WILL THE CITY DO THE RIGHT THING THIS TIME?--The city has provided FixTheCity notice that it intends to hear a motion to rescind the Mobility Plan (MP2035) as amended and then pass a “clean” copy of the original Mobility Plan. They have scheduled a joint Planning and Transportation hearing for November 10 at 2:30 p.m.
Should the City Council actually vote in favor of this motion it would be rescinding and rejecting important amendments including:
- “Considering community input before any Mobility Plan projects are implemented.”
- “Ensuring that emergency responders can effectively serve the community.”
- “Affirmatively stating equity as an important factor in prioritizing projects for implementation.”
- “Including specific steps to address transportation needs in historically disinvested neighborhoods to achieve regional equity regarding mobility in the City of Los Angeles.”
FixTheCity contends in its lawsuit, among other things, that the LA City Council improperly passed MP2035 by amending it without submitting the amended plan to the City Planning Commission as required by City Charter Section 555. The just-released proposed motion specifically states:
“As part of Council deliberations, Council approved three amendments to the plan. On September 9, 2015, a lawsuit was filed challenging the Mobility Plan, and, among other things, specifically contending that the Council’s approval of the amendments did not comply with the procedures prescribed in Los Angeles City Charter Code Section 555. In order to cure the alleged procedural defect, Council would first need to rescind the Mobility Plan 2035 as amended.”
In a last-ditch attempt to rescue MP2035, the city is attempting to fix its first mistake by making the very same mistake again: namely, improperly amending the General Plan. In trying to fix their mistake, they city has acknowledged a key claim of Fix the City’s lawsuit.
MP2035 is, for better or worse, a current part of the General Plan. The City can amend the plan (which now contains the amended Mobility Plan 2035) only by starting over and obeying Charter Section 555 and other relevant sections. All amendments can be heard at that time by the Planning Commission and the Mayor as required. There are no legal short-cuts.
In addition, an attempt to pass a “clean” copy of the Mobility Plan would be improper as the council has, per the charter, 75 days to take action on General Plan amendments approved by the City Planning Commission and/or the Mayor. It is long past 75 days.
Simply put, MP2035 is not only flawed, but it was improperly amended and passed. The only (legal) solution available to the city is to stipulate to a court order invalidating their approval and then go back through the General Plan amendment process for the entirety of MP2035 with any amendments council members may wish to add and while respecting the wishes of the voters.
Of course, to revisit MP2035 properly, the city would need to update and revisit the flawed environmental impact report which failed to address impacts on congestion, air quality, public safety, growth inducing effects and more.
Perhaps the ultimate motivation behind the new charter shenanigans is that a new public process would mean that the City would have to face a far more educated electorate, and that electorate is not happy with MP2035. They don’t want congestion. They don’t want more traffic. They don’t want slower emergency response times.
With a new public process, the City won’t be able to slip this congestion-increasing, public-safety-decreasing “mobility plan” past the public, the neighborhood councils and several of its own unhappy councilmembers.
Needless to say, this includes serious concerns and some extreme unhappiness with controversial “road diets” such as the one implemented on Rowena in Silver Lake.
Will the city do the right thing? Will they try to paper over a past mistake with another mistake? Stay tuned.
(Jim O’Sullivan is one of the Fix the City founders. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 91
Pub: Nov 10, 2015
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