ALPERN AT LARGE-Sorry, Mayor Garcetti and Councilmembers Buscaino, Englander, Bonin, Koretz and Wesson...this is gonna sting a little.
This is hardly the first time I've criticized the leadership at City Hall, but I've also taken heat from some of my colleagues for being "too nice" and supporting you on various initiatives in the past...so when I suggest that The Road to Fixing Our Roads isn't through City Hall, that suggestion is more focused on getting the job done rather an ad hominem attack on Downtown.
My last piece was an obviously-sarcastic "How NOT to pass a LA City Road/Tax Bond Initiative, but we DO need to fix our roads, sidewalks, alleys and underground infrastructure.
So before you spend a lot of time, money and energy on a City initiative that may not pass muster with the voters, here's a few considerations to pursue (or ignore):
1) Apologize...or at least report the truth: that the money that should have been spent on our roads and sidewalks over the last 10-20 years were, in one way, shape or form, diverted to many DWP and other City workers who are now retired (often at a very early age) and enjoying a bonanza that past and future City workers would never, and will never, enjoy because it's not sustainable. Never was...yet THAT's where the road/alley/sidewalks money went.
2) Acknowledge that the past Mayor and City Council (of which Herb Wesson and Eric Garcetti were prominent figures) have chosen poor hiring and budgeting decisions and gimmicks that avoided the tough decisions and now have forced many--including our hardworking firefighters--to work long overtime hours with the result of new hiring and pension dilemmas being created. Seriously...is it more cost-effective to have a few exhausted workers paid lots of overtime, because it's more expensive to pay new hires when they retire?
3) Admit that no matter how the City comes up with cute, gimmicky schemes to pay for our dilapidated sidewalks, the City CHEATED its hardworking, beleaguered homeowners and landowners who are paying INCREASING amounts of taxes in return for DECREASING services from the City. If the homeowners have to pay for their sidewalks (again, because they ALREADY paid for them in many years of taxes), will City-approved private contractors be allowed to do the job cheaper than City union workers...or will there at least be a competitive process?
4) Avoid repeating previous bait and switch funding efforts, such as that with the California High Speed Rail project (which isn't just slight more expensive than advertised...but over twice as much, with no legal and intellectually/morally-honest method of funding the project anywhere on the horizon). In other words, where did the $3-5 billion price tag for the City road repair effort come from, and is it a truly efficient, transparent and cost-effective figure?
(More importantly, if that Road repair money is granted by bonds and/or taxes, then will yet MORE City money get shunted inappropriately for the next generation of DWP and City workers to retire early and live large on the public dime?)
5) Apply the principles and tactics of those from Metro, who crafted a rare piece of good tax legislation in Measure R (the sales tax measure to fund our current batch of road and rail projects) and who are trying to craft another measure ("Measure R-2"), in order to pay for projects not sufficiently or expeditiously funded by Measure R. And it should DEFINITELY be remembered that Measure R includes road repair money, which is perhaps best doled out by the County than by the City of Los Angeles.
That last consideration might be the most important one of all.
Forget the Englander-Buscaino Road Repair measure because the City has lost its credibility with the voters, and include it as part of County Measure R-2.
The City's Community Plans are ignored by Planning and the LADOT (and by our electeds!)...
Motorists are told to pound sand and drop dead when they beg for more parking to access the sidewalks, mass transit and small businesses so vital to the success of our Complete Streets initiative...
Politically-connected developers get away with not paying the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars for transportation and other mitigations they're legally and morally obliged to pay...
And money that already should be dedicated to mobility and infrastructure enhancement gets diverted to nebulous, gimmicky and questionably legal projects that the taxpayers do NOT favor.
So why have a City Road Repair Tax/Bond initiative when we're already able to get some with a properly-crafted Metro/County Measure R-2? Combine the two efforts and prioritize street/sidewalk/alleyway repair in the City of LA's portion of county sales tax revenues...and if it's not enough, then that's even BETTER because the City won't get off the hook towards rediverting revenues that should ALREADY be paying for our streets/sidewalks/alleys/infrastructure.
Because having the City blow yet another few billion of taxes to inefficiently and incompletely correct our infrastructure is the last thing we need to create a better for the Economy, Environment and Quality of Life for 21st Century Angelenos.
(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Boardmember 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 CD11 Transportation 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, 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 12 Issue 18
Pub: Feb 28, 2013
