CITY HALL - The quickest way to convey the quality of a life lived in a Crimogenic City is to recall Biff’s Casino in Back to the Future II. After Marty McFly returns to 1985, Doc Brown shows up and takes him to 2015, where things go very badly. Biff Tannen steals the Sports Almanac and the DeLorean, goes back to 1955 and gives the almanac to his younger self, who then makes a fortune from gambling. As a result, Biff owns Hill Valley and his skyscraper casino dominates the landscape.
How does a council of 15 people vote together over 99% of the time, while giving away millions of dollars to billionaires? To paraphrase ex-Council President Garcetti, “LA City Hall is a Temple of Crimogenics.”
If LA had a District Attorney rather than a Cooley, The Hollywood Community [HCP] would be Exhibit #1 in the criminal prosecution of the council members. The HCP is based on two material frauds:
Fraud # 1. Hollywood Must Build for 250,000 ppl in 2030
According to the HCP, Hollywood needs to construct enough mixed-use projects in Transit Oriented Districts [TOD] to accommodate 250,000 persons in 2030. (Exact number in HCP is 249,062) The Plan insists that in 2005, Hollywood’s population had increase from 210,794 ppl in 2000 to 224,426 ppl. When the population grew by 14,000 ppl in just 5 years, we surely will have 250,000 ppl twenty-five years later in 2030.
It is all a Big Lie. Hollywood’s population was not 224,426 ppl in 2005. Hollywood has experienced an accelerating exodus starting in 1990, and the decline has been 400% faster after the ascension of his Lord Highness Council President Eric Garcetti. By 2005, Hollywood’s population was about 206,000 ppl. By 2010, it had fallen to 198,228 (US 2010 Census), and a future projection based on facts shows that Hollywood’s population will be 190,000 or fewer persons by 2030.
This fraud is not a secret. It has been widely reported in LA Times, LA Weekly, CityWatchLA, Ron Kaye blog, on radio shows and on TV.
Fraud #2. The City Studied All Reasonable Alternatives
The City studied nothing! It did not study the mega-Sizing Alternative of building for 250,000 ppl, nor did it study the mini-mega-Sizing Alternative of building for 244,000 ppl nor did it study the No Project Alternative.
“Study” means “to research or a detailed examination and analysis of a subject, phenomenon, etc.”
You can read the thousand or so pages of the HCP, the DEIR, the FEIR and the attachments, but you won’t find a detailed examination and analysis of anything. What you will find are conclusions. Garcetti’s Plan says that its goal is to make Hollywood a vertical city. It states that the core of Hollywood has more than 21,000 ppl per square (7-10-10 Hollywood Community Plan, p 39) and that the Garcetti Plan will increase population density in this core area. There is no analysis of adverse impact of increasing population density beyond 21,000 ppl per sq. mi. The Garcetti Plan is a road map where the mega-developers want to go and how to get there, but with zero examination or analysis of whether Hollywoodians want to go there or whether it is prudent to supersize the vertical construction as the Garcetti Plan promotes.
The HCP did not even mention, let alone study, the Down Zoning Alternative which was required due to the fact that Hollywood has been losing population since 1990. The City’s Framework mandated that future community plans prepare for population increases and for decreases. Since we have a 20 year down streak, there was no honest way not to study the Down Zoning Alternative.
The HCP’s conclusions are not backed up with facts or analysis. The HCP only presents conclusions which support the mega-Sizing desire of Garcetti. For some people, size does matter and ex-Council President Garcetti is one of those people.
Let’s see how Los Angeles operated a 100 years ago when it approached city planning. Here are a few paragraphs from the 1915 Study of Street Traffic Conditions in The City of Los Angeles.
“The largest number of [trolley] cars which it is possible to operate on a single surface track is, admittedly. 180 per hour. This is equivalent to a [trolley] car every 20 seconds, including stops, and is impracticable unless the tracks are free from obstruction and the "service stops" can be restricted to ten seconds or less.
“In cities with comparatively narrow streets. such as Los Angeles, stops will average several times ten seconds, as it is necessary for passengers to wait on the curb until their [trolley] car arrives. instead of grouping on off Isles of Safety of or in the street, as is possible in Indianapolis or San Francisco. It is therefore probable that at no time has Los Angeles street [trolley] car traffic ever approached such density for even a one-hour period.
“One hundred and eighty [trolley] cars per hour on a single track means three hundred and sixty [trolley] cars per hour on double track. which, again, means 6 [trolley] cars per minute passing any point, or a total of 42 [trolley] cars occupying street space between First and Seventh streets in any minute of the hour. Forty-two [trolley] cars, at 550 square feet per car, will occupy 23,100 square feet of street, which is only ll ½ per cent of the total space available. In other words, with street [trolley] car traffic operated to the maximum, vehicles are occupying nearly eight times as much area as are the [trolley] cars.
“Obviously, the remedy for congestion under such circum-stances lies in the providing more vehicular area, rather than the relegation of transportation facilities to above or below the ground surface. The addition of one eighth (l/8), or a strip seven feet wide to the present street area would hardly compensate for the immense expenditure necessary for subway or elevated construction. especially when relief by natural expansion is simply a question of time.” 1915 L.A. Traffic Study, pp 23-24
In 1915 anyone could take out pen and paper or their slide rule and double check the City statistics before deciding whether they supported the City’s conclusions. The 1915 study also cites where it gets it data so that readers could go check. While people who didn’t care about the City might die of boredom reading the 1915 Study, those citizens who care about creating a better city for their children, as opposed to making billionaires even wealthier, did devour the data.
We should ponder the openness, the thoroughness and the analysis that went into this public document 100 years ago, and then we should feel collective shame for the tripe we call the Hollywood Community Plan. The fault does not rest in the staff at City Planning. The decline into abject fraud is due to the Crimogenic nature of City Hall. The June 14th Addition to the FEIR states:
“Population within the Hollywood CPA has fluctuated over the years. Population decreased from the 2005 estimated population of 224,426 to the 2010 census population of 198,228. Over the longer term, population may decline or may increase. SCAG forecasts the population will increase projecting a 2030 Hollywood population of 244,602 persons. There may be a number of reasons for this fluctuation in Hollywood population, and the decline seen between 2005 and 2010.” Second Addition to Final EIR, June 14, 2012, p16/33
“Fluctuate” means “to change continually; shift back and forth; vary irregularly.” It is a lie that Hollywood’s population has fluctuated, it has shown a consistent twenty year decline.
There has been an accelerating exodus from Hollywood starting in 1990, and there are no facts to show that after the decline began, it reversed itself and started to increase only to drop again. This Fluctuation Lie was invented to cover up the first lie that Hollywood needs to build for 250,000 ppl by 2030.
“2005 estimated population of 224,426" It is typical of the criminal mind to mislead and confuse. The false theme of the quoted paragraph is that Hollywood’s population has fluctuated so we have to construct for a fluctuation up to 250,000 ppl. The criminal mind pretends that it has not told a lie because it inserted the word “estimated” before “population.” The use this number was a fraud, because it is an old estimate, which has been completely debunked as wrong. Citing this forecast as if it were the real 2005 population is a lie.
“There may be a number of reasons for this fluctuation in Hollywood population.” A lie told a thousand times becomes the truth. There are zero reasons for the fluctuation because there has been no fluctuation, only decline. For the crimogenic personality, words mean what they want them to mean at any given moment.
In a non-crimogenic City, the Plan would tell the truth, i.e. the reason-able estimate of Hollywood’s population in 2005 was about 206,000 ppl down from 210,794 ppl five years earlier. The rate of decline increased so that by 2010, our population was down to only 198,228 people. In 2012, the population is probably around 196,000 persons. The public has completely exposed the Big Lie, yet Garcetti clings to it.
By this lie about our having 224,426 ppl in 2005, the Garcetti Plan deceives people into thinking that our population fluctuates from 210,794 in 2000 to 224,426 five years later and down to 198,228 five years after that. It is a lie with a purpose – to deceive people into falsely believing that our population swings are so great that we must build for 250,000 ppl.
The crimogenic mechanism of LA City Council is this: There’s a corrupt deal amongst the councilmembers not to vote against what another council member wants in his/her district. When a councilmember sees the Hollywood Community Plan is based on frauds, he keeps his mouth shut and votes for it.
Now you know why the City Council votes in unison over 99% of the time. Each councilmember has sold his vote and in return he receives the votes of other councilmembers. If they had the honesty to actually exchange cash in front of us each time they sold a vote, we might catch on to this criminal enterprise. Each councilmember is a criminal who has sold his votes and has, thereby, bought the votes of his fellow councilmembers.
The council’s hubris after its years of criminal vote selling has become so great that Council President Garcetti bragged about it during the last council session in December 2011. They have their voting machine rigged to vote YES, unless the councilmember physically changes his vote. He can be is the rest room taking care of personal hygiene, yet the machine will still tally his Yes vote.
(Richard Lee Abrams is an attorney in Los Angeles. He can be reached at: [email protected] ) –cw
Tags: City Hall, Hollywood Community Plan, HCP, Eric Garcetti, Tom LaBonge, City Council, corruption, misleading, lies, Crimogenic
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 51
Pub: June 26, 2012
