LOS ANGELES

POLITICS--Attorney Patricia K. Oliver alleges that SoCalGas is “deliberately advancing a deceptive AQMD order that would immunize the gas company from liability for its massive negligence at Aliso Canyon, which is sickening thousands of Porter Ranch residents” in a letter she sent to the South Coast Air Quality Management District last week. 

BACK TALK--We are writing to respond to and clarify some of the issues raised in your article "Tom LaBonge Leaves the Cupboard Bare … Records on $600,000 Missing" posted on January 19, 2016 on City Watch.  

First, it should be stated that LaBonge's funding proposal of $50,000 for the urban design study for the benefit of the Miracle Mile community at large and its museums did go through a formal and publicly recorded vote. Per Council File No. 15-0741-S1, dated June 17, 2015, all ten Council members present voted "yes." (Five were absent.)

Second, LACMA is not the sole beneficiary of the $50,000 grant in question. The proposed funding was allocated for a project to benefit the community of the Miracle Mile and its five museums (LACMA, La Brea Tar Pits and Museum, Petersen Automotive Museum, Craft & Folk Art Museum, and the future Academy Museum of Motion Pictures) to define and promote the Miracle Mile as a distinct and cohesive cultural destination. As a matter of accounting, LACMA was named the recipient of the funds in the name of all the museums and was in charge of paying the consultant using the grant funds. However, the benefits of the funding were to be equal among the five institutions and the City's 4th District community at large.

Finally, the scope of the project is greater than "a way-finding project involving signage along Museum Row."  The project's deliverable was a wide-ranging creative document detailing many factors that impact Museum Mile as a destination. This includes a variety of current and future concerns: consistent naming of the district; accounting of existing parking and proposed alternate models; available sidewalks and crosswalks before, during, and after Metro construction; possible collaborative public programming, and, finally, way-finding.  We believe the project will benefit the entire Miracle Mile community and are working with Councilman Ryu and his office to provide whatever information and documentation that he may need to support the project.

We kindly request that you publish this letter to address the factual inaccuracies and negative implications included in the article on CityWatch. Please reach out with any further questions or clarification about the far-reaching community benefits of this project.

(Miranda Carroll is Director of Communications at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.)

CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 7

Pub: Jan 22, 2017

PLATKIN ON PLANNING--There is no shortage of heat when it comes to planning debates in Los Angeles, but not much light, especially when attention turns to the proposed Neighborhood Protect Initiative.  For example, an instant opposition group, that does not appear to have even read the initiative, is already mislabeling it the Housing Moratorium Initiative.   

So, borrowing a term from Hizzoner, Eric Garcetti, lets return to some (city planning) basics.  Maybe it is possible to shed some light on these heated planning debates through three simple questions and answers: 

What do we mean by planning?  In California there is not much grey when it comes to planning.  Every city is legally required to prepare and adopt a General Plan.  State law not only specifies that this General Plan must be timely and internally consistent, but it also must include the following elements:  Land Use (Called community plans in Los Angeles), Circulation and Transportation (Called Mobility Element in LA), Housing, Noise, Conservation, Open Space, and Safety.  

In addition most cities, including LA, have an optional Air Quality element.  Furthermore, LA has another element that ties everything together, the General Plan Framework Element.  It also has a new Health element, and many ancient elements, such as Infrastructure, that were prepared a half century ago, but never subsequently updated or rescinded. 

In LA nearly all of these General Plan elements are out-of-date. They are also internally inconsistent, with different base years, horizon years, and presumably even contradictory goals, policies, and implementation programs.  To say the least, they urgently need to be updated.  It is not just a question of following state law. Current, carefully monitored plans are necessary for LA to avoid the chaos resulting from roller coaster market forces determining the city’s fate. 

In addition to the General Plan element, most California cities must prepare an annual monitoring report on its General Plan that is submitted to Sacramento for review.  In LA, which is a charter city, this requirement is built into the legally adopted General Plan Framework Element and its related Environmental Impact Report.  Despite these legal obligations and related lawsuits, City Hall has ignored this monitoring requirement for the past 20 years.  It never created a mandated monitoring program, and it has never drafted a full monitoring report, just a few partial reports.  

This, then, is what constitutes planning in California.  Issues related to zoning, which occupy most of the time and energy of the LA Department of City Planning, are nothing more than a partial implementation mechanism for the city’s Land Use Element.  The 3,000 building permits per year that the Department of Building and Safety shunts off to City Planning for special review are, therefore, only a tiny part of what constitutes real city planning.    

It is, therefore, unfortunate that in Los Angeles, a city that desperately needs good planning, city planning has been reduced to zoning technicalities.  Most city planners, even those with graduate degrees and professional certifications, wile away their days as zoning technicians, processing the building permits that Building and Safety sends over to them.  In effect, their job is to legalize otherwise illegal projects. 

What do we mean by density?  In Los Angeles most references to density take their lead from the primary focus of the city’s planning department: reviewing and almost always approving land use exemptions for large and tall buildings that are otherwise illegal.  This is why in LA there is often agreement by proponents of these discretionary permits, as well as their critics, that density is nothing more than large buildings.  

But, this is only a small part of what really constitutes density.  Many cities that have dense buildings, like New York City, also have high-density public infrastructure and public services necessary for those dense commercial and residential buildings to function.  This includes high-density mass transit, as well as wide, well maintained, tree covered sidewalks that support a high-density pedestrian traffic.  It also means high-density libraries, neighborhood parks, and schools for the high-density population.  In it entirety, this is what should be called good density.  It also accounts for New York City’s low per capita carbon footprint.  In its case, a high density built environment actually works. 

But, in LA what already exists or is proposed for such neighborhoods as Hollywood, Koreatown, Downtown LA, and even Warner Center, is bad density.  It consists of high-density buildings that are permitted through discretionary approvals decades before essential supporting high-density infrastructure and services appear.  LA’s current planning approach is to therefore put the cart many, many years before the horse.  If it were to plan correctly, the General Plan’s mandatory and optional elements would first be brought up to date.  At the same time the city’s public infrastructure and public services need to be upgraded through careful planning and monitoring prior to the approval of new high-density buildings.  If this were done in the correct order, then LA could end up with good density, rather than the bad density that is already blighting much of the city and getting worse as the current real estate bubble swells. 

What do we mean by growth and development?  In L.A. these are euphemisms for real estate speculation.  When officials and pundits talk about growth and talk about development, they mean privately financed real estate projects, usually commercial skyscrapers, apartment complexes, or a mix of the two. 

But, this focus on real estate speculation is an inaccurate definition of growth and development.  Growth also refers to the full gamut of the planning issues addressed in a city’s General Plan, and development also includes all of the public facilities that are necessary for a large modern city like LA, that intend to become a high-density world city.  

Growth also includes the expansion of schools, colleges, universities, galleries, theaters, and museums.  Development should incorporate the roll out of the alternative transportation modes addressed, in part, by LA’s new Mobility Element:  high speed interurban rail, commuter rail, heavy rail (subways), light rail (trolleys), express busses, local buses, shuttles, motorcycles and bicycles, and finally walking.  In short, all of these infrastructure and service categories, whether public, non-profit, or private, are the sum of what should be factored into any analysis and description of growth and development.   

The Unifying Principle:  If there is a unifying principle that will turn all of this heat into light, it can be found in every General Plan.  These plans cover 100 percent of a city’s land area.  They address far more than the privately owned lots that are the subject of building permits and discretionary planning actions. 

Depending on the neighborhood, these private owned lots only comprise 20 to 40 percent of a city’s land area.  The remainder is streets, parkways, sidewalks, driveways, parking areas, public buildings, parks and beaches, power lines and related easements, and different forms of open space.  

Since this is a majority of a city’s total area, and this is fully addressed through the planning process, it only makes sense that these areas need to be fully considered when talking about planning, density, and growth and development.  It also means that these discussions should be linked to each city’s budgeting process and reflected in the work programs of each city department.

(Dick Platkin is a former LA City Planner who writes on local planning issues for City Watch.  He welcomes questions, comments, and corrections at [email protected]. ) 

-cw

CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 7

Pub: Jan 22, 2016

EDUCATION POLITICS-Sixty-two years after Brown vs. Board of Education supposedly made integration the law of the land, why is it we still have de facto segregation and an objectively inferior public school system in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and beyond? 

The best explanation is the least cited reason: People who are not themselves subjected to inferior segregated public education are loathe to comprehend how impossible attaining a good education is in a district like LAUSD that has sanctions in place for any teacher who tries to buck its clearly inferior system. 

The corporate media, bent on supporting the privatization of public education for profit, continues to censor information regarding the abysmal state of affairs in the vast majority of LAUSD and charter schools. 

Parents without children in these schools have no personal knowledge or any way of knowing how deplorable public school conditions are since their predominantly white children are safely ensconced in comparatively high functioning private or parochial schools. 

These students are being taught critical thinking skills in all subjects through a rigorous curriculum that rarely, if ever, exists at the super-majority-minority-poor-segregated LAUSD schools -- not to mention in many other districts like it throughout the country. 

Those outside the failing LAUSD system are effectively limited to what actions they might be willing to take to change things, mainly due to their media-nurtured ignorance as to what is really going on. 

Add to this the pernicious, unchallenged racial stereotypes that foster low expectations for minority students -- with no expectation that better is even possible – and you are left with the disingenuous rhetoric that “every child should be a lifelong learner who is going to college,” even if they can't read, write, or do basic math. 

So, if 94% of the white population is able to avoid integrated public education by escaping to private, parochial, and certain majority-white charter schools, then it’s no wonder they continue to rationalize their choices, often by falsely believing that the same quality of education might be available in our degraded public schools. 

Another reason inferior segregated public education still exists in 2015 is that no regulatory agency seems willing or capable of taking action against clearly segregated, failing public schools that are in violation of the law. A conspiracy of silence continues to block any objective media coverage of the neglect that remains a closely guarded secret in plain sight. 

Again, this dearth of knowledge has everything to do with the corporate ownership of both the commercial and public media – entities that continue to censor any news that contradicts their corporate masters' move to privatize the $2 trillion a year public education "business for profit.” 

All this negativity tends to create low self-image and low expectations for all involved in segregated public education. Some good teachers still try to get their students to accomplish just one thing that they had formerly been taught was impossible within the “no-expectation” public and charter schools. Good teachers persist in doing this with the knowledge that, once their students master just one thing they didn't think they could do, they might have an epiphany – they might just come to believe they are capable of learning everything. 

Ironically, teachers who go this extra mile are too often targets for removal at LAUSD where, in the vast majority of charters, positive rhetoric takes the place of substantive critical thinking skills. One substitute teacher, who is in high demand at predominantly white charters, related to me how she was censured at a mostly Latino charter when she tried to teach critical thinking skills to her Latino students. She was punished for trying to develop the notion that ideas are interrelated; she was punished for not teaching rote fill in the blanks, the norm at that particular school and others like it. 

Since she knew from prior teaching assignments in predominantly Latino schools in Greater Los Angeles that the students were painfully aware of Presidential candidate Donald Trump's defamatory statements against Latinos, she pointed out that Trump in no way supported any of his allegations with facts. She went on to point out that what was conspicuously missing from all of his diatribes against Latinos and Muslims were any facts to support his inflammatory statements. 

Immediately, her students were able to see not only the weakness of Trump's attacks, but also their own deficiencies in the assignment they had been working on, where they had been asked but did not make a connection between the story’s thesis and the ideas that supported the thesis. 

A passing Vice Principal happened to overhear this teachable moment and consequently requested that this teacher not return to this school in the future.

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He’s a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

-cw

CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 7

Pub: Jan 22, 2016

POLITICS--To my knowledge, the only times I've ever experienced magic is when I met my wife for the first time, and when my two kids were born.  But I guess that love-at-first-sight isn't the only magic that abounds in the City of the Angels.  After all, we've got gobs of magic money coming out of Downtown--police settlements, utility settlements, and lots of resources to give developers when we were told that we were running out of water, and that our infrastructure was going to Hades in a handbasket. 

The only problem with all this magic, unfortunately, is that the average middle class Angeleno (for those of us who still exist) has to work with bank accounts that adhere strictly with the confines of math and science. 

In other words, when we have no money to spend, we can't.  And, unless we take a risk with our credit cards, we don't. 

So when the police do something horrible and send innocent men to prison for decades, their need to be compensated (and is money really sufficient compensation?) raises the other question of how Angelenos are supposed to pay for it...because it's not the corrupt police officers who will pay for it, but rather you and me. 

Ditto for the victims of the Porter Ranch gas leak.  They ARE victims, but will the SoCal Gas officials who should have prevented this pay the inevitable legal costs?  Nope, you and me again. 

So maybe we can add public sector/utility malfeasance to the list of problems we'll need to raise the torches and pitchforks about this fall. 

And I am sure that, as with overdevelopment, City Hall corruption/collusion with developers, lobbyists, special interests, etc., we'll be told to just suck it up and take it.  Never mind the fact that our police, utility and other dollars are going to this damage control instead of where our money is supposed to go. 

And I am also sure that Council President Herb Wesson (you know, the guy who redistricts at whim, makes overdevelopment deals at whim, tells former Mayor Riordan to shove off and not even let him speak in front of the City Council, and considers Mark Ridley Thomas' county supervisorial district as his manifest destiny), will shrug his bossy, regal shoulders and tell us that this is all just life in the Big City.  And not just the Big City, but "his" City. 

And I am also equally sure that former Council President and current Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is by far more of a compassionate man that the current king occupying his former position, will fail to acknowledge the rape and pillage of Angelenos' wallets...and perhaps arrange for even more overdevelopment and LADWP revenue transfers to pay for the LAPD and other outrages. 

So along comes the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, currently backed by former Mayor Riordan, and as reported in CityWatchLA we will have an interesting ride to this November's ballot. 

Because it appears that we WILL have to bring a ballot measure, and perhaps several others, to both challenge the City Council/Downtown oligarchy and demand their royal heralds and political appointees obey the law, and to respect the laws of financial responsibility when the magic money trees stop producing sufficient revenue to reverse the damage of City "leadership". 

And among those ballot measures may have to be either a revisitation of who the City Attorney represents (he is NOT legally obliged to represent ordinary Angelenos, believe it or not, but rather he is the attorney who ultimately MUST represent Downtown City leadership), or to add a City Ombudsman answerable ONLY to Neighborhood Councils. 

Because the magic sooner or later ends, leaving only the stark reality of a City on the edge of financial unsustainability and the cold, hard means we will have live within should we choose to address our financial, infrastructural, and governance problems.

(Ken Alpern is 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 does regular commentary on the Mark Isler Radio Show on AM 870, and co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.) 

-cw

CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 7

Pub: Jan 22, 2016

MY TURN-There was an amazing reaction to my article "Felipe Fuentes: the Long farewell."  It’s always gratifying to know that people read what you have to say, even if they don’t agree with your point-of-view. 

What was surprising, though, was that in all the comments on Facebook and on this site, exactly zero support was shown for Councilmember Fuentes (District 7.) Not one comment came in justifying or praising his work, and I heard from multiple people from each of the neighborhoods in his District.  Frankly, I was almost hoping for some disagreement to balance out the conversation! 

Many comments were in the same vein, expressing the hope that people would now take local elections very seriously and play an active part in selecting future candidates to run for CD7. Several people said they looked forward to fresh winds blowing in the Northeast Valley. 

Several readers called out the entire LA City Council for sticking together and always supporting each other in opposition to their stakeholders. Some even accused certain councilmembers of criminal actions, citing the relevant penal code infractions. 

Contrary to many of the comments I received, I do not believe all of our City Council elected representatives are crooks, but they do have their own agendas and that plays into their actions.  What I find objectionable, however, is the tendency they have to close their eyes to malfeasance on the part of their colleagues. When CM Fuentes evicted long-standing tenants from the Sunland Tujunga City Hall, Council President Herb Wesson said he could not get involved -- a little disingenuous since, not too long ago, he did not take kindly to CM Bernard Parks, using the power of his office to diminish Parks’ influence. 

Maybe it’s the nature of the system in which each Councilmember seems to be the "Mayor" of his or her own district. When I read the City Council agenda's and reports, some of the items are enough to make your eyes glaze over. A link on the Council website allows you to check if and when your representative shows up for Council meetings. I understand that most of the real work is done in the various committees and unless it involves budget matters or something really controversial, staff does most of the investigation. It’s similar to what goes on in both our State and Federal government day-to-day operations. 

One important question initiated by this entire drama is, “What is it that actually makes a ‘good’ councilmember?” Some people imbue their representatives with special powers and are excited to have a picture taken with them, to be recognized or be called by first name. After a while, these elected officials begin believing their own press.  

Elected officials get used to being placed on a pedestal; they forget why they were elected in the first place. Almost all of our city councilmembers have been accused of kowtowing to one benefactor or another – influential people and businesses involved in everything from real estate developments to neon signs to technological updates. This is all part of City business.  

And for each issue there will always be those who believe decisions were made as a result of campaign contributions … or even the lack of campaign contributions. In the end, you can't please every constituent, but you do have an obligation to consider every point-of-view. 

There are many unanswered questions related to the current state of affairs in Council District 7. One compliment I received from a community leader was that he thought I had managed to tie the problems of CD7 to the awakening of people in the Northeast Valley – to folks who now realize that they truly have a stake in who governs them. 

Maybe this will cause some in other Districts in Los Angeles to look at their own councilmembers with more scrutiny…to analyze what he or she is actually doing for the District other than continually passing out certificates of appreciation and posting pictures on Facebook and their respective websites extolling their presence at certain events. 

If you have a great councilmember in your district, let me know. And if you have someone who is not accessible, whose agenda differs from the majority of stakeholders in the district – someone who doesn’t wholeheartedly support the community -- then, let me know that too! 

As always, comments are welcome!

(Denyse Selesnick is a CityWatch columnist. She is a former publisher/journalist/international event organizer. Denyse can be reached at: [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

-cw

CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 7

Pub: Jan 22, 2016

NEW GEOGRAPHY--Among urban historians, Southern California has often had a poor reputation, perennially seen as “anti-cities” or “19 suburbs in search of a metropolis.” The great urban thinker Jane Jacobs wrote off our region as “a vast blind-eyed reservation.”

The Pavlovian response from many local planners, developers and politicians is to respond to this criticism by trying to repeal our own geography. Los Angeles’ leaders, for example, see themselves as creating the new sunbelt role model, built around huge investments Downtown and in an expensive, albeit underused, subway and light-rail network.

Yet the notion of turning Southern California into a dense, New York hybrid makes very little sense. Nor has it done much for the regional economy, certainly in Los Angeles. The City of Angels thrived during its period of development into a multipolar region; in the 21st century, as Downtown has gained a few thousand hipsters, the rest of the city has lagged economically while population and job grow th – including in tech – has been more robust in the surrounding counties of Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino.

Building off Strength

Southern California, even before the advent of the freeways, developed along the lines of an “archipelago of villages.” Even Downtown Los Angeles, the one legitimate urban core in the region, lost its central relevance by the 1930s and, despite all its self-promotion, employs close to the smallest share – well short of 3 percent – of the regional workforce of any large region in the country.

In contrast, the two fastest-growing areas in Southern California – the Inland Empire and Orange County – are arguably the largest regions in the country without a real downtown. Rather than a negation of urbanity, as some suggest, these areas are nurturing an expansive archipelago of smaller hubs, each serving distinct geographies, populations, tastes and purposes, and constitute the building blocks for Southern California’s urban future.

The advantages of such districts are obvious. They allow people to live as most prefer, in single-family homes, lower-density townhouses or apartments, while having easy access to a walking environment. In many cases, most notably Irvine, there is employment nearby, leading to very short commutes on average. This multipolarity is essentially baked into the Southern California cake; it cannot be transformed without massive economic disruption, and enormous expenditures on transit have so far done little to reduce gridlock or spur broad economic growth.

The Urban Archipelago

Urban theorists are correct that people, particularly the young, like walkable, often unscripted, urban areas. But that is very different from saying that they want to live in or near high-density for most of their lives. Indeed, as economist Jed Kolko has shown, people’s propensity for living in high-density locales diminishes markedly once they enter their 30s. This milestone looms within a few years for most millennials.

So when we think about urban strategy in places like the Inland Empire or Orange County, we have to see it as fulfilling two different missions: dense areas that serve as magnets for young people or childless couples, but also as places that the vast majority of people – who wish to live in suburban-style homes – can visit and enjoy. As urban hipsters grow up, these nodes continue to allow easy access to trendy food, live music or boutique shopping.

This trend can be seen in the Inland Empire, which has been roundly castigated as the “most sprawling region” in the country. The lively remake of downtown Riverside, or in some new projects being developed in places like Rancho Cucamonga, suggest there is an emerging market for this kind of low-intensity urbanization in the area.

The tendency is more evolved in Orange County, which is far more dense and where land costs are higher. In fact, O.C. is becoming a hothouse for experimentation in a basically suburban setting, including developments on former farmland, such as the Irvine Spectrum, as well as vintage downtowns such as in Orange, Fullerton, Laguna Beach and Santa Ana. Some of the more recent signature manifestations of urbanism Orange style include:

• Anaheim’s old Sunkist House and the surrounding area evolved into the “Packing District,” where young and old alike try fusion cuisine, socialize and listen to live music. Awarded Commercial Project of the Year at the Golden Nugget Awards, the renovated building and its lineup of gourmet shops, along with the new surrounding housing units and Center Street Promenade, provide a cultural hub within a larger suburban fabric.

• The emergence of Costa Mesa as one of the best midsize cities for food in the nation, with out-of-state icons such as Halal Guys and Raising Caine’s finding their way in the fray. The OC Mix is a group of stores in an industrial complex offering artisanal shops, restaurants and space for working and lounging around. The LAB, one of the early purveyors in the Costa Mesa creative scene, with its anti-mall concept, has become a breeding ground and role model for Orange County “hipness.”

• Huntington Beach’s new Pacific City complex pays obeisance to the area’s laid-back beach culture, providing foosball tables, movie screens and space to simply hang out. Besides a few anchor tenants, mostly local merchants, chefs and bartenders will call it home, and the complex plans to incubate restaurateurs at its food hall. Similar to the recently built Residences at Bella Terra, Pacific City could attract new apartment dwellers seeking urban life with a coastal escape just next door.

Toward an Urban Pluralism

Many of these developments have created among some Southern Californians a sense that a way of life is being undermined. A megadevelopment at Beach Boulevard and Edinger Avenue in Huntington Beach has been scaled down from 4,500 new housing units to 2,100, largely due to vigilant complaining and locals’ desire to maintain their “Mayberry by the Sea.”

Some Tea Party and right-wing activists see densification as a grand plot by advocates of world government, but it is less a matter of conspiracy than of conflicting interests and ideologies.

But activists, as well as NIMBYs, have a point. The current planning regime run from Sacramento would like to constrain suburban lifestyles as much as possible. State policy, notes veteran area developer Randall Lewis, is forcing developers to create projects so dense – up to 20 units per acre – that they barely satisfy the privacy needs or preferences of the middle-class families the region needs to attract and retain. “We would want to have the free market work, and developers pick what they can sell,” Lewis said.

In fact, the state’s densification strategy, notes Rancho Cucamonga City Manager John Gillison, has intensified opposition to new production of multifamily units from residents fearful that their lifestyles are being targeted. “It’s made it a lot tougher to push density,” he notes.

A far more logical approach would be to embrace what the urban historian Robert Fishman once described as “urban pluralism,” fostering the development of housing irrespective of type, largely following market forces.

As part of this approach, cities need to assure residents that their single-family neighborhoods can remain intact, while allowing for “infill development” in underused or abandoned areas, including former warehouses, deserted shopping areas or factories. Some projects, such as in Costa Mesa and Anaheim, where there is already a dense infrastructure, might be more ambitious, while other locales, like Old Town Orange, Tustin or Laguna Beach, may seek to retain more to keep a mid-density, small-town feeling.

“What works in Santa Monica does not work so well in Ontario,” notes developer Lewis.

The prospects are excellent for building on our multipolar pattern. The growth of telecommuting – already used by more workers than transit across the whole region – allows for people to cluster in their chosen communities including, if they choose, in close-in urban enclaves close to private co-working spaces such as Costa Mesa’s Crashlabs.

Thirty years ago, transit users accounted for five times the workforce share as stay-at-home workers. This has totally reversed. The growth of ride-booking services, like Uber, and the expected advent of autonomous vehicles also suggest that car-dependence, the scourge of revelers in suburbia, can be reduced.

Technology and a fair understanding of our past provide the preconditions for Southern California’s resurgence as an urban trendsetter. Given that most of America more resembles Southern California than New York or San Francisco, we are well-positioned to shape a bold 21st century urban future.

(Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is also executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press.  He lives in Orange County, CA.

Charlie Stephens is a researcher and MBA candidate at Chapman University’s Argyros School of Business and Economics and founder of substrand.com.) 

-cw

CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 7

Pub: Jan 22, 2016

LA TIMES ON EDUCATION-A member of a Facebook group discussing education asked journalism ethics expert Peter Sussman about the LA Times education coverage and posted this. (Shared with permission.)  "I asked a journalist friend about the ethics of the LA Times taking money from Eli Broad while editorializing in favor of his project.” 

Here is his response: 

"Was I tagged because this is such a tough ethical issue to parse? It is not. With this kind of entanglement with the subject of its news stories, the Times has given up the right to expect any trust or credibility for its journalism on education. They are trapped in a massive conflict of interest, and no amount of pro forma disclosure will fix that. It's so sad to see what has happened to that once-great publication.

"You can add to the comment that trust and credibility are the life's blood of journalism, and without it, a ‘new’ organization is no different than any other partisan in public disputes, with the added problem that there is no major paper to hold it accountable, although in this case a blogger has apparently stepped into the breach. People have jeopardized and lost their jobs for defending their editorial independence and standing up to such conflicts of interest. I haven't read the background on the issue you've highlighted, but if all your information is accurate, the Times' problem extends beyond opinions to reporting, however well-intentioned their education reporters are."

Peter Sussman is a retired longtime San Francisco Chronicle editor who is also a past co-author of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.

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

-cw

CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 7

Pub: Jan 22, 2016 

BILLIONAIRES AT THE GATE-Over a decade ago, when there was a push to break off the vast San Fernando Valley from LAUSD, and for the Valley to form its own school district, I was not in agreement. However, with approximately 675,000 students in the 7 district areas that comprise LAUSD, I find I am now changing my mind, as have many of us who are education professionals and who follow and write about public education. 

This huge LAUSD enterprise, with a yearly budget of over $7 billion, has been mired in confusion, corruption, and inefficiency for many decades, and seems not to be manageable. I now tend to agree with some Angelenos who are pushing to reconstruct LAUSD into multiple independent districts. However, the danger is that it would further segregate the inner city students. 

Right now, the multitude of charter schools (LA has the most in the nation) pick and choose among students of color, leaving behind those who are hard to teach, English Language Learners, and/or those who are personally handicapped and have special needs. They have contributed to the almost total re-segregation of students of color despite the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education landmark decision by the US Supreme Court. 

It would be very costly to have all these new districts with a multitude of administrators. One of the greatest economic problems at LAUSD is the nepotism which has, for so many years, caused the hiring of many unnecessary middle managers whose large salaries are now built into the budget. They do little to deserve this taxpayer largesse. 

Many lifelong Los Angeles residents -- particularly those of us who are also professional educators -- are beleaguered by the lack of public input allowed by the district, as well as the lack of transparency shown by the district and the Board of Education in a system where highly financed candidates get elected to the BoE…people who either are not educators and/or also are not skilled in business management. 

We do not need more ‘Voteria’-impacted (paying for votes through an illegal lottery), multi-millionaire charter school candidates and other toadies of Eli Broad using his directives to run LAUSD. It is “We the People” who pay all the freight and this is the only thing that is "public" about Broad's latest permutation. In his new takeover scheme for “charterizing” the district, Broad tries to hide his name by calling it Great Public Schools Now, a plan that is actually designed to convert public education into a business model, a vehicle for free market profiteering. But the taxpayers are still footing the bills, so this is not a 'robber baron' solution to funding and running public schools -- it is not geared to educate the entire student base but, rather, only carefully selected students. 

The audacity of these billionaires boggles the mind. They have appointed a hardball charter school lobbyist to run their new 501c3 non-profit, rapidly tossed together after a major teacher and public protest at the Broad Gallery on the day of its opening. Broad's paid articles and editorials have been run in the LA Times, suggesting that their hired gun (hired to kill public schools in favor of free market profiteering) should give the new Superintendent of Schools “a seat at their table" and thus be able to participate in this destruction of public education. It is the greatest form of sophistry we have witnessed yet. It is off the charts in terms of any democratic structure...and public education has always been the crux of our democracy. 

We do need more people willing to run for the BoE, people who have some training in business management plus a background in education.  We got lucky that Scott Schmerelson, who, with his many decades of experience as a teacher and senior administrator, was willing to come out of retirement to run for and win a seat on the Board. He has become the major hope on the BoE to make reasoned decisions while also holding back the Broad deformers from taking over the district. 

We had hoped that George McKenna and Richard Vladovic, each with similar credentials to Schmerelson, would also function positively to protect the public schools against the billionaires’ charter onslaught, but it seems that these two men have become stuck in their own personal issues. 

Monica Ratliff, who is both a Columbia-trained attorney and an elementary school teacher, has been a staunch defender of public education as a member of the BoE, but she has been pushed into a background role by the testosterone overload on the Board. I still have faith that she will vociferously support Schmerelson’s position when he speaks loudly against the “Broad-billionaire clique” takeover. Once Steve Zimmer (photo above) completes his role as a BoE member and as the current President of the Board, there will be a far fairer changing of the guard. 

For now, however, it is imperative for the public to raise a loud voice in support of our public schools.  The outsider cash donated by Broad, the Waltons, Bloomberg, Murdoch, Anshutz, and others, to the now multi-million dollar LAUSD BoE elections that only a decade ago required a candidate to spend just $30,000, must be stopped. 

The push by these few golden boys and girls to take over all of our American institutions, expecting the rest of us to conform to their form of rule, turns all of us into serfs for Eli Broad and his band of invaders. It would be more productive and fair if these privatizers would donate to programs that strengthen the public schools…programs that would hire back teachers, aides, nurses, counselors, janitors, and fund the arts and special education, as well as academics.

(Ellen Lubic, Director of Joining Forces for Education is a Public Policy educator/writer. Views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the views of CityWatch or its ownership.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

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CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 7

Pub: Jan 22, 2016

BILLBOARD WATCH-What a difference a dozen years makes. Back in 2002, LA City Councilmember Hal Bernson called for the removal of an unpermitted billboard in his San Fernando Valley district and the prosecution of its owner. But in 2014, Councilmember Mitchell Englander, who now represents that district, called for granting “amnesty” to that billboard and almost 1,000 others the city has identified as either lacking permits or having been altered in violation of their permits. 

At the same time, Bernson urged a legal challenge to a state law that puts the burden on the city to prove that unpermitted and altered billboards like the one in his district were erected unlawfully if they hadn’t been cited within five years. He told an LA Times reporter that the law was “horse manure” and said, “We have to test it. Otherwise we have no enforcement authority.”

The city never challenged the 1983 statute, widely regarded as a billboard industry privilege that no other kind of business in the state enjoys. Englander cited the law as a reason to grant billboard amnesty, predicting that the city would be drawn into ruinous litigation if it pursued action against unpermitted and altered billboards.

Bernson’s call for legal action came after he asked city officials to check a random sample of billboards in his district, which includes the communities of Chatsworth, Granada Hills, Northridge, and Reseda, among others. The partial survey found three unpermitted billboards and six that didn’t match the specifications of their permits.

Two of the unpermitted billboards are still standing and displaying ad copy and the third is currently shown as permitted by the city’s Department of Building and Safety. Five of the six altered billboards are also standing. One has an unpermitted second face, while several are higher or larger than specified in their permits.A citywide billboard inventory and inspection showed that Englander’s district has a total of 149 billboards, which is by far the lowest of any of the city’s 15 council districts. Of those, 15 lack permits and 11 have unpermitted alterations, according to inventory data made public nine months prior to Englander’s amnesty proposal.

The City Council’s PLUM committee, of which Englander is a member, added the amnesty provision to a new citywide sign ordinance that has been in the works since 2009, but on October of last year the City Planning Commission emphatically rejected the idea and questioned why the city hadn’t been taking enforcement action against the billboards known to be in violation of the law.

The PLUM committee okayed the amnesty shortly after receiving a letter from City Attorney Mike Feuer saying that enforcement action could be successfully taken against many of the billboards despite the state law colorfully characterized by Bernson in the LA Times article. Feuer told committee members that his office was ready to help in any enforcement effort.

The City Council could reject the planning commission’s action and reinstate the amnesty provision, but that would take a supermajority of 10 votes. Four councilmembers -- Mike Bonin, Paul Koretz, Paul Krekorian, and David Ryu -- have publicly stated their opposition to billboard amnesty. A fifth, Mitch O’Farrell, has said that he was pleased by the commission’s action, which also included a rejection of another PLUM committee proposal -- to allow digital billboards outside special sign districts.

Bernson retired from the City Council in 2003 after 24 years in that office. He was succeeded by Greig Smith, who was succeeded by Englander in 2011. Englander is currently a candidate for the LA County Board of Supervisors in this year’s June primary election, and has received significant support from billboard companies and their employees as well as lobbyists representing major billboard companies.

Interestingly, Bernson’s unsuccessful attempt in 2002 to get the city to challenge the state law seen as protecting illegal billboards came on the heels on a City Attorney race that many believe was heavily influenced by free billboard advertising for the winner, Rocky Delgadillo. (photo)

So it’s not surprising that Delgadillo never gave his blessing to Bernson’s call for the removal of the unpermitted billboard, the prosecution of the owner, and the challenge to the state law. Is also not surprising that Mike Feuer’s office opposes Englander’s billboard amnesty, since he was the loser in that campaign that featured Delgadillo’s name on billboards around the city in the days leading up to the election.

(Dennis Hathaway is the president of the Ban Billboard Blight Coalition and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected].) 

-cw

CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 7

Pub: Jan 22, 2016 

CONNECTING CALIFORNA--Last week, Michelle King was appointed superintendent of LA Unified, California’s largest school district. But can we really trust her to lead the Los Angeles schools? After all, she’s from Los Angeles.

Actually, that understates how suspiciously local King is. As a child, she attended LA Unified schools. Then she got degrees from UCLA and Pepperdine (and is even now working on a doctorate at USC). She has spent her 30-year career in the LA school system, as a science teacher, principal, and top deputy to the last two superintendents. Heck, she even sent three children to LA schools.

If she were any good, wouldn’t she have lived or worked someplace else?

Is that a ridiculous question? Yes, but it mirrors much of the reaction in Los Angeles to her appointment. While politicians and interest groups released official statements full of praise, everyone from education professors to newspaper editorialists whispered their disappointment that LA Unified had hired someone so achingly local and low profile. One mover-and-shaker lamented to me that while there is a Michelle King on Wikipedia, it’s the co-creator of the TV drama The Good Wife.

This is supposed to be the era when we celebrate the local—local produce, local bookstores, local governance. But in Southern California, we’re not so excited about locally grown leaders. It’s the dark side of being a globally connected and welcoming place. We have for so long been a city of stars from someplace else that we have little faith in those boring grinds who are actually from here, painstakingly pay their dues and then have the temerity to think they might run things.

And so King, who probably knows LA Unified better than any living being, was labeled a disappointing fallback choice. Los Angeles elites had been hoping for a star from the outside—a political figure like the Obama cabinet member Julian Castro or a member of Congress who could transition into schools; or some gilded creature from the billionaire-backed reform movement; or a high-profile superintendent from a city like Miami or St. Louis—both of which, it should be noted, have far fewer residents than LA Unified has students.

Of course, Los Angeles’ contempt for its own is not new. Los Angeles’ locally grown police chief Charlie Beck, for all his progress in crime-fighting and diversifying his force, labors under the sense that he’s not in the same class of out-of-town predecessors. Once an internal candidate, always an internal candidate.

And no matter who you are, making the New York Times has always been a far bigger deal than getting written up in the Los Angeles Times—even before our local paper was downsized by out-of-town owners. And Hollywood has organized itself as an exclusive club that keeps regular Angelenos at a remove; even in 2016, the entertainment industry remains so distant from the diversity around it that it has turned the Academy Awards, with another slate of all-white acting nominees, into a national joke. When our movie stars do philanthropy, it’s more likely to be directed to South Sudan than South LA.

Los Angeles also has a nasty habit of outsourcing thorny problems: When our big institutions get into trouble, we don’t knuckle down and fix them ourselves. We bring in outsiders to fix them. Over the past generation, our sheriff’s department, police department, the Dodgers, and elements of our transportation and school district have had to be taken over, or put under trustees. “Too much of the city has been taken into receivership,” the author D.J. Waldie has written of LA.

I’ve experienced LA self-contempt personally. When a source or friend is introducing me to some powerful LA figure, I’m struck at how little access my years of journalistic work in Southern California buy—and at how many doors suddenly swing open when it’s mentioned that I went to college at Harvard.

This is supposed to be the era when we celebrate the local—local produce, local bookstores, local governance. But in Southern California, we’re not so excited about locally grown leaders.

In this context, the reaction to King’s appointment, while frustrating, is hardly surprising. You could argue that she’s the best prepared LA Unified leader in a long time—having been a success as teacher, principal, and administrator, most recently as a top aide to the past two superintendents. Her expertise ranges from science education, to instructional reform, to student discipline. And she’s hardly following giants; the district has had eight superintendents in 20 years, many of them outsiders, including a Navy admiral who had little idea what he was doing.

And while elites don’t know her well—she was presumably too busy working to write lots of op-eds and give speeches—regular people in LA schools do. As the LA School Report site pointed out, King was far and away the most frequently mentioned person in the district’s online survey of what kind of new superintendent parents, staff, and teachers would want.

This community support, however, counted as a strike against her in editorials by the Los Angeles Times and LA Daily News after her appointment. Both papers damned her credentials with faint praise (the Times editorial called her “obviously capable” twice) and advised her to pick fights and make enemies—the kind of tactics that backfired on her predecessor and former boss, John Deasy. The only thing more condescending than the editorials was a column in which the Times’ Steve Lopez said the school board “decided on someone who has been a good, low-profile soldier rather than a strong, independent voice, and for now at least, I find that disappointing.”

And I find Lopez’s notion that a good local can’t be strong and independent to be maddening. And out of touch.

The reality is that, with all our diversity and strange ways of governance (from ballot initiatives to our hundreds of regulatory commissions), California’s institutions are getting more complicated—making it harder for outsiders to step in. And with all of LA Unified’s challenges, from its hundreds of thousands of poor students to its big projected deficits, there may be no California government more complicated and important.

In other school districts, local leaders or those elevated from the ranks have succeeded. There may be no better big-city school district in the state than Long Beach, run for the last 14 years by Chris Steinhauser, who was both student and teacher in the schools he leads. In San Francisco, Richard Carranza, who was the top deputy of his predecessor, has done so well that LA Unified sought to recruit him before choosing King.

At San Diego Unified, Cindy Marten, a local elementary school principal elevated to superintendent three years ago, has made some political mistakes but also has pleasantly surprised many with dramatic changes to culture, training, and personnel, including the replacement of more than 70 principals and vice principals.

Of course, LA Unified presents a bigger challenge. Which is precisely why a woman tough enough to negotiate the LA district as parent, teacher, and administrator for 30 years stands a better chance of succeeding than just about anyone else.

(Joe Mathews is Connecting California Columnist and Editor, Zócalo Public Square, Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It [UC Press, 2010]. This column was posted first at Zocalo Public Square … connecting people and ideas.)

-cw

CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 7

Pub: Jan 22, 2016

STREETS BLOG LA-Yesterday, the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), a national non-profit with state chapters throughout the country, released a report detailing the “12 biggest highway boondoggles” under study in the country. Not surprisingly, a California highway project made the list, the I-710 Tunnel Project in Los Angeles County. 

PIRG explains the project: 

San Gabriel Valley Route 710 tunnel, California, $3.2 billion to $5.6 billion – State officials are considering the most expensive, most polluting and least effective option for addressing the area’s transportation problems: a double bore tunnel. 

The 710 Expansion Project has been studied for decades and has been one of the most contentious projects in the region. For nearly a decade, Streetsblog Los Angeles has covered the public meetings, public outcry and community opposition to the project even as it soldiers on through study after study. The project was debated for decades before Streetsblog LA even existed. 

Heck, this isn’t even the first time a national environmental advocacy group has chimed in agreeing that plans to expand the 710 represented “one of the worst highway projects in the country.” 

The maligned 710 freeway project, which Streetsblog LA readers voted to name the “Southern California Big Dig” would extend the existing freeway north so that it connects with the 210. The most recent iteration of the project is championed by councilmembers and representatives of cities that are dealing with congestion on freeways and local streets south of the I-210 that connect with the 710. 

However, opponents of the expansion argue that a tunnel project is not the answer to congestion and port traffic. “I do not believe that the 710 freeway tunnel alternatives proposed by Caltrans and Metro make sense for our region or taxpayers,” writes Congressman Adam Schiff, who represents the portion of the San Gabriel Valley where the tunnel would be dug. 

“For the same cost as the $5.6 billion tunnel, we could likely complete all of the alternatives — light rail, bus, surface street improvements, bike and pedestrian walkways, cargo movement, and other traffic flow solutions — combined, and use the remainder of the money to repair some of our aging infrastructure. These alternatives are not only more cost effective, but far less disruptive of the affected neighborhoods.” 

Opponents have put together their own list of solutions to address mobility with a mix of transit, active transportation and highway and road projects. PIRG published recommendations for Caltrans and other California transportation departments to follow that would apply not just to the 710, but to every highway project designed to “reduce congestion.”  

This massive widening project, currently under construction, was pitched as one that would improve air quality and the environment. 

The study recommends that California and Caltrans: 

1. Adopt fix-it-first policies that reorient transportation funding away from highway expansion and toward repair of existing roads and bridges;

2. Invest in transportation solutions that reduce the need for costly and disruptive highway expansion projects by improving and expanding public transit, biking, and walking options;

3. Give priority to funding transportation projects that reduce the number of vehicle-miles people travel each year, thereby also reducing air pollution, carbon emissions, and future road repair and maintenance needs;

4. Include future maintenance costs, a range of potential future housing and transportation trends, and the availability of new transportation options such as car-sharing, bike-sharing, ride-sharing, and transit in transportation project selection decisions;

5. Invest in research and data collection to better track, and more aptly react, to ongoing shifts in how people travel. 

Caltrans has made progress in recent months, acknowledging that California’s mania for building more highways is actually counter-productive. But as any twelve-step program will tell you, admitting you have a problem is just the first step. Governor Jerry Brown’s recently proposed budget didn’t show any major changes on how the state funds transportation projects. Neither did last year’s. 

But as for the 710, PIRG has a specific solution. 

“Given that the proposed tunnel has extraordinarily high costs and would not serve to reduce congestion or improve air quality according to their EIR, Caltrans should immediately drop the 710 tunnel project,” writes Emily Rusch, the director of CALPIRG.

(Damien Newton, along with Joe Linton, heads up the excellent StreetsBlogLA … where this perspective originated.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 7

Pub: Jan 22, 2016

LA WATCHDOG--The Los Angeles Rams are returning to Southern California, 35 years after they left Memorial Coliseum for Anaheim and 21 years after ditching Anaheim for St. Louis.  But most importantly, the return to the Southland is not being financed with taxpayer money which is why the move to Inglewood does not make economic sense for either the San Diego Chargers or the Oakland Raiders. 

The Rams will be playing in an 80,000 seat stadium that is projected to cost $1.8 billion. But this futuristic, high tech venue is only part of a 298 acre, $3 billion entertainment complex that will consist of not only the football stadium, but over 4 million square feet of retail, office, hotel, and high end residential space as well as a 6,000 seat performing arts venue and a 25 acre park. 

This entertainment complex that is located in Inglewood, just south of the refurbished Forum that is now managed by New York based Madison Square Garden, is owned by Hollywood Park Land Company, a joint venture between two sophisticated, well-heeled partners, San Francisco based Stockbridge Capital, a real estate investment firm with almost $10 billion of assets under management, and The Kroenke Company, a commercial real estate and development company founded in 1985 by Rams owner Stan Kroenke. This family enterprise controls over 60 million square feet of space, including shopping centers, warehouse facilities, residential real estate and entertainment venues in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. 

However, if the Chargers or Raiders decide to relocate to Inglewood, the second team in the market would have to pony up $900 million, an amount equal 50% of the cost of the not-so-profitable stadium.  However, this team would not have the opportunity to participate in the upside of the joint venture unlike Kroenke, the owner of the Rams and one of the principals of the Hollywood Park Land Company. 

As a result, both the Chargers and Raiders would be better off by staying in their respective cities, leveraging the threat to move to LA with the cities of San Diego and Oakland for new stadiums, saving their $900 million needed for the Inglewood stadium, foregoing the payment of a substantial relocation fee, and taking the $100 million that the National Football League has offered each of them to stay in their existing markets. 

The relocation of the Rams to Southern California, the second largest media market in the country, is a huge win for the NFL as the 17 million residents in the Los Angeles metropolitan area (including the Inland Empire) will more than offset of the loss of 3 million people in the St. Louis metropolitan area where the Rams play second fiddle to their beloved Cardinals. 

Kroenke will benefit not only from his investment in the Inglewood entertainment complex, but also from the increase in the value of the Los Angeles Rams (v. the St. Louis Rams) over and above the $550 million relocation fee that the NFL will extract from the team.  

While the economics of the relocation of the Rams to Inglewood (and not the City of Los Angeles, contrary to the impression left by LA Mayor Eric Garcetti in his Sports Center interview) is of paramount interest to the 32 billionaire owners of the NFL, our question is when will we have winning team?  Fans may not be bothered by being forced to buy a personal seat license for thousands of dollars and pay over $100 for a nose bleed ticket, but putting up with another losing team is unacceptable, especially now that the Lakers have lost almost 80% of their games this season.  

The Rams have not had a winning record in 12 years.  Over the last five years, the team has won less than 40% of its games and over the last ten years, less than 30% of its games.  So the question to Stan Kroenke and Coach Jeff Fisher (a home town boy who graduated from Taft and USC) is: “What is the plan to produce a winning team, especially in a division that features the Arizona Cardinals and the Seattle Seahawks?”

(Jack Humphreville writes LA Watchdog for CityWatch. He is the President of the DWP Advocacy Committee and a member of the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council.  Humphreville is the publisher of the Recycler Classifieds -- www.recycler.com. He can be reached at:  [email protected])

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CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 6

Pub: Jan 19, 2016

GUEST WORDS--By the time Tom LaBonge [photo] termed out of the City Council in June 2015 his City Hall office was a mess. Shades of the fall of Saigon, file cabinets were emptied and records were shredded or just vanished. Not a single piece of paper was left for the incoming David Ryu administration. Council District Four residents who had been asking for assistance with problems or filing complaints were out of luck because there were no records for Ryu’s staff to respond to.

To make matters even worse, LaBonge had gone on a last minute spending spree. He promised to hand out over $600,000 in discretionary funds to various groups with no documentation to show how these expenditures had been earmarked or why.

When those of us who closely follow City Hall found out that LaBonge had emptied the CD 4 bank account we were stunned because the use of discretionary funds had been a major issue in the runoff election between Carolyn Ramsey, LaBonge’s former Chief of Staff, and David Ryu. For many voters LaBonge passing out money like Halloween candy was the straw that pushed them into Ryu’s camp. Ryu won the election hands down. (We can only speculate if those funds and files would have been left intact if Ramsey had been elected.)

In order to bring some sanity to the situation, on his first day in office Councilman Ryu filed motions to have LaBonge’s spending spree rolled back. On July 28, 2015 the City Council voted 15-0 to do just that. They cancelled LaBonge commitments and declared that these funds were unencumbered. Ryu then appointed a committee of stakeholders to advise him in this effort to review LaBonge’s pledges, but with no paperwork to go on the effort has been extremely daunting. The committee has been diligently trying to help the Councilman examine the requests and appropriately reallocate funds. But the task is complicated. Did the groups listed by LaBonge as needing public funds actually apply for them or was this LaBonge’s peevish attempt to empty the coffers before he left office?

There are legitimate and pressing needs for discretionary funds in CD 4: trees to be trimmed, potholes to be filled, sidewalks to be fixed, and the list goes on! Which of the projects on LaBonge’s list should be funded, which should not?  This is public money and each group should have to step forward and make their case for the funds to the Council office – and to the public.

The list of LaBonge’s giveaways ranged from Parent Teacher Associations to museums. It also appears that some funds were earmarked for projects outside of  Council District Four – these are probably the most egregious items.

The amounts on LaBonge’s list range from $2500 to $50,000. Some names are recognizable while others are not. All are just a simple line entry on  a page that lists the names and amount. There are no supporting documents illuminating why one group was to get money and others were not. To many this is the perfect example of a slush fund: opaque, arbitrary, and subjective.

One name and amount on LaBonge’s ledger immediately jumped off the page: Museum Associates was to get $50,000 to finance a way-finding project involving signage along Museum Row.

I had to look at it several times to make sure I was really seeing what I was seeing. Museum Associates is a privately owned 501(c)(3) non-profit doing business as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

This group receives around $30-million a year from the County to run LACMA and is also slated to get another $125-million from the County to build its new museum on Wilshire Boulevard. Museum Associates also owns the old May Company property were the Motion Picture Academy is being built – as well as its Spaulding parking lot and 6006 Wilshire Boulevard. So, the first thought that came to mind was does LACMA really need $50,000 from the CD 4 discretionary fund and if so, why?

In a letter LaBonge submitted to the City Council on July 28, 2015, he asked them to leave his financial gifts in place and not return the funds to Councilman Ryu. LaBonge claimed he was fulfilling a $ 100,000 commitment to Los Angeles County by giving $50,000 to LACMA and $50,000 to the Ford Museum. That actually should be fairly easy to check out. An inquiry to the County should turn up something that references such a commitment.  

Museum Associates should also be of help as they have a personal service contract with an independent contractor detailing plans for a way-finding plan to promote LACMA and other Miracle Mile museums. That contract mentions a grant from the city that will be used to pay the contractor. Surely there is something in writing that Museum Associates can produce that details the conditions of such a grant? The project may be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but what elevated it above all the other needs in CD 4?

Again, these are public funds and there must be a paper trail documenting the basis for this grant. Without that the specter of quid pro quo will forever hang over all of these funds and projects.

David Ryu is committed to an open and transparent process in this matter. He promises to come up with a grant proposal system that all must comply with. There is already a template that many Neighborhood Councils use to help them in this process. Whether a Neighborhood Council or a Council Office, there needs to be a rational and fair way to vet the expenditure of public money. After all, it’s our money – not Tom LaBonge’s.

(James O’Sullivan is Vice President of Fix The City and President of the Miracle Mile Residential Association. This perspective was posted first in the MMRA Newsletter, edited by Ken Hixon.) 

-cw

CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 6

Pub: Jan 19, 2016

COUNTY WATCH--The LA County Counsel Annual Litigation Report and the Chief Executive Officer’s Annual Risk Management Report will be heard on Tuesday at an atypical 1pm Board of Supervisors meeting.   

The Board of Supervisors is the defendant in county lawsuits and in FY2014-2015 roughly $61 million dollars or half of the county's total litigation bill was deployed toward fighting the Sheriff's myriad legal battles. 

Supervisor Solis described the reports as “an urgent call for introspection and action."  Self-analysis is critical but the county residents who have been footing the clearly escalating bill for such litigations are entitled to basic information.  That's because the dirty little secret that no one at the county wants us to know, is that half of the county's liability costs goes to lawyer fees, much of which is paid to outside white shoe law firms who have repeatedly refused to disclose their hourly rate or provide anything close to the kind of itemized bill one might expect from a plumber. 

Abetting such preposterous non-disclosure, the County has long been invoking Gov code 6255, which states "the public interest served by not making the record public clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure of the record." Why?  The City of Los Angeles, hardly a paragon of transparency, provides such information.     

The truth is, however, that the only interests served by the county's non-disclosure are those of the outside law firms themselves.  An important example of this fact relates to Richard E. Drooyan who was at first hired pro bono (an arrangement in and of itself, highly unorthodox and fraught with potential conflicts of interest) as General Counsel for the Citizens' Commission on Jail Violence but then was hired by the board to be the Implementation Monitor responsible for enacting the CCJV's recommendations.   

Apparently, Mr. Drooyan's compensation went from zero to a salary so unorthodox as to be made a virtual state secret by the board of supervisors who to date have spent thousands of dollars opposing a simple public records act request for the basic terms of Mr. Drooyan's contract.  Even though every one of the County's more than 100,000 employees has their salaries disclosed.  

It’s the salary that they dare not speak of, but it's important for us to know, because frankly we should get our money back. 

Perhaps the most important of the  CCJV recommendations requiring implementation was also the "deliverable" …  whose quality could best be assessed, and frankly, the document-- critical to the well-being of both deputies and inmates --is a disgraceful mess, full of embarrassing typographical errors and until recently, lacking page numbers.  Much more importantly, by not stripping out certain problematic sections, it has had the effect of actually legitimating them.   

One of several egregious examples can be found on page 90 of the revised manual we are told "Sworn personnel may demonstrate a “sparking” of the weapon in an effort to gain voluntary compliance of the suspect."   

How much did we pay to have that rule slip through the cracks?   

Which one of the 63 recommendations of the CCJV did that fall under?  How is sparking a Taser not something like cracking a whip?  

Until we are given such information, the public is left groping in the dark for sane policies on all of the above.  

Until our representative leaders get their house in order there is little chance that the jailhouse will be put in order.   

So, maybe that's a good excuse not to kick meaningful reform down the road any further, but rather kick the 2+ Billion dollar jail plan down the road until the many diversion programs focused on reduction before construction can get funding and get to work. 

While the OIG Max Huntsman's website has a terrific piece on deputies shooting themselves in the foot, one wonders what our OIG thinks of the "Use of Force Manual" and in particular, the language regarding Tasers?  

(Eric Preven is a Studio City based writer-producer and public advocate for better transparency in local government.  He was a candidate in the 2015 election for Los Angeles City Council, 2nd District.)

-cw

CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 6

Pub: Jan 19, 2016

HERE’S WHAT I KNOW-It’s been over 86 days since the Southern California Gas Company first reported the Aliso Canyon gas leak in the Porter Ranch community of the valley. The gas well, not expected to be contained until late February or early March at the earliest, has disrupted lives for many families in this suburban neighborhood. Over 2,200 residents have been temporarily displaced, housed in hotels and apartment buildings as far away as Warner Center and Westlake Village.

When students at Porter Ranch Community School and Castlebay Lane Charter School returned to classes after the winter break, they were no longer housed in their home schools. Back in December, the LAUSD board declared an emergency for these schools, both located within two miles of the gas leak. About 1,100 K through 8^th grade students at Porter Ranch Community School are now housed on the Northridge Middle School campus; and 770 kindergarten through 5^th grade students from Castlebay are housed at Sunny Brae Elementary School in Winnetka. In the months after the gas leak was first reported, absenteeism and visits to the schools’ health offices had increased; families had begun to choose independent study for their children. 

Could anything have been done to prevent the gas leak? Attorneys representing Porter Ranch families report that Southern California Gas Co. knew five years ago about the leaking wells in Aliso Canyon and had received a ratepayer increase to fund upgrades in 2013 -- but never replaced safety valves on its gas injection wells. 

LA County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich is asking fellow board members to join him in possibly curbing residential development in parts of the northern San Fernando Valley until, as Antonovich said in a statement released last week, “a thorough investigation can take place as to what caused the leak and what safeguards will be put in place to avoid a failure of this magnitude again.” 

One of the caveats involves halting development in Deerlake Ranch, a 314-home tract approved sixteen years ago. And Newport Beach-based Foremost Companies is in the process of pulling building permits for the 230-acre development north of the 118 Freeway at Topanga Canyon Boulevard, just 10 miles west of the entrance to the storage facility. Antonovich has asked county agencies to re-designate the area as permanent open space. 

Way back in 1989, before the area was developed, locals opposed overdevelopment, fearing traffic, depletion of water, and a strain on sewage lines and landfills. Environmental reports that outlined plans for the just under 3,400 homes that would be known as Porter Ranch contained no obvious references to the massive natural gas storage facility about a mile away. Despite the concerns of locals, the 1,300 acre development was approved by City Council in 1990 and became one of the largest residential and commercial projects in LA history. 

Twenty-five years later, families are squeezed into hotel rooms, surviving on takeout or restaurant meals. Kids must adapt to new schools and do their homework in tight quarters, unable to play with friends after school, play soccer or take karate in the neighborhood studio. Residents have suffered from various health issues caused by the methane gas exposure. 

Mothers and fathers, residents and business owners, activists and attorneys continue to mobilize to fight for what was lost and for the future. We must look at what has happened in Porter Ranch as a cautionary tale -- a tragedy that should not be repeated. Until the gas company can stop the leak and ensure the area is safe, any further development there should be curtailed.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles-based writer and CityWatch contributor.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

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CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 6

Pub: Jan 19, 2016

HERE’S WHAT I KNOW--The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative targeted for the November ballot picked up an endorsement from former mayor and top philanthropist Richard Riordan on Thursday. The initiative would place a citywide two-year moratorium on projects that attempt to circumvent existing land zoning in Los Angeles. 

Riordan has expressed disapproval with Mayor Garcetti’s policies. “If a person moved to the city now and heard Eric Garcetti talk, they’d assume he’s a member of the Tea Party,” the former mayor shared. “He isn’t doing anything for the poor but helping the rich get richer – through these zoning deals on land development.” 

The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, sponsored by the Coalition to Preserve LA (CPLA) would prevent spot zoning by individual city council members that paves the way for developers to bypass existing zoning laws to build taller, denser buildings across the city on land zoned for less dense development. 

Should the initiative make the November ballot, stakes would be high. In attempt to address rising rents in Los Angeles, Garcetti has promised to add 100,000 housing units by 2021. A second piece of Garcetti’s plan is to place housing within proximity of rail and bus lines to encourage mass transit. 

On the other side, supporters of CPLA and the Neighborhood Integrity Commission argue that mega-development adds to street traffic and has a negative impact on both neighborhood character and livability with developers cutting deals to build larger structures than the city’s infrastructure can handle. 

Riordan cautions against placing too much zoning control in the hands of single council members. “That person is being lobbied by the developers and getting campaign money or campaign promises and this just has to end,” he warns. (Photo right: So-called Palladium Project that prompted the ballot measure.) 

The former mayor also questions the impact of positioning developments near bus, rail, and subway lines, noting that traffic congestion surrounding “elegant developments” near mass transit has worsened rather than improved. “You’re going to have more and more traffic around these over-developments,” he adds. “You cannot put in expensive condos and rental units and hope to attract people who will use public transportation. You will have two cars in each family.” 

The issue of affordable housing is crucial as LA moves forward. Tying development to encourage residents to use mass transit is an ambitious plan but spot zoning is unlikely to be the panacea. As Riordan predicts, the working class and poor will continue to be driven out, a historically prevalent outcome of gentrification. “Los Angeles is not a fast-growing city and it won’t grow all that much in the future but it’s going to switch to wealthier people under current policies,” Riordan observes. “It’s like San Francisco – a lot of wealthier people and a lot fewer minorities.” 

Riordan reflects on his own record as mayor. “When I was mayor, we prevented people from taking industrial land and turning it into high-rises because we still needed factories and manufacturing – for the good jobs it provides to the working class in LA.” 

He believes the moratorium to end land flipping and spot-rezoning is necessary to stop the net loss of existing, older affordable housing units in LA and he challenges Garcetti to define affordable housing. 

“It has zero to do with housing the homeless. It has to do with creating solidly middle and upper-middle class condos that area $4,000 a month,” he concludes. “Garcetti’s affordable housing will probably go for close to $3,000. So I want him to define it because the working poor in L.A., without question, can’t afford City Hall’s ‘affordable housing.’” 

Changing the landscape of affordable housing in Los Angeles, as in cities across the country, is complicated. Developers are more likely to build multi-unit projects that will capture rents that the market will bear. If we don’t curtail the power of individual city council members to assist developers in bypassing zoning restrictions, we aren’t likely to see that landscape change. We need to address the affordable housing issue in Los Angeles. Paving the way for developers to work around existing restrictions is not the way to do it.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles-based writer and CityWatch contributor.)

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CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 6

Pub: Jan 29, 2016

METHANE MAYHEM-It’s early December, and I’m sitting in a mega-church packed with more than 500 people. They’re here to listen to an update on the efforts to contain an enormous natural gas blowout that occurred more than a month before. Gas from the leak is being blown by prevailing winds right into their community of Porter Ranch, in Los Angeles County, CA. 

People are mad. 

Hundreds of families have left their homes to get away from the rotten-egg smell of the gas, and moved into temporary homes elsewhere. Children are attending other schools further from the leak, which is spewing some 110,000 pounds of methane per hour from a broken well less than a mile from the neighborhood.  

Trust between the gas company, regulators, and community members seems absent. 

People question what else is in the gas that might have long-term health impacts. They want to know why many are suddenly reporting headaches and bloody noses.

I’m sitting in this church because my colleague Hilary Lewis and I were invited to Porter Ranch with our infrared gas-finding camera to see what this high profile disaster actually looks like. Before we arrived, the public had no access to images or video of the gas itself, as it’s invisible to the naked eye. 

We meet a local organizer in a supermarket parking lot, exit the vehicle, and even my horrible sense of smell instantly reacts to the scent of the gas more than two miles from where we stand. It’s coming from a well at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility, an 8,000-foot deep sandstone formation — a depleted oil field — that SoCalGas uses to hold vast quantities of gas. In fact, it’s one of the largest gas storage fields in the nation, comprising some 115 extraction and injection wells, some of which operate at pressures above 2,000 pounds per square inch — a hefty load for well casings over 60 years old. 

We hike the hills and document the gas blowing sideways and downhill into town. Later that night, we see a plume of gas at least a mile long spanning Aliso Canyon. Of all the sites I’ve shot as a certified infrared thermographer nationwide, this is, hands down, the largest volume of spewing methane gas I’ve ever seen — and I’ve visited nearly a hundred sites around the country, including the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota. Each day, the leak is releasing the same amount of greenhouse gases as the average daily emissions of more than 7 million cars.

This video footage — aired nationally on NBC’s The Rachel Maddow’s Show and many other media outlets — has helped to draw widespread attention to the leak, and has assisted local residents in their efforts to get justice and to hold industry, regulators, and policymakers accountable.  

Just ten days later, I return to Aliso Canyon to shoot additional infrared footage for the Environmental Defense Fund from a small chartered aircraft. We fly as close as is safe, seeing a plume nearly 1,000 feet high under calmer wind conditions. The pilot can’t help but note the pungent smell not long after gaining altitude. 

We get a view of the well pad itself — a mangled looking mess coated in mud. This mud was used to try to “drown” the well during the first several attempts to plug the leak. Nothing worked. There are huge craters around the well, and no one wants to get too close with machines for fear of a spark turning the entire scene into an enormous fireball.

The footage I shot for EDF makes an even bigger mark on the national consciousness. Soon thereafter, California Governor Jerry Brown declares a state of emergency regarding the leak, and the Los Angeles Times editorializes against fossil fuels, referencing the Aliso Canyon leak. 

Right now, as the leak enters its tenth week, the underground pressure has been reduced by half of its original rate, due to the gas escaping from the leak and other actions taken by SoCalGas — the company operating the facility — to withdraw gas in a controlled manner.  

It will be months before the leak is repaired. SoCalGas is currently drilling two relief wells to divert the gas below the leak source, much like what was done during the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. But by the time the wells are drilled, most of the gas will be gone anyway. 

Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is 87 times more harmful to the climate than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. So far, an estimated 79,000 metric tons of methane have escaped from this one facility — so much that California’s goals to reduce climate pollution have been seriously compromised. It’s estimated that, at its height, the leak increased the state’s daily methane emissions by 25 percent.

What has this disaster taught us? For one thing, it’s yet another affirmation that fossil fuels are not safe or clean, and that things often go horribly wrong when it’s least expected. But more specifically, it highlights the woeful state of regulatory oversight on underground gas storage facilities such as Aliso Canyon. For example, the well casing at the site of the blowout failed hundreds of feet below the surface, likely due to the predictable corrosion of 60 year old well casings. To add insult to injury, the safety shut-off device for this well was removed long ago and never replaced.

So there you have it — a well operating at the upper limit of its pressure tolerance, with a safety valve deliberately removed long before, and a well casing that failed with no safeguards in place to prepare for when that time might come. Aliso Canyon has 114 other wells that could fail at any time unless adequate safeguards are in place.

Thankfully, Governor Brown’s declaration of a state of emergency will force a number of much-needed steps — both immediate and medium-term — that will address the situation. His declaration was much needed because, for example, the California Air Resources Board is considering new regulations that would address leak detection and repair for natural gas infrastructure, but these wouldn’t have applied to underground facilities like Aliso Canyon. Yes, you read that correctly. Now, due to Brown’s declaration, California regulatory bodies, including the Air Resources Board, will be required to assess the long-term viability of natural gas storage facilities in California.

It’s long past time to regulate these facilities properly, or take them offline entirely. Hundreds of underground natural gas storage facilities exist throughout the nation, and many of them could also experience catastrophic failures, in addition to other problems already occurring, such as groundwater contamination. 

To prevent more disasters like Aliso Canyon in California and around the country (there are 326 similar facilities nationwide) we need an emergency statewide effort to shut down facilities that lack basic safety equipment, including Aliso Canyon. Gas storage wells that lack shut off valves should be taken offline before other Porter Ranches happen. We also need increased oversight and management of these facilities, not to mention support for residents affected by pollution, including health care and financial compensation.

Moving forward, we also need a rapid transition away from gas. The Solutions Project, an organization working to accelerate the transition to renewable energy, has mapped out a plan for California to achieve 100 percent fossil fuel-free energy by 2050. This transition would protect communities from underground storage risks, gas line leakage, and explosions like the one in San Bruno.

Because nearby communities — and the global climate — cannot afford any more disasters, Earthworks, a nonprofit that works to protect communities from the adverse impacts of energy development, is working hand-in-hand with community groups to push for significant regulatory changes and enforcement. Learn more about Earthworks’ work here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

(Pete Dronkers is the Southwest Circuit Rider for Earthworks. He is an ITC-certified thermographer. This piece was posted earlier at the excellent Common Dreams.)  Photo:   EarthWorks. The first (and to date only) direct overhead photos of the leaking Aliso Canyon well pad polluting Porter Ranch community; taken on December 17, 2015. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

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CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 6

Pub: Jan 19, 2016

EDUCATION POLITICS-The LA Times has written another diatribe peddling Eli Broad’s privatization plan for Los Angeles public schools (Eli is certainly getting his money’s worth in underwriting the LA Times education coverage). 

“What the LA School Board's resolution opposing the Broad plan might accomplish is to continue making this a politically divisive issue. Potential donors might then decline to join the effort, but would that really be helpful to students?”  

Really? Is it the democratically elected representatives’ vote to support public schools against a hostile private takeover that is the problem here? Is it LAUSD’s fault for discouraging otherwise willing donors to pay for the weaponry that would destroy its schools?

The LA Times goes on: “A better move would be to call on Great Public Schools Now [Broad's group] to provide a place at the table for the district’s new superintendent, Michelle King, to participate in the planning process. If the new nonprofit organization hopes to overcome resistance in the community, it needs to be more open about its planning and it needs to open the process to public discussion…”

Hello!

In its ongoing effort to convince the city that a huge public entity should be handed over to a private group of titans, the LA Times now suggests inviting the public official to the table to give the effort some credibility. This is the superintendent, who was appointed by the democratically elected board, to lead the public entity the titans seek to control.

As Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis has said, “You can’t have a seat at the table when you’re on the menu.”

The LA Times even suggests the plan should include funding for outside auditors.  I guess that’s to head off the mob that will cry foul at circumventing public process.

It seems the LA Times needs a civics lesson.

The things they think would make this process go better are the very things that define democratic process—the things inherent in a public school system: Public hearings. Involvement of experts. Inclusion of all stakeholders. Service to all not some.

If this group of do-gooders has such a bright idea, why don’t they come to a school board meeting, present it, and participate in the discussion that any of us does? Let’s hear a discussion about the educational value, the impact on desegregation goals, the research-based evidence, the cost, etc.

They won’t do that because they’re titans. They think they should run things without the inconvenience of public interference.

The LA Times has backed itself into a corner in advocating for the private takeover of the public school system. Now calling for a *public* process into a private takeover does not fix that.

The LA Times’ conflict of interest in promoting Eli Broad’s plan remains a problem. Just as every LA Times article about education now comes with an asterisk (*), so does this version of a public process.

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

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CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 6

Pub Jan 19, 2016

THE TRUTH ABOUT ROAD DIETS-Everyone in NELA who’s been awake for the last few years know about the reactionary cabal that has been struggling to keep Highland Park a preserve for “leadfoot drivers.” You know, the sort that has been maiming and killing residents on Figueroa Street for years – the sort that, lately, has been accelerating the pace of the bloodshed. And now the car addicts have started a petition on change.org asking CD14 Councilmember José Huizar to remove the bike lanes from York Boulevard. 

Sign the counter-petition here.  

These people employ what you might call discredited arguments, but really, they are just plain lies. They state that bike lanes have caused a loss of business, but the empty storefronts that existed before bike lanes are now largely occupied, and older businesses such as Huarache Azteca have invested in sprucing up their façades. They claim that bike lanes slow down emergency response -- they don’t. They say bike lanes cause traffic backups. 

What they don’t mention is that collisions of all sorts dropped dramatically thanks to the street’s road diet, which later added bike lanes without reducing mixed traffic lanes further. As for the other intuitive assertions, this UCLA study on the York road diet itself should set your mind at rest. Its conclusions were based on actual data gathered on the actual York Boulevard -- not on “gut feelings.” 

What causes traffic backups is too many cars which are drawn to a street when it has too much lane space. Cars cause congestion; building more lanes makes more room for more cars to cause more congestion. Don’t take my word for it: listen to CalTrans, which now admits that More Roads Mean More Traffic.  

In fact, it should be obvious even to the Neanderthals that we’ve been building more roads and more lanes for eighty years -- and traffic has gotten steadily worse. 

So I offer a compromise: for the next eighty years, let’s build nothing but bike lanes and transit lines, and see what happens. 

Who knows? We might end up like Denmark, which currently holds the Number 1 spot on Forbes Magazine’s list of best places to do business,  as well as being home to the happiest population on this poor beleaguered planet. 

All those bike lanes help….

(Richard Risemberg is a writer. His current professional activities are centered on sustainable development and lifestyle. This column was posted first at Flying Pigeon.  Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams. 

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CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 6

Pub: Jan 19, 2016

MY TURN-I received a lot of questions asking me how I felt about Councilmember Felipe Fuentes (District 7) announcing that he would not run for election in 2017. I have been critical of him and his rather cavalier attitude toward most of his constituents. In fact, much of the central and northeast parts of the San Fernando Valley have not been well served by their elected city officials. 

Fuentes is well known for not answering questions. And so is his staff. I have asked them all to state their points-of-view on issues I have covered in my articles. All have neglected to answer any queries, either negatively or positively. I don't take this personally because many of his constituents have also been ignored, and I’m not even a constituent. However, as my dear departed Mother would say, that is just plain rude! 

The Los Angeles Times ran an interview with Fuentes in which he spoke about his sixteen years of public service. He gave the impression that he was burned out, that he could no longer give his constituents the service they deserved if he opted for a second term. I was rather taken back since I had yet to discover what services he had actually devoted to them in his first term. 

His comments sounded rather noble, but what the interview did not disclose were the other factors involved -- including angry constituents. In September, Fuentes announced that the space occupied by the Sunland Tujunga Neighborhood Council (STNC) for the last eleven years would have to be vacated in November. He also gave an eviction notice to the Substation of LAPD housed in the same city-owned building. 

He had decided to rent the space (for $1.00 a year) to two non-profit organizations involved in helping the homeless. A great hue and cry was raised both in CityWatch and by other Valley news outlets and social media. All the protest came to naught; the STNC and the LAPD had to find new homes. 

Apparently, the City Council doesn't interfere with decisions made by individual Councilmembers, even when the Councilmember is not truthful in the file on which he is asking them to vote. 

Fuentes claimed that the change would free up space for groups that address homelessness and other community issues. “I'm not going to be apologetic for bringing more services into the district,” he said.  

Adding to the intrigue was an aide to US Rep. Tony Cardenas, who also represents part of the Valley.  She disclosed last year that she had received a subpoena to appear before a Federal grand jury. Months later, the LA Times reported that several aides to another Valley officeholder, CM Nury Martinez, had also received subpoenas. 

Fuentes' district director, Yolanda Fuentes Miranda, went before the grand jury in December. The councilman declined to comment on Miranda, who happens to be his aunt, but said her appearance had nothing to do with his decision to leave after one term. 

Last September, when I began my research into District 7, I found that none of the NCs and non-profit groups were ready to go on record with their opinions of Fuentes – even though he is not running for re-election. Such reticence would indicate that they were afraid of retribution. 

Northeast Valley politics has existed as a kind of political stronghold for a long time. Some stakeholders refer to groups in power as "the cartel" or "the machine." I don't think they mean they are literally relatives of the Mexican cartels or have anything to do with the drug trade, but they have pretty much picked the winners of the various electoral races in their area for several years. 

One big exception, and what I think precipitated a grassroots push back, was the election of Assembly Member Patty Lopez who upset and defeated Raul Bocanegra. Incumbent Bocanegra was supposed to become speaker of the State Assembly…but Patty Lopez threw a nice monkey wrench into that plan. 

It is rumored that there are grand jury ethics questions related to that election. Staff members from three different political offices were supposedly sent as “supervisors” and “watchdogs” for the recount of the Lopez/Bocanegra votes – all while working for other politicians. 

I had a business office in Mexico for more than 20 years. Some of the political nepotism I see here is reminiscent of how political jobs were handed out down there during those times. 

There are quite a number of staff positions occupied by people with the names “Fuentes” and “Padilla.” Some of them must be related to the elected office holders and their titular boss, Alex Padilla. 

District 7 is really a microcosm of Los Angeles. There are ranchers seeking to retain the rural flavor of the area and they fight against most development. There are pockets of extreme poverty and a huge homeless population, attracting drug dealers, thieves and other ne'er-do-wells. There are also middle class sub-divisions and gated communities. The terrain is both hilly and urban inner city. There is a large Latino population and a conservative white group. The region runs the gamut on the economic scale. 

The Bullet train is causing a great deal of stress to many residents. Plans now call for it to run through the middle of some of these Northeast communities. And El Nino will probably flood the Tujunga Wash where developers want to build 250 upscale homes. 

But despite all these real and potential difficulties, residents of the Northeast Valley have seen that grassroots efforts can make a difference. A new group, initiated by Sunland Tujunga community leaders late last year, now has over 2500 Facebook members on its page called, "An Open Letter to CD7." It has spread to neighboring communities and they are working the social media and raising awareness. 

Here is an edited look at their purpose: 

OUR MISSION: CD7 Open Letter has been created to recruit members of the ST community to become signers to the open letter that the administrator will author in an effort to bring about positive change to CD7 in general and Sunland Tujunga in particular. 

When the letter is complete, members will have the opportunity to decide if they support it. If they do support it, their name will be included as a signer. 

The group is for people who support the following goals: 

1. Cleaning out the homeless camps all over CD7.

2. Strict enforcement of vagrancy, loitering and trespassing laws.

3. Cleaning up the parks.

4. Initiation of patrols of the Wash, forest and sensitive wildlife areas to ensure that camps are not reestablished.

5. Proactive working with property owners who have been impacted by the influx of transients and trespassers caused by public policy failures…people who have no means to effectively deal with it on their own.

6. Enforcement of the homeless ordinances recently passed by the LA City Council but largely abrogated by the mayor.

Members agree that a solution should start with law enforcement. The city should work to make our streets livable and safe again and not give them over to transients and drug dealers. We believe it’s about being able to take our kids to the park or on a safe walk along the creek in Big Tujunga. It's about not being attacked in our cars by crazy people. It's about seeing new stores open because Foothill no longer looks like a mini Skid Row. 

Members of this group truly want to help the homeless. We are all compassionate people, many of whom devote time and treasure to help. But unless the authorities make it more difficult to live on the streets or in the Wash and on the hillsides, no one is going to have the motivation to get help. The camps will continue to grow. 

Transients who steal and the hard core drug dealers who have threatened us need to be dealt with by the authorities or, at the very least, they have to be made so uncomfortable that they relocate to other areas. 

IF YOU'D LIKE TO PARTICIPATE, PLEASE VISIT HERE. 

Just in the last couple of weeks, community leaders from different neighborhoods have met to talk honestly about the kind of person they would want to represent them on the LA City Council. The groups have included Republicans and Democrats, Libertarians and Independents but unfortunately (for me) no press. This is a non-partisan office. These leaders see an opening for neighbors to actually have a voice in who they elect, instead of being given just a few choices. 

It is rumored that potential candidates will receive a “report card” from representatives of the entire area; their grades on the most important issues will be disseminated in the community. 

Several people have indicated their desire to run. The big question is... who will be anointed by the old guard? Raul Bocanegra has already had several fund raising events; it’s rumored he wants a re-match with Patty Lopez. 

I question why Fuentes decided to give so much notice in announcing his “retirement” from politics. During the next year and half he can continue to follow the same shoddy path or he can create a legacy of inclusion, putting his constituents before his personal agenda. If he would resign now the cost of a special election would be burdensome.  

We will be watching his actions closely. As always, comments welcome…

(Denyse Selesnick is a CityWatch columnist. She is a former publisher/journalist/international event organizer. Denyse can be reached at: [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

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CityWatch

Vol 14 Issue 6

Pub: Jan 19, 2016