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ERIC PREVEN’S NOTEBOOK - I'm getting ready to step into the future at the $2 billion Intuit Dome in Inglewood, where attending a concert feels a bit like preparing for a mission into space—not via Boeing, obviously! To gain access to this futuristic venue, I first need to download the official Intuit Dome smartphone app and create an account. Scanning at the Intuit is going to make food, beverage, and merchandise purchases ultra-quick—I'll try to remember to smile for the facial recognition cams! Yikes.
If we’re using this technology at stadiums, why not at City Hall or the new luxury office space intended to replace the Kenn Hahn Hall of Administration?
Just imagine the possibilities! And I'm really hoping that Nithya Raman (CD4) takes a page from Billie Eilish and pushes back against the unwarranted effort by a bunch of bros to stuff Studio City full of High School Regulation basketball courts.
"We have the greatest stadium and the greatest arena." Ring Master Inglewood Mayor James Butts
City Ballers:
City Clerk: Caller with the last four digits 2616, please unmute yourself and state the items you would like to speak on.
Smart Speaker: Yeah, it's Eric Preven. I'd like to speak on the available items and give a general public comment.
Jonathan Groat, Deputy City Attorney: Okay, so you have three minutes for the items and one minute for general public comment. Go ahead with the items first.
Smart Speaker: Just a quick point of order before my clock starts. For the last three meetings, you've omitted me intentionally, so I'd like to examine the process—
Jonathan Groat, Deputy City Attorney: You can address that in your general comment. But for now, stick to the items.
Smart Speaker: Okay, I'll address the illegal behavior in my general comment. Regarding item seven, this is about the oversized vehicle parking ordinance. I remember during the campaigns, we were promoting a "Do No Harm" approach. The city's safe parking program is underused as a result of excessive sign-up restrictions, and preferential parking districts are a tool for Nimby neighborhoods. My neighbors tried and failed to implement one, but that hasn't stopped DOT from adding red paint to our curbs in Studio City to boost citation revenue.
While advocating for "Do No Harm" publicly, the Transportation Committee—first run by Bonin and now Fabulous Force Five of Females —including Traci Park has wired CD11 for heavy enforcement. It's all about revenue from citations and applying smart boots, which was something Mitchell Englander used to boast about, while Krekorian and Blumenfileld chuckled along.
“Mike Bonin pushed through 247 roadway closures often consisting of hundreds of spaces during 2017, 2018, and six months of 2019. . that's 247 in 30 months = 8 per month or 2 per week. As an example, the Preferential Parking District (PPD) No. 276 in the Studio City Area in Council District Two is comprised of about 30 blocks. A block is defined as a street segment between two intersecting streets. Between 300 and 600 spaces. So if we take an average of 500 spaces x 247 restrictions* = 123,500 spaces!” Yuck.
Welcome back, Councilmember Krekorian (CD2). You're aligned with John Lee (CD12), Bob Blumenfield (CD3), and others from that period who were all about enforcement to protect Nimby residents.
Now, on the topic of the Paralympic and Olympic games and the working groups—
Jonathan Groat, Deputy City Attorney: Speaker, this is not on the agenda. You can discuss that during general public comment.
Smart Speaker: I thought item 12 was on the agenda.
Jonathan Groat, Deputy City Attorney: No, the items open are one and two, and hold his time: Item seven as amended, items fifteen through twenty-one, and item 39 as amended.
Smart Speaker: Okay, can you hold my time while you lecture me about this? Groat, I'm concerned your meddlesome behavior is damaging the city.
Jonathan Groat, Deputy City Attorney: Again, this is not on topic.
Smart Speaker: Can we get you out of there and bring Ysaguirre back? Obviously, that won't go over well with Mr. Quan, but—
Jonathan Groat, Deputy City Attorney: You can speak to that in general comment if you like.
Smart Speaker: Fine, let me get back on the items. Am I allowed to speak on the three items today amounting to four million dollars in settlement payouts for various retaliation lawsuits against the city?
Jonathan Groat, Deputy City Attorney: Closed session items are not open for public comment. Public comment was exhausted at the committee.
Smart Speaker: I'll roll those items over to general. What about the sixteen settlements totaling nearly ten million dollars? Now, I'll try to get to the REAP items—what an appalling way to stuff an agenda full of items to dissuade public participation. Sorry, Groat, we do not cede this space to you or to Eunisses Hernandez (CD1), who prefers private meetings with her "Fam" over public meetings. Shame, shame, shame. Shame of fools.
Now, regarding the closed session items converted to open session, totaling around $10 million— none of them are open.
Here are the big three from Wednesday:
27. $1,300,000 Bureau of Sanitation Description: This settlement addresses alleged race-based discrimination and harassment within the Bureau of Sanitation from 2019-2021, and retaliation against an employee for reporting these allegations.
34. $1,500,000 Department: RED FLAG (Missing Department) Case: Andrea Marsh v. City of Los Angeles, et al. Description: The case involves claims under the Fair Employment and Housing Act for gender/pregnancy discrimination, sexual harassment/hostile work environment, and retaliation.
37. $1,150,000 Location: RED FLAG (Missing Location) Description: This settlement pertains to a trip and fall incident that occurred on August 9, 2021, within the City of Los Angeles.
Smart Speaker: We need to get the details on the Oaktree Capital LLC $1,080,000 from the other day, and Nike Retail Inc. $660,000 (eyes narrowing) People r not getting refunds.
Jonathan Groat, Deputy City Attorney: General public comment, you have one minute. Go ahead.
Smart Speaker: Sixteen closed session items—this is a good spot to start. The public asks, "What do you got?" but you refuse to tell us, just read out a number. We ask, "Why are we paying over a million dollars?" and the answer is, "It's already been heard in committee, sir. You're disrupting the meeting."
Blumenfield said today, "We pretty much agreed with the City Attorney's recommendations." Pretty much? That’s not good enough. I'm going to explain this in my soon to be written Pulitzer Prize-winning essay about the ongoing abuse of the Brown Act committee exemption.
This is a very corrupt process, hiding the things you're systematically bungling. But we see what’s going on and we will continue to comment. And we will write articles—I'm writing at CityWatch.com, Eric Preven's Notebook. But what you really need to do is clean up your act.
And Krekorian needs to admit the plans for the Studio City Rec Center were— and Katy Yaroslavsky (CD5) needs to call for a joint motion with Nithya Raman (CD4) to review the unpermitted man-scaping that was done on the Zev Yarsoslavsky Greenway. Sorry, scraping. We know you adore Zev, but this is very very bad, and he's been meeting on the down low. Yuck.
Not for the Zev, we demand local autonomy over all scaping. Engelberg needs to join LA28 and leave us alone.
Homegrown video made by elf volunteers
Outreach Bill of Rights:
As one can see, we know how to do outreach, unfortunately, all too frequently we just don't do it. As it related to a sneaky expansion project at our rec center --
Neil Drucker of BOE claimed the “staff of Council District 2, Paul Krekorian, has done additional outreach to stakeholder organizations such as the Studio City Neighborhood Council and the Studio City Residents Association. Whether those stakeholder organizations disseminated the notice and agenda for the 7-20-17 LVNOC meeting to their own membership is within the purview of the leadership of those organizations and is not within the purview of the Proposition K Program nor its program staff. RED FLAG!
Dear General Manager, Department of Neighborhood Empowerment
I know you are in New York with the Aspen Institute "learning and sharing" about the Neighborhood Council system but here in Los Angeles it's imploding.
In 1999 the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment emerged to connect neighborhoods to the resources necessary to empower their communities and constituents to meaningfully participate.
All these years later, last week in Studio City, a Local Volunteer Neighborhood Oversight Committee [LVNOC] was convened for a voter-approved Prop K Community Center, precisely the type of project that requires local engagement to be appropriately customized to the unique needs of each neighborhood, but the community was never notified.
There were no drawings or pictures posted until the sixty-minute 6 pm meeting began despite numerous public record requests for information about the project. There was nothing online to review or share among our residents. There were actually more Bureau of Engineering and Rec and Parks employees at the meeting than community members in attendance.
Studio City Neighborhood Council did not send out a single notification about this LVNOC meeting and it was allegedly the last and there hadn't been one for 591 days.
Failing to notify the community should be considered a serious violation of an all-new Neighborhood Council-Wide Ordinance on the subject of outreach. The City of LA needs something like an Outreach Bill of Rights.
Going forward all NCs should be required to UPDATE by eblast all taxpayer-funded Neighborhood construction projects that impact the community. And the department should also set basic outreach criteria for other types of projects.
If an NC fails to provide adequate outreach, as in the painful example of the Prop K project in Studio City, the department should step in to take over and issue sanctions.
For an empowerment organization, disempowerment must be treated as something that will NEVER be tolerated. [It's not negotiable, data-driven, and there is no panel to turn it into a game.] Outreach is required, whether you favor or disfavor the news.
Even the most diligent community stakeholders will fall on their faces if the electeds remain "outright hostile to any plan that would give the public the ability to stick their noses under the tent with stronger voices, and increased transparency."
I would ask that you and the Mayor to put a 'HOLD' on the Studio City Rec Center Prop K project and any future work on the project, until we can facilitate a community meeting, that the community is actually invited to.
Kindly confirm receipt. Cc Raman (CD4)
Eric Preven
The open space at Studio City Rec Center [Beeman Park] will be filled with a net zero high school regulation basketball court. No thx.\
Nithya Raman (CD4) went to MIT but lacks the street-smarts to connect the dots between Prop K at Studio City and Weddington's giant athletic complex. It's simply too much.
Sean Murphy Speaker:
Jonathan Groat, Deputy City Attorney: Good morning, which items would you like to speak on?
Sean Murphy Speaker: I don't know what to say. Everything is a closed session, and I was going to speak on item 39, but someone else spoke on it, so I can't.
Jonathan Groat, Deputy City Attorney: Thirty-nine is open if you'd like to.
Sean Murphy Speaker: No, I can't because she spoke on it.
Jonathan Groat, Deputy City Attorney: I'm giving you one minute for general public comment. If there are other items you'd like to speak on, please let me know.
Sean Murphy Speaker: What about item seven? Is that a closed session or no?
Jonathan Groat, Deputy City Attorney: Item number seven is open.
Sean Murphy Speaker: Okay, sorry. Item number seven.
Jonathan Groat, Deputy City Attorney: You have one minute for item seven and one minute for general public comment.
Sean Murphy Speaker: These items are all closed sessions. I'm for item seven. For general public comment: I'm Sean Murphy. I miss my fans. I don't think you're going to like what I predict—the Great Depression might be coming back. Crime is still rampant—people are still getting stabbed on the metro. We should not have the Olympics. I hated it in '84, and I still hate it now. We should not have the Olympics; the Depression might be coming back.
Bob Blumenfield, CD3: Thank you.
Speaker Zero:
These comments are in the afternoon. Regarding the REAP item, it's really a shame that contracts don't mean anything. I hear a lot about the social contract from older people, but it doesn't exist. REAP involves real contracts like leases, where people live. Yet, landlords breach their contracts without any real consequence. Instead, their money gets put in a time-out until they fix the violation, which sounds crazy. So, that's crazy. Fuck REAP. And fuck—you’re going to rot in hell for that. What else?
Oh, the RV park—yes, it’s item 39. We have a lot of empty spaces, and yet people are ticketed for parking in public spaces because they have nowhere to go. You won't fight rising rents, so why should people give up their homes just because some consider them an eyesore? You know what I consider an eyesore? The tacky mansions popping up everywhere. We need space for affordable housing, but instead, it's McMansions every day. Meanwhile, people don’t have a place to go because you don't like the way RV areas look. At one point, people traveled in RVs for vacations; now, they're people's homes. Get with the times.
For general public comment, Candido predicted an earthquake at City Hall. Yesterday, I heard seismologists talk about the Puente fault line that runs through L.A. I think it's funny—you should get right with what you believe in.
I also want to know why Hugo Martinez took a picture of my wife during public comment. I’m going to get that off your phone. You're not elected; you're a capitalist in sheep's clothing and a pendejo times a thousand. It's sad. Eunisses, you're pathetic. And Nithya, my wife said everything that needs to be said about you. You're a piece of shit.
County Corner:
Sup. Kathryn Barger: Thank you. I see no other speakers in person. We have someone on the line—Mr. Preven.
Executive Officer: Next participant, Mr. Preven. Your line is open. If you're on mute, please unmute and speak directly into your phone. You may begin.
Sup. Kathryn Barger: Go ahead, Mr. Preven. Mr. Preven?
Moderator: Eric Preven? Your line is open. Please begin.
Sup. Kathryn Barger: Go ahead, Eric.
Sup. Kathryn Barger: All right. Nope. Is he there?
Moderator: It appears he is not here.
Smart Speaker: Tell me, was there a delay getting back from Paris? Is that why we're missing the chair? Look, Supervisor Solis, let me say this about District 1 leadership—Solis can handle this. Certainly, a discrete celebration of the rejection of Republic Sanitation Bros. By the way, Republic are terrific guys, very focused on sustainability. Today, they take one on the chin, so Solis will deliver the final word. I just want to thank the board, especially Chair Horvath, for going to Paris. I heard Solis went too. What we have to do is cultivate all that good feeling from Paris and bring it back here. That is our assignment. And as for the locals, we'll have to sustain— Hey, what about the Casey Wasserman allegations? Very bad.
A coupla bros in white collars and ties.
Casey Wasserman, the chairman of the 2028 Summer Olympics, is under intense scrutiny, and the spotlight isn't just from the Olympic torch. A damning report accused Wasserman of having "serial" affairs with junior employees, which has caused significant fallout in the entertainment and sports industries. Billie Eilish, one of his agency's top clients, quickly left after the scandal broke, signaling the growing discomfort with Wasserman's conduct.
Wasserman’s ties to power are extensive. He visited Eric Garcetti after Garcetti’s controversial confirmation as ambassador to India, despite the sexual harassment scandal involving Garcetti’s LAPD detail. Wasserman's connections extend to Activision Blizzard, a company run by a Harvard-Westlake parent rocked by its own harassment scandal, which also seemed to fade away quietly.
Mayor Karen Bass's first chief of staff, Chris Thompson, also has ties to Wasserman, having worked at LA28 before moving to the mayor's office and then back to a local lobbying firm. This revolving door of influence raises serious ethical concerns.
Wasserman's agency represented 150 athletes at the Paris 2024 Olympics, raising the question: how many will it represent by LA28? The potential for conflicts of interest is staggering, particularly given Wasserman’s significant influence over the upcoming Games.
These intertwined relationships exemplify the corruption at the highest levels of L.A. politics and business. With major figures like Wasserman involved in scandals and maintaining powerful connections, it's clear that the city's elite are more focused on protecting each other than ensuring ethical governance. For the sake of the 2028 Olympics and the integrity of the city, Wasserman should be held accountable. His continued involvement only deepens the perception of a corrupt system where the rich and powerful play by their own rules. Go Wolverines!
Executive Officer: Your time has expired.
Moderator: Our next participant is Eric Preven. Your line is open, please unmute if you are muted and speak into your phone. You may begin.
Smart Speaker: Thank you. Welcome back from Paris. It's appalling that this community has endured these odors and smells for ten years. The container in their neighborhood gets hot and smelly, and when the big trucks load up, the odor is intolerable. Residents have smelled it from a mile and a half away. We need to get a handle on the smell from these trash dump vehicles. I have one more quick comment about Casey Wasserman's allegations. Very bad.
Executive Officer: Your time has expired.
Smart Speaker: Yeah, and by the way, another point on this whole smell issue—it's not just about the trucks; it's about the way this whole waste management situation has been handled. You guys have kicked the can down the road for too long. It's time for real accountability. We need proper air monitoring, and not just the kind where you tell us what we want to hear, but the kind that actually gets to the bottom of what these residents have been complaining about for years. And don't think that just because you're back from Paris with a renewed sense of purpose that we're going to let this slide. People are fed up. You all talk about equity and justice—well, start with the basics: clean air and a community that doesn't stink.
(Eric Preven is a longtime community activist and is a contributor to CityWatch.)
