LOS ANGELES

DUELLING VISIONS--The Build Better LA Initiative is a remarkably bad idea that hands more power to the Los Angeles City Council to approve overdevelopment, even as it boosts the council's desire for more campaign cash from real estate developers.

HELP AND HYPOCRISY - Homelessness is often described as a problem we must solve -- and Los Angeles city and county now have expensive plans to do so. Homelessness is also an industry. And as George Mason professor Craig Willse shows in his book, The Value of Homelessness: Managing Surplus Life in the United States, that industry is designed to manage costs rather than challenge the mechanisms that create and maintain homelessness. 

BACKTALK--On Tuesday, CityWatch posted an article that loosely - very loosely and deceptively - tried to paint a picture of why I support the No Kill philosophy for the City's animal shelters and why I do what I do in the realm of animal welfare.  The article got it wrong.  I do what I do because I love animals and want to see as many of them live good lives for as long as possible. (Photo above: Councilman Koretz on right with LA Controller Ron Galperin and a friend.) 

EDITOR’S PICK--Every time you turn on a light or charge your cellphone, you pay a tax. Surprised? Many Angelenos don't realize that hidden in their monthly bill from the Department of Water and Power is a big surcharge in the form of a 10% City of Los Angeles Utility Tax, as well as a “transfer” of 8% of all electric-related revenue to City Hall. In short, you're paying almost 20% more for electricity than you should be.

MEDIA WATCH: NBC4--LAPD insiders say terror preparedness is "smoke and mirrors." Jenna Susko reports for NBC4 News on Feb. 12, 2016. (Published Saturday, Feb. 13, 2016)

GETTING THERE FROM HERE--Aren't you getting sick of hearing why we're "supposed to" ride transit, and why transit ridership isn't always where it should be?  Certainly, "doing the right thing" is what most of us will do based on our innate striving for our better human nature, but human nature hasn't changed and we're leaving the Bush/Obama politically-correct era and entering a Sanders/Trump era of telling it like it is ... and that includes transit! 

GET IN INVOLVED--The original version of this article incorrectly implied that only two students sit on the board for the Westwood Neighborhood Council. In fact, three students, two being undergraduates and one being a law student, sit on the board.

HERE’S WHAT I KNOW-Last Wednesday, the Coastal Commission fired executive director Charles Lester, voting seven to five in a closed-door session, despite the supportive testimony of over 200 people who opposed his dismissal and hardly any in favor of firing him.

LATINO PERSPECTIVE-Public schools in Los Angeles, where about 50 percent of the student body is Latino, will not allow immigration officials onto school premises as the U.S. continues its crackdown on undocumented Central American immigrants. The Los Angeles Unified School District board decided Tuesday to name schools, from kindergarten to high school, as "safe zones" and resource centers for students and families threatened by the enforcement of new immigration laws. The resolution cited a "heightened sense of fear and anxiety" among students and families in the district, as well as the need for school grounds to welcome families who have questions about immigration. 

VOX POP--Thunderstorms are an infrequent occurrence in Los Angeles. Last November all sides in the ongoing and often litigious development wars in Los Angeles – those who see density as a cure for all that ails us and the NIMBYs who want to embalm LA as it was 20 years ago – were caught off guard by the sound of thunder. A group named the Coalition to Preserve LA proposed a ballot measure that would establish a moratorium of up to two years for any development project that does not adhere to existing planning regulations or that requires a City Council vote to change the zoning of a particular site. 

STREETSBLOG LA-At its meeting last week, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission unanimously reaffirmed keeping bikeway designations for Central Avenue and Westwood Boulevard.

GUEST WORDS--Three-card Monte is a confidence game in which the victim (the “mark”) bets that they can find the “money card” – typically the queen of hearts – among three face-down playing cards. It’s a shell game without the shells. Dealers employ sleight of hand and misdirection to prevent the mark from finding the queen. The bottom line is that the mark always loser. 

GUEST COMMENTARY-Just eighteen months prior to handing over (in a below-market private sale) the keys to an old firehouse (photo above) bordering Richard Weintraub’s proposed development site for Sportsmen’s Landing, the City slapped Mr. Weintraub with a $1.6 million lawsuit to recover several years’ worth of taxes that he, as a hotel owner, was required to but did not pay.  

A THEORY ON EVERYTHING-With the passing of 79 year-old United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Saturday one can only hope we will have a reprieve from his reactionary "originalism" legal views. This might allow us to bring our country and the Supreme Court into the 21st century and a chance of achieving liberty and justice for all under law. 

ANIMAL WATCH-None of the following is intended as legal advice. Information contained herein is strictly for informational purposes. If you are a landlord in Los Angeles and have specific questions or situations regarding Service/Emotional Support Animals, talk with an attorney or rental-property owners’ association, such as the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles (AAGLA) or Apartment Owners' Association (AOA). Both tenants and landlords can find information at HCID. 

Find Your Neighborhood Council, Find Your Voice Here.

GET INVOLVED--This is a message to all residents of the City of Los Angeles, urging you to participate in your local neighborhood council. It is a chance for you to have an influence on the choices that your city government makes, such as the way that spending is divided among things like road repairs, parks, or public safety. (Photo above: Sunland Tujunga Neighborhood Council raising its voice.) 

INSIDER REPORT--This is the story of what happens when someone reports wrong doing by an employer. This story probably plays out daily in an office near you. This is why most go along to get along; but I’m not built that way. (Photo above: Author Cheryl Dorsey) 

WORD ON THE LA STREETS BLOG -- “Bottom line is, citizens want to be involved, they want to be engaged in the process of figuring out how we reprogram our streets, how we reprogram our communities, making it more livable, making it more desirable, making it safer.”

So said councilmember for the 9th District, Curren Price, when interviewed by KCET’s Nic Cha Kim at CicLAvia: South L.A. in December of 2014 (minute 4:20). 

It is a perspective that many who live, work, play, and move along the Central Avenue corridor in historic South Central share.

Given that the corridor communities have a median income hovering around $30,000, an average household size between of 4 and 9 people, a median age of 23, and little opportunity for economic advancement thanks to limited access to higher education, area residents are very much at the mercy of their environment. Rapidly rising rents and the lack of affordable housing around the city make it nearly impossible for them to move anywhere else. And the high dependence of many families on transit, cycling, and walking to get back and forth to work and school means that just going about their daily lives entails constant flirtations with danger.

Central Avenue, boasting the highest number of cyclists anywhere in the city during peak hours (and a very steady stream in off-peak hours), has seen nearly 300 collisions between drivers and pedestrians or cyclists over the last decade.

That we know of, that is.

Many of those who have been hit by cars have never reported the incidents to authorities, either because they preferred to handle things informally with the driver, the injuries were minor, or the incident was a hit-and-run and they saw no point.

So, even though more than three-quarters of residents are renters, the vast majority would tell you they are deeply invested in the well-being of their neighborhoods and would like nothing better than to see them become safer and healthier places for all.

Thus far, however, efforts to get Councilmember Price to sit down and have that conversation with stakeholders about their needs and aspirations have proven futile.

Over the past year, the community has been shut out of discussions about Great Streets’ and the councilmember’s plans to remake Central Avenue in the image of Broadway (downtown) and to remove the Central Avenue bike lane planned to help bike commuters get safely between Watts, historic South Central, and jobs downtown from the Mobility Plan altogether.

The Great Streets plans for the street were only made available to the public after Streetsblog published an article complaining about the blatant steamrolling of the community. When local stakeholders tried to follow up by delivering letters to the councilmember’s office and approaching the members of the Business Improvement District, they were still not able to get any response from Price to their demands for a bike lane.

Fed up with failed attempts at peaceful engagement and concerned that Price would once again try to see Central Ave. removed from the Mobility Plan at the City Planning Commission hearing, residents took action. Gathering their signs, courage, a megaphone, and a banner to be hung on Price’s building, they stormed the councilmember’s constituent center at Vernon and Central yesterday.

“We’re tired of coming to you!” said resident and safe streets advocate Samuel Bankhead.

“When are you going to come to our* office?” he continued. “I’m asking…when are you coming down to have a dialogue?…What solution do you have?” [*He was referring to the conference room a TRUST South LA, where residents, volunteers, and stakeholders regularly meet, discuss community problems and potential solutions, and plan community engagements as part of a mobility advisory council.]

Staff on site were not able to offer much in the way of reassurances.

When District Director James Westbrooks was asked by Bankhead if he would be willing to tell the kids standing there — kids that are regularly transported back and forth to school by bike along Central Avenue — that “we’re not gonna have a bike lane,” there was not much Westbrooks could say.

Price made up his mind on the subject a long time ago.

Sadly, the logic used to reach that decision — detailed in a statement emailed in response to stakeholders’ action — seems rather questionable. 

For one, Price says that safety is the key reason it would be difficult to add lanes to Central Avenue. Arguing it is “too narrow, has significant cut-through traffic all day, and has no pocket lane for left-hand turns,” he says there is no space for a lane.

But the narrowness of the street would really only be an issue in the context of the extension of the sidewalks, as suggested in the Great Streets plan, for the very brief section of Central between Vernon and Adams. That plan would put the street on a road diet and, instead of using valuable road real estate to carve out space for cyclists, install planters and bollards to make it feel like the pedestrian space had been extended.

The reconfiguration of Central Avenue, as proposed by Great Streets, includes a road diet, extended sidewalks, and the shifting of the bike lane planned to run from Watts to Little Tokyo over to Avalon. Source: Great Streets

The concrete sidewalks themselves would only be extended if funding should become available — something not likely to happen for several years, at the earliest. Meaning that most of the street space “reclaimed” by Great Streets would likely go underutilized, possibly for years.

Meanwhile, instead of taking the option to head a half-mile east to Avalon or a parallel side street (as suggested by Price and the Great Streets program), cyclists would likely continue to ride on the narrow and crowded sidewalks they ride on now (antagonizing business owners hoping to create an enticing pedestrian environment) or further slowing traffic by riding in the single traffic lane created by the road diet.

No one wins in that scenario.

But it’s Price’s other point that really drives stakeholders crazy.

“As a grandfather of small children,” his statement continues, “I would feel uneasy riding our bikes along this busy thoroughfare knowing the dangerous implications.”

Yes!

Exactly!

This is exactly the reason stakeholders finally stormed his office yesterday!

They are tired of being uneasy and they are tired of feeling that they are constantly in danger!

Unlike Price, however, because they are lower-income, are patrons of shops on Central, have kids in schools along the corridor, work along the corridor, and reside along the corridor, they don’t have a choice about where to ride.

As explained in depth here, gang activity makes the side streets a very difficult proposition for youth, lone commuter cyclists, and families. Busy thoroughfares like Central Avenue offer lots of eyes, familiar faces, and potential safe havens. And, it is one of the few streets in the area that offers a straight shot between the downtown warehouses (where many of the commuters work), historic South Central, and Watts.

For folks who are trying to get to work on bikes that are in questionable condition because they can’t afford better ones or who have kids in tow, having to travel as much as a mile out of their way just to access a short stretch of bike infrastructure can also constitute a real hardship. The city would never ask drivers to make such a detour or to take the least safe route. It makes no sense to put that burden on the shoulders of the most vulnerable of LA’s citizens.

Gang territories in Historic South Central; Central Ave. is the border on the right edge of the lopsided figure. The borders between gang territories — generally main streets — are often where you have a lot of activity between rivals, but civilians are generally able to pass. Gangs’ occupation of neighborhoods means that side streets are where gang members tend to feel they can act with impunity. People who don’t live on those streets tend to avoid them. Source: Coalition for Responsible Community Development

South Central cyclists are the economic engine of the community.

The vast majority are riding out of necessity: they can’t afford transit, work off-peak hours, are making deliveries between small businesses, or have to get to several sites in a short space of time.

Their existence is already precarious.

The least the city can do is offer them slightly safer passage so they can bring home a salary to their families, get their kids to school safely, patronize local businesses, and continue to build a stronger community.

If, as Price contends, he takes seriously his responsibility “to make the best…decision on behalf of the entire community,” then hopefully he will rethink his effort to see the Central Avenue bike lane removed from the Mobility Plan.

Disadvantaging his constituents who struggle the most does not uplift the community.

It undermines it.

(Sahra Sulaiman writes for LA Streets Blog … where this piece was first posted.)

-cw

PERSPECTIVE-I recently wrote about the Neighborhood Integrity ballot measure proposal, an attempt to rein in the City Council’s tendency to play fast and loose with general plan amendments, especially when developers contribute to their re-election campaigns. 

WE CAN DO BETTER-I finally got around to watching Searching for Sugarman, the excellent 2013 documentary by Malik Bendjelloul about Sixto Rodriguez.  Seeing the film, my mind circled back, as it does sometimes, to Detroit. (Photo: Rodriguez) 

LAPD INSIDER-On January 28, 2016, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief Charlie Beck unilaterally disbanded the Parole Compliance Units (PCU) within all divisions of the LAPD and ordered that those officers assigned to the PCU be redeployed to patrol assignments. That was the Unit that specialized in conducting checks on early release "non-violent, non-serious" offenders.