LOS ANGELES

LOS ANGELES … ONLY THE RICH NEED APPLY--From Los Angeles to Berlin, developers and politicians, not to mention the “new urbanists,” are creating a global gentrification crisis – and it’s not just the poor who are getting hurt. We first came to understand the ugliness of gentrification in Los Angeles.

In LA, gentrification has been fueled by the City Council and Mayor Eric Garcetti’s willingness to grant “spot-zoning” approvals to deep-pocketed developers who want to build luxury-housing high-rises. 

For example, the city’s General Plan and community plans lay out zoning rules for what can and cannot be built in neighborhoods. So a 20-story luxury-housing tower cannot go up in a community that’s only zoned for four-story buildings.

Over the past few years, however, developers have gone to the L.A. City Council and Garcetti, with checkbooks in hand, asking for zoning exemptions – or “spot-zoning” approvals. After taking thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and other political cash, such as money for a council member’s “officeholder” account, the City Council and Garcetti almost always deliver the favors.

Developers then demolish an older building with affordable housing units to construct a luxury high-rise with over-priced apartments or condos. Or, developers throw up a luxury tower on a piece of land that’s not normally zoned for that kind of project.

Developers make tens of millions, if not more, in profits from spot-zoning approvals. But residents and neighborhoods, especially if a luxury high-rise goes up in a working- or middle-class community, feel the pain.

Residents in an affordable apartment building that’s slated for demolition lose their homes from the get-go. And more times than not, there’s no way they can afford the exorbitant rent at a new luxury-housing tower that offers such fancy amenities as concierge service, a gym, and, believe it or not, a dog park. A senior citizen or housekeeper or struggling artist is out of luck while a happy dachshund gets world-class treatment. 

Adding to the displacement, the luxury tower jacks up rents for residents in other buildings in the neighborhood—and a once affordable community becomes less affordable. Not only are those residents forced out, but lower- to middle-income people can no longer move in.

We saw this disturbing trend take place across LA – from the lower-income, Latino Eastside to the middle-income, white San Fernando Valley to working- and middle-class neighborhoods on the Westside to lower-income, African American South LA More than 20,000 affordable units have been taken off the market in LA since 2001 to make way for some form of luxury housing.

It didn’t matter what color you were, although people of color often got screwed the worst. If you weren’t making an annual salary of $100,000 or more to pay for higher rents, you were displaced – and a one-time worki ng- or middle-class neighborhood became gentrified.

Similar scenarios are unfolding in London, Portland, Berlin, (photo left) and numerous other cities across the United States and the world.

It’s particularly pervasive today. Deep-pocketed developers are on a spending spree around the world, buying up properties in major cities and building luxury projects or converting affordable housing into luxury housing.

In the United States, according to Zillow, developers are building all kinds of high-end apartments and condos, but are not construct enough housing for lower-income people. Politicians allow this to happen by either failing to come up with land-use policies that prevent widespread gentrification or they approve luxury projects that are not normally allowed under a city’s zoning rules.

More and more, community activists are fighting back, which is happening in Berlin, London, New York, and Los Angeles, where numerous neighborhood groups supported a development reform initiative known as Measure S.   LA’s political establishment hated it, and developers spent millions to kill reform. After all, they didn’t want a broken system that helped them make billions in profits and millions in campaign contributions to be fixed. Measure S ultimately failed at the ballot box this past March.

But the initiative did jump-start a much-needed, citywide discussion about troubling land-use policy, gentrification, corruption at LA City Hall, and a severely broken development approval process. That discussion, and neighborhood activism, will only continue in LA.

Luxury-housing developers and politicians either ignore or refuse to acknowledge the serious, street-level problems they are creating. The same goes for the “new urbanists,” as they call themselves. They push for more dense cities regardless of what kind of housing is built. They just want density, density, density.

Many urban planning academics are just as bad. They say the best way to lower rents and to cure housing shortages is to simply build more housing—the supply-and-demand theory. Developers then cite the academics and new urbanists to justify their luxury towers to the public and politicians. With that political cover provided by the “experts,” the developers build more high-end housing.

Yet the academics, developers, new urbanists, and politicians often ignore specifics. Cities such as L.A., which is dealing with a shocking homeless problem, are not facing a “luxury” housing crisis, but an “affordable” housing crisis. It makes perfect sense to build more “affordable” housing, not any kind of housing—fix the problem at its root.

That’s what Zillow recommended — developers must construct more housing for lower-income people, which includes the middle-class.

Developers, academics, new urbanists, and politicians don’t want to discuss that. It messes with their economic, political, and/or ideological agendas. (Yes, “new urbanism” is an ideology.)  The affordable housing crisis then worsens, luxury-housing prices are sky high, rents in the neighborhood keep going up, and working- and middle-class folks keep getting pushed out.

If gentrification continues to go unchecked, it will have devastating, long-lasting, multi-pronged impacts, and the world’s metropolises will become luxury cities that only the affluent can afford. Everyone else will struggle to make ends meet – or get the boot. 

(Patrick Range McDonald, an award-winning investigative journalist, worked on the Measure S campaign as senior researcher and website editor. This perspective was posted first at LA Weekly and most recently at washataw.com.) 

-cw

TOMORROW’S MOVERS AND SHAKERS TODAY--Crespi Carmelite High School senior Justin Miller (photo above) says, “A year ago, I watched The Hunting Ground, the award-winning documentary by Kirby Dick about sexual assault on college campuses. Then, I watched it again. And again. It hit me hard. I could not shake it.” 

The 2015 documentary produced by Amy Ziering follows the experiences of college students raped on campus who face retaliation and harassment as they fight for justice. One in five women will be the victim of sexual assault during their college experience – and that’s a statistic Justin would like to see turned around. Eleven million women are currently enrolled in higher education nationally and of that number, 2.5 million will be assaulted. 

Inspired by the documentary, Justin founded Seniors With A Mission (S.W.A.M.), with the initial goal of producing Raise the Volume, a one-night event at the Saban Theater on April 27. The teen started a GoFundMe and raised over $6,000 to underwrite the event but due to some logistical issues, has decided to donate money raised to The Rape Treatment Center. To expose Los Angeles-area high school seniors to this crucial issue before they leave for college, Justin has appealed to Kirby Dick and the team at The Hunting Ground to allow the film to be screened for free at participating high schools, including Crespi Carmelite, Louisville, Marlborough School and other schools in Los Angeles. 

“I am going to ask each high school to screen the film for their seniors,” the teen says. “If we can make this happen, we will ultimately reach more high school seniors and be left with more money to donate to The Rape Treatment Center. Although I am disappointed that we had to rethink the Raise the Volume event, it might yield the most benefit for the overall cause, which is awesome.” 

Justin, a writer/director who will be studying at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts next fall, explains most assaults happen during the first weeks of freshman year, as students begin their college experience, forever changing their lives. The mission of the S.W.A.M. is to “change the College Campus Culture to one of Compassion and Respect.” A painful and difficult subject will be embraced by an entire generation and revolutionized into a message of dignity, hope, and transformation.” -- Raise the Volume 

The Rape Treatment Center at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center was established in 1974 and is nationally recognized for its pioneering work in the treatment, prevention and education arenas. The RTC provides free comprehensive and compassionate care for adult and minor victims of sexual assault and operates 24 hours a day. 

Services include emergency medical treatment, forensic services, crisis counseling, and longer-term psychotherapy, advocacy that includes accompanying victims during legal and court proceedings, as well as during medical appointments. The Center provides information about rights and options so that victims can make informed choices. Over 50,000 victims and their families have received this support services. 

In addition, The RTC prevention education serves thousands of Los Angeles middle school, high school and college students. Students learn about rape, sexual assault, peer sexual harassment and other forms of abuse. The students are also exposed to prevention strategies, including options in high-risk situations, safe intervention strategies when they witness a peer being sexually abused, assaulted, harassed or bullied, as well as how to get help. The center works with educators and administrators to best address sexual abuse, bullying, sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence on campuses, as well as to develop effective prevention policies and strategies. 

The center provides professional training and education programs that reach thousands of victim services providers each year, including police, paramedics, prosecutors, medical and mental health practitioners, and school personnel. An additional area of impact is Public Education and Policy Reforms.

To donate to S.W.A.M.: Raise the Volume, visit the Go Fund Me page.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

SKID ROW- (Editor’s Note: The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment did not respond to attempts by CityWatch to authenticate the charges made by the author of this article. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CityWatch.) Last week, there was an historic election of sorts in Downtown Los Angeles. The many historic moments start with the first-ever subdivision election in the history of the city. 

The Skid Row Neighborhood Council- Formation Committee, which began their formation effort in June of 2014, squeaked by the community of Hermon, who started their effort in 2011 and held their subdivision election two days later. 

While Hermon’s election was successful and went off without any hitches (beyond opposition from the larger Arroyo-Seco NC), Skid Row’s history books will forever overlook their election which was held in a physical polling place in Skid Row (with online voting becoming a last-minute additional option less than two weeks prior to the election day) and also had an energetic and well-attended “Uplift Skid Row Pep Rally” directly across the street, and instead will focus on the “Scandal in the Skid” which was originally leaked by an anonymous source connected to the Downtown LA Neighborhood Council (DLANC) who forwarded damaging e-mails to the Skid Row NC- Formation Committee, who initiated Skid Row’s bid to create a new NC that would’ve broken away from the DLANC and addressed it’s myriad issues directly with City Hall’s resources. 

The irrefutable evidence pointed out that DLANC created a front organization called “Unite DTLA” which then forwarded “Vote NO on Skid Row Separation” campaign materials to DLANC’s entire database via e-mails that connected directly to a DLANC-controlled URL, which is illegal by City regulations. It was also discovered that Unite DTLA also used DLANC’s mailing address- which is paid for by the City’s NC Funding System (taxpayer funding), and thus also a violation. 

The Skid Row subdivision election’s preliminary results saw Skid Row NC losing by a slim 62-vote margin. DLANC’s database registered at least 700 potential voters from their 2016 NC elections. This entire database was automatically registered in Skid Row’s 2017 subdivision election. Easily, the “NO” position e-mails (publicly stated by a current DLANC Board member on social media to have been sent “four times a day”) may have influenced 62 of their 700 voters, and possibly more. 

This week, the Skid Row NC-FC officially filed multiple actions, which include a recount (there are provisional ballots that have yet to be counted), a grievance against the DLANC and 5 separate challenges all filed with the City’s Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE). 

If DONE accepts any of the challenges, an independent grievance panel will be formed with a possible decision coming no more than 14 days from it’s convening. 

If each of the challenges are dismissed, the Skid Row NC-FC has indicated that they will explore all possible options, including “legal options” which imply the possibility of at least one lawsuit, possibly naming both DLANC and the City of Los Angeles. 

This unfortunate turn of events takes away from a tremendous and unexpected turnout in which over 760 voters voted in favor of creating a Skid Row NC and over 1600 overall. Even rap superstar Ice Cube and dozens of Hip-Hop artists recorded cell phone videos urging qualified voters to “Vote YES for the Skid Row NC” which formulated from a #HipHop4SkidRow social media campaign. 

With all this momentum, Skid Row was able to organize and activate a newly-established voter base that could have been much larger, but there are also claims of voter suppression, which may be addressed after the pending challenges through DONE. The oldest voter in support of Skid Row’s effort was a 96-year old Skid Row man who beamed with pride for his community. 

Still, DLANC’s devious acts overshadow Skid Row’s glory and a revealing video released on social media exposes an even greater concern of how people outside of Los Angeles will view this controversial election. 

Will the City of Los Angeles’ image, which prides itself on being diverse, inclusive, progressive and a “sanctuary city” be tarnished? 

Will international tourists see Los Angeles in an unattractive light because of it’s inhumane actions towards it’s homeless residents? 

Will the City’s 2024 Summer Olympic bid be negatively affected? Or the City’s effort to land the 2026 World Cup frowned upon? 

Or will this simply be just a local community tussle over the control of Skid Row? 

If the DLANC is to be punished, will it’s close ties to the powerful Downtown business sector be a factor in a soft “slap on the wrist”-type punishment? Or will the hammer be dropped to set an example of what will not be tolerated in any NC elections across the city? 

There is a lot at stake and the pressure is already mounting. 

It was reported that DLANC’s Executive Secretary stepped down this week. It is not yet known whether this move is related to the voting scandal, but surely the timing seems to come at a bad time. 

Can DLANC, which is considered one of the better NC’s of the 96 NC’s citywide, overcome this still-unfolding drama where things will simply return to normal or will major changes be inevitable? 

The Skid Row community is stunned and there is talk of the concerns regarding the possibility of long-term trauma, which would add to the many complexities associated with the area commonly known as “the homeless capitol of America”. 

Will Skid Row residents cower behind the results of this election and collectively decide never to get involved in politics again? Or stand up to the powerful land-use developers who aim to gentrify the area where they live? 

The results of DONE’s challenge review has great implications that will undoubtedly and instantly affect tens of thousands of Angelenos. 

A Skid Row NC could be the missing piece in all the new Measure HHH and Measure H discussions involving billions of taxpayer dollars, which could give the necessary credibility to subsequent decisions on homelessness that the DLANC just doesn’t have. 

Either way, history will again be made. 

Skid Row NC-FC members strongly believe they are on the right side of history. 

This will undoubtedly be a significant turning point in Los Angeles’ well-documented struggles to sufficiently handle it’s expanding homeless problems which include a lack of significant low-income housing, adequate storage facilities for homeless citizens and ineffective healthcare services for the ever-growing mental illness population and even help for those suffering in various states of addition. 

The new Homeless Count numbers will be released by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) at the end of next month. 

The fight to create a Skid Row NC may still continue well past that. 

It is unknown what solutions the “NO” voters have planned to address homelessness in Skid Row, if any. 

Maybe they just got caught up in the moment of wanting to simply win an election. 

History books now await DLANC’s entry.

EASTSIDER-Let’s be honest. Since the late 1980’s, Council District 1 has been a district deliberately created to be a majority-Hispanic council district. You can check out the history at Wikipedia.  

The latest revisions to the District are the product of a particularly slimy body-swap political exercise presided over by the 2012 LA Redistricting Commission. It was so toxic that it only ended in 2015 with a federal judge’s ruling long after the 2013 election was over. 

Here in Glassell Park, I guess we should be used to being treated like serfs, since we have at various times been under Council District 13 with Eric Garcetti, Council District 14 with Jose Huizar, and Council District 1, initially with Reyes and now with Cedillo. 

The 2013 race to replace termed-out Ed Reyes was particularly nasty, with Cedillo, termed-out himself from the CA Legislature, running against Reyes’ Chief of Staff, Jose Gardea. You can get a taste of that debate in this LA Weekly article.  

Anyhow, the 2012 redistricting did not change the 70% plus Latino nature of the District. What it did do was provide a body swap between Huizar and Reyes so that CD 14 swapped its chunk of Glassell Park and environs out for Downtown LA where Huizar could make more money with the CRA and the business/developer community. It also let Council President Herb Wesson split Koreatown into four districts for his own purposes…including a piece landing in CD 1. 

With that background, it seems to me that the 800 pound gorilla in the room for the Council District 1 runoff, is whether gentrification, missteps by the incumbent, and voter turnout will flip this district to non-Latino. 

How We Got to a Runoff 

Between 2013 and now, many of our communities have been the beneficiaries of a gentrification tsunami in the Echo Park, Highland Park, Glassell Park and Cypress Park areas. Mt. Washington doesn’t count, since it had already been gentrified. 

As Silverlake became outrageously expensive, our hillsides from Highland Park to Glassell Park became the next “new wave” of gentrification, with single family homes suddenly going for $700,000 and up. Also, condos and small lot homes are popping up like mushrooms with exorbitant prices. All this is driving out a lot of longtime residents who can’t even afford their apartments. 

Regarding Gil Cedillo and Joe Bray-Ali, there is an irony in this race. When he ran in 2013, Cedillo talked to everyone; on the other hand, City Hall Insider Gardea was locked in to Ed Reyes “never met a development he didn’t like” (unless it was a single family home) remote style of governance. 

This time around, Cedillo is characterized as the incumbent who loves development and doesn’t talk to the troops, while Joe Bray-Ali is the young, fresh candidate who talks to everyone. As I wrote in an earlier CW column, “Joe Bray-Ali Cleans Up Nice!” 

Further, it was clear at the Sotomayor School debate that Joe had a shot -- the takeaway quote being, “of all the other candidates Joe Bray-Ali stands the best chance of getting in a runoff.” 

And the results -- although initially in favor of Cedillo -- were ultimately:

While it’s nice to guess right, the margins in this race were very tight, and the number of total votes cast in a district with some quarter of a million people in it, was not so good. 

The Runoff Its Own Self 

Clearly Joe Bray-Ali has momentum going for him, and is garnering unusual endorsements, such as CD 13’s Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, in addition to the Los Angeles Times and a number of environmental groups like the League of Conservation Voters. And there is no question that the issue which brought Joe to everyone’s attention -- safe streets and the Bicycle Plan -- has galvanized supporters. 

Gil Cedillo also has a number of endorsements, from Jerry Brown and Xavier Becerra to Mayor Garcetti and Gloria Molina. Perhaps of more use in this race are the ones from the Police Protective League, the Firefighters, and UTLA (United Teachers of Los Angeles.) 

Joe’s difficulty will likely be in the area of Latino voters, inasmuch as his campaign has not achieved too much success in wooing this segment of the District to his cause. Of course Gil Cedillo’s problem is that, while the District is about 72% Latino, so far, that hasn’t translated into a huge Latino voter turnout. The trick may be how many of the Giovanni Hernandez and Jesse Rosas voters will come out and vote for Joe in the runoff. 

On the other side, it seems to me that a big difficulty Gil Cedillo has is that he actually likes to govern, as in introducing City Council initiatives and motions. This probably stems from his years in the California legislature, where they make decisions on statewide issues. Trouble is, most Angelenos I know could care less about what the City Council does -- unless and until their taxes go up, a monster development invades the neighborhood, or they actually need something from their Councilmember. 

The real name of the game in winning City Council Districts is going out and pressing flesh, having as many one-on-one contracts with each neighborhood as possible, and demonstrating that the Councilmember cares. Take Mitch O’Farrell as an example. He’s never met a development or developer he doesn’t love (even if the project is on a fault line) but has great constituent services staffing, and is out everywhere pressing the flesh all the time. And guess who won re-election in a walk? Mitch. 

Joe Bray-Ali is out and about everywhere, while Gil Cedillo labors under the handicap of being an incumbent with a track record. The rap on him is that once elected, his team slacked off on daily outreach to the various community groups and neighborhood councils, and it was difficult to get him to go out and press the flesh of constituents. It is difficult to turn around these perceptions at election time; on the other hand, the challenger can make any promise he wants before getting elected and having to deliver. 

Upcoming Events 

As we speak, the East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD), now up to about 750 members, have endorsed Joe Bray-Ali, but many of them are not in CD 1. The Northeast Democrats (NEDC) have not endorsed; however, they have scheduled a meeting for April 19 to vote on an endorsement. Of course, they are a much smaller group, but at this point everything counts. 

There will also be an important candidates’ forum in the critical Westlake/Pico-Union area on April 17 at the Monsenor Romero Hall (2845 W. 7^th Street, starting at 7p.m.) It should prove interesting. 

Hopefully, there will be more candidate forums and events before the election, and I may write another column before the actual May 16 election date. 

The Takeaway 

Not only does Joe Bray-Ali clean up nice, but my initial observation stands: “…if Joe Bray-Ali can force Cedillo into a runoff, all the electoral math changes in a hurry. If an incumbent with all the advantages can’t put the election away in the primary, he’s viewed as wounded meat and all bets are off.” 

At the same time, never underestimate the value of incumbency. Mr. Cedillo did, after all, come within a hair’s breadth of winning the election outright, and I suspect that in a two-candidate race he would have won. At this point, his political back is up against the wall, and you can be sure that all stops are out. 

The real question has to do with voter turnout…and the Latino vote. 

Shortly after you read this article, vote-by-mail will start on April 18, and the actual runoff election date is May 16. Remember, as the primary election proved, EVERY VOTE COUNTS! If we don’t vote, complaints about the results won’t mean much.

PLEASE VOTE! We will be living with the results of this election for 5 1/2 years.

(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GELFAND’S WORLD--For sixteen years, Los Angeles officials have been telling us that the system of neighborhood councils exists to improve citizen participation in government. In fact, the City Charter leads off its section nine with the following purpose statement: 

To promote more citizen participation in government and make government more responsive to local needs, a citywide system of neighborhood councils, and a Department of Neighborhood Empowerment is created.  Neighborhood councils shall include representatives of the many diverse interests in communities and shall have an advisory role on issues of concern to the neighborhood. 

That seems pretty self-explanatory. In my home-council, we've been encouraging participation by our neighbors since February 2002, back when we held the first neighborhood council board meeting in the city. Over the ensuing years, public officials and LAPD Senior Lead Officers have added their own contributions. In fact, our public treats the chance to ask questions of the LAPD and of civic officials (or their representatives) as an important part of the meeting. In reality, this is their part of the meeting, because it provides members of the public a chance to engage with officials who have the power and authority to change things. Even when the visitor is an appointed representative (usually a staffer) rather than the City Councilman, it is a chance to provide feedback to the elected official. 

That's why I was so surprised when an old friend told me the following story. He was at his neighborhood council meeting (it's the council immediately adjacent to my home council) and he got up to ask the City Councilman's representative a question. This was nothing new actually -- it happens routinely at most neighborhood councils around the city. But this time, he was told that he could not ask his question. The rules had changed. 

He explained to me that he was told the following -- that only members of the elected board could ask questions of the City Councilman's representative during the public part of the meeting. If he wanted to have a private conversation with the rep away from the meeting, he was welcome to try. 

It's apparently the new rule. If this is an accurate description of a new policy, it certainly represents a terrible way of doing business. 

I called the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), the city agency that oversees neighborhood councils. The DONE representative I spoke with explained the situation my friend had experienced. The Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council had a rather busy agenda that evening, so to save time, the board decided to abolish the public's right to ask questions of the visiting dignitaries. Thus my friend Bill was forbidden to ask Councilman Joe Buscaino's representative Ryan Ferguson a question in public. 

That this is a bad policy is easy enough to see. An essential element of public participation is providing members of the public a chance to cross swords with elected officials. This is what we have seen in town halls held by congressmen over the past couple of months. The reception that members of congress had at their town halls may be the reason that we still have the Affordable Care Act. 

The public Q/A session is the public's opportunity to communicate not only with the elected official, but also with each other. This is particularly important when the inquiry concerns a City Councilman's performance in office, analogous to the way it concerns a congressman's voting record. What is the councilman going to do about traffic or homelessness or home burglaries? Will he support the proposed sales tax increase? What does he think about the current trend to treat home burglaries as misdemeanors? 

It's not obvious that elected board members will think of the same set of questions as you or I would, and it's rather unlikely that board members will press their questions to the same extent that we might. In fact, there is a reasonable argument to be made that neighborhood council governing board members have different incentives than the public when it comes to discussions with elected officials. The board members are trying to maintain a cordial relationship with the elected official, something which is not conducive to aggressive public questioning over matters of performance or ethics or legislation 

The question of purpose 

In considering the radically different approaches taken by my home council (Coastal San Pedro) and the council in question (Central San Pedro), it's appropriate to ask what the whole system is supposed to be about. Which way is more likely to result in improved government as described in the City Charter's quaint wording? My rather partisan point of view is that shutting the public out of the process is less than optimal. Actually, it's the way to communicate to the public that they are second class participants. What's so outrageous is that the neighborhood council is the organization that is supposed to be the closest to the public in all of city government. How hard is it to point out that citizen participation means exactly what it says? 

But this point having been made, it is also necessary to admit that the night's agenda (see the link above) was in fact pretty busy. How do you rationalize the need to get through a long agenda with the public's right to participate in questioning of officials? 

I think that the honest answer is that for some agendas and some neighborhood councils, it's not always possible. It's necessary to make a choice. 

In order to make a choice rationally, it's necessary to consider the opposing needs. 

My view is that an essential function of the neighborhood council is giving the public the maximum opportunity to make its own views known. It's not unreasonable to dedicate a significant fraction of council meetings mainly to public participation. For example, my council held a couple of meetings dedicated to discussion of the homelessness problem, leading off with speeches by homeless advocates and devoting the bulk of each meeting to public comments. 

In addition, it's necessary to devote a sufficient amount of time for public participation at every other council meeting. Hearing from the public is a prime function of the neighborhood councils, and all of them should live up to this expectation. 

But what about all the other agenda items -- the items that require such a large amount of time? There are three possible answers to this question. The first is simple: Just don't put so much on your agenda. A lot of routine matters are sufficiently handled every two months, or even every three months. 

Another method is to learn how to use time management. In practice, this involves putting a time limit on each agenda item in advance. The board can extend the length of any item, knowing full well that this adds to the length of the meeting. It is between the board and the public as to whether this is acceptable. But absent an affirmative board vote to extend the length of any given item, it is over when it has used up its allotted time. 

I understand that most boards would feel strange about having an item die without taking a vote, but there again, there are methods for dealing with the situation. In brief, go directly to the vote at the end of allotted time, or put further consideration of the matter over until the next meeting, or quickly pass a motion to extend the item by five minutes. 

It's possible to handle your time effectively such that the rights of the public to participate are not hindered. That this requires of the presiding officer a certain skill set is not in question, and training in these matters is one of those obligations that should have been taken up by DONE years ago but never was. 

I should also like to add that lengthened board agendas are a symptom of a long term trend in neighborhood councils, the idea that every question should be sent to a committee, and there should be a committee for every question. It sounds reasonable at the superficial level, but a deeper look leads to some concerns. For one thing, committee work is usually carried out by a smaller number of participants, and committee meetings often happen at times and places that are difficult for many members of the public to attend. The result is that those few people who are most invested in any particular subject are the ones who become the committee members. The result is, often enough, a skewed recommendation from the committee to the board. Now add in a board meeting which limits public participation (one comment not to exceed two minutes is certainly to be limited) and the recipe is for an overall skewed result. 

It is of course possible for a committee to be made up almost entirely of people with a specific interest and still see a fair result. This happens when, for example, the downtown business owners can ask for certain changes that would benefit the community as a whole without damaging any other part of the community. 

But the primary functioning of a neighborhood council still has to include a maximum of public participation, and this remains the case whenever the choice is between hearing public comment and hearing the reports of committees. Or to be specific, Bill should have been allowed to ask Ryan his question.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

LEAVING LA-We have spent considerable time exploring the factors driving Family Millennials away from Los Angeles. Today we show the lure of other places. 

NewGeography has a number of articles describing the areas which are competing for middle class Angelenos. They all share the common element of Affordable Opportunity. Four articles are: 

September 20, 2016, NewGeography, “Lone Star Quartet,”  by Aaron Renn. 

This article gives an over view of Texas and shows the breadth of opportunity which Texas offers. 

December 3, 2016, NewGeography, “Opportunity Urbanism: The Tech Edition,” by Ryan Streeter. 

This article describes the tech job market in Austin, one of Texas’ most desirable areas. Austin not only has a university but it is the state capital with an established music scene. As such, it has a decent chance of attracting young Millennials who can later effortlessly transition into Family Millennials without moving thousands of miles away.

April 8, 2017, NewGeography, “The Ghost of Mamie Eisenhower,”  by John Sanphillippo. 

Good picture essays are fantastic. This article documents small towns that abound in other parts of the nation and have decent weather. Their decline has become ancient history, and their renaissance has already begun. The best place to enter opportunity is on the ground floor. 

April 6, 2017, NewGeography, “Seven Ways Life Has Gotten Better in Rural America,” by Aaron M. Renn. 

For people who love open space, convenience, and who can telecommute, the rural areas probably provide the most opportunity. People have not yet begun to talk and write about the coming impact of Virtual Presence. Soon wall size monitors, directional mics, and cameras which can track you as you walk about the room will be common. When people are liberated from the small monitor, we will enter a telecommunications era more revolutionary than what the smart phone has brought.   

These and other NewGeography articles give us a sense of the advantages of moving to smaller cities, smaller towns and even to rural areas sooner rather than later. When one adds together Virtual Presence, long range electric, self-driving cars and the economics of our times, we see that the future of the American family lies in low density communities. 

Work Book for LA Family Millennials 

In planning for a family, Millennials will do some basic calculations. The housing costs in Austin or the exurbs in the South or in rural areas will be one third to one half of a detached home in LA. While everyone’s financial position is different, the extra housing cost to live in LA is about $36,000 per year. If one includes two children in private school, the extra cost will increase by about $40,000 more per year. (Private LA schools range from $11K to $32K per year per student.) That means it costs about $75,000 extra per year to live in LA. 

Away from Los Angeles, that $75,000 can be divided three ways: (1) $25K/yr. for normal living expenses like vacations, clothes, cars, restaurants, (2) $25K/yr. for retirement, and (3) $25K/yr. to up-grade housing, e.g. six bedrooms, home offices and an acre of land. 

For an LA family who is not earning enough to save $75K per year by moving, relocation to a low density, growth community means the difference between paying exorbitant rent for a small apartment and owning a home of their own with a yard in a decent school district.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Dearest Nevada … Marry me.

(Editor’s Note: As regular readers know, CityWatch was founded 15 years ago to promote civic engagement. And, it is our belief that the best engagement is the result of information and education. We also believe that for this divided country to ever come together it will be necessary for all sides on these divisive issues to be heard … and listened to. No progress comes from ‘preaching to the choir.’ That is why we post perspectives and positions from all sides of the political spectrum. We believe your voice should be heard … even if we disagree with what you have to say. It is with that belief in mind that we make this Heather MacDonald speech available to you.)

TRANSPORTATION WATCH--Most of us like paying for a given thing only once.  But hey, maybe some of us like paying for transportation and infrastructure so much that we'll pay not once, but three, four, five times for the exact same thing until finally, sort of, maybe, it gets paid for. 

As for little old me? I like paying for something once ... although I realize that budgets and disasters require some significant flexibility when reality makes yesterday's predictions null, void, and moot. And I've recommended sales taxes and higher gas taxes for decades to pay for transportation and infrastructure. 

I'm all for appropriate taxation...but I'm also for "Alpern's Law of Taxes" which states that the one thing taxpayers are more concerned about than the amount of taxes they pay is the perception about how well those taxes are spent. 

Let me repeat that again, more slowly … 

 ... the ... perception ... about ... how ... well ... those ... taxes ... are ... spent! 

But a funny thing happened over the past few decades.  The education unions needed to be FED. The public sector employee unions decided that early retirement in the mid-fifties, and getting paid big time in retirement at a salary similar to those still working, took precedence over that little thing called financial sustainability. 

And even former Governor Schwarzenegger showed he had no spine or willingness to explain that one could be PRO-teacher, PRO-education, PRO-roads, PRO-rail, PRO-business, PRO-health care, and PRO-taxpayer all at once. 

So, here’s the drill: We scream about the roads, gather more taxes, bonds, fees, whatever and then when we get more money for infrastructure we yank money from the general fund for “other” things to placate the unions. 

And whadaya know?  We don't have enough money for roads, rail, sewage, water, and other infrastructure all over again!  But the percentage of our budget going to pensions and inefficient/inappropriate spending continues to rise. 

Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Seen any new universities get built lately?  The cost of education go down?  The ability of the middle class to thrive?  Businesses with lots of middle or upper class jobs go up, with either an industrial or intellectual economic base go up to pay for everything? 

I didn't see any of that, either. 

And here's the kicker, fellow taxpayers, and fellow Californians: 

You already paid for universities, and roads, and everything nice, several times over and got that tax/bond/fee money indirectly yanked towards ‘something else’ … and you will now pay for all of that yet again. 

I'm not for ANY one-party state, either Republican or Democrat.  Boondoggles and sweetheart deals that favor a few and thrash the majority is not OK. 

We now have an upper economic class of technological and other professionals who are in nice and/or gated communities.  They may grumble and get angry about taxes, but they're moving forward and living nice lives. 

Then there's the middle class, comprised primarily of suffering but hanging-in-there small businesses and public sector workers.  And if you're too stupid to become one of them, then woe be unto you. And after you retire, you'd be well advised to flee California to keep (gasp!) your hard-earned money. 

And then there's the former industrial/manufacturing middle class, who are now working fast food jobs in a service industry that's anything but helpful for those who want to live sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyles...and a minimum wage increase will too often lead to automation replacing their jobs, not more money. 

But those who stayed awake in economics class, or who lived long enough in California to remember how economics works in different venues and climates, either have been shut down, died, or fled the state. 

And now we have a new gas tax that ... perhaps after the last 4-5 failures ... will actually go to transportation. 

There ARE answers: 

1) Require a minimum of the state general fund, and safeguard all transportation taxes/fees/bonds, to remain invested in transportation/infrastructure.  10% of the general fund ought to do it. 

2) Change the education portion of the state general fund to alter inefficient K-12 funding (the K-12 population is going DOWN...did you know that?) to be diverted and establish 5-10 new UC and Cal State universities over the next ten years.  And pay education employees in a responsible and sustainable manner! 

3) Increase the costs of transportation/infrastructure for Silicon Valley/Beach businesses and developers who are impacting, but NOT paying their fair share, of the costs needed for them to be among those few who are profiting handsomely off the sweat and toil of the rest of our state. 

Until then, we've got the gas tax from those we elected to "lead".  Shut up and pay, right? 

Let's just make sure that our money actually goes to where it's supposed to, with transportation money actually having a net INCREASE as a result of this gas tax. 

Otherwise, we can look forward to our next tax/bond/fee increase because--you know--there's just not enough money for our crumbling roads and infrastructure because we spent our recent gas tax money ... directly or indirectly ... on SOMETHING ELSE. 

(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties. He is also 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 was co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chaired the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)

-cw

ANIMAL WATCH-If anything will get viewers for TV news, it is reporting that animals are going to be killed at a shelter. Activists know this well. Occasionally, frantic calls to reporters come from well-meaning--but misinformed--visitors or volunteers, because there is little time for quiet, detailed communication while managing facilities with hundreds of animals leaving and entering daily.  

Most stations know this and confirm the full facts with the agency's management so the broadcast can, hopefully, provide a positive way the public can be part of the solution--if there is a problem. 

But, on Thursday, KTLA News completely caught LA County Animal Care & Control by surprise when it broadcast and posted, “Some local rescue pet organizations are upset over a new policy at LA County Animal Services. They say the policy allows shelters to euthanize animals that are deemed 'unsafe,' instead of being made available for adoption by rescue organization." 

Sayalan Orng, identified by the station as a shelter volunteer, said ominously, "My concern is that, if this continues and we can't save dogs that are deemed aggressive, this will be a “mass murder.”" 

Although reporter Kareen Wynter announced that shelter volunteers had started a petition opposing the change, the on-line document which KTLA posted for the convenience of critics indicates it was actually started by a woman in Littleton, CO, who does not appear to have affiliation with L.A. County shelters or any other animal organization. 

A spokesperson for LACAC&C said they were not aware of the broadcast. When they were notified that an e-mail to one of their Carson rescue partners had been misinterpreted, the Department promptly posted a media release on the LA County Animal Care and Control website to clarify:

As an animal care organization DACC is committed to finding homes for all adoptable pets sheltered that are not reclaimed by their owners. While we strive for adoption outcomes for all dogs, we also have a responsibility to public safety. In some cases, dogs that find their way to our animal care centers have a documented history of such aggressive tendencies that they pose a threat to public safety. 

Eighty-four percent (84%) of the dogs that come into our Los Angeles County Animal Care are adopted to families or placed with our very valued adoption partners (rescues). However, because of our commitment to public safety, DACC will not place dogs—even with our adoption partners—when the dog has a documented history of aggressive behavior, or has exhibited a pattern of threatening or aggressive behavior while in our care. 

The reality is that very few dogs in our animal care centers will be deemed to pose a risk to public safety. We want to reassure concerned animal advocates that fears that have recently been conveyed to us -- that any dog that shows fear in the stressful kennel environment will be euthanized -- is simply not correct. Our policy is limited to dogs whose documented history demonstrates a high likelihood that they will injure or kill another animal or attack a human. 

We do not take lightly the decision to euthanize a dog for behavioral reasons and are committed to taking that action only when the dog poses a very strong propensity to do harm if placed in a new home. We will continue to evaluate each dog as an individual, taking into consideration all available information including temperament test, documented history and behavior while in our care. 

We continue to collaborate with our adoption partners to place dogs with less serious behavior issues, such as those whose evaluation would suggest special placement that our adoption partners may have the resources to address. 

The release also cites State law supporting the department’s policy. 

It is hard to believe that most County residents and rescuers would not support a decision to reduce the risk of harm to people, their pets and other animals by dogs which have a documented history or pattern of aggressive behavior—especially with attack reports on shelter employees, volunteers and the public by impounded or adopted animals increasing at an alarming rate. 

Here are just a few: 

RECENT DOG ATTACKS IN SHELTERS 

On January 23, 2017, CityWatchLA told the story of Priscilla Romero, Animal Care Technician for L.A. Animal Services, who was savagely mauled by a dog that had bitten before while in the shelter and had other notations by employees that the dog was not safe. 

On February 24, 2017, according to the Orlando Sentinel, “Lake man is recovering from attack by pit bull at animal shelter, -- “The victim of a pit bull bite in the Lake County Animal Shelter talks ... A worker came running with a mop and used it to beat the dog off.” 

On March 18, 2017, the Daily World, wrote, Pit bull attacks worker; animal shelter shut down – Stacey McKnight was alone in the back of the St. Landry Parish Animal Control shelter Thursday when the unthinkable happened. ... ‘The dog's aim was to attack me,’ she said.” 

WHO ARE ‘ANIMAL RESCUERS’? 

Responsible animal rescuers perform a valuable service for the shelters and homeless animals by keeping them in a quiet, safe environment while they seek adopters that are a good match for each dog's personality, energy level and potential needs for the rest of its life. 

Some rescuers believe they are able to change the behavior of even a very aggressive dog or that behavior assessment tests do not show the dog’s true nature. Because of the increase in breeding and ownership of certain breeds of dogs for property protection (or to guard criminal enterprises), often those impounded in shelters have serious anti-social behavior or genetic propensities which have caused them to threaten or to have already attacked a person or kill other animals. 

There is no clear legal definition of a “rescuer” or a “rescue organization” in California or most states. Anyone -- including those without dog-handling, training, or other animal-management education or experience -- can become a “rescue” and solicit donations merely by obtaining or being remotely covered under a federal 501(c)3 non-profit, tax-exempt umbrella. 

There are no other federal laws, nor is there a state or local agency in California that maintains jurisdiction, monitors or reviews "rescue" activities for compliance with laws or ordinances. Nor are there prescribed background checks to start a "rescue" or determine qualifications for employees or volunteers. 

Hoarding, noise or animal cruelty complaints may be made to the local animal-control department -- which is often where the rescue has “pulled” many of its animals to help reduce shelter population. 

There is also no statewide agency (such as Department of Consumer Affairs) for anyone dissatisfied with the health or temperament of an animal adopted from a rescue to make a report and have its license or permit revoked, because none is required. 

ANIMAL RESCUERS ARE NOT IMMUNE TO DOG ATTACKS 

April 5, 2017, Rescue Group Volunteer, Son Injured in Dog Attack … A volunteer and her young son were hospitalized after two large-breed dogs attacked and bit them at “For the Love of Dogs” private animal shelter. "The Rottweilers went up to the children and they started to pet one of the dogs … the dog suddenly grabbed one of the children off the picnic table and took him to the ground, and the second dog started to attack the child as well.” Samuel said, “the volunteer rushed to her son’s aid and was bitten when she tried to shoo the dogs.” 

May 23, 2016, CityWatch article, LA Animal Services: Pit Bull with a Violent History Attacks Potential Adopter... 

-- "A Pit Bull named Sammy with a prior record of repeated aggression and who had just bitten a Los Angeles Animal Services kennel worker in the abdomen, was released on April 28 to NovaStar Rescue, at the personal instruction of LA Animal Services General Manager Brenda Barnette."  

August 12, 2013, Darla Napora, Pregnant, Killed by Her Pit Bull . .. . 

Two Years Ago Father Writes ... "Darla's husband wanted a male pit bull and one was rescued… Darla was described as being "...an avid, long-time supporter and member of Bay Area Dog Lovers Responsible About Pit Bulls [BAD RAP], a Pit bull advocacy group.” 

On August 20, 2012, Dog Rescuer Rebecca Carey Killed at Georgia Home by Dogs She Saved ...One or more of the rescued dogs in her home attacked Carey and killed her. ...at the time of her death—two Pit Bulls, a Boxer mix, and two Presa Canarios…” 

ANIMAL CONTROL, HUMANE SOCIETIES CAN BE SUED 

Aug 5, 2016 -- Animal control director can be sued for dog attack death, court rules ... Court rejects animal control chief Mark Kumpf’s defenses. ... Two complaints specifically alleged that the dogs’ owners, Andrew Nason and Julie Custer, had directly threatened her with attack. Andrew Nason and Julie Custer, above, were convicted of offenses pertaining to. . ."..

April 3, 2017 -- Adopted Pit Bull Attacks Toddler - Animal Shelter Sued for ‘Product Liability’ "Although the dog in Clinton, Iowa, had been listed as a 'Boxer-Labrador-mix,' it was determined to be a Pit Bull  that had been transported from a Louisiana shelter. The dog was subsequently declared a dangerous dog by Clinton authorities..." 

INCREASE IN FATAL ATTACKS BY RESCUE OR SHELTER DOGS

Colleen Lynn, of Dogsbite.org, compiled the following stats:

In the 7-year period of 2005 through 2011, dogs inflicted 214 deadly attacks in the United States. Only 2% (4) of those deaths involved rescue or adopted dogs. Of these 4 cases, 75% (3) of the dogs were vetted by rescues or shelters.[Vetted indicates a certified rescue or shelter.] All of the victims were children ages 4 and younger. 

In the 5-year period of 2012 through 2016, dogs inflicted 178 deadly attacks in the United States. A stunning 9% (16) of these deaths involved a rescue or adopted dog, making it the fastest growing category of the 47 measurable parameters that DogsBite.org tracks per death between the two time periods. 

Of the rescue or adopted dogs that killed during the 5-year period, 63% (10) were vetted. 50% (8) of these deaths involved children 7 years and younger and the other half involved adults 23 to 93 years old. 

Between the two periods, there has been a 350% increase in rescue or adopted dogs inflicting fatal attacks in the U.S. Combining both periods, 2005 through 2016, pit bulls and American bulldogs accounted for 70% of all rescue or adopted dogs that killed a person in the United States. 

PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM MARCIA MAYEDA, DIRECTOR, L.A. COUNTY ANIMAL CARE & CONTROL 

The Department of Animal Care and Control is committed to protecting human and animal safety, while placing as many unwanted animals as possible into new homes. Unfortunately, some dogs that arrive at our care centers have documented histories of aggression, or exhibit behavior so dangerous that they cannot be safely placed back into the community. Doing so places other animals, as well as people, at risk for serious  injury or death. While, sadly, these aggressive dogs cannot be safely rehomed, this decision is essential to public safety. 

To be clear, this policy relates to relatively few dogs. Other dogs may not pass a temperament assessment, but we feel are able to be further assessed and rehabilitated by experienced animal adoption partners (rescue groups). We work closely with many such organizations to provide these dogs with the opportunity for behavior modification and placement into new homes. 

It is disheartening that a venomous attack on LA County Animal Care & Control was promoted by KTLA -- which has been a strong supporter of animal shelters -- before the station had determined all the facts. As conveyed by Director Mayeda, a discussion with management could have diffused the angst of those making these claims and this damaging controversy would not have occurred.

(Phyllis M. Daugherty is a former City of LA employee and a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

DEEGAN ON LA-In today’s uneasy political climate, threatened by storm clouds of unwanted change, many are expressing their grievances by either complaining about, arguing against, or resisting something political. 

Education, and how it’s delivered, has become one of the flash points for collective dissatisfaction -- all the way from the Federal government, where we have a Cabinet level Education Secretary (who many claim lacks the understanding and experience to do the job) to the local neighborhood level here in LA, where Charter school “co-locations” on LAUSD campuses are an issue. 

A “co-location” (which became state law seventeen years ago) means having a charter school share a campus that has extra classrooms not used full time by the school district -- although those rooms may sometimes be in use for special-ed needs, art, drama and other extra-curricular after-class programs. 

The co-location process has received pushback from parents who don’t want their campuses hosting charter schools, bringing a minimum of eighty additional students from a different school and culture (private school versus public school) into their LAUSD schools. Is the politically expedient anti-globalism movement now going local, where students are becoming the spoils of the education wars? 

For the first ten years of the state law authorizing co-locations, LAUSD mounted legal challenges that they eventually lost. Yet, school district educators, administrators and parents still try to deny implementation of this law that reflected the will of the people in a public vote. Aligning this to the will of the LAUSD has not been easy. 

Expansion of charter schools by “co-locating” onto LAUSD campuses is at a crossroads now, with the May 16 run-off for seats in Districts 4 and 6 crucial to both pro and anti-charter school forces. The people on both sides of the issue have a chance to speak by casting their votes in this election. 

It doesn't take many votes to make a difference; change is lurking in this current school board race. The biggest vote getter in the municipal election -- the Mayor -- was given a second term with the votes of just 15% of the city’s registered voters. Not so lucky was the incumbent and anti-charter-school school board president Steve Zimmer, who is now fighting to hold onto his seat in District 4, jeopardized when he captured slightly under half of the votes cast in his district. This gave him just short of a majority in the close race, forcing a run-off. That slight margin is how little it takes to get elected to a position that could help freeze charter school growth. The flip side is that charter school supporters, seeing this vulnerability, can mobilize and achieve the required votes to win.

A mostly boring, poorly attended municipal election a few weeks ago had a historically low 16% voter turnout that would make anyone’s claim of having a “mandate” sound like something Trump would tweet. This resulted in a run-off for the LAUSD school board seats in District 4, which includes the Westside and part of the west Valley where pro-charter Nick Melvoin faces anti-charter Steve Zimmer; and District 6, the east San Fernando Valley, where charter-backer Kelly Gonez faces union-supported Imelda Padilla. Results in Districts 4 and 6 could tip the school board to a “pro-charter” or an “anti-charter” majority, so lots is at stake. This run-off could tilt the scales in the charter versus traditional school controversy as well as reveal the union versus non-union biases that exist in this, the second largest school district in the country. 

After voters passed Prop 39 in the year 2000, adding to the State Education Code "that public school facilities should be shared fairly among all public school pupils, including those in charter schools....that school districts to make ‘reasonably equivalent’ facilities available to charter schools upon request,” the LAUSD fought back, delaying implementation for ten years until forced to comply. In 2010 they lost a lawsuit brought by the California Charter School Association to compel LAUSD compliance with Prop 39. 

Now, seven years later, the power ratio at the LAUSD school board is vulnerable to a major shake-up. All it will take is two more pro-charter board members to be elected on May 16 and the pro-charter forces will have a majority on the board. It has been seventeen years since Prop 39 was passed -- enough time for a kid to matriculate from kindergarten to the doorsteps of college. 

Across the city, on the neighborhood level (such as in Hancock Park) there are charter schools wanting to use Prop 39 to co-locate onto LAUSD campuses. But many face resistance. Is this a state law versus neighborhood preference conflict? Or is it something more -- possibly a form of NIMBYism? 

“To Be, or Not To Be? That is the question” is what many students learn when they are exposed to Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” for the first time. It’s a question many of their parents are asking now with the increasing number of charter schools taking up space on LAUSD campuses. In Hancock Park, they are asking if the LAUSD Third Street School campus will also be home for a charter school. That would swap out a few rooms that are now used for extracurricular activities for a charter school co-location by Citizens of the World Charter Schools which already operates charters in Hollywood, Silverlake and Mar Vista. 

A recent LAUSD presentation about a possible charter school co-location at Third Street School was shouted down by mostly moms who are against co-location. It was as if parents were using another Hamlet quote: “There’s something rotten in Denmark”, although the laws are pretty specific: it’s the adjustment to them that’s causing the emotional turmoil. 

The boiling point will come with the May 16 run-off election. Charter-advocate and Zimmer opponent Nick Melvoin (District 4) and charter-backer Kelly Gonez (District 6) will have to win seats if it’s going to be “goodnight sweet prince” for school board president Zimmer. We may see a school board that says hello to charter school expansion.

(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EDUCATION POLITICS-On Sunday April 2, the Committee for Racial Justice in Santa Monica had as their guest speaker Dr. Ben Drati, the relatively new African American superintendent of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD). What Dr. Drati discussed in his presentation was SMMUSD's decision to once and for all effectively deal with the unacceptable realities behind why African American and Latino students continue to do poorly at SMMUSD -- and what can be done to close this achievement gap with verifiable results. 

While I had some problems with Dr. Drati's approach to achieving minority student parity with their generally more affluent and academically successful non-minority peers, what I nonetheless found refreshing in his approach was a his willingness to incorporate ideas that might enable him and SMMUSD to help minority students to achieve their potential. 

The "coherent and cohesive focus" that Dr. Drati seeks to implement at SMMUSD to improve minority achievement, will require that he not underestimate the entrenched "culture of opposition" he will surely encounter when his reforms challenge the profitable vested interests of those who are doing just fine financially under the present system. 

Dr. Drati believes the "people leading schools have best intentions in mind." The reality is that we have 2.3 million people presently incarcerated in our prisons, one million of whom are African American. Fixing our schools so that minority students come out highly educated, socialized and employable, could not help but cut into these rates of incarceration and the obscene corporate profits that have been generated by them for so long.

There is also a tendency to minimize or not really understand the profoundly positive effect a good pragmatically driven public education system can have when it does more than mouth platitudes that most of those running the system don't even really believe. For example, Dr. Drati presented a list of several factors that schools could not control in dealing with minority underachievement. The reality is that a well functioning school is the actual mechanism that eliminates these negative factors. 

According to Dr. Drati, schools "don't control the level of poverty and living conditions" of its student population. But in American history, functioning public schools have always been the social integration mechanism that has assured students will more often than not do better socio-economically than their parents, who often had inferior educations. So far, this has eluded Black and Latino students. Why is that? 

If the "parents’ education level" continues to function as a continuing negative indicator of their children's achievement, because they are incapable of helping their children with homework, there are certain measures to try. Something as easy and relatively inexpensive as keeping the schools open after regular school hours and into the evening, so that students can get supplemental help with homework, can not only give underachieving students a place to get help but it might also serve as a forum for drawing back to school some of the students -- and parents -- who may have become frustrated and dropped out. It would be a lot cheaper than incarceration in the juvenile justice system that costs $78,000 a year per youth. 

Most importantly, Dr. Drati needs to know that any K-12 education system cannot assume that students arriving into a school at a given grade-level are objectively at that grade-level as measured by mastery of all prior grade-level standards. The existing system that now socially promotes students irrespective of their true grade-levels, has been and continues to be the greatest factor in creating student apathy, classroom disruption, and the lack of self-worth these students continue to suffer from unnecessarily. Could this have something to do with explaining why 70% of students who ultimately make it into the community college system in California wind up taking remedial courses in subjects that should have been remediated while in K-12? And how was it their K-12 schools awarded them high school diplomas? 

In dealing with the present de facto segregated public education system that still exists throughout the vast majority of inner city schools, there are some very difficult truths that cannot be avoided or ignored. For the past 400 years, there has been a systematic decimation a people based on race. It cannot be overcome without addressing the quantifiable, predictable damage this system has had and would have on any people unwillingly subjugated to it. A belated "equal education" for people who have been assured that they are not equal will not work to turn this travesty around – to the benefit of all Americans -- unless a pragmatic, subjective assessment of each student’s academic standing is done to ensure a relevant education the students can benefit from. 

One of the hardest issues to address and get the public to accept in order to turn around our failed public education system is to recognize that we as a society have perpetrated immutable damage that has limited the future of what were once the unlimited possibilities of the poor and minority students subjected to it. It now behooves us to transition from this "inherently unequal" low expectation school system to one "with liberty and justice for all." We must not ignore the damage we have done, which if left unaddressed, would continue to preclude these students from attaining any possible remaining success in the future. 

As we move to lessen the negative impact of this necessary transition period, it might be advisable to stop using empty, disingenuous rhetoric. More specifically, with a total college and university capacity in this country of 40% of high school graduates, why have public schools all but eliminated industrial arts and career training programs that students could use to achieve gainful employment after leaving school or to enable them to defray the ever increasing costs of post-secondary education? 

Another temptation that reformers like Dr. Drati need to avoid if they are to assure that minority students get the timely education they are entitled to, is not to adapt the system to the current low, negative achievement results of a racist system. In successfully educating any student, their age and grade levels need to be ignored and replaced with an assessment of where the individual student is subjectively – while at the same time assessing what each one is capable of learning. Such an approach might result in a pleasant surprise, a system in which minority students finally feel safe and respected and able to let down their guard, becoming "school boys or girls" without suffering the slings and arrows of their peers. 

In his talk, Dr. Drati posed the question: "What is going on in the mind of somebody who thinks it's okay to kill" without understanding that such a person has neither Drati's education nor vocabulary to understand the ramifications of such an action. With an average 500 word vocabulary, these young people engaging in violence on the streets of Los Angeles or Chicago are the logical result of failing to educate too many of this country's most important asset: its kids. This is important for all of our futures...if we want to have one. 

Although a product of the Los Angeles public school system who had the atypical ability to go on to college and get degrees in both biochemistry and a doctorate in education, I must confess I was not surprised to find out that Dr. Drati's family had immigrated to the United States. To me, this means that his family was probably not subjected to the systematic siege that most Black American families have suffered for far too long. Imagine what African American and Latinos students might achieve in school if they were given a level playing field like Dr. Drati had. 

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

DITHERING DYSTOPIA-As the Mayor was winging around the world touting Los Angeles as a venue ready for the World Stage, his bumbling surrogates -- Councilmembers Herb Wesson (photo above) and Mitch Englander (literally unable to keep their lies straight) -- rolled out a motion last Wednesday to make the violation of City Hall rules become a “trespass,” a misdemeanor which can carry with it a six-month prison sentence.  

It’s the “if-you-dare-break-one-of-our-rules-we-will-send-you-to-jail” ordinance, and it will render City Hall a dystopian haunted house, where members of the public will actually be stripped of civil liberties as they pass through the metal detector.  

A necessary evil? Absolutely, they contend, given the deadly and/or noisy nature of the City’s murderous and/or blabber-mouthed gadflies. All this is in addition to the prospect of the transient who hopped over Councilmember Bonin’s desk in 2014 coming back for another bite of the apple. 

Cops in City Hall take orders directly from whomever happens to be sitting in Council President’s seat. It could be a psychopathic drug addict, but if that person’s in the chair, he has at his disposal a private army of Taser-toting cops.  

So watch your back. Herb Wesson and the frequently defensive and irritable Mitch Englander are taking the civic out of civic engagement. 

It’s the watchdogs that are to blame. If they weren’t so nosy and abrasive and fault-finding, then the Council wouldn’t need to crackdown.  

Where’s the press? Most of the major outlets swallowed Wesson’s barely coherent talking points and then dutifully circulated them to the public, but it’s not too late to set things straight. 

We should be storming City Hall, kicking down doors and taking names. If not now, then when? 

(Eric Preven and Joshua Preven are public advocates for better transparency in local government. Eric is a Studio City based writer-producer and Joshua is a teacher.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

NEW GEOGRAPHY--California may never secede, or divide into different states, but it has effectively split into entities that could not be more different. On one side is the much-celebrated, post-industrial, coastal California, beneficiary of both the Tech Boom 2.0 and a relentlessly inflating property market. The other California, located in the state’s interior, is still tied to basic industries like homebuilding, manufacturing, energy and agriculture. It is populated largely by working- and middle-class people who, overall, earn roughly half that of those on the coast.

Over the past decade or two, interior California has lost virtually all influence, as Silicon Valley and Bay Area progressives have come to dominate both state politics and state policy. “We don’t have seats at the table,” laments Richard Chapman, president and CEO of the Kern Economic Development Corporation. “We are a flyover state within a state.”

Virtually all the polices now embraced by Sacramento — from water and energy regulations to the embrace of sanctuary status and a $15-an-hour minimum wage — come right out of San Francisco central casting. Little consideration is given to the needs of the interior, and little respect is given to their economies.

San Francisco, for example, recently decided to not pump oil from land owned by the city in Kern County, although one wonders what the new rich in that region use to fill the tanks of their BMWs. California’s “enlightened” green policies help boost energy prices 50 percent above those of neighboring states, which makes a bigger difference in the less temperate interior, where many face longer commutes than workers in more compact coastal areas.

The new Bantustans

Fresno, Bakersfield, Ontario and San Bernardino are rapidly becoming the Bantustans — the impoverished areas designed for Africans under the racist South African regime — in California’s geographic apartheid. Poverty rates in the Central Valley and Inland Empire reach over a third of the population, well above the share in the Bay Area. By some estimates, rural California counties suffer the highest unemployment rate in the country; six of the 10 metropolitan areas in the country with the highest percentage of jobless are located in the central and eastern parts of the state. The interior counties — from San Bernardino to Merced — also suffer the worst health conditions in the state.

This disparity has worsened in recent years. Until the 2008 housing crash, the interior counties served, as the Kern EDC’s Chapman puts it, as “an incubator for mobility.” These areas were places that Californians of modest means, and companies no longer able to afford coastal prices, could get a second shot.

But state policies, notably those tied to Gov. Jerry Brown’s climate jihad, suggests Inland Empire economist John Husing, have placed California  “at war” with blue-collar industries like homebuilding, energy, agriculture and manufacturing. These kinds of jobs are critical for regions where almost half the workforce has a high school education or less.

Why the interior matters

In legislating against the interior, the state is trying to counter the national trend — evident in the most recent census numbers — that shows people seeking less dense, more affordable areas. Both millennial and immigrant populations are growing rapidly in these regions. Between 2000 and 2013, the Inland region experienced a 91 percent jump in its population with bachelor’s degrees or higher, a far more rapid increase than either Orange or Los Angeles counties.

By curtailing new housing supply, California is systematically shutting off this aspirational migration. Chapman University forecaster James Doti notes that, in large part due to regulation, Inland Empire housing prices have jumped 80 percent since 2009 — almost twice the rate for Orange County. Doti links this rapid rise to helping slow the area’s once buoyant job growth in half over the past two years. Population growth has also slowed, particularly in comparison to a decade ago.

Weighed down by coastal-imposed regulations, the interior is losing its allure for relocating firms. Many firms fleeing regulation, high taxes and housing costs used to head inland. Now, many are migrating to Nevada, Texas, Arizona and other states. “Many of the projects we saw years ago have surfaced in Phoenix,” lamented Mary Jane Ohlasso, assistant executive officer for San Bernardino County, in an interview. “The whole way California has grown has been hopelessly terminated,” she told me.

Over time, however, constraining the interior will backfire on the coastal enclaves. In recent weeks, coastal technology and professional service providers have raised a growing alarm about attracting and retaining thirtysomething skilled workers. Some have even suggested that new transportation infrastructure — for example, a tunnel between Corona and south Orange County — could provide an alternative for family-aged workers who cannot afford a residence closer to the coast. Others, to keep key employees, are purposely setting up offices in places like San Antonio for workers entering their thirties.

If this crisis of the interior is not addressed, the prognosis for California will be ever-growing class and race bifurcation and an ever-rising demand for welfare and other subsidies for those unable to pay for housing. California needs, in reasonable and sustainable ways, to keep open its regions of opportunity, not to seek to close them off to future generations.

(Joel Kotkin is the editor of New Geography  … where this piece was most recently posted … and is R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, a St. Louis-based public policy firm, and was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.)

-cw

@THE GUSS REPORT-Aloof and incompetent government has been mocked by the masses since time immemorial. Outside of elections, it is sometimes the only way to have your dissent heard.

The increasingly antagonistic mockery of LA City Councilmembers at their thrice weekly gatherings has become a slapstick art form which has intensified during the five years that its president Herb Wesson has run the meetings, yet Wesson seems oblivious as ever to what he has done to increase the hostility in his quest to reduce civic participation. Specifically, he has: 

• Reduced public speaking time from a total five minutes to three for items on the agenda. 

• Reduced public speaking time from two minutes to one on any single agenda item. 

• Reduced general public comment (for items not on the agenda) from two minutes to one minute. 

• Moved general public comment from the beginning of the meeting, to the end of the meeting, back to the beginning and, now, in dribs and drabs, as filler throughout the meeting. 

• Consistently called for peoples’ speaker cards the moment they step outside of City Council chambers to go to the restroom, declaring their time forfeited. 

• Interrupted speakers, calling them “off-topic” without giving them a chance to make their point in their own way, including doing this to some whose primary language is not English and some who may be disabled or homeless and do not speak as swiftly as Wesson. 

• Repeatedly interrupted speakers while their already reduced speaking time ticks off the clock. 

• Called people to speak on a topic even though the agenda item is not yet ready to be voted on. 

• Allowed Councilmembers to mill around or even stray away from Council chambers during public debate, and set Council’s voting software default to an “aye” yes vote without paying attention to speakers’ concerns. 

• Squandered hours at the start of most City Council meetings with breathless, repetitious, fawning ceremony and celebration (which should be moved to a once-per-month weekend event) rather than put the peoples’ business first. 

• Misplaced speaker cards so that, when the person gets in line to speak, he or she is declared “disruptive” and thrown out of the meeting under threat of arrest. (Then he suddenly locates the cards once speakers have been ejected from the room. 

Just last week, on a day when City Council squandered hours on fluff before getting down to business, Wesson’s sarcastic, Napoleonic back-up, Councilmember Mitch Englander, told a disabled speaker who had an opinion with which he disagreed, “your prescription is now ready.” 

Where was Wesson’s reprimand for that? While Wesson and Englander whine, they give as good as they get. 

The situation is far worse now than during the years Mayor Eric Garcetti served as City Council president, although his interference with free speech resulted in a losing, costly-to-the-taxpayers federal 1^st Amendment lawsuit won by David “Zuma Dogg” Saltsburg. As a result, all new elected officials and commissioners who run public meetings are now warned about “The Zuma Dogg Ruling” before they enter the City Hall fray. And Mr. Saltsburg wasn’t the only critic to win a free speech battle in court against City Hall. 

Wesson’s restrictiveness and inability to find common ground is not only arbitrary and retaliatory against the City Hall regulars, it also hurts other people who may come to City Hall only one time in their lives to fight something like an unfair property lien, forcing them to wait hours for a paltry 60-seconds to speak, often without even being heard. 

Last week, Wesson dealt what will eventually become another losing hand for City Hall when he and the other Councilmembers instructed City Attorney Mike Feuer, who has cultivated his own retaliatory reputation, to figure out a way to (mis-)use trespass laws to silence critics.  

In typical Wesson-Englander fashion, they didn’t first hash out the specifics of how and where the legislation will be applied. From City News Service: 

“Vanessa Rodriguez, spokeswoman for Council President Herb Wesson, said that despite Englander's interpretation, the ordinance would not apply to public meetings.” 

According to Englander, the law will be applied to any city meeting or building where someone is deemed disruptive. He is the last person whose judgement should determine that. A year ago last week, Englander was swatted-down by a judge in his recent campaign for County Supervisor in an attempt to list on the ballot his profession as “police officer” even though he isn’t and never was one. 

Regardless, City Council unanimously approved its motion to suffocate criticism in Nancy Pelosi-fashion -- i.e., voting on it without knowing what’s in it.

While the gadflies love goading Englander into calling phony speaker names such as Mohammed Atta and this gem, to derisive laughter, things weren’t always this bad for Wesson. 

When Wesson first came to the City Council presidency as a skilled career politician who is fairly likable in one-on-one settings, he not only knew virtually everyone in the room, but in many instances, knew where they were headed once they left it. If he saw regulars in Council chambers on a given day, he instinctively knew that they probably wanted to get to another meeting up in the City Hall Tower, so he would reliably call on them early to make their points at City Council and send them on their way. It also helped Wesson get critics away from the Channel 35 cameras broadcasting the meetings sooner.

Now that is good political instinct! 

But over the course of time, Wesson has lost that sense of fairness -- to the detriment of the public and his ever-growling stomach -- whose churning can often be heard over his open City Council microphone. 

If Wesson returned to that more reasonable mindset and started running meetings in a more efficient and fair way, it might not halt the disruptions, but it would be a wise step in a better direction because where it’s headed now, the taxpayers and Wesson are going to lose in the end. And another 1^st Amendment win for the gadflies is fuel for the fire.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a CityWatch contributor, a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CALWATCHDOG--An immigration-enforcement headache anticipated by President Trump’s sister — federal appellate court Judge Maryanne Trump Barry — is roiling law enforcement authorities in California. 

They say federal court rulings impede their ability to cooperate with demands from Attorney General Jeff Sessions that they cooperate more fully with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in turning over undocumented immigrants with criminal records.

At issue is how long jails and prisons can hold undocumented immigrants for pickup by ICE agents after their sentences are completed. The present practice in California is to give agents up to 48 hours. But especially in heavily populated areas with many jails — such as the Los Angeles region — ICE agents struggle to meet this deadline in picking up criminals set to be released.

Last month, Sessions blasted local authorities for being unwilling to hold these inmates up to 96 hours — four days — after their scheduled release and said failing to do so amounted to defiance of the federal government. A list released by the Justice Department cited eight California law enforcement agencies that it said had “refused” detainer requests: the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles Police Department and local jailers in Alameda County, Madera County, Santa Clara County, Sacramento County, Santa Barbara County and the city of Anaheim.

Sheriffs say federal court ruling blocks longer jail detentions

But the California State Sheriffs’ Association says that only giving ICE 48 hours to get released criminals is not a matter of defiance. It’s to avoid costly lawsuits.

Association officials cited U.S. Magistrate Judge Janice M. Stewart’s 2014 ruling in a case from Clackamas County, Oregon, in which an undocumented immigrant accused of domestic violence, Maria Miranda-Olivares, was detained beyond the normal release time at ICE’s request. Stewart cited a federal appellate court ruling from earlier in 2014 that said ICE requests were just that — requests — and were not legally binding. She ruled that Miranda-Olivares could sue Clackamas County for unlawful detention.

The circumstances of the appeals case — Galarza v. Szalczyk — were somewhat different than the Oregon case. It dealt with a U.S. citizen who was detained at length by local authorities in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, then released by ICE agents after they determined he was a citizen, as claimed. 

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling that threw out Ernesto Galarza’s lawsuit alleging illegal detention by Lehigh County. (Galarza had previously settled his lawsuit against ICE and its agents.) The opinion, written by Judge Julio M. Fuentes, cited a long list of precedents in which requests from ICE and its predecessor agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, were treated by courts and the federal agency itself as nonbinding. Fuentes’ key finding:

“Under the Tenth Amendment, immigration officials may not order state and local officials to imprison suspected aliens subject to removal at the request of the federal government. Essentially, the federal government cannot command the government agencies of the states to imprison persons of interest to federal officials.”

Trump’s sister warned of ‘enormous ramifications’

But one of the three appellate judges who heard the Galarza appeal — Trump’s sister — dissented from Fuentes’ ruling and lamented the fact that the Obama administration had not filed an amicus brief:

“I am deeply concerned that the United States has not been heard on the seminal issue in this appeal, an issue that goes to the heart of the enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws. And make no mistake about it. The conclusion reached by my friends in the Majority that immigration detainers issued pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 287.7 do not impose any obligation on state and local law enforcement agencies to detain suspected aliens subject to removal, but are merely requests that they do so, has enormous implications and will have, I predict, enormous ramifications,” Barry wrote.

Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones told the Los Angeles Times that state sheriffs had urged the Obama administration without success to appeal the Oregon ruling. Jones and other sheriffs interviewed by the Times said they had explained the bind they were in to Trump administration officials. But that didn’t deter Sessions from his criticism.

(Chris Reed is an editorial writer for U-T San Diego. Before joining the U-T in July 2005, he was the opinion-page columns editor and wrote the featured weekly Unspin column for The Orange County Register. This piece was posted originally at CalWatchDog.) 

-cw

NOISE POLLUTION NIGHTMARE-Nextdoor is lit up as neighbors in the West Adams community weigh in on the onslaught of air traffic noise over their community. Indeed, on the second day after relocating from one street north of the 10 freeway to 3 blocks south of it I recall thinking, "Oh no. I live under a flight path.” Jeff Camp, a West Adams resident spearheading local response, reported over 300 flights in one day, while neighbor Linda Marais stayed up and counted nine flights in the early morning, between 3 and 6 a.m., a practice that apparently is prohibited.   

According to the LAX website, it “is the fourth busiest passenger airport in the world, second in the United States. It served more than 80.9 million passengers in 2016 an increase of almost 8 percent from the previous year. As of March 2017, LAX offers 692 daily nonstop flights to 91 U.S. cities and 1,220 weekly nonstop flights to 78 international destinations in 41 countries on 66 commercial air carriers.  LAX ranks 14th in the world and fifth in the U.S. in air cargo tonnage processed, with more than 2.2 million tons of air cargo valued at over $101.4 billion.  LAX handled 697,138 operations (landings and takeoffs) in 2016.”

Technology is changing everything and the National Airspace System is not exempt. According to Wikipedia - “Between 2015 and 2025 they are transforming the air traffic control system in an effort to reduce gridlock in the sky and the airport. The project is dubbed NextGen [referred to as Metroplex in Southern California] and 'proposes to transform America’s air traffic control system from a radar-based system with radio communication to a satellite-based one.' GPS technology will be used to shorten routes, save time and fuel, reduce traffic delays, increase capacity, and permit controllers to monitor and manage aircraft with greater safety margins. Radio communications will be increasingly replaced by data exchange and automation will reduce the amount of information the air crew must process at one time.

As a result of these changes, planes will be able to fly closer together, take more direct routes and avoid delays caused by airport 'stacking' as planes wait for an open runway.” 

Aye. And there’s the rub.  

As the campaign is implemented throughout the country, the direct routes of airplanes following each other more closely have created noisy highways in the sky, a shower of pollution raining down onto communities below and a spike in complaints from 904 in February of 2016 to 3,247 in February of 2017. Boston, Baltimore, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Cruz, New York, Phoenix, Culver City along with our adjacent community, and San Diego are primarily impacted and lawsuits have ensued. 

A local pilot weighing in on Nextdoor disputed that the Nexgen project has redirected flights over our community; rather, he said, it was the result of airport construction. It is both. So in October of 2016, Culver City decided to challenge the environmental review by the Federal Aviation Administration’s Southern California Metroplex Project. The FAA review conveniently found that there was no significant impact to the environment. Culver City filed a Petition for Review with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit claiming that the FAA did not adequately consider the affect of noise and pollution on affected communities and did not do an adequate technical analysis before redesigning the airspace. 

“Our residents have already experienced a significant impact on their quality of life from current flight path changes. The citizens and businesses of Culver City deserve a full analysis and discussion of the location, altitude, and impacts of these new approach and departure procedures created by the Project, which are absent from the FAA’s Environmental Assessment,” said Culver City Mayor Jim B. Clarke.”

Numerous calls to Representative Karen Bass from the rising tide of Nextdoor activists, have resulted in an upcoming sit down and this statement from Representative Bass: “The continual barrage of airplane noise and pollution at all hours is absolutely unacceptable. My office has received numerous complaints over the past years about both daytime noise from frequent, lower flights, and about nighttime noise from planes landing over homes instead of over the ocean.  I encourage constituents to actively report the noise events to LAX noise management in order to build an official record of the problems. 

In the meantime, I have directed my staff to set up a meeting between the relevant agencies and affected constituents as soon as it can be arranged. I have also been working with my colleagues in the Congressional Quiet Skies Caucus to direct funds to address the airplane noise issues being felt across the country.  Please stay in touch with my office so I can continue to track how this is affecting our district.”

To file a complaint CLICK HERE. Complaints influence outcomes. 

(Dianne Lawrence is the editor and publisher of The Neighborhood News and an occasional contributor to CityWatch) Photo credit: Michael Kelly. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-The jury is no longer out. Our new President, Donald Trump, is the climate change denier-in-chief. He has called climate change a Chinese plot. He has appointed another unabashed climate change denier, Scott Pruitt, to run the Environmental Protection Agency, a Federal agency established by Republican “moderate,” Richard Nixon. Trump has also withdrawn many Obama era climate-change regulations, such as restrictions on power plant emissions. Last, but hardly least, Trump nominated retiring Exxon CEO, Rex Tillerson, to become Secretary of State. On his way out the door, Exxon gave Tillerson a $180 million severance package, about six times what Exxon spent under his leadership to foster doubt about climate change.

If this situation strikes you as grim, you are correct, and given the upward trend of all climate change indicators, such as CO2 levels, extreme weather events, sea level rises, and the loss of polar ice caps, the world’s climate situation will only get worse. In fact, even before Trump, these trends were already quickly unfolding, which means his historical role is to make an already bad situation much worse.  

In light of these harsh realities, some Angelinos might become smug about climate change. After all, we live in a state, California, and a city, Los Angeles, where prominent elected officials, especially Governor Jerry Brown and Mayor Eric Garcetti, have assumed a major leadership role in opposing the Trump administration’s dangerous pushback against modest Obama era climate change programs. 

But, this smugness is premature. A closer look at LA’s actual climate change policies and practices issues reveals that our glass, too, is mostly empty. The following information should wipe the smile off anyone gloating about how forward thinking their city and state really are when it comes to climate change. 

Basic Environmental Programs where the City of LA falls short. 

CEQA: As I have previously written, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is a potentially powerful tool to stop climate change. It provides appointed and elected decision makers detailed information on a specific project’s climate impacts, especially its likely generation of Green House Gases. Through CEQA, Environmental Impact Reports (EIR’s) also provide these decision makers with specific data on at least four project alternatives, including those identified as environmentally superior. Given the extraordinary dangers from climate change, some of which are already appearing, like mounting forest fires, most of us would assume that elected officials obviously opt for the environmentally superior alternatives. 

Wrong. In Los Angeles this does not happen. Instead, our elected officials reflexively select the most environmentally destructive alternative. This action, which sweeps hard evidence of unmitigatable climate change impacts under the carpet, requires the decision makers to adopt a Statement of Overriding Considerations. These statements sideline an EIR’s environmental findings through a text that routinely echoes a project’s claims about job and transit ridership generation. While these promises could conceivably be true, we will never know for sure because the approval process stops with the decision maker’s vote to adopt their Statement of Overriding Considerations. After that no approvals are contingent on evidence that a project actually boosts transit ridership or jobs, much less that these supposed outcomes offset the project’s actual generation of unmitigatable Green House Gases. 

Trees: The lowest hanging fruit in fighting climate is quite literally growing on trees, a basic infrastructure component that is, year-after-year, one of City Hall’s lowest budget priorities. As a result, most LA streets and parkways are either barren or haphazardly planted with inappropriate trees that are seldom pruned or watered. 

Nevertheless, when it comes to addressing climate change, trees are the closest things we have to a miracle cure. As we learned in high school biology classes, trees absorb CO2, sequester carbon in wood and leaves, and then exhale oxygen through photosynthesis. In addition, some trees, like Ficus, filter out other air pollutants, such as particulate matter. But, these benefits are just the beginning since trees also create beauty and a shade canopy. Both features promote walking in a city whose built environment remains auto-centric and whose natural environment is getting hotter.

Furthermore, trees also buffer another feature of climate change, heavier rains. Without trees these rains cause soil erosion and runoff. With trees, most of this damage is prevented because the rain hits the leave and then slowly percolates into the ground. 

Pedestrianization: Any successful climate mitigation program attempts to reduce automobile driving, the largest source of Green House Gases in California. This means that all alternative transportation modes, whether walking, bicycling, busses, light rail, heavy rails, commuter rail, and high speed interurban rail deserve more political and financial support. Among these, walking and bicycling are the low-cost alternatives. Furthermore, three other West Coast cities, notably Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco have already demonstrated that walking and bicycling can become significant alternatives to automobiles. But, in Los Angeles the sidewalks are crumbling, and most do not have a proper tree canopy or ADA curb cuts. As for bicycling, even though Los Angeles has perfect weather, many wide corridors, and broad bicycle-friendly flat areas, LA ranks 24th in the United States when it comes to bicycling. 

Planning Documents: The City of Los Angeles has a Mayoral climate change document, pLAn, which markets itself as LA’s first climate action plan. This is an odd boast since Mayor Villaraigosa’s even more detailed climate action plan, Green LA, is still easily found on the City of LA’s website. But, such piddling details aside, the real problem with the City of LA’s overall approach to climate change mitigation and adaptation is that there is no there there. Other than another short-lived executive document, there are no legally adopted policy documents, implementing ordinances, or independent monitoring. 

Furthermore, the official city planning process, the General Plan, does not yet directly address the environment. While climate change related goals and programs are coincidentally scattered through many General Plan elements, especially Air Quality, Mobility, and the General Plan Framework, nothing links them together and nothing measures their effectiveness. 

While City Planning has resumed preparing its required annual General Plan monitoring report, the current document makes no mention to either the Villaraigosa or Garcetti climate action plans. For that matter, it makes no direct references to many existing City department climate-related programs, especially those at the Bureau of Sanitation. In theory, they all have a bearing on climate change adaptation (securing water) and mitigation (transit), but this is only implicit. They are never identified per se, and the monitoring report does not draw any climate connections from these programs to any executive climate initiatives or to multiple State of California climate mandates, such as AB 32 and SB 375. 

As for the preparation and adoption of a new General Plan Climate Change element that could build on executive documents and a vast array of city programs, we can always make a wish. After all, some California cities, like San Francisco, already have a General Plan environmental element, and the Governors Office of Research and Climate, has posted detailed policy guidelines and data bases for new General Plan environmental/climate change elements. 

Theoretical issues: The most common form of climate change denialism, exhibited by Donald Trump and his cronies, is rejection of the natural science climate consensus. The planet is now experiencing relentless climate change resulting from human activity. It has been observable for at least a century, and is now accelerating because of the increased generation of Green House Gases through industrial production, power generation, and transportation. 

But, one of the most astute climate change analysts, University of Oregon environmental sociologist, John Bellamy Foster, convincingly argues that there are two additional types of climate change denialism. They equally apply to the President, the Governor, and the Mayor. 

Foster’s second type of climate change denial is the belief that climate change is disconnected from the economy. Foster argues that “growth,” or what he terms capital accumulation, inevitably leads to climate change. By extension, he also argues that capitalism cannot be tweaked to allow perpetual expansion (i.e., growth), whether slow, like the United States, or fast, such as China, without adverse climate impacts. This is what he considers to be third level of climate change denialism, the belief that climate change can be controlled or even reversed without changing the economic system. 

Needless to say, California, including Los Angeles, does not yet have elected officials who link climate change to the country’s economic system. As demonstrated by their repeated efforts to undermine the California Environmental Quality Act in order to promote real estate speculation, it is clear that their pronouncements and their actions reject Foster’s contention that economic “growth” stands in the way of environmental protection. 

Final thoughts: This list of deficient programs, plans, and approaches to address climate change is hardly definitive. A closer look at Los Angeles reveals many more efforts to undercut policies and programs to reduce Green House Gases, such as exempting more real estate categories from CEQA. 

If smugness is creeping up on you, please stay tuned for a review of these programs.

(Dick Platkin is a former LA city planner who reports on local planning issues for CityWatchLA. He has also taught courses of Sustainable City Planning at USC’s Price School of Social Policy. Comments and corrections welcomed at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EASTSIDER-Don’t misunderstand. I like Ron Galperin, and as both a lawyer and a budget guy, he is the real deal. Of course it is important to remember that auditors are numbers and data freaks, living in their own closed universe. On the plus side, their work product, within their “scope of work” parameters, will always add up. Which doesn’t mean the real world works like that. 

Case in point is the recent Audit by City Controller Galperin, which you can find here.  

The major finding of the audit, that made headlines in the LA Times, was the one about DWP training program has high costs and low graduation rates, audit finds. 

The other major finding tied in with this, was that many trainees leave the DWP after completing the program, lured by better deals from other Utilities. 

I have no doubt that the data supports these findings. What this actually means in the real world, however, is another thing entirely. I believe that the training costs are well spent to train employees in a very hazardous business -- the reliable delivery of power to us under any and all adverse circumstances. 

Training and the Power Employees 

Some 80% of the DWP training money goes to the Power System. That’s the folks who used to be called ‘linemen’ and are now called EDMT -- Line Worker, Cable Splicer -- the people who climb up to those humungous power lines stretching into three states (California, Utah, and Arizona), and the people who work the power generation plants, stations and substations, as well as on the telephone poles to our houses. 

This is seriously hazardous business, often performed 24/7 without respite, in the worst weather conditions. You and I can be without power for hours or days if these people do not perform their jobs efficiently. 

They are also being trained to perform their jobs in an era of rapid technological change, as we switch from traditional energy sources like coal and nuclear to wind and solar. 

The three major complaints in the Audit relate to the length of time that it takes to train these power system employees (up to 42 months), the dropout rate (about 67% for Line Worker/Cable Splicer), and the fact that a lot of successful employees are hired away from DWP by other Utilities such as Southern California Edison. 

The Safety Employee Analogy 

I use the comparison of training a power line worker to that of a police officer. Without stretching the comparison too much, in each case we have a system designed to take unskilled candidates, and through a rigorous, expensive and lengthy process, turn them into safe, skilled workers who can reliably function under sometimes dangerous or hazardous conditions, all while avoiding mistakes. In each of these systems, the goal is to perform under unpredictable conditions without errors that could result in injury or even death. Not to mention litigation. 

In the case of police officers, POST training is rigorous and expensive, just as apprenticeship training is rigorous and expensive tor the DWP. The goal is to wind up with highly trained employees who want to have a long, successful career, and to assure safety to these employees and to the public. 

Although it is rarely talked about, in each of these systems, one of the primary purposes of the training is to weed out potential employees who are unsuitable for a career in that field. We don’t want an employee who discovers that the job isn’t for him or her after completing the period of instruction. The potential risks are simply too high, and might not be exposed until the candidate is faced with a lot of pressure under really crummy, dangerous conditions. Thus the rigorous training. 

Please understand that I’m not making a case for equality of between police and Line Workers (sorry, IBEW) when it comes to their importance, their pay, or the two retirement systems. It is simply that long, expensive and rigorous training systems are critical for success in each field. 

Dropout Is Important 

Back when I was living in Lincoln Heights, I knew a number of young high school students who would not blink an eye at the thought of joining a gang, which always seemed to me to be a relatively hazardous life choice. But talk to those same young people about making a lot of money and have a good paying job climbing up one of those big power poles for DWP, and most of them would look at me like I was crazy and say, “No Way!” 

The point is that in any training program, you want to make sure that the candidate is a good fit for the job as early in the program as possible. While I did not see any statistics on point, dropouts are a normal part of doing business. The best programs will have the highest dropout rates early on -- before that huge amount of time and money is spent making candidates highly trained. 

In the case of DWP, with the high winds, rainstorms and crazy weather we have enjoyed over the last year, one major error can cause or extend a power outage to thousands of customers, not to mention cause injury or death. 

Wages and Benefits 

I know that all my friends on the DWP Committee will cringe at this one, but there is a certain poetic justice in the Audit Report. It (correctly) notes that DWP is being successfully poached by other utilities that grab successful employees who graduate from the apprenticeship program. 

Well, gee, that would have to do with wages and benefits, wouldn’t it? So it may be all well and good that, relative to certain benchmark positions, DWP employees are paid significantly more than other City employees. However, looking at the utility industry as a whole, that simply isn’t the case. Thus the poaching. I suspect that on the Power side, Galperin’s Audit Report is going to become Exhibit A in the ongoing negotiations between the IBEW and the DWP over a successor contract. 

Also, having opened that particular can of worms, someone is going to have to take a serious look at the Office of Public Accountability/Ratepayer Advocate’s (OPA) recent Joint Compensation Study, which you can find here.  

Generally, the DWP Pension plan for newer employees (Tier 2) makes no sense as compared to mainstream defined benefit plans, such as CalPERS -- even as most public sector pension plans are the reason employees stay until retirement. 

Regarding administrative types, their IT infrastructure might as well be written in Cobol or RPG (and some probably is), and like most of the City, needs major upgrades and integration. So while the Auditor correctly wants better data, the existing system is not going to be of much use. 

The DWP employment pyramid is upside down compared to everyone else. That is, there are serious compression issues that literally create dis-incentives for mid-managers and up to hire on or stay. In plain English, for most employers, wages and benefits go up geometrically the higher up in the food chain you are. Witness the executives making hundreds of times what a base worker gets. In the DWP, it is almost the reverse. 

The Takaway 

Truth is, large municipalities are the training grounds for everyone in the State. In LA City and County, the LAPD and the Sheriff spend huge sums of money in providing POST training, and in the end many of those officers leave for other agencies that simply can’t afford to provide the training. They’re poached. 

Same deal for DWP and its apprenticeship program. If utilities like SCE can swoop in at the end and lure a trained DWP employee away with sugarplum dreams and bags of cash, they will do so. It’s an economic fact of life, and it’s cheaper for them. 

Such is the cost of doing business in the public sector. On the plus side, it is also a tribute to the quality and value of the training programs, and that’s a good thing for all of us. 

For a real solution, maybe, someday, the Mayor and the City Council will let the DWP have its very own satellite Personnel Division, and fix some of this goofy stuff. Maybe Controller Ron Galperin will even support such a concept.

(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

PERSPECTIVE--The first thought that popped into my mind when Governor Brown proposed his gas tax hike was former mayor Villaraigosa’s infamous trash collection fee increase.

You may recall, the fee was hyped as a means to hire 1,000 new LAPD officers.

Less than half that number were hired; the rest of the funds went to overhead,

As I told NPR’s Patt Morrison and the LA Weekly in interviews back in 2008, controls and reporting are insufficient  to assure the proper allocation of taxes and fees. 

This is especially true with state tax revenues, which are allocated to various funds, including those at the local level.  At every layer, allocations are made for multiple purposes. Such is the case with gasoline taxes. They are also used to fund mass transit and other transportation projects unrelated to automobiles. Gasoline excise tax revenue is also used to pay the debt service on highway bonds (Brown’s proposal is an excise tax), effectively relieving the general fund of the obligation.

This all makes for quite a trail to follow. Few individuals have the time or wherewithal to do so.

Determining how much of gas taxes actually improve roads is almost a fool’s errand. Politicians know this and use it to their advantage.  Lack of accountability gives them all the cover they need to divert funds.

This much is known: Brown’s plan would increase taxes by $52 billion; $7.5 billion would go to public transportation and another $1 billion for bike lanes and walkways, not exactly what you would call road and bridge improvements. 

It also includes a constitutional amendment requiring spending to be limited to transportation projects.  And Villaraigosa’s trash fee was supposed to cover hiring officers.

You can be assured that new definitions of transportation will abound if the proposal is passed. If it fails – and it could – don’t be surprised if it is resurrected.

Here’s an idea: instead of the tax increase, let’s just pass a constitutional amendment requiring all existing gas tax revenue be spent on roads and bridges.  We might then see a major decrease in the maintenance backlog.

(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and serves as President of the Valley Village Homeowners Association. He blogs at Village to Village and contributes to CityWatch. The views presented are those of Mr. Hatfield and his alone and do not represent the opinions of Valley Village Homeowners Association or CityWatch. He can be reached at: [email protected].)

-cw

EDUCATION POLITICS-Not at the moment. All of the recent years for which final (“actual”) budget data are published show every single annual budget has finished in the black. While the entirety of the LAUSD budget includes various capital and internal funds, for the purposes of tracking the actual operating budget, the General Fund revenues and expenditures are of most importance.

Recent school board candidate’s statements casting shade on LAUSD’s current solvency are just wrong. But what about the future? Is the District simply swirling that bankruptcy toilet, circling inevitably toward the abyss? Even if currently flush, how well can past financial performance predict the future? 

The District’s Chief Financial Officer (who just resigned after 10 years of constitutional, if not justifiable, worry), publishes a projected budget for one and two years beyond the current operating year. That current operating year’s budget is finalized in June prior to the start of the upcoming schoolyear. And there’s a big accounting midyear to check up on things. 

So this means there are four forecasts for any given year -- snapshots of how budget forecasts stack up against the facts of what actually come to pass: (i) at mid-year, (ii) right before the start of a new fiscal/school year, (iii) one year out from that year and (iv) two years out from that year. 

Each one of these sets of guesses is expected to have different tendencies. They will vary by how far in the future the forecast projects, by what sorts of monies are considered, revenue or expenditure. And each can be assessed for accuracy, what direction these forecasts trend for any given point, etc.

The forecasts are key in assessing whether the “sky is falling” – the origin of the claim that LAUSD is sinking financially, whether it’s accurate, what has been and what should be done about it. 

Revenue projections, especially with increasing time in the future (by two years out,) have been conservative, or favorable to the bottom line; less has been anticipated and planned for coming in, than wound up coming in when all was said and done. That’s responsible and it makes for good planning. The relatively small percentages of unfavorable, negative variance for the upcoming year’s final budgets was always offset by underspending. Every successive year has maintained a positive carryover. 

It is in the expenditures that the district has carefully offset the volatility of state and federal monies so vulnerable to political caprice. LAUSD has consistently, favorably, underspent its budget in every year. What is clear is that the pessimistic, Henny-Penny terror of projecting a future so influenced by vagaries, is hedged through persistent projections of underfunding and overspending…which don’t then come to pass in reality. 

That’s OK, sort of. Life happens.

But what isn’t OK is insisting that forecasts – particularly the sort that are inherently conservative – are blueprints of tomorrow’s future. Because that’s the partisan agenda furthered by the voice of corporate Democrats and school privatizers in the guise of “Charter Reform.” 

That voice is prophesied by LA School Report and The 74 (“partners” of: Broad, CA Community, DeVos, Gates, Gen Next, Karsh, Simon, Triad and Walton Foundations; Bloomberg Philanthropies, Carnegie Corp., Fisher Fund, Park Ave Charitable Trust, Sackler and Strauch,) and by the California Charter School Association-sponsored school board candidates Gonez (LAUSD6) and Melvoin (LAUSD4). And it’s asserted religiously, without ever cross-checking how past projections compare with future reality once it actually comes to pass. 

The data actually show two things: First, careful projections and husbandry of its funds has actually served LAUSD well fiscally. Despite tumultuous financial circumstances in our city, state and at the federal level, LAUSD has managed to keep a laudably steady keel. Its administrators have done themselves proud. 

Secondly, however, this fiscal responsibility in the face of predictive doom-saying has come at the expense of the District’s very own Commons. LAUSD’s students and staff cinch their belts every year on cue to defend the institution from the fallout of the partisan fake outrage at the risk of deficit. LAUSD has balanced the books every year despite tumultuous swings in funding, because the institution extracts an enormous carryover buffer from every year’s operations. 

During each of the five years in question, LAUSD’s carryover has been on average 12.5% of that year’s eventual actual revenue intake. In three of these five years, the carryover was never broached because revenues wound up larger than expenditures. In the two years when the carryover was tapped, 9% was used in 2011-12 and 17% was used in 2012-13. 

But that translates to hundreds of millions of dollars due for our students and teachers, money that, year after year, is never realized. Far from overspending our way to insolvency, there’s an important case to be made that LAUSD underspends each year. 

For example, for want of less than $2.5 million in 2012, then-Superintendent Deasy summarily cut all Title I funds to schools of middling diversity overnight, causing enormous financial hardship to schools of poverty percentage between 40%-49% (the burden was partially mitigated through a one year “hold-harmless” fund that has since been discontinued.) Twenty-three of these high-functioning schools weathered the unforeseen shortfall via privatization, converting their schools to “fiscally dependent” charters. 

And yet $687 million remained that year to rollover into the following year’s budget. That amounts to 12% of 2012-13’s eventual $5.7 billion revenue. That carryover could address so many worthy needs; it could lower LAUSD’s vital teacher:student ratio, for example – certainly more effectively than eventually came to pass.  There is no shortage of important needs to address, but one of these should be the size of the accounting cushion itself, because every dollar spent politically mollifying appearances, is a dollar not spend substantively at the school-site. 

It’s not clear what amount of carryover is optimal for a large government agency, or even whether there is any.  Certainly every budget is a political document and collateral choices are forced by the way it is designed. But those choices are also implied in the way the budget is interpreted. 

LAUSD isn’t going broke and the institution should have the courage to stand up to those who would wish to paint it so in order to further the narrative of “churn and disaster” that only leaves us poorer than when we started. Our public funds are to be spent on us the public, by us the public. And while we could use more of these funds, what we have is precious.

(Sara Roos is a politically active resident of Mar Vista, a biostatistician, the parent of two teenaged LAUSD students and a CityWatch contributor, who blogs at redqueeninla.com) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.