ middle class of child rearing age spans two “generations.” There are Family Millennials, born between 1981 and 1998. Their peak birth year was twenty-five years ago. Thus, there are fewer younger Millennials each year and an increasing number of the older Millennials are becoming Family Millennials, age 25 and above. 

Los Angeles’ other middle class “generation” is its Generation Xers, who are between the ages of 35 to 49 years old. Los Angeles already is deficient in its number of Gen Xers. While Garcetti and others were raving about the young Millennials living on groups of two and three in lofts in DTLA, they covered up the fact that the Gen Xers were leaving the City. 

Many in this group, who were between 27 and 41 years old when the Crash of 2008 hit, have mostly decided to leave dense urban areas. Although this generation is smaller than the Baby Boomers above them and the Millennials below them, Gen Xers are vital for any urban area for the next two decades. They are wealthier and more entrepreneurial than Family Millennials and their prior departure is one of the reasons Los Angeles has lost more employers than any other urban area over the prior decade. 

People with the entrepreneurial spirt are precisely the type that leaves the high cost-low opportunity of Los Angeles for the low cost-high opportunity areas in Texas. In fact, Austin (the capital of Texas,) was the grand winner in attracting Gen X entrepreneurials. Since 2000, Austin’s Gen Xers have increase by 44.9% despite the fact that the size of this population segment has declined 6.6% nationally and Los Angeles is doing even worse than the national average. 

As Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox wrote in NewGeography.com in December 2016, “This makes sense as this is the age when home ownership is most critical and people are looking for the maximum income relative to costs. Being in your late 30s to 50 does not mean you have lost the ability to dream, but it does make addressing reality far more imperative than when in your 20s.” 

Thus, a significant number of Gen Xers have left Los Angeles and the age group just below them, Family Millennials, is doing likewise. Both generations leave for basically the same reason -- LA is high cost with low opportunity. People want their children to do better than they are doing. Thus, families move to the low cost-high opportunity areas. 

Losing both GenXers and Family Millennials is Financially Devastating to Los Angeles 

According to Val Srinivas and Urval Goradia, writing in “The Future of Wealth in the United States Mapping Trends in Generational Wealth,” for the Deloitte University Press in November 2015, “…Generation X will experience the highest increase in share of national wealth through the forecast period, growing from under 14 percent of total net wealth in 2015 to nearly 31 percent by 2030. In contrast, “The Millennial generation will experience the fastest growth rate of net wealth. However, the generation’s share of national household wealth will remain below 20 percent.” 

By 2030, the Gen Xers and Family Millennials will control about 50% of the nation’s wealth. Any urban area that loses the middle class from both these generations will lack the financial wherewithal to sustain itself. The middle class has proven it will not raise its families in cramped high rises in Hollywood or DTLA or at Gehry’s Folly at 8160 Sunset. The on-going destruction of Valley Village’s residential areas is particularly ominous for the viability of the entire Valley. 

Los Angeles’ Absurd Solution is to Spend Billions on Construction 

Politicos have fallen in love with the disastrous notion that Los Angeles should make construction of extremely dense Transit Oriented Districts [TODs] and Infill projects its main business. This idea is a perversion of the Keynesian principle that during a recession, spending money helps a society to recover. If the government cannot find something worthwhile to construct, then, Keynes said, it can pay people to dig holes and fill them up again. The money paid to the workers will be spent in the stores, that will then make it possible to hire more employees and buy more products from suppliers. 

This principle is sound, but Keynes never encouraged spending money on harmful projects. (If there were a bona fide housing shortage, residential construction would satisfy Keynes’s requirements, but our Crash of 2008 was caused by spending billions of dollars to build into a glut – which is exactly what Los Angeles is doing.) 

As mentioned in a prior article, destroying rent-controlled housing in order to build luxury housing is atrocious macro-economic policy and harms society. Furthermore, the subsidy of unwanted luxury housing harms the Price System by misleading people into thinking that financing more high rises is a wise use of investment capital. Again, this dynamic plus massive fraud resulted in the Crash of 2008. 

It seems that both California’s Governor and LA City leaders think that deficit spending on construction should be Los Angeles’ prime business. While the spending of billions of dollars will have a short term stimulus, the long term impact will be devastating. 

The Crucial Exodus Time is Nigh 

When people expect prices to rise, people buy before the increase. The Family Millennials and Generation Xers are beginning to realize that home prices in Austin, Texas, outside Nashville and Atlanta, etc. are rising. Now is the time for them to jettison LA and buy where costs are still low and opportunity is high. As Gen Xers and Family Millennials see that home prices in other areas of the nation are beginning to increase, their departure rate from LA will accelerate. The few Gen Zers who are still here will soon realize that they need to unload their properties in LA before the next crash as well as buy elsewhere before those housing prices significantly increase. 

The temporary inflation in R-1 prices will benefit the Gen Xers who did not move away prior to the Crash of 2008. As they move to higher management levels, they can afford better homes. They realize that selling their R-1 homes in Valley Village is their last chance to get their money out of their Valley homes. The financial pressure to escape from LA is irresistible. 

A Gen Xer can sell an LA home for $1 million and buy a larger home in Texas for only $450,000. The housing cost differential between Los Angeles and Texas and Nashville and Atlanta, etc. is go great, that the equity in an LA home may allow a Gen X family to buy a better home for all cash. At the very least, the family will have a whopping down payment with a very small mortgage. For Gen Xers, opportunity is knocking twice. 

The Impact of Measure S 

The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is officially on the March 2017 ballot as Measure S. If it passes, it will halt the most dramatic threat to LA’s future, i.e., the mega projects, which are at the root of the extortion and bribery running LA City Hall. 

Even if Measure S passes, however, Infill developers will continue to bid up the prices of residences way beyond their value as mere living space. If all single homes were re-zoned R-1, no matter what higher zoning surrounded them, families could afford to look for a home in LA. Such a down zoning would prevent the Infill developers from bidding up home prices and a family could feel secure that its residential neighborhood would be safe from developers for decades. The opposite will continue to be the situation for LA. Residential prices will temporarily escalate as Infill developers bid up the purchase prices.   

Science Will Prevail 

Despite misinformation from City Hall and its apologists like Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics and Joel Singer of California Association of Realtors on Channel 4's Conan Nolan’s show, the osmosis-like movement of talented middle class from Los Angeles to the suburbs in Arizona, Texas and the rest of the Sun Belt will prevail. Has there ever been a time in history when people voluntarily moved away from low cost-high opportunity areas to high cost-low opportunity areas?

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

GELFAND’S WORLD--Over the past few days, several of my friends have asked me to support them in their attempt to create a reform movement in the California Democratic Party. This isn't the first such attempt by any means, but the current confluence of bad news on the national level and grass roots rebellion on the local level makes this attempt a bit more likely to succeed. My comment is that their reform platform should go even farther. 

The Blue Revolution, as it calls itself, proposes structural changes in the way the Democratic Party rules itself. Most of what it suggests is valid, but of little interest to the rest of us. But they do get to one topic that is important -- restructuring the way that members of the Democratic National Committee are selected. I would like to suggest a reason why this is important. The DNC plays a critical role in the way presidential primary elections are scheduled. The current DNC has been an utter failure in dealing with the chronic problem of giving great power to Iowa and New Hampshire, two states which fail to represent the United States as a whole or, for that matter, speak for liberal values. 

Our local rebels want to change the way that California's DNC representatives are chosen. More power to them. But let's take it farther. A real reform proposal would be to demand that the DNC change the order of primaries to give the rest of the country a chance. As long as we're at it, how about making California the first or second state in the 2020 primaries? 

We will know that a newly restructured DNC is for real when New Hampshire is kicked out of its first place position in the presidential primaries, and not until then. If our California DNC delegation can't make some noise about this long-overdue change, then what good are they? 

Moving primaries around is a start, but it's still just a small piece of what ails us. I would like to offer a proposal that is both thoroughly radical and yet profoundly conservative. You might say it is self-sacrificial yet ambitious. 

The background: 

Back in the old days, Democrats got money and support from unions and from a few individual donors. The big business interests didn't feel a lot of kinship with Democrats, and gave their money mostly to Republicans. Democrats found themselves outspent, but managed to hold control of the congress for most of a half century. Unfortunately, the Democrats who controlled the U.S. Congress got a little greedy. They figured that business interests had to deal with them anyway because they held the power, so they might as well take money from business. 

It was the perfect example of a short term success that becomes a long term problem. Let's consider one example of how this worked out. We'll do so by asking the following question -- does anyone trust the U.S. congress to represent the interests of the American public when it comes to prescription drug pricing? The answer is pretty obvious isn't it? We're not going to find a lot of people who would say, "I believe that the congress will do what's right for us when it comes to that issue." Notice that Republicans and Democrats are equally damaged (in the moral sense) by their acceptance of pharmaceutical money. 

The Democrats have a real problem when they are not in the majority, because they don't have a simply stated ideology to fall back on. Republicans have it easy. All they have to do is recite, "Less government, lower taxes, a stronger military." Simplistic thinking combined with simplistic rhetoric does have its audience. In a nation that has been watching itself decline as an economic power since the oil embargo of the 1970s, the Democrats don't have a real strong slogan of their own to counter with. 

So how about if the Blue Revolution and those of us who think of ourselves as Reform Democrats create our own litmus test. We will support candidates who refuse to take money from the drug companies, from the casinos, from oil companies and computer chip manufacturers, from Facebook and Google, Walmart and Microsoft. We will support a party that represents workers. We're not necessarily hostile to business -- we'll work with business in terms of legitimate needs -- but we need to understand who we are first. 

We can start here in California. Since this is a CityWatch column, let's also apply the rule to Los Angeles City Council elections. Anybody who takes money from the developers doesn't get my vote. 

I understand that it's easy to poo-poo these suggestions as being impossible to achieve. Allow me to suggest that the internet age has changed things quite a bit. I suspect that plenty of people would donate a few dollars to candidates who pledge to follow the new rule by refusing corporate money. It will require candidates who are willing to join in a new political culture. The opportunity exists for a newly reformed Democratic Party to flourish. But it has to be a party that understands that modern voters will see through insincerity. 

Addendum 

In my previous column, I argued that those of us who are so appalled by the Trump election should not forget our anger. One commenter argued, not unreasonably, that we shouldn't match the hatred we saw applied against Obama with hatred of our own. Fair enough, but let's clarify. I would argue that it is legitimate to be angry about the victory of racism, misogyny, and bullying. This isn't hatred so much as it is justifiable outrage. This does not mean that we should lose our self-control, but that we should stay motivated. 

Someone named Phil Shailer said it much better than me. This reaction to Trump voters has been making the rounds and is likely to go viral because it speaks for so many of us.

Finally, let me thank Bill Roberson, Shannon Ross, and Carrie Scoville for making me aware of the Blue Revolution.

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

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Several weeks ago in “Can the Cheap Perfume of "Approve with Conditions" Mask the Stink of Bad Planning?”  I explained how the real purpose of lengthy “conditions of approval” for large, controversial real estate projects like 333 S. LaCienega is to neutralize community opposition. These endless promises are intended to defuse challenges to mega-projects, like the one pictured above in a shorter form than proposed. These promises, transformed into “conditions of approval,” are nearly worthless, but often succeed in persuading neighborhood critics to drop their opposition to bad projects. (Photo above: La Cienega and Third Street intersection.) 

This sordid process thrives in Los Angeles because decision makers routinely approve controversial projects once they receive campaign contributions and once community opposition has been sidelined by developer promises. In these situations, the decision makers never bother to ask such obvious planning-related questions as: 

• Does the project conform to the very plans and zones that the City Planning Commission and the City Council legally enacted after an extensive preparation and adoption process? 

• Does the design of the proposed project match the character and scale of surrounding residential areas, as required by the City Council-adopted Community Plans, as well as the design guidelines now included in the General Plan Framework Element? 

• Do public infrastructure and public services have sufficient capacity – per Framework Policy 3.3  -- to meet future user demand stemming from the approved project? 

• Will the project’s Environmental Impact Report conclusions be monitored and updated once the City Council adopts approval ordinances? 

• Will project approvals be phased, ensuring that later phases are contingent on certified compliance with the original Conditions of Approval? 

• Will a developer’s multiple promises to community groups and elected officials, such as job generation and transit ridership, be accurately and regularly monitored? 

• Will there be real-world consequences, such as revocation of certificates of occupancy or partial demolition of structures, if promises are not kept? 

Because these obvious questions are never asked, the legislative actions, such as spot-zoning, blocked by Measure S, the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, predictably lead to truly bad city planning. For example, the proposed luxury high rise at the former Loehman’s site – 333 S. LaCienega -- perfectly illustrates how these bad planning practices proliferate in Los Angeles, with cascading adverse consequences. Consider the following: 

• Clash with character and scale of nearby areas: As should be obvious the rendering above, this project does not comply with the legally required General Plan findings that the structure be consistent with the scale and character of the neighborhood’s residential area. More specifically, the project will be 240 feet high and have a Floor Area Ratio/FAR (i.e., building mass) of 6.0 on a lot where height is restricted to 45 feet and building mass is limited to an FAR of 1.5. As for compatible character, the proposed tower has a nautical design, reminiscent of a cruise ship, while the surrounding residential buildings have Spanish Revival architecture. Admittedly, a cruise boat might come in handy when massive earthquakes and climate-change induced sea-level rises permanently flood the greater Fairfax area, but for now this nautical design is totally at odds with the area’s character. 

• Traffic congestion: The project is located at one of the most congested intersections in Los Angeles. Called the Bermuda Triangle, the site is the convergence point of San Vicente Boulevard, Third Street, LaCienega Boulevard, Burton Way, and LeDoux. No combination of street signs, signal lights, and traffic officers has managed to keep this intersection clear during rush hours, and the construction of an auto-centric luxury tower at this location can only make a bad traffic situation worse. 

• Unconvincing public necessity: Los Angeles City Charter, Section 558, clearly states that to qualify for General Plan Amendments and zone changes, a project must conform to public necessity, convenience, general welfare, and good zoning practice. In this case, the tenants will be extremely rich, paying an average rent of $12,000 per month for lavish apartments in a building with five star amenities, including on-call luxury cars and drivers. These are certainly wonderful features for the 1 percent who can afford them, but the Wilshire Community Plan area has no demonstrated shortage of parcels that can accommodate such luxury apartments. The use of spot-zoning and spot-planning to jack up a 45 foot height limit to 240 feet may meet a private need to maximize profit, but it does not meet any public need. There is no public necessity for a spot-General Plan Amendment and spot-Zone Change to build a luxury apartment tower where it is strictly illegal and unwarranted. 

• Poor Zoning Practices eliminate certainty: The related City Charter finding of good zoning practice is also sharply at odds with this project. The City Council must take three separate actions to legalize this project: a spot-zone change, a spot-height district change, and a spot-General Plan Amendment. Not only is City Charter Section 555 clear that these legislative actions must apply to socially and geographically significant areas (i.e., not single parcels), but these poor planning practices totally eliminate certainty from the planning process. When individuals, families, or companies move into an area, they have clear expectations of what can be legally built near their homes and businesses. But, spot-zoning completely removes this certainty. Cities like Los Angeles then become the Wild West. Spot-zoning through a City Council vote to permit a 240 foot high rise tower where 45 feet is the law eliminates all predictability from the planning process. The zones and plan designations that people assumed about their neighborhood when they moved in can vanish at the snap of a deep-pocketed developer’s fingers. 

• Affordable housing hype: The project claims that it needs a major economic incentive, much greater building mass, to accommodate large luxury apartments, through LA’s Density Bonus Ordinance. More specifically, the developer intends to replace 13 of 145 luxury apartments with low-income units to build a much larger building. Yet the developer has owned this building site for many years and has virtually no land acquisition costs. In this case, LA’s genuine need for more affordable housing has become a thin cover story for the construction of 130 luxury rental apartments where less than half of that figure is legally permitted. 

• Misuse of on and off-site improvements: The project’s conditions of approval, as voted by the City Planning Commission and the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, include adjacent street trees, bicycle infrastructure, and a quasi-public fountain. Yet in nearby Los Angeles and Beverly Hills neighborhoods, there are many existing pedestrian-oriented projects and corridors. Some have been built and operated as basic municipal services, not as extensions of mega-projects. Others are linked to by-right buildings that conform to plans and zones, and that do not need City Council spot-zoning rescue ordinances to usher in public improvements. 

• Bad Precedents: To justify height and mass far above legal limits, the project invokes other nearby buildings that exceed 45 feet. Yet, most of these over-height buildings also required spot-zoning approval from elected officials to be built. For example, one of these projects, across the street, at 8500 Burton Way, is a prototype for this project and owned by the same developer. Yet, when it was permitted, its neighbors were told it would not become a precedent for more ad hoc zone changes and general plan amendments. Nevertheless, the genie is out of the bottle. If the City Council eventually approves 333 S. LaCienega, it is only a question of time until nearby property owners make parallel requests. They will quickly realize that similar zone changes and General Plan amendments can green light more lavish and lucrative high-rise apartment towers on their properties. 

The take away from this case study is that a few poor planning practices eventually open up the flood gates for more bad decisions. Their cumulative impact is municipal demise, but good planning practices can move a city in the opposite direction. Los Angeles can still become the progressive, highly livable city that most of residents and visitors truly desire. It might even eventually become the global city that its City Hall boosters magically believe can be achieved through real estate speculation.

(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles City Planner and also a Board Member of the Beverly Wilshire Homes Association. He welcomes comments and corrections at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.