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Thu, Mar

Candidates Refusing to Debate: The Unpardonable Sin of Politics

Better to drive a stake through the heart of civic debate in Los Angeles than bleed it dry with more fundraising-obsessed election coverage.  

What’s so bad about a shoe-string candidacy? What’s so bad about an underdog facing impossible odds?    

War-chests of campaign funds are impressive, but it’s not clear how they benefit the public. After all, it’s not to give the public a clear, unbiased view of their options that campaign funds are deployed. 

If a member of the public is buying a car, he or she deserves an opportunity to inspect all the available models, have them lined up, so he or she can see them side by side, kick the tires, look under the hood.  

But the public is denied that opportunity in the context of elections when newspapers disqualify candidates who don’t make fundraising a priority.  

Even if those candidates are unlikely to get elected, maybe some of their ideas will inform the debate. Readers might find them interesting. It’s not easy to collect 500 signatures. 

As for viability, a single debate can change the dynamics of an election, throwing into disarray plans for a game-ending primary. A single article can start a wave of interest, rallying fund-raising sources and tactical support. 

Isn’t it more interesting--and more likely to build an audience--for the press to mix it up, foment the debate rather than smother it, make incumbents get in the ring and fight for a second-term?
The press should be merciless on incumbents who refuse to debate. Such refusal should be the unpardonable sin of politics. No elected officials are above the public. If we ask them to show up for a couple of hours for a debate, they better well do so—quickly and with a smile.   

If the press reports on a candidate’s fund-raising, it should be one factor among others. Media outlets that receive public funding—KCRW to cite just one example—should be required to give 2 minutes of airtime per candidate. The Elections division of the city should host debates, with candidates sitting in the seats used by Councilmembers during meetings. Cameras are pre-set in that chamber, so it shouldn’t be expensive. 

Besides, it's money well spent. 

 

(Eric Preven and Joshua Preven are public advocates for better transparency in local government. Eric is a Studio City based writer-producer and a candidate for Los Angeles mayor. Joshua is a teacher.)

-cw

California as Alt-America

NEW GEOGRAPY--In 1949 the historian Carey McWilliams defined California as the “the Great Exception” -- a place so different from the rest of America as to seem almost a separate country. In the ensuing half-century, the Golden State became not so much exceptional but predictive of the rest of the nation: California’s approaches to public education, the environment, politics, community-building and lifestyle often became national standards, and even normative.

Today California is returning to its outlier roots, defying many of the political trends that define most of the country. Rather than adjust to changing conditions, the state seems determined to go it alone as a bastion of progressivism. Some Californians, going farther out on a limb, have proposed separating from the rest of the country entirely; a ballot measure on that proposition has been proposed for 2018. [[ http://www.presstelegram.com/government-and-politics/20161224/is-california-splitting-away-group-believes-california-should-form-its-own-nation ]]

This shift to outpost of modern-day progressivism has been developing for years but was markedly evident in November. As the rest of America trended to the right, electing Republicans at the congressional and local levels in impressive numbers, California has moved farther left, accounting for virtually all of the net popular vote margin for Hillary Clinton. Today the GOP is all but non-existent in the most populated parts of the state, and the legislature has a supermajority of Democrats in both houses. In many cases, including last year’s Senate race, no Republicans even got on the November ballot.

Homage to Ecotopia

The election of Donald Trump has expanded the widening gap. The two biggest points of contention going forward are likely to be climate change, which has come to dominate California’s policy agenda, and immigration, a critical issue to the rising Latino political class, Silicon Valley and the state’s entrenched progressive activists.

Most of the big cities -- Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento -- have proclaimed themselves “sanctuary cities,” and the state legislative leadership is now preparing a measure that would create “a wall of justice” against Trump’s agenda. If federal agents begin swooping down on any of the state’s estimated 2 million undocumented immigrants, incoming Attorney General (and former congressman) Xavier Becerra has made it among his first priorities to  “resist” any deportation orders, including paying legal fees.    

Equally contentious will be a concerted attempt to block Trump’s overturning of President Obama’s   climate change agenda.   In recent years Gov. Jerry Brown has gone full “Moonbeam,” imposing ever more stringent environmental policies on state businesses and residents. The most recent legislation signed by Brown would boost California’s carbon reductions far beyond those agreed to by the U.S. in the Paris accord (which Trump has said he will withdraw from). All of this is being done along with a virtual banning of nuclear power, which, as the Breakthrough Institute’s Michael Shellenberger notes, remains the largest and most proven source of clean energy.

California’s draconian climate policies have been oft-cited by Obama and environmentalists as a role model for not only America but the world. However, they will not be widely emulated in the rest of the country during the next four years. Instead, California may be opting for a kind of virtual secession, following the narrative portrayed in Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 novel, “Ecotopia,” where Northern California secedes from the union to create a more ecologically perfect state.

Ironically, the state’s policies, which place strong controls on development, road construction, and energy production and usage, are somewhat symbolic; by dint largely of its mild climate, the state is already far more energy efficient than the rest of the country.  But to achieve its ambitious new goals,  most serious observers suggest, the state would lose at least 100,000 jobs and further boost energy prices -- which  disproportionately affect the poorer residents who predominate in the state’s beleaguered, and less temperate, interior.

The impact of these policies would be far-reaching. They have already reduced outside investment in manufacturing to minuscule levels and could cost California households an average of $3,000 annually. Such economic realities no longer influence many California policymakers but they could prove a boon  to other   states, notably Texas, Arizona and Nevada, which make a sport of hunting down California employers.   

A ‘Light Unto the Nations’?

Even with these problems, no other part of the country comes close to being as deeply progressive as California.  Illinois, President Obama’s home state, is a model for nothing so much as larceny and corruption. New York, the traditional bailiwick of the progressive over-class, is similarly too corrupt and also too tied to, and dependent upon, Wall Street. In addition, both of these states are losing population, while California, although slowing down and experiencing out-migration by residents to other states, continues to grow, the product of children born to those who arrived over the past three decades.

California’s recent economic success seemingly makes it a compelling “alt-America.” After a severe decline in the Great Recession, the economy  has roared back, and since 2010 has outpaced the national average.  But if you go back to 2000, metro areas such as Austin, Dallas, Houston, Orlando, Salt Lake City and Phoenix -- all in lower-tax, regulation-light states -- have expanded their employment by twice or more than that in  Los Angeles.

Indeed, a closer examination shows that the California “boom” is really about one region, the tech-rich San Francisco Bay Area, with roughly half the state’s job growth recorded there since 2007 even though the region accounts for barely a fifth of the state’s population. Outside the Bay Area, the vast majority of employment gains have been in low-paying retail, hospitality and medical fields. And even in Silicon Valley itself, a large portion of the population, notably Latinos, are downwardly mobile given the loss of manufacturing jobs.

According to the most recent Social Science Research Council report, the state overall suffers the greatest levels of income inequality in the nation; the Public Policy Institute places the gap well over 10 percent higher than the national average. And though California may be home to some of the wealthiest communities in the nation, accounting for 15 of the 20 wealthiest, its poverty rate, adjusted for cost, is also the highest in the nation. Indeed, a recent United Way study found that half of all California Latinos, and some 40 percent of African-Americans, have incomes below the cost of necessities (the “Real Cost Measure”). Among non-citizens, 60 percent of households have incomes below the Real Cost Measure, a figure that stretches to 80 percent below among Latinos.

In sharp contrast to the 1960s California governed by Jerry Brown’s great father, Pat, upward mobility is not particularly promising for the state’s majority Latino [[ http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/04/non-white-youth-population-growing-in-california-and-nation-report-finds.html   ]]   next generation. Not only are housing prices out of reach for all but a few, but the state’s public education system [[ https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-best-schools/5335/ ]]   ranks 40th in the nation, behind New York, Texas and South Carolina.  If California remains the technological leader, it is also becoming the harbinger of something else -- a kind of feudal society divided by a rich elite and a larger poverty class, while the middle class either struggles or leaves town.

Will America Turn to the California Model?

The new California model depends largely on one thing: the profits of the very rich. Nearly 70 percent of the state budget comes from income tax, half of which is paid by the 1 percent wealthiest residents (the top 10 percent of earners accounted for nearly 80 percent). This makes the state a model of fiscal instability. As long as the Silicon Valley oligarchs and the real estate speculators do well, California can tap their wealth to pay its massive pension debt, and expand the welfare state inexorably for its increasingly redundant working-class population.  

It’s highly dubious this model would work for the rest of the country. Due largely to its concentration of venture capital, roughly half the nation’s total, Silicon Valley may be able to continue to dominate whatever is the “next big thing,” at least in the early stages. Even parts of the tech community, such as Uber, Lyft and Apple, have announced major expansions outside of the state, in some cases directly due to regulatory restraints in California. Layoffs, meanwhile, are rising in the Valley as companies merge or move to other places. Google, Facebook and others, of course, will remain, keeping the big money in California, but the jobs could be drifting away.   

Under any circumstances, the rest of the country -- with the exception of a few markets such as Manhattan and downtown Chicago -- could not absorb the costs for housing or the taxes California imposes on its residents and businesses. Part of the reason stems from the fact that California is indeed different; its climate, topography, cultural life cannot be easily duplicated in Kansas City, Dallas or anywhere else. People will pay for the privilege of living in California, particularly along the coast. Would they do so to live in Minneapolis or Charlotte?

Nor, unlike during much of the postwar era, can it be said that California represents the demographic future.  The state -- even the Bay Area -- generally loses people to other states, particularly those in middle age, according to an analysis of IRS numbers.  Brown apologists suggest it’s only the poor and uneducated who are leaving, but it also turns out that California is losing affluent people just as rapidly, with the largest net loss occurring among those making between $100,000 and 200,000.  

Perhaps more revealing, the number of children is declining, particularly in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas. Children made up a third of California’s population in 1970, but USC demographer Dowell Myers projects that by 2030 they will compose just a fifth.

Nor is help on the way. Although boomtown San Francisco has maintained its share of millennials, most large California cities have not. And the number of people in their mid-thirties -- prime child-bearing years -- appears to be declining rapidly, notably in the Bay Area.   Coastal California is becoming the golden land for affluent baby boomers rather than young hipsters. Surfing dudes will increasingly be those with gray ponytails.

Instead of a role model for the future, the Golden State seems likely to become a cross between Hawaii and Tijuana, a land for the aging rich and their servants. It still remains a perfect social model for a progressive political regime, but perhaps not one the rest of the country would likely wish to, or afford, to adopt.

(Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com… where this analysis was first posted. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. He lives in Orange County, CA.)

-cw

City Hall Flashback: They’ve Always Lied about Affordable Housing!

EASTSIDER-I was reading an old special Issue of CityWatch (from July 2004, no less,) and guess what I found? The entire issue was devoted to affordable housing. Of course, back then, the issue was framed in the context of a proposed ordinance for Inclusionary Zoning. David Lowell described the matter of affordable housing as follows: 

“Leading the City’s solution list is a controversial concept called inclusionary zoning, which, to simplify, requires developers who are building new apartments, condos and homes to include some affordable housing units, generally in return for certain incentive benefits like a break on density requirements or expedited permit processing.” 

Sound familiar? Here’s the fascinating part: The City Council Motion for the Ordinance was made by none other than Ed Reyes (thank god, now termed out,) and our very own Mayor Eric Garcetti, then councilmember for the 13th District. That’s right, our clever, smooth talkin’ Mayor has been riding this train since 2004. 

In fact, he and his buddy Jose Huizar (who replaced Ed Reyes on the PLUM Committee,) have both been milking this issue for bucks and power ever since -- even as they get a billion dollar bond measure through for their developer pals to build housing for the homeless. Because the truth of the matter is that for all of their work on the Inclusionary Zoning and other planning changes, there is less affordable housing than before, more people have lost their rent-controlled housing than before, and the housing that is billed as “affordable” is not in fact affordable. 

This is separate from a companion issue of the Council carefully looking the other way as many people in rent-controlled housing were inspected, rejected, ejected and just plain dumped on the street, so that politicians’ developer buddies could build, build, build. 

I have painful, personal memories of all of these shenanigans. Reyes and Garcetti decided to lock up land in Northeast LA through a series of “Interim Control Ordinances,” “Community Design Overlays,” and other indecipherable bureaucratic gobbledygook which really meant that no one was going to build anything unless and until they had the personal blessing of Reyes and Garcetti. And of course those blessings came with height variances, setback variances, glossing over density requirements, last minute plan changes, and even quick build expedites – all, generally, in the name of providing a few affordable housing units. Sometimes, even the PLUM Committee and the Planning Commission looked vaguely embarrassed as they toed the party line over any and all protests. 

In late July of 2016, CityWatch contributor Dick Platkin wrote a very telling article, “Getting Developers to Build Affordable Housing...Like Getting Blood From a Stone.” 

There were two important points in his piece. First, regarding any increase in affordable housing, he noted that “...as hinted at in the value capture report, LA’s amalgam of existing housing programs barely produces any net gain in affordable housing. This is because many market housing projects have extensively eliminated existing affordable housing through relentless demolitions and evictions.” 

The actual Value Capture Report can be found here. 

As Mr. Platkin notes in a “you can’t get there from here” moment: “...the Council and its value capture ordinance cannot avoid the essence of their conundrum: the need of developers to maximize profits from their real estate investments. The greater the City’s affordable housing requirement, the lower the resulting private investment and number of affordable units.” 

There you have it. The math of the reality that there isn’t much affordable housing in the City of Los Angeles. There wasn’t in 2004, there wasn’t in 2006, and there sure isn’t in 2017. As I noted in an earlier CW article, the City Council and the Mayor have been avoiding this truth as far back as 2006 when they tried to pass a big bucks affordable housing (Measure H.) 

The Takeaway 

It seems pretty clear to everyone from the LA Times to the Neighborhood Councils that developers own our Mayor and the City Council -- the PLUM Committee, the Planning Commission, and the Planning Department are all no more than an afterthought to the relentless destruction of our neighborhoods and our City itself. Where the communities have been able to generate the funds to challenge these developments in court, the City has lost most of the cases. But who has the resources to sue our own government all of the time? 

With virtually no opposition to re-electing the Mayor and the City Attorney, not to mention most of the City Council incumbants on the ballot in March, it is highly unlikely that anything will change, absent some outside force. 

Fortunately, such a force will be on the ballot in March -- Measure S, the Coalition to Preserve LA backed initiative, headed by Jill Stewart. 

I urge everyone to go to their website, read the summary of the initiative, the FAQs, and think for yourselves. If you live in or near a community which has had any of these outrageous projects foisted on you or your friends, if you read CityWatch, if you are in a Neighborhood Council, if you can’t afford rent -- in short, everyone outside of City Hall -- please take the time. You can bet that literally millions of developer and lobbyist dollars will be flooding in to stop this measure. 

For me two key provisions of Measure S tell it all. First, there is a two year moratorium on “spot zoning,” the favorite method of the City Council to throw out all of the planning rules for well-heeled developers. It would actually impact something like 5% of development projects. Second, and just as important, it would require the City Council to create a real General Plan and updated Community Plans, to reflect our City of 2017, not the LA of the 80s -- the last time the City paid any attention to the law. 

Hold Neighborhood Council meetings to discuss the measure. Get people involved. Remember, this is not a herculean task. Something like 10% or less of registered voters actually vote in these municipal elections. It therefore doesn’t take a huge shift in numbers to actually make a difference. 

If there is any lesson to be garnered from our recent Presidential election, it is that a relatively small difference in voter turnout, at the margins, can produce a huge change. 

So I say, go for it!

 

(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.

California’s Racial Politics Harming Minorities

NEW GEOGRAPHY-- Across the country, white voters placed Donald Trump in office by a margin of 21 points over Clinton. Their backing helped the GOP gain control of a vast swath of local offices nationwide. But in California, racial politics are pushing our general politics the other direction, way to the left.

Some of this reflects California’s fast track toward a “minority-majority” state. Along with a few other states — Hawaii, Texas and New Mexico — California is there now, with minorities accounting for 62 percent of the population, compared to 43 percent in 1990. The shift in the electorate has been slower but still powerful. In 1994, registered Democrats held a 12 percentage-point margin over Republicans. By 2016, the margin had widened to 19 points.

The racial shift does much to explain why Trump lost some largely affluent suburban areas like Orange County, where 53 percent the population is Latino or Asian, up from 45 percent in 2000. Perhaps most emblematic of potential GOP problems was Trump’s — and the GOP’s — loss in Irvine, a prosperous Orange County municipality that is roughly 40 percent Asian.

California’s unique racial politics

Ideology plays a critical role in California’s emerging politics of race. Hispanic and Asian voters outside California — for example, in Texas — have tended to vote less heavily for Democrats. In 2014, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott won 44 percent of Texas Latinos. Florida’s Gov. Rick Scott garnered 38 percent of the Latino vote in his successful re-election campaign. In contrast, that same year, Neel Kashkari, Jerry Brown’s Republican opponent, won only 27 percent of the Latino vote in California. Only 17 percent of California Asians voted for Trump, nearly 40 percent lower than the national rate (27 percent).

These differences, ironically, have become more evident as California has become relatively less attractive to immigrants. Since the 1980s and 1990s, as California’s economy has become increasingly deindustrialized, the immigration “flood” has slowed, particularly among Hispanics. By the 2010s, other cities — notably Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston — were emerging as bigger magnets for newcomers.

These areas, with lower costs, generally work better for less-skilled immigrants. Latinos in Texas, particularly, do better than their counterparts in California — as measured by homeownership, marriage rates and incomes — and also tend to vote more conservatively.

Part of this reflects different political attitudes among minority leaders in the two states. “We’re not going to do it with welfare, we’re not going to do it with income maintenance, we’re not going to do it remaining contentious and divided,” notes Democrat Henry Cisneros, San Antonio’s first Hispanic mayor and later U.S. secretary of housing and urban development. “We’re going to do it if we come around a single theme: jobs.”

In contrast, California’s racial politics focuses more on serving an increasingly “stranded population” of poor people with limited opportunities for advancement. Indeed, a stunning United Way study found that half of all Latinos, and some 40 percent of African Americans, have incomes below the cost of necessities (the “Real Cost Measure”). Among non-citizens, 60 percent of households have incomes below the Real Cost Measure, a figure that deteriorates to 80 percent among Latinos.

Building a sanctuary for poverty

Zealous boosters of “diversity,” California progressives also embrace policies — in fields like energy, housing and workplace regulation — that place strong barriers to upward mobility. They have undermined what’s left of the industrial economy, and also opposed the production of new single-family houses. Jason Furman, the chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, has shown that the single-family house, on average, contributes 2.5 times as much to the gross domestic product as a multi-family unit.

Instead, today’s new-style progressives — who are primarily concerned with wealth redistribution, racial redress and climate change — have done little to address the ramifications of an increasingly deindustrialized economy that has cut into blue-collar opportunities. Rather than pushing growth, they have placed their emphasis on ever-increasing subsidies for the poor, including those working in expanding low-wage service industries.

To break this pattern, we need a different set of policies, whether they come from moderate, pro-business Democrats or what is left of the California Republican Party. The primary need is to replace welfarism with a strong, pro-growth agenda. This, critically, would include the expansion of single-family housing, something the American Interest’s Walter Russell Mead suggests could spark a new economic expansion. Since 2000, more than 95 percent of the minority growth in the 52 largest metropolitan areas has been in suburban and exurban areas.

If President-elect Trump succeeds in promoting policies that unlock growth, in part, by sweeping away the worst anti-economic growth regulations, it could create a new wave of opportunity for minority Americans. It would be a tragedy of historic proportions if California, long the object of so many immigrants’ dreams, ends up choosing dependency over opportunity.

(Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism (www.opportunityurbanism.org). 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. This article was posted most recently at New Geography.) 

-cw

Billions of $$ Spent to Improve LA’s Freeways Wasted … Still Crawl at Snails Pace

RANTZ AND RAVEZ--The year 2017 has begun and we are all searching for ways to begin this year with a positive attitude and hopefully an improved quality of life for ourselves and our families as we sit down and read the logic and common cense by that veteran of the Los Angeles streets and political insider that can illustrate and bring to your attention the issues that impact you, your families and your overall quality of life. That is me ladies and gentlemen. The man-of-the-streets and of the Los Angeles political world. Waste in government spending, excessive taxation, massive traffic congestion, out of control homeless population, broken political promises and so many other issues currently face us from Sacramento to Los Angeles City Hall and all parts between. 

Let me begin with some of the new taxes that will be taking more dollars from your pockets and thrown into that deep hole known as the Federal, State, County and Local Governments. When you hear that government is there to help you, remember that while you are paying dearly into their elusive accounts, the money seldom appears to improve your quality of life. Take for example the traffic on the 101, 10 and 405 Freeways. From the San Fernando Valley to Downtown Los Angeles and to the Westside approaching the Los Angeles International Airport. It is a gridlock traffic situation 7 days a week. The frustration and billions of dollars spent on the local freeways has done little to move traffic faster than the pace of a Mollusk. I will save you the time to check and see what a Mollusk is. It is kind of like government. Very slow and hides when it perceives danger. It is a Snail. 

Where are those new sidewalks City Hall promised for your neighborhood a few of years ago? The same place many other City Hall promises have ended up. Lost in the committees and departments and various other hiding places where your tax dollars are stashed away and used for various programs and pet projects. Take for example the million dollars the city is providing to defend Undocumented Criminal Aliens facing deportation. While we all know that not all people in this country or city are criminals committing crimes, it is not the city’s responsibility to defend those committing crimes that happen to be in this country illegally. Those are your tax dollars that our elected officials want to use to fight the Federal Immigration Service. Your tax dollars are for city services and not for pet project ideas of a very liberal city government.  

As of January 1 we all get to pay a little more for everything we buy in Los Angeles. The sales tax has increased ½ cent for the Los Angeles County Traffic Improvement Plan. I am sure most of us will be dead by the time anything is done to the 405 gridlock to LAX. Then there is the 1.2 BILLION dollar Homeless tax that will appear on your future property tax bill. The city wants to use the funds to provide supportive housing for the homeless in Los Angeles. Locations will be situated throughout Los Angeles communities. Some in the valley and others spread throughout the city. 

There is the 3.5 billion dollar Community College bond measure that was passed in November. This fund will be used in the Community College District for educational purposes. There is the County of L.A. 1.5 cents levied annually per square foot of improved property in Los Angeles County to fund Safe, Clean Neighborhood Parks, Open Space, Beaches, River Protection, and Water Conservation Measures. All of the increased taxes and fees were all by the voters during the November Election.  

It would be good for the City Controller to look into where the projects are and where the money is located. Preparing Controller Reports on senseless projects is simply wasting money and doing nothing to improve local government or truly addressing those issues that would or could improve services in the City of Los Angeles. The only time the LA City Controller got any publicity was when he went after the DWP Union Leader on a Training Fund that was set up for city employees. The expensive and lengthy investigation did not reveal anything that resulted in any enforcement action against the DWP Union or their leaders. In the end, the Controller put his head back into the sand and has continued to do little to shake up any City of LA Departments or managers.      

+++++++

The LAPD and the MTA are working on a possible contract for police services … pushing the LA County Sheriff out the door! 

While millions of dollars are appealing to LA’s City leaders, the lack of current LAPD personnel to enforce the laws and patrol the streets of Los Angeles to reduce the growing crime trends remains a major problem for the LAPD. With only 9897 sworn officers short of the 10,000 in the police department budget, it will be hard pressed to take on the responsibility of patrolling the various transit lines throughout the City of LA. 

The LAPD has eliminated certain services it delivered to citizens in the past due to lack of personnel. In examining the preliminary year - end LAPD Crime Stats, we find the following information: Violent crime in LA has increased for the third year in a row. A 10% increase in violent crime over 2015 and a 38% increase since 2014. That means more murder victims, robbery victims and the other major crimes in the city. While there are many reasons for the crime increase the situation is not expected to improve in 2017. 

With this in mind, how can the LAPD handle the public transit lines along with the streets and neighborhoods of Los Angeles without additional personnel? Police recruitment is down in L.A. and throughout the country and not improving. The Anti-Police LAPD Police Commission has done nothing to demonstrate any type of support or encouragement for the LAPD Personnel that are not motivated or encouraged to do what they do best “Protect and Serve” the people of Los Angeles.  

Policing the bus and rail system is a daunting task at best. Being an infrequent rider on the public transit system Orange Line and Red/ Blue Lines in and around Los Angeles, I can tell you that there are many violations that are not being enforced by the Los Angele County Sheriff’s Department due to the lack of Sheriff Personnel riding the transit lines. While I will on occasion see a Deputy checking the riders for payment to ride the Metro Lines, I can count on one finger how many times I have seen a Deputy on a city bus or train in the past two years. 

With most of the LAPD field personnel are working 12 hour shifts 3 days a week, I am sure some officers will work overtime for extra pay to support their families. How much can an officer do without rest considering court and other police activities? Without additional personnel, it will be hard pressed to protect the passengers riding the Metro lines in this region.

+++++++

I Thank Mr. O’Henry for his kind comments about my articles. I happened to see Mr. O’Henry while dining at Uncle Bernie’s restaurant on Ventura Blvd. Uncle Bernie’s, not my Uncle, is a great place to dine for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Try it and I am sure you will enjoy the experience. 

If you have a situation you would like me to review, drop me an email at [email protected]

-cw

Here’s California’s Wondrous Yosemite National Park ... Brought to You By McDonald's?

COMMERCIALIZING OUR PARKS-A controversial set of new rules quietly given final approval over the recent holiday -- allowing national parks in the United States to expand corporate sponsorships and commercial contracts with private companies -- is being called a "disgrace" by those who say the move is a betrayal of what the nation's parks should be. 

Despite outcry from citizens, documented in public testimony and hundreds of thousands petition signatures, the director of the National Park Service Jonathan B. Jarvis announced on December 28 that he had signed an order-- officially titled Order #21 on Donations and Philanthropic Partnerships -- which, among other changes, ends an outright ban on commercial advertising and lifts restrictions on naming rights in parks. 

"It is disgraceful that the parks service plans to sell our national parks to the highest bidder despite overwhelming public opposition to increased commercialism in our national parks," said Kristen Strader, campaign coordinator for Public Citizen, which organized against the proposed reforms. She cited more than 215,000 petition signers and hundreds of individuals who submitted official objections to the NPS. 

In his statement last week, Jarvis argued that public concerns over the changes were overblown. "Whether or not people and organizations fully understood the proposed changes," Jarvis said, "it was clear that people place great value on national parks and are insistent that they be protected as they belong to all of us." 

While he acknowledged the changes would allow "opportunities for limited donor recognition in parks," he pushed back against criticism by saying, "no one is going to commercialize national parks and park superintendents still won’t be allowed to solicit donations. We have federal law to back us up on that." 

While Strader gave the NPS some credit for removing a particularly noxious provision from the draft policy that would have allowed corporate logos to be placed on exhibits and waysides, she disagreed the new rules would not seriously change the look and feel of the parks. 

"Now that this policy has been finalized," Strader warned, "park visitors soon could be greeted with various forms of advertisements, like a sign reading 'brought to you by McDonald’s' within a new visitor’s center at Yosemite, or 'Budweiser' in script on a park bench at Acadia." 

Such a reality, she said, should worry anyone who cherishes the national park system. 

"In a society where we are constantly inundated with advertisements everywhere we go, national parks offered a unique and beautiful escape," Strader said. "Even in schools, students endure a constant barrage of billboards, social media advertising and marketing. Until now, national parks have remained relatively commercial-free, which is why they were such a valuable respite."

This order, she concluded, is "a dangerous shift toward opening our parks up to an unprecedented amount of commercial influence."

 

(Jon Queally is staff writer at CommonDreams.org where this report was first posted.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

Scientific Theory of LA’s Decline

CORRUPTION WATCH-According to the “Osmosis Theory of LA’s Decline,” populations tend to move from areas of high costs and low opportunity (HC-LO) to areas of low costs and high opportunity (LC-HO.) Darwin’s survival of the fittest has a say here too. The smarter the person, the more likely he or she will move away from Los Angeles. In other words, the more talented middle class is “osmosisizing” itself away from “high cost-low opportunity” Los Angeles to “low cost-high opportunity” areas like Texas, the South, Nashville and Arizona. (Photo above: uncollected trash in Koreatown, Los Angles.) 

There are other factors in LA’s plight. Because babies cannot move out on their own, newborns are not renting apartments and buying houses. The elderly often own their own homes and have their costs covered. Thus, the new births and the “not-dying” of the Boomers do not mean LA is seeing an increased demand for housing. 

The crucial element of population mathematics is that Los Angeles is driving out the most vital segment of its population, that is, the family age middle class. As they leave the City, we lose our future. (We have previously discussed in CityWatch on December 29, 2016, why LA has a lower demand for housing while housing prices rise.) 

Two Productive Segments of LA’s Middle Class 

Los Angeles’ middle class of child rearing age spans two “generations.” There are Family Millennials, born between 1981 and 1998. Their peak birth year was twenty-five years ago. Thus, there are fewer younger Millennials each year and an increasing number of the older Millennials are becoming Family Millennials, age 25 and above. 

Los Angeles’ other middle class “generation” is its Generation Xers, who are between the ages of 35 to 49 years old. Los Angeles already is deficient in its number of Gen Xers. While Garcetti and others were raving about the young Millennials living on groups of two and three in lofts in DTLA, they covered up the fact that the Gen Xers were leaving the City. 

Many in this group, who were between 27 and 41 years old when the Crash of 2008 hit, have mostly decided to leave dense urban areas. Although this generation is smaller than the Baby Boomers above them and the Millennials below them, Gen Xers are vital for any urban area for the next two decades. They are wealthier and more entrepreneurial than Family Millennials and their prior departure is one of the reasons Los Angeles has lost more employers than any other urban area over the prior decade. 

People with the entrepreneurial spirt are precisely the type that leaves the high cost-low opportunity of Los Angeles for the low cost-high opportunity areas in Texas. In fact, Austin (the capital of Texas,) was the grand winner in attracting Gen X entrepreneurials. Since 2000, Austin’s Gen Xers have increase by 44.9% despite the fact that the size of this population segment has declined 6.6% nationally and Los Angeles is doing even worse than the national average. 

As Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox wrote in NewGeography.com in December 2016, “This makes sense as this is the age when home ownership is most critical and people are looking for the maximum income relative to costs. Being in your late 30s to 50 does not mean you have lost the ability to dream, but it does make addressing reality far more imperative than when in your 20s.” 

Thus, a significant number of Gen Xers have left Los Angeles and the age group just below them, Family Millennials, is doing likewise. Both generations leave for basically the same reason -- LA is high cost with low opportunity. People want their children to do better than they are doing. Thus, families move to the low cost-high opportunity areas. 

Losing both GenXers and Family Millennials is Financially Devastating to Los Angeles 

According to Val Srinivas and Urval Goradia, writing in “The Future of Wealth in the United States Mapping Trends in Generational Wealth,” for the Deloitte University Press in November 2015, “…Generation X will experience the highest increase in share of national wealth through the forecast period, growing from under 14 percent of total net wealth in 2015 to nearly 31 percent by 2030. In contrast, “The Millennial generation will experience the fastest growth rate of net wealth. However, the generation’s share of national household wealth will remain below 20 percent.” 

By 2030, the Gen Xers and Family Millennials will control about 50% of the nation’s wealth. Any urban area that loses the middle class from both these generations will lack the financial wherewithal to sustain itself. The middle class has proven it will not raise its families in cramped high rises in Hollywood or DTLA or at Gehry’s Folly at 8160 Sunset. The on-going destruction of Valley Village’s residential areas is particularly ominous for the viability of the entire Valley. 

Los Angeles’ Absurd Solution is to Spend Billions on Construction 

Politicos have fallen in love with the disastrous notion that Los Angeles should make construction of extremely dense Transit Oriented Districts [TODs] and Infill projects its main business. This idea is a perversion of the Keynesian principle that during a recession, spending money helps a society to recover. If the government cannot find something worthwhile to construct, then, Keynes said, it can pay people to dig holes and fill them up again. The money paid to the workers will be spent in the stores, that will then make it possible to hire more employees and buy more products from suppliers. 

This principle is sound, but Keynes never encouraged spending money on harmful projects. (If there were a bona fide housing shortage, residential construction would satisfy Keynes’s requirements, but our Crash of 2008 was caused by spending billions of dollars to build into a glut – which is exactly what Los Angeles is doing.) 

As mentioned in a prior article, destroying rent-controlled housing in order to build luxury housing is atrocious macro-economic policy and harms society. Furthermore, the subsidy of unwanted luxury housing harms the Price System by misleading people into thinking that financing more high rises is a wise use of investment capital. Again, this dynamic plus massive fraud resulted in the Crash of 2008. 

It seems that both California’s Governor and LA City leaders think that deficit spending on construction should be Los Angeles’ prime business. While the spending of billions of dollars will have a short term stimulus, the long term impact will be devastating. 

The Crucial Exodus Time is Nigh 

When people expect prices to rise, people buy before the increase. The Family Millennials and Generation Xers are beginning to realize that home prices in Austin, Texas, outside Nashville and Atlanta, etc. are rising. Now is the time for them to jettison LA and buy where costs are still low and opportunity is high. As Gen Xers and Family Millennials see that home prices in other areas of the nation are beginning to increase, their departure rate from LA will accelerate. The few Gen Zers who are still here will soon realize that they need to unload their properties in LA before the next crash as well as buy elsewhere before those housing prices significantly increase. 

The temporary inflation in R-1 prices will benefit the Gen Xers who did not move away prior to the Crash of 2008. As they move to higher management levels, they can afford better homes. They realize that selling their R-1 homes in Valley Village is their last chance to get their money out of their Valley homes. The financial pressure to escape from LA is irresistible. 

A Gen Xer can sell an LA home for $1 million and buy a larger home in Texas for only $450,000. The housing cost differential between Los Angeles and Texas and Nashville and Atlanta, etc. is go great, that the equity in an LA home may allow a Gen X family to buy a better home for all cash. At the very least, the family will have a whopping down payment with a very small mortgage. For Gen Xers, opportunity is knocking twice. 

The Impact of Measure S 

The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is officially on the March 2017 ballot as Measure S. If it passes, it will halt the most dramatic threat to LA’s future, i.e., the mega projects, which are at the root of the extortion and bribery running LA City Hall. 

Even if Measure S passes, however, Infill developers will continue to bid up the prices of residences way beyond their value as mere living space. If all single homes were re-zoned R-1, no matter what higher zoning surrounded them, families could afford to look for a home in LA. Such a down zoning would prevent the Infill developers from bidding up home prices and a family could feel secure that its residential neighborhood would be safe from developers for decades. The opposite will continue to be the situation for LA. Residential prices will temporarily escalate as Infill developers bid up the purchase prices.   

Science Will Prevail 

Despite misinformation from City Hall and its apologists like Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics and Joel Singer of California Association of Realtors on Channel 4's Conan Nolan’s show, the osmosis-like movement of talented middle class from Los Angeles to the suburbs in Arizona, Texas and the rest of the Sun Belt will prevail. Has there ever been a time in history when people voluntarily moved away from low cost-high opportunity areas to high cost-low opportunity areas?

 

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. 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.

Reforming the Democratic Party: California Should Lead the Way

GELFAND’S WORLD--Over the past few days, several of my friends have asked me to support them in their attempt to create a reform movement in the California Democratic Party. This isn't the first such attempt by any means, but the current confluence of bad news on the national level and grass roots rebellion on the local level makes this attempt a bit more likely to succeed. My comment is that their reform platform should go even farther. 

The Blue Revolution, as it calls itself, proposes structural changes in the way the Democratic Party rules itself. Most of what it suggests is valid, but of little interest to the rest of us. But they do get to one topic that is important -- restructuring the way that members of the Democratic National Committee are selected. I would like to suggest a reason why this is important. The DNC plays a critical role in the way presidential primary elections are scheduled. The current DNC has been an utter failure in dealing with the chronic problem of giving great power to Iowa and New Hampshire, two states which fail to represent the United States as a whole or, for that matter, speak for liberal values. 

Our local rebels want to change the way that California's DNC representatives are chosen. More power to them. But let's take it farther. A real reform proposal would be to demand that the DNC change the order of primaries to give the rest of the country a chance. As long as we're at it, how about making California the first or second state in the 2020 primaries? 

We will know that a newly restructured DNC is for real when New Hampshire is kicked out of its first place position in the presidential primaries, and not until then. If our California DNC delegation can't make some noise about this long-overdue change, then what good are they? 

Moving primaries around is a start, but it's still just a small piece of what ails us. I would like to offer a proposal that is both thoroughly radical and yet profoundly conservative. You might say it is self-sacrificial yet ambitious. 

The background: 

Back in the old days, Democrats got money and support from unions and from a few individual donors. The big business interests didn't feel a lot of kinship with Democrats, and gave their money mostly to Republicans. Democrats found themselves outspent, but managed to hold control of the congress for most of a half century. Unfortunately, the Democrats who controlled the U.S. Congress got a little greedy. They figured that business interests had to deal with them anyway because they held the power, so they might as well take money from business. 

It was the perfect example of a short term success that becomes a long term problem. Let's consider one example of how this worked out. We'll do so by asking the following question -- does anyone trust the U.S. congress to represent the interests of the American public when it comes to prescription drug pricing? The answer is pretty obvious isn't it? We're not going to find a lot of people who would say, "I believe that the congress will do what's right for us when it comes to that issue." Notice that Republicans and Democrats are equally damaged (in the moral sense) by their acceptance of pharmaceutical money. 

The Democrats have a real problem when they are not in the majority, because they don't have a simply stated ideology to fall back on. Republicans have it easy. All they have to do is recite, "Less government, lower taxes, a stronger military." Simplistic thinking combined with simplistic rhetoric does have its audience. In a nation that has been watching itself decline as an economic power since the oil embargo of the 1970s, the Democrats don't have a real strong slogan of their own to counter with. 

So how about if the Blue Revolution and those of us who think of ourselves as Reform Democrats create our own litmus test. We will support candidates who refuse to take money from the drug companies, from the casinos, from oil companies and computer chip manufacturers, from Facebook and Google, Walmart and Microsoft. We will support a party that represents workers. We're not necessarily hostile to business -- we'll work with business in terms of legitimate needs -- but we need to understand who we are first. 

We can start here in California. Since this is a CityWatch column, let's also apply the rule to Los Angeles City Council elections. Anybody who takes money from the developers doesn't get my vote. 

I understand that it's easy to poo-poo these suggestions as being impossible to achieve. Allow me to suggest that the internet age has changed things quite a bit. I suspect that plenty of people would donate a few dollars to candidates who pledge to follow the new rule by refusing corporate money. It will require candidates who are willing to join in a new political culture. The opportunity exists for a newly reformed Democratic Party to flourish. But it has to be a party that understands that modern voters will see through insincerity. 

Addendum 

In my previous column, I argued that those of us who are so appalled by the Trump election should not forget our anger. One commenter argued, not unreasonably, that we shouldn't match the hatred we saw applied against Obama with hatred of our own. Fair enough, but let's clarify. I would argue that it is legitimate to be angry about the victory of racism, misogyny, and bullying. This isn't hatred so much as it is justifiable outrage. This does not mean that we should lose our self-control, but that we should stay motivated. 

Someone named Phil Shailer said it much better than me. This reaction to Trump voters has been making the rounds and is likely to go viral because it speaks for so many of us.

 

Finally, let me thank Bill Roberson, Shannon Ross, and Carrie Scoville for making me aware of the Blue Revolution.

 

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

‘No Cars’ at One of LA’s Most Congested Intersections? No Way!

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Several weeks ago in Can the Cheap Perfume of "Approve with Conditions" Mask the Stink of Bad Planning?  I explained how the real purpose of lengthy “conditions of approval” for large, controversial real estate projects like 333 S. LaCienega is to neutralize community opposition. These endless promises are intended to defuse challenges to mega-projects, like the one pictured above in a shorter form than proposed. These promises, transformed into “conditions of approval,” are nearly worthless, but often succeed in persuading neighborhood critics to drop their opposition to bad projects. (Photo above: La Cienega and Third Street intersection.) 

This sordid process thrives in Los Angeles because decision makers routinely approve controversial projects once they receive campaign contributions and once community opposition has been sidelined by developer promises. In these situations, the decision makers never bother to ask such obvious planning-related questions as: 

  • Does the project conform to the very plans and zones that the City Planning Commission and the City Council legally enacted after an extensive preparation and adoption process? 
  • Does the design of the proposed project match the character and scale of surrounding residential areas, as required by the City Council-adopted Community Plans, as well as the design guidelines now included in the General Plan Framework Element? 
  • Do public infrastructure and public services have sufficient capacity – per Framework Policy 3.3  -- to meet future user demand stemming from the approved project? 
  • Will the project’s Environmental Impact Report conclusions be monitored and updated once the City Council adopts approval ordinances? 
  • Will project approvals be phased, ensuring that later phases are contingent on certified compliance with the original Conditions of Approval? 
  • Will a developer’s multiple promises to community groups and elected officials, such as job generation and transit ridership, be accurately and regularly monitored? 
  • Will there be real-world consequences, such as revocation of certificates of occupancy or partial demolition of structures, if promises are not kept? 

Because these obvious questions are never asked, the legislative actions, such as spot-zoning, blocked by Measure S, the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, predictably lead to truly bad city planning. For example, the proposed luxury high rise at the former Loehman’s site – 333 S. LaCienega -- perfectly illustrates how these bad planning practices proliferate in Los Angeles, with cascading adverse consequences. Consider the following: 

  • Clash with character and scale of nearby areas: As should be obvious the rendering above, this project does not comply with the legally required General Plan findings that the structure be consistent with the scale and character of the neighborhood’s residential area. More specifically, the project will be 240 feet high and have a Floor Area Ratio/FAR (i.e., building mass) of 6.0 on a lot where height is restricted to 45 feet and building mass is limited to an FAR of 1.5. As for compatible character, the proposed tower has a nautical design, reminiscent of a cruise ship, while the surrounding residential buildings have Spanish Revival architecture. Admittedly, a cruise boat might come in handy when massive earthquakes and climate-change induced sea-level rises permanently flood the greater Fairfax area, but for now this nautical design is totally at odds with the area’s character. 
  • Traffic congestion: The project is located at one of the most congested intersections in Los Angeles. Called the Bermuda Triangle, the site is the convergence point of San Vicente Boulevard, Third Street, LaCienega Boulevard, Burton Way, and LeDoux. No combination of street signs, signal lights, and traffic officers has managed to keep this intersection clear during rush hours, and the construction of an auto-centric luxury tower at this location can only make a bad traffic situation worse. 
  • Unconvincing public necessity: Los Angeles City Charter, Section 558, clearly states that to qualify for General Plan Amendments and zone changes, a project must conform to public necessity, convenience, general welfare, and good zoning practice. In this case, the tenants will be extremely rich, paying an average rent of $12,000 per month for lavish apartments in a building with five star amenities, including on-call luxury cars and drivers. These are certainly wonderful features for the 1 percent who can afford them, but the Wilshire Community Plan area has no demonstrated shortage of parcels that can accommodate such luxury apartments. The use of spot-zoning and spot-planning to jack up a 45 foot height limit to 240 feet may meet a private need to maximize profit, but it does not meet any public need. There is no public necessity for a spot-General Plan Amendment and spot-Zone Change to build a luxury apartment tower where it is strictly illegal and unwarranted. 
  • Poor Zoning Practices eliminate certainty: The related City Charter finding of good zoning practice is also sharply at odds with this project. The City Council must take three separate actions to legalize this project: a spot-zone change, a spot-height district change, and a spot-General Plan Amendment. Not only is City Charter Section 555 clear that these legislative actions must apply to socially and geographically significant areas (i.e., not single parcels), but these poor planning practices totally eliminate certainty from the planning process. When individuals, families, or companies move into an area, they have clear expectations of what can be legally built near their homes and businesses. But, spot-zoning completely removes this certainty. Cities like Los Angeles then become the Wild West. Spot-zoning through a City Council vote to permit a 240 foot high rise tower where 45 feet is the law eliminates all predictability from the planning process. The zones and plan designations that people assumed about their neighborhood when they moved in can vanish at the snap of a deep-pocketed developer’s fingers. 
  • Affordable housing hype: The project claims that it needs a major economic incentive, much greater building mass, to accommodate large luxury apartments, through LA’s Density Bonus Ordinance. More specifically, the developer intends to replace 13 of 145 luxury apartments with low-income units to build a much larger building. Yet the developer has owned this building site for many years and has virtually no land acquisition costs. In this case, LA’s genuine need for more affordable housing has become a thin cover story for the construction of 130 luxury rental apartments where less than half of that figure is legally permitted. 
  • Misuse of on and off-site improvements: The project’s conditions of approval, as voted by the City Planning Commission and the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, include adjacent street trees, bicycle infrastructure, and a quasi-public fountain. Yet in nearby Los Angeles and Beverly Hills neighborhoods, there are many existing pedestrian-oriented projects and corridors. Some have been built and operated as basic municipal services, not as extensions of mega-projects. Others are linked to by-right buildings that conform to plans and zones, and that do not need City Council spot-zoning rescue ordinances to usher in public improvements. 
  • Bad Precedents: To justify height and mass far above legal limits, the project invokes other nearby buildings that exceed 45 feet. Yet, most of these over-height buildings also required spot-zoning approval from elected officials to be built. For example, one of these projects, across the street, at 8500 Burton Way, is a prototype for this project and owned by the same developer. Yet, when it was permitted, its neighbors were told it would not become a precedent for more ad hoc zone changes and general plan amendments. Nevertheless, the genie is out of the bottle. If the City Council eventually approves 333 S. LaCienega, it is only a question of time until nearby property owners make parallel requests. They will quickly realize that similar zone changes and General Plan amendments can green light more lavish and lucrative high-rise apartment towers on their properties. 

The take away from this case study is that a few poor planning practices eventually open up the flood gates for more bad decisions. Their cumulative impact is municipal demise, but good planning practices can move a city in the opposite direction. Los Angeles can still become the progressive, highly livable city that most of residents and visitors truly desire. It might even eventually become the global city that its City Hall boosters magically believe can be achieved through real estate speculation.

 

(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles City Planner and also a Board Member of the Beverly Wilshire Homes Association. He welcomes comments and corrections at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

Measure ‘S’ Stands for ‘Stop’ … the LA City Planning Politburo!

SUSTAINING THE CITY-Try to ignore the federal election results for a moment, if you can. There is a lot of fear, dread and loathing about City overdevelopment, worsening traffic (as a result of overdevelopment), and worsening environmental issues (also a result of overdevelopment). In short, we have the foxes guarding the henhouse and a Planning Politburo that appears hell-bent towards shredding all law and livability in the City of the Angels. 

Corrupt City Councilmembers and Mayors? Nothing new. Oversized influence of mega-developers at City Hall? Nothing new. But what appears to be a growing trend is that, even when a City Councilmember is doing the right thing, LA City Planning ignores the will of the citizenry and their elected leader, transforming a neighborhood into an environmental and quality-of-life-nightmare. 

ENTER MEASURE S:  This spring's elections (March 7, 2017-- closer than you might think) will feature a measure that -- no matter what the agenda-driven professional liars and self-serving creepies say -- does the following: 

  • Developers will have to have to pay for their traffic and environmental impact reports to be done by independent experts, and not by their own hired guns. EIR's have to mean something, and they have to be credible.
  • Backroom deals between billionaire developers and City Councilmembers will be made illegal, and City Council rules and laws will be adhered to and enforced. 
  • Developers will have to prove to impacted communities that their new megaprojects can absorb the new development with respect to traffic and other environmental impacts. 
  • Despite claims by mega-developers that they want to create affordable housing, the opposite has been the result of these at-market and oversized, over-tall projects (which often have over 50% vacancy) that ultimately leave fewer, and not more, truly affordable housing for Angelenos. 
  • The City Council will have to (finally) update the City’s legally-required Community and General Plans that balance growth and environmental impacts. 

You know...follow and obey the laws!

After years of being told that we were decades (not years, but decades) behind in our Planning for the regions and totality of our City, it's time we had the ability to catch up in our Planning infrastructure the way we just did with our Transportation infrastructure. 

The City spends gobs of time and resources on lots of priorities, but the basics of planning for a big city that makes scientific and environmental sense? Nope! 

But no longer. 

If the Planning Department can tell the Mar Vista Community Council, its residents and its Councilmember (Mike Bonin of CD11) to go pound sand when a developer (Pamela Day and her Crimson Holdings cronies) consistently lie, obfuscate, and disempower the neighborhoods of Mar Vista...what can we do? 

If the Planning Department ignores the pleas of the Mar Vista Community Council, the CD11 office and planners, and the local residents (who have always been for affordable housing) when they plead for a 3-5 story project but get an 80+-foot tall, 7-8 story project that is the tallest development for miles, and with entirely insufficient parking and infrastructure so that the developer can win the lotto...what can we do? 

And what can you do when this keeps going on in your neighborhood -- black, white, Latino, Asian, mixed, poor, wealthy, etc.? What can you do when the Planning Department gives us the cold shoulder and ignores our legal rights, recommendations and pleas? 

Vote Measure S into law -- we have to STOP the LA City Planning Politburo. We have to STOP the unsustainable, environmentally-destructive madness. We must have a civilized, sustainable city that has rules that are followed. 

STOP the tone-deaf, agenda-driven, wild-eyed, build-build-build group-thinkers at LA City Planning. 

Vote YES on Measure S!

 

(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 is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs 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.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

Education Politics: California Becoming Nation’s Conscience-In-Exile

EDUCATION VUE-In a sign that California is quickly emerging as the nation’s progressive conscience-in-exile, a new Los Angeles education-reform group has launched an ambitious initiative that it claims could close historic student achievement gaps in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). 

Members of Reclaim Our Schools LA (ROS-LA), a coalition of educators, labor unions and social justice organizations, told a December media event attended by about one hundred parents, students and supporters (photo above) in the library of South LA’s Dorsey High School, that the key to substantive school reform is to transform LAUSD into a “community school district.”

Community schools, which have roots in the progressive movement of the early 20th century but have been undergoing a recent revival, look beyond academics to the entrenched, poverty-related social, emotional and health barriers that keep kids in high-needs districts from succeeding in school. The approach redresses those needs by partnering with families, local government and community-based organizations to provide “wraparound services” — health clinics, mental health counselors, after-school programs or parent support services — on school grounds. 

“We believe schools should be safe havens for students and families,” said coalition member Angelica Salas. “Our coalition is committed to making sure that every student can benefit from an education, independent of what school or what ZIP code they live in.” Her group also used the event to unveil a detailed argument for community schooling in a paper called “A Vision to Support Every Student.”  

In addition to Salas, who is the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, nine coalition speakers were present, including union president Alex Caputo-Pearl of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), and Max Arias, executive director of Service Employees International Union Local 99. 

The coalition was short on the details of what an actual community school might look like, saying each would be tailored to specific community needs. But the group noted that LAUSD, whose student population is 80 percent low-income, already boasts a number of successful pilot community schools, including San Fernando High School Community School in the economically depressed North San Fernando Valley, and James A. Garfield Senior High School in East LA, whose on-campus “Wellness Center offers physical exams, family planning and mental health services. 

Though the movement has been mostly overlooked by the media in their coverage of the 25-year education wars that have pitted the “school choice” privatization movement against traditional neighborhood public schools, it has produced impressive gains in math and reading proficiency, along with increases in graduation and college-admission rates, with the kind of disruptive, high-needs students that the corporate charter school model tends to exclude. Those successes gained community schooling a toehold in the Obama administration’s 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act, which included language supportive of the approach. 

“Unlike other models of reform that we see today,” said coalition member John Rogers, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, “[community schooling] is a model of reform that is inclusive; that doesn’t exclude English learners; that doesn’t exclude foster [care students]; that doesn’t exclude students with special needs. It says everybody is part of our community.” 

According to ROS-LA’s Patricia Castellanos, who is also deputy director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), Oakland Unified and Cincinnati Public Schools have already declared themselves community school districts, with Austin, Texas possibly to follow. 

But as the nation’s second-largest school district, LAUSD would considerably raise the profile of community schooling with what Castellanos termed a “new path” to reform, with the potential to impact national education policy. 

That prospect, coalition members repeatedly emphasized, has taken on new urgency in the months since last spring, when ROS-LA began organizing. Donald Trump has alarmed public education advocates with both his campaign proposal for a $20 billion school voucher program and his nomination of anti-public schools radical Betsy DeVos to head the Department of Education. 

“If there were ever a time to invest more in our public schools, it is now,” declared coalition member Tina Trujillo, associate professor at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. 

However, ROS-LA’s ambitions may not only collide with the incoming administration, but also run up against Republican vows to cut federal funding for health services, food assistance and cash assistance for low-income seniors and people with disabilities. 

California currently receives about $69.3 billion in federal support for health and human services, with $7.7 billion going to the state Department of Social Services for child welfare services, foster care and the CalWORKs welfare-to-work program — the kind of assistance to low-income and vulnerable Californians that is at the heart of community schooling’s wraparound services model. 

“We are very well aware that there are financial issues that need to be dealt with,” admitted UTLA’s Alex Caputo-Pearl. “California hovers between 40th and 50th among the states in per-pupil funding. It’s not acceptable. We’ve got to take that battle to the state level, and we will.” 

The exact price tag to transform LAUSD to community schooling remains unknown. Castellanos said that specific budget numbers will be part of ROS-LA’s planning and research for 2017, adding that national community school experts claim the model is less expensive to implement than it might seem, since it is based on leveraging existing community services and grants. 

In the meantime, the coalition will be laying the groundwork for political and economic support by lobbying LAUSD leaders and scheduling parent-student forums in early 2017 to ensure that ROS-LA’s priorities are reflected in the district’s Local Control and Accountability Plan. 

“Our goal is to have LAUSD designate itself as a community schools district and to allocate funds to roll out this model.” Castellanos said. “That will require conversations with the LAUSD board so that community schools are part of the school board’s budgeting process in the next year.”

 

(Bill Raden is a freelance Los Angeles writer. This article was first posted at Capital & Main. Photo by Bill Raden: Dorsey H.S. student Christabel Ukomado addresses Reclaim Our Schools gathering. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

Voices from 2016: In Venice ‘Safe and Clean’ is Code for ‘Permanent Removal’

NEIGHBORHOOD POLITCS--On September 28, LA City Councilmember Mike Bonin held a community meeting in the Westminster Avenue Elementary School auditorium to present his accomplishments and propose solutions to the problem of Homelessness in Venice. There was a slide show, fliers, city officers and non-profit organization organizers. There were a lot of attendees in the auditorium. A lot of cops were there too.

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2017: If California Is to Right Its Biggest Wrongs, We'll Have to Embrace Some Dirty Deals

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Grab a glass of champagne. Then bend your mind around this New Year’s resolution for Californians: In 2017, let’s become more tolerant of political corruption.

Yes, bigotry against political skullduggery is just about the last socially acceptable prejudice in our state. And while the idea of tolerating dirty deal-making may sound perverse or strange, so are the ways we make decisions in California. We rarely consider how all of our rules curtailing the power and discretion of elected officials—rules approved in the name of preventing corruption—have made it so difficult to respond to large scale problems in our state that we no longer try.

Our state’s governance system has long been premised on the notion that our chosen representatives must be extremely naughty people. And so we’ve designed a highly complex government over the last century with the primary goal of preventing corruption, by limiting the power and discretion of elected and appointed officials to make dirty deals—or just about any other deals. That is the channel connecting our state’s rivers of regulations, oceans of laws, and tsunamis of formulas for budgets and taxes that defy human navigation.

All these obstacles have worked to a point: We’re a pretty clean state by American standards, with a relatively low rate of public corruption convictions. And the corruption cases you see here typically involve very small stakes for a big state—minor embezzlements, small-time cover-ups, and politicians who violate tricky campaign finance laws or (heaven forbid) live outside their districts.

The perverse result of our clean but hampered government is that we’ve opted to embrace large-scale, incapacitating societal wrongs, instead of accepting even the smallest rule-bending in the legislature or city hall (what other jurisdictions might still consider part of the cost of getting stuff done).

In California, among the richest places on earth, thousands of homeless people are on the streets, and we tolerate the highest poverty rate in the United States. We have done little to respond to a huge and expanding shortage of housing for working and middle-class people. Our roads, bridges and waterworks are in dangerous disrepair. Our health system makes it hard to get health care, our schools offer too little education, and our tax system, by bipartisan acknowledgment, doesn’t tax us efficiently or fairly.

In hamstringing our politicians, we’ve frustrated ourselves.

And yet, attacking such big problems is considered wildly unrealistic. There are too many rules and regulations standing in the way of large-scale action. And if we got rid of those rules, we fear we would be abetting corruption.

Which is why we so desperately need to adopt a new attitude toward corruption.

A famous observation of Samuel Huntington, one of the 20th century’s greatest political scientists, applies now in California.

“In terms of economic growth, the only thing worse than a society with a rigid, over centralized, dishonest bureaucracy is one with a rigid, over centralized, honest bureaucracy.”

“In terms of economic growth, the only thing worse than a society with a rigid, over centralized, dishonest bureaucracy is one with a rigid, over centralized, honest bureaucracy,” Huntington wrote. ““A society which is relatively uncorrupt … may find a certain amount of corruption a welcome lubricant easing the path to modernization.”

California needs lubrication—and a little more corruption that allows us to advance larger public goals.

California must expedite the building of affordable housing, homeless housing, housing near transit, and housing on lots already zoned for housing—even if it means paying off certain interests to prevent their opposition and handing out exemptions to planning requirements and zoning and environmental laws like party favors. The alternative is to let the scandalous housing shortage grow, while we cross all the regulatory t’s and let NIMBYs tie us in knots.

LA voters, for example, just approved money for homeless housing we need now—but it likely will take at least five years to have the housing in place if we follow the usual procedures. And it could be even worse if anti-growth activists, posing as warriors against corruption, succeed in passing a moratorium on certain developments on LA’s March ballot.

The poor state of California’s roads also cries out for some big corrupt deals, damn the environmental reviews. For years, the state has failed to address a $130-billion-plus backlog in state and local road repairs. A legislative report found that more than two-thirds of roads are in poor or mediocre condition, one of the worst records of any state in the country.

But California’s mix of limitations on infrastructure and taxes mean we’ll keep falling behind—as long as we play by the rules. Raising taxes to cover repairs requires a two-thirds vote of both houses of the state legislature and getting to two-thirds in cases like this requires buying votes with spending. But our abstemious governor hasn’t been willing to do the buying. He should resolve to be less righteous and more road-friendly in 2017. (And how fast can we get some contracts out the door and get construction crews on the highways?)

Roads and housing aren’t the only contexts where we prioritize following all the rules over meeting the needs of Californians. In education, state leaders make a fetish of meeting the very low requirement of the constitutional funding formula for schools—instead of finding ways, kosher or not, to lengthen our short school year (just 180 days) and offer students the math, science, arts and foreign language they need, but aren’t getting.

Our aqueducts and water mains so badly need updates and repairs that politicians should be raiding other government accounts to secure the necessary funds. But moving money around brings lawsuits and scrutiny. So no one dares resolve the problem, not even in a time of drought. Now is the moment to break rules and accelerate water infrastructure. Find ways to bully or buy off anyone who objects.

The stakes of our anti-corruption fixation may get higher in 2017. California finds itself in a confrontation with President-elect Donald Trump. Politicians are talking about how they are ready to fight Trump if he attacks California policies or threatens vulnerable people, like immigrants and Muslims.

Fighting may be necessary, but California and its governments are at a decided disadvantage in a battle with the richer and more powerful federal government. Dealmaking might be the better strategy, at least at first. On recent trips to Sacramento, lobbyists and other behind-the-scenes players argued to me that California should find some way to buy off Trump—either personally or in his presidential role—given the president-elect’s love of negotiations and his lack of interest in ethics or legal niceties. Of course, such creative dealmaking runs up against Californian rules and sensibilities.

That’s why the change we need is not legal—it’s cultural. We need to be more politically mature and realize that big progress in governance almost always involves actions that are not entirely forthright. Indeed, some of our country’s most effective officials—like the Daleys in Chicago, or even a California character like Willie Brown, the former Assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor—were effective precisely because they didn’t always color inside the lines.

So as we greet 2017, let’s raise a toast to dealmaking that brings real progress, even when it’s dirty.

(Joe Mathews is Connecting California Columnist and Editor at Zócalo Public Square … where this column first appeared. Mathews is a Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (UC Press, 2010).)

-cw

2017: Testing LA’s Mettle

@TheGussReport – Predicting LA’s fortunes requires a decent read on our city and county officials. Dialogue with them and listen closely because what they say matters; their evasion matters more; and their evasion while speaking matters most. (Photo art above: LA’s new skyline?)

“The winds of change blow from the west” is the trite refrain they often invoke when justifying many an ill-conceived idea. Bullet-train, anyone? But in a year with Trumpian-force winds, LA (and San Francisco and Sacramento for that matter) is going to be tested big-time, especially when its desperate need for federal dollars is weighed against its pledge to remain a sanctuary city. And since LA is unaccustomed to being tested by outside forces, there are plenty of balls for it to drop.

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A Must for LA in 2017: More Hard-Hitting Investigative Reporting

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-2016 is nearly over, and that means that 2017 offers immense opportunities for CityWatch writers and readers, including yours truly, to answer important questions. These are some of the stories that I am following and hope to examine in more detail. I look forward to similar research and articles from other CityWatch writers. 

CITY HALL QUESTIONS 

How extensive is corruption at Los Angeles’s City Hall? 

The LA Times Sea Breeze story of $600,000 in campaign donations to get land use decisions reversed is undoubtedly the tip of the iceberg. And David Zahnizer’s front-page story on Rick Caruso’s luxury tower at the former Loehman’s site is just as important. While the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative/Measure S staff has broken smaller stories of corruption, there are undoubtedly many bigger stories waiting for careful investigation and publication. The more the better because even if Measure S does not pass in March 2017, this type of investigative reporting will play a major role in ensuring that Los Angeles is well planned. The alternative, an unplanned city, in which real estate speculators determine long-term land use patterns, is a road to municipal ruin. 

What is the residential build-out potential of Los Angeles, based on existing zoning? 

The corporate funded density hawks repeatedly argue that LA has virtually no land left for housing construction, yet the most recent City Planning reports on this exact question – from the early 1990s – concluded the exact opposite. Furthermore, we also need to know how much future housing construction and population growth can be supported by available public infrastructure and public services. 

What is really behind the “no money” excuse for the many projects and public services that elected officials and some of their advocates ignore? 

There is no shortage of low-priority budget categories that qualify for this sorry alibi: urban street trees, careful plan check and code enforcement, updated General Plan elements, sidewalk and street repairs, ADA curb cuts, street cleaning, street lights, recreation program, library hours, climate change mitigation and adaptation, bicycle infrastructure, mass transit station amenities, and much more. For these and many more projects, local government’s constant refrain is, “There is just no money,” yet big-ticket items, like the 55 percent of the City budget that funds the LAPD, go unchallenged. 

What role does local government play in increasing wealth and income inequality? 

Most fingers point to the Federal government because it largely controls tax rates, tax loopholes, minimum wage, and the safety net, such as Social Security and Medicaid. But, City Hall also plays a significant, but overlooked role. For example, every time the zone and/or General Plan designation for a piece or property densifies through spot-zoning, the site becomes considerably more valuable. Yet, this windfall is not taxed in California because most commercial property is never totally sold. Instead portions of the ownership change, allowing the property title to remain fixed and unassessed because of Proposition 13. 

Is METRO advancing mass transit for mobility or to bolster real estate speculation? 

Some scholars, like Allen Whitt, long ago argued that the fundamental purpose of urban mass transit, include MetroRail in Los Angeles, is to resuscitate real estate in older parts of town, such as Wilshire Boulevard and Hollywood. Now, several decades later we are witnessing the expansion of mass transit, but with little consideration for mobility. 

In Los Angeles, the MetroRail interface with other transportation modes is missing: buses, cars, pedestrians, and bicyclists. METRO has dropped the ball on this aspect of transit, while City Planning has largely limited its role to up-zoning the private parcels near existing and proposed transit stations. As a result, transit-adjacent public areas have unfunded guidelines, while individual parcels are stoked for an influx of private investment. 

ENVIROMENTAL QUESTIONS 

How is climate change related to economic activity? 

The popular press presents the climate change “debate” as climate scientists on one side and climate change deniers on the other side. This supposed debate is then reduced to one bid question: do humans cause climate change or is it a natural fluctuation? But this this simplistic approach sees the forest and misses the trees. This is because it doesn’t examine the diverse carbon footprints of our planet’s eight billion humans. It equates the carbon footprint of those living in squalor on $2 or less per day with executives of fossil fuel companies, living in energy-intensive estates, driving big cars, and flying on highly polluting planes. 

Will driverless electric cars reduce our carbon footprint? 

Companies such as Tesla and Google tout their driverless and electric cars as a miracle cure for congestion and Green House Gases. But this is a dubious claim for several reasons. First, better cars perpetuate the entire built environment based on cars: the entire car manufacturing process, roads, parking lots, and car-oriented buildings, especially big box retail and shopping centers. 

Second, better cars mean each car uses less energy, but the automobile companies still expand overall production. For example, Toyota does not use the profits from the Prius to make a better bicycle, but to branch out to the Prius C and Prius V. Instead of one Prius model there are now three, as well as other Toyota models with hybrid engines, such as the Camry. As a result overall energy consumption is still expanding. 

A FINAL WORD FOR THE NEW YEAR 

CityWatch readers, in 2017 please share your information about these and other important and overlooked stories. We may have meager resources, but crowd-sourcing our knowledge can and will be the antidote to the neglect of the mainstream, corporate media.

 

(Dick Platkin reports on local planning issues in Los Angeles for CityWatch. Please send any questions, comments, or corrections to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

Los Angeles and 10 Big “No’s” for 2017

LA GOVERNMENT WATCH-Over this past year, our contributions to CityWatch have focused on a disturbing pattern that has shown how elements of our Los Angeles City government have been working against the public interest for years. Here’s a re-cap of what needs to change as we move into 2017: 

  1. No sole source contracts or private sales of surplus property under any condition. No exceptions. No contracts let without Requests for Proposal (RFPs). Apart from being required by law, they are the life blood of good government, because they secure the best value for the public, while also ensuring that every member of that public gets a clean shot at winning contracts. The same is true of public auctions of surplus property. 
  1. No closed sessions of the City Council -- for any reason -- not even those permitted by the Brown Act (i.e. litigation, real estate negotiations and so on.) 
  1. No attorney-client privilege for Officers of the City (except in their capacities as private citizens.) Again, all litigation -- regardless of the dollar amount -- should be conducted in open session. This would help prevent the kind of prolonged litigation that has recently cost the City over $250 million. 
  1. No contracting with secretive LLCs. If you want to do business with Los Angeles, you have to take your mask off. It is preposterous how many entities there are with whom the City currently does business without knowing the most basic of facts about them, including the precise identity of the owner. 
  1. No enforcement role for the Ethics Commission. Campaign finance laws etc. should be enforced by the DA. The Enforcement Division of the Ethics Commission routinely violates the Constitutional rights of members of the public. The part of the Ethics Commission that maintains the database of donations etc. should be kept intact. 
  1. No absolute power for the City Council President in making committee assignments. Such power gives the President too much leverage over the rest of the Council and results in a stifling of debate (because everyone has to tow the line or suffer retaliation.) 
  1. No use of parking fines in the General Fund. Such fines, not to exceed $35, should go to a fund used exclusively for infrastructure projects. 
  1. No back-room lawsuit settlements. These are used as a way to kick-back money to the plaintiff. Settlements need to be dealt with in open session. 
  1. No further violations of Rule 93 -- violations which have resulted in the public’s cameras in City Hall that are being operated by public employees -- at the direction of Herb Wesson – so that the members of the public are videotaped from a face-obscuring distance. 
  1. No commencing of City Council meetings with the settling of liens against members of the public who suffer humiliation and unspeakably huge monetary penalties.


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

 

LA’s Non-Stop War against Rent-Control, the Single Family Home and Other Long-Term Wealth Creators

THE WEALTH FORMULA, PART TWO- In a recent CityWatch article, I explained why the City of Los Angeles has escalating housing costs and, at the same time, is experiencing a net exodus of people leaving rather than moving to LA. It took years of corruption and malfeasance, but the City has managed to make Los Angeles the nation’s least desirable urban area. 

The Destruction of Wealth is Not Wise 

Just as the government has laws against people stealing other people’s property, the government has a duty not to encourage the destruction of businesses which are generating wealth. Rent-controlled properties are long-term wealth creators. Los Angeles’ Rent Stabilization Ordinance was relatively effective in allowing landlords to make a profit and provide housing the poor could afford. (I shall not discuss the criminal REAP program. I hope someone does a CityWatch article from the landlord’s perspective.) 

From the macro-economic standpoint, when an honest business is generating wealth, it should not be destroyed. Tearing down rent-controlled units destroys wealth. Not only is the landlord harmed, but the tenant is harmed, and those who end up homeless become a financial burden on everyone. Macro-Economics does not care if the developer believes he can make more money from his new fancy units. Society does not look at only how much “gelt” he pockets, but it must subtract all the wealth lost by the destruction of the rent-controlled units and all the extra costs which society will incur. 

From a macro-economic standpoint, the destruction of over 22,000 rent-controlled units has caused irreparable harm from which the City will not recover. 

In a city operating on the economic philosophy of corruptionism, the city government is unable to institute wise macro-economic safeguards. As a result, we have an economic system that destroys affordable housing, while only 37% of the need is being built and while replacing it with luxury apartments that represent a 12% glut. (11-17-2015 HCIDLA report) The City then gives our tax dollars to the developer because he says his profit is too small. ($17.4 Million to CIM Group for 5929 Sunset Blvd.) Thus, we have a corrupt city government that destroys the homes of poor people, stealing “wealth generators” from small landlords; and then the City gives tax money to the developers who happen to be funding the Mayor’s and councilmembers’ campaigns. 

Where Los Angeles Does Have Housing Shortage 

There is an actual shortage of detached single family homes. One factor is that prior to the 2008 Crash, banks unloaded foreclosed homes as fast as possible onto the market. But after the Crash of 2008, many banks decided to rent homes. This decision reduced the number of homes for sale without reducing the number of available homes in which to live. Withholding homes from the sales market drove up prices without any increase in demand. 

How the City Increases the Price of R-1 Homes

The City’s housing policies, especially in-fills, allow developers to buy and tear down the single family home to construct multiple rental units on the property. As a result, a family who wants to purchase a home for living space often faces a developer who will pay far more than the living space value

Because developers can get councilmembers to change the zoning to satisfy their whims, they are confident that wherever they buy, they can build multiple units. In order for many families to purchase a home in Los Angeles, they have to out-bid developers. 

As a result, detached home prices have been “bid up,” thereby reducing the supply of homes for families. A proper government would protect the Price System of detached homes by not allowing any spot zoning or granny flats. A competent city would not permit Small Lot Subdivisions. 

A City Which Decimates its Middle Class is a Failed City 

As a result of making it hard to construct and allowing the destruction of detached homes, the City has driven out Family Millennials, i.e., the new Middle Class. It did not take a genius to foresee that when the younger Millennials wanted to settle down, they would abandon the Dorm Room style of life and do what Americans have done for generations: find a detached home with a yard and decent schools. Intentionally depriving Millennials of the homes they would come to desire has left them no realistic alternative but to move away from Los Angeles. When the most productive sector of the population abandons a city, it becomes an economic basket case. 

The City’s Subsidizing Mega Projects Drives out the Middle Class 

Because Wall Street does not want to be left holding the bag when the next crash comes, it is balking at financing a lot of mega projects. Wall Street has seen that fraud does not deceive the laws of economics. For example, for years the City fooled Wall Street into lending for improvident mixed-use projects by giving the developers an extra revenue stream to repay the Wall Street loans. The City would let the developer keep the sales taxes from the retail stores in the mixed-use projects. CIM Group’s Midtown Project in City Council President Wesson’s district, for example, allegedly gets 100% of sale taxes and business license fees. 

When she was City Controller (July 2001 to April 2009), Laura Chick warned of this folly, pointing out that 50% of the CRA mixed-use projects’ retail space was vacant, but the City ignored her. Without tenants, there was no extra revenue stream for the builders to repay the Wall Street loans. Perhaps, the most colossal disaster was the Hollywood-Highland Project which cost $625 million to construct but was sold a few years later for only $201 million. Projects do not sell for 1/3 their construction costs because they are making money for the developer. Remember, the wealth formula: you have to sell or rent for more than the cost to produce. 

Since then, the City has been giving its developer buddies billions of dollars in financial aid. The private Grand Avenue Project is getting about $197 million. All the projects in Hollywood will end up being subsidized. The City has subsidized Korean Airlines and China. Yes, freakin’ China – the world leader in over-development. When the government subsidizes developers who build crap that no one wants, the government destroys the Price System. 

The Anticipatory Destruction of Wealth 

While some people look at Gehry’s Folly at 8160 Sunset Boulevard and say “ooh and aah,” others see the Anticipatory Destruction of Wealth. The role of the government is to understand this aspect of macro-economics. When hundreds of millions of dollars are invested in bad projects based on falsified data, all those hundreds of millions of dollars are diverted away from productive investments. That means we lose wealth by diverting money from where it should go. All the wealth that wise investments would have created never comes into existence. 

While some recognize this anticipatory destruction of wealth, no one person knows where the funds should have been invested. That is why the nation needs to restrict investment firms to doing one thing – raising capital for productive investments. Investment firms, which can stay in business only by making wise investments in enterprise, are absolutely essential for the nation to prosper.

Prior to the repeal of Glass-Steagall, investment houses were limited to doing the research necessary to know where to invest the capital they raised. Of course, the people who provided the funds for the investments held each investment firm liable for mistakes. After the investment firms no longer had to make a profit by raising capital and investing it for other people, they found that financial manipulation was more profitable for the executives -- even if it crashed the world economy. The vital function of Wall Street’s raising capital for wise investments cannot resume until a beefed up Glass-Steagall is re-instituted and credit default are outlawed and Wall Street’s role in the commodities market is seriously restricted. 

The City’s War on the Middle Class is not Wise 

Garcetti has made no secret of his war on the single family home and against the automobile in his mania to turn Hollywood and now the rest of Los Angeles into a west coast Manhattan. The City would have been far wiser to pass an emergency re-zoning measure 10 to 15 year ago, in which all single-family homes, no matter where they were located, would have a presumptive R-1 status. 

Simultaneously, there should have been a moratorium on any increase in office density in The Basin. That would have stabilized residential housing in the Basin, while allowing offices on the periphery. Traffic patterns would have been reversed, somewhat, thereby allowing for more population without more traffic. Without anyone at City Hall who understood or cared about macro-economics, we have suffered through at least 15 years of economic falderal and corruptionism. 

Que sera sera 

At this point, one is supposed to provide the prescription for recovery. But there is none for Los Angeles. Alea jacta est, the Rubicon was crossed years ago, and we have gone far beyond the point of no return. Here is Los Angeles’ most likely future: there will be a massive dump of billions of dollars of construction dollars into Los Angeles for mega-projects and fixed-rail transit. These improvident expenditures will further erode the quality of life and leave Los Angeles bankrupt, at which time the City will seek a federal bailout.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. 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.

They Go Low – We Go Local!

BUTCHER ON LA-Within two weeks of moving into our new apartment in La Crescenta, I learned of two substantive, meaningful opportunities to participate locally: a community meeting explaining the new districts for elections of local school board members and notice of a meeting of the Crescenta Valley Town Council where the main topic discussion was construction on the 210 freeway. 

Got a doggie park recommendation for what turns out to be the best dog groomer in the San Fernando Valley (at the corner of Wheatland and Sunland), pulled into the parking lot and found myself parking in front of the Foothill Trails District Neighborhood Council storefront. 

Then we received this notice announcing the City of Los Angeles’ gifting of delicious, free mulch and soil amendment. 

And just as I was feeling most darkened by the shortness of the days after the Election, I read this from esteemed labor activist attorney, our friend Emma Leheny, who now with the National Education Association, America’s largest labor union, sharing a comprehensive organizing resource for local action

Anti-immigrant statements by Trump and his supporters have caused anxiety among school children throughout the country. Bullying and harassment in schools have been fueled by Trump’s slurs. Educators have been supporting our schools and students – with guidance, inclusive curricula, and anti-bullying resources.  But given Trump’s stated plan to rescind all Obama executive actions, school sites may soon see ICE agents attempting to enter campus. ICE issued a memorandum in 2011 stating schools were off-limits for immigration enforcement, except in exigent circumstances. We can expect that memo to be repudiated, or at a minimum, ignored in the next administration. So our students and educators are looking for answers: what can keep our schools safe for all of our students? 

NEA has developed this template resolution and policy for use by any school board. It recognizes the constitutional rights of undocumented students to access a free, public K-12 education, as set forth by the Supreme Court in Plyler v. Doe. It puts in place steps for district administration to follow if approached by ICE. It re-iterates the support and respect a school community holds for all of its students and families. Several large school districts have already taken steps in this direction – Los Angeles, for example, enacted and re-affirmed a resolution opposing immigration enforcement at school. 

The Tenth Amendment also creates a bulwark against feared efforts by the new administration to overreach by attempting to coerce local and state compliance with an anti-immigrant agenda. This proposed NEA language educates local administrators about what protection they can offer students, even in the face of ICE intimidation. 

They go low, we go local. 

From Noah Zatz’s spot-on piece, The Principle and Politics of Sanctuary:  

What to do? It is easy to feel paralyzed and powerless in the face of President-elect Trump’s announced intention to rain terror on immigrants and people of color with mass deportations, Muslim registration, racial profiling, and so much more. Start somewhere. For me, that has meant staring where I live, by attending my first local school board meeting. I’ve joined with other parents to make my small city’s schools into sanctuaries from federal immigration enforcement and other intrusions. It’s also meant starting where I work, joining with faculty, staff, and students to push similar policies at the university level. 

Sanctuary offers a simple moral idea that draws on rich and righteous histories. It connects us to the Underground Railroad for escaped slaves, the protection offered to Anne Frank and Schindler’s List, and the 1980s religious movement to welcome Central American refugees from Cold War conflicts. 

They go low, we go local. Whenever the social justice arms of our religious communities show up – be it the Catholic Worker or the human rights committee of a reform synagogue -- in South Gate or Selma, the light of God and the goodness of people ultimately bend the arc of justice towards peace -- but we’ve gotta work it. 

There’s an amazing group of organizers gathering on Facebook at “Our Future. The Organizers’ Roundtable.” Sign up now to join the greatest organizers in the country. Find your local page! 

Find a local organization working to protect the environment. For instance, I’ve been inspired by the successful local organizing in my new neck of the woods by Glendale’s VOICE (Volunteers Organized in Conserving the Environment).  

As 48 US mayors say in their November 22 letter to the President-elect

On November 8, American voters approved more than $200 billion in local measures, funded by their own local tax dollars, to improve quality of life and reduce carbon pollution. Seventy percent of voters in Los Angeles County, the car capital of the world, approved a $120 billion, multi-decade commitment to public transit. Seattle voters approved transit investments totaling $54 billion; Austin voters approved a record-setting $720 million mobility bond; Boston voters approved investment in affordable housing, parks, historic preservation and more. 

As President, you will have the power to expand and accelerate these local initiatives which the people resoundingly supported. We call upon you and the federal government you will lead to help cities leverage funds for the hundreds of billions of dollars in transit, energy, infrastructure and real estate development necessary to upgrade our infrastructure for the 21st century. We ask that you lead us in expanding the renewable energy sources we need to achieve energy security, address climate change and spark a new manufacturing, energy and construction boom in America. 

We ask that you help provide American businesses the certainty to invest through continued tax credits for electric vehicles, solar power, renewables and other clean technologies. And we ask that you shift to embrace the Paris Climate Agreement and make U.S. cities your partner in doing so. 

While we are prepared to forge ahead even in the absence of federal support, we know that if we stand united on this issue, we can make change that will resonate for generations. We have no choice and no room to doubt our resolve. The time for bold leadership and action is now. 

Sign up for the simple local app Nextdoor and connect with happenings in your community. 

Find your local Patch for local news! 

Order your local newspaper for home delivery -- or BUY an electronic subscription if you don’t need the feel of newsprint on your fingers. 

It’s all local and it’s all personal – I’ll sign up for a Muslim registry. I’ll tell the woman at the DIY store that she’s being rude when she says too loudly that she doesn’t understand a word the cashier is saying because she speaks with a different accent. I’ve got an entire clip of safety pins to wear! 

I ordered home delivery of the LA Times now that we’re back in town! 

A worthwhile read from the Nieman Reports, All Journalism is Local:  

A possible future for journalism is more in the mold of grassroots organizing, where the newsroom becomes a sort of 21st century VFW hall, the hub of local activity. The current buzz is around audience acquisition through social media. What about audience acquisition through local physical presence, opening up potential trickles of revenue from events and other local activities? 

The danger of social media “audience acquisition” is that it repeats the mistakes of cable television, rendering us captive to celebrity, national news stories, and clickbait. Newsrooms as “civic reactors,” the beating heart of our communities, offers greater promise -- not to mention the skills of grassroots organizing are cousins to traditional news-gathering skills, rather than the alien skills of marketing and public relations. 

“Res publica” means, literally, the “real” people. It is up to us to make sure it is not the kind of “real” in reality television, but the kind of “real” you find at PTA meetings and traffic hearings.

I’m inspired to help organize a bit locally. I accepted a little freelance reporting job with the Crescenta Valley Weekly News, a vibrant, privately-owned local weekly newspaper. Enjoy my first byline: Holiday Happiness Found on Oak Circle Drive

They go low … we go local!

 

(Julie Butcher writes for CityWatch, is a retired union leader and is now enjoying her new La Crescenta home and her first grandchild. She can be reached at [email protected] or on her new blog ‘The Butcher Shop - No Bones about It.’) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

Raising Eyebrows: California Secessionists with Russian Ties

CAL WATCHDOG-The campaign to place California secession on the ballot next election year entered uncertain waters as news broke that its mastermind lives and works in a city in the center of Russia.  

“I immigrated to California, and I consider myself to be a Californian,” Louis Marinelli told The California Report from his Yekaterinburg apartment, KQED reported. “I wanted to handle some personal issues in my family, regarding immigration. My wife is from Russia. I’m here handling various personal issues. But at the same time, we have some political goals we can achieve while I’m here.” 

From founding to funding. 

Marinelli’s deep Russian ties, past and present, attracted attention as he took his current stay in the country as an opportunity to start work on a so-called “embassy of California” in Moscow. That undertaking, as Bloomberg noted, has the aid of “a vehemently anti-American group supported by the Kremlin” — the Anti-Globalist Movement of Russia — which Marinelli said supports California’s right to self-determination. “Talking to the Russian tabloid Life, Alexander Ionov, the president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, said that the embassy would serve as a hub to boost tourism and foster cultural and economic exchanges between the Golden State and Russia,” Heat Street reported.  

“We may disagree on several issues, but if we have common ground on one issue, why shouldn’t we have a dialogue?” Marinelli asked Bloomberg. But he has already begun to hit against the limits of that rhetoric.  

“Marinelli’s Russian connection has created a schism, if not quite the Great Schism, in the breakaway movement with members of the California National Party, a group that is formally affiliated with Yes California but has publicly disavowed Marinelli as a Russian marionette. Silicon Valley investor and Hyperloop co-founder Shervin Pishevar briefly became another standard-bearer of ‘Calexit,’ as it come to be known, threatening Marinelli’s virtual monopoly on the cause, but backed off, saying he didn’t really support secession.” 

The Trump factor. 

But crisis management was not the only reason Yes California accelerated its timetable to land their initiative on the California ballot in 2018. (According to the prospective measure’s language, voting yes “would trigger a special election the following March in which residents would decide if ‘California should become a free, sovereign and independent country,'” as the San Jose Mercury News observed.) Donald Trump’s election provoked a degree of dismay among some California Democrats intense enough to suggest a secessionist movement could take advantage while passions remained relatively hot. 

“It wasn’t until Trump’s victory last month that mainstream U.S. outlets -- including the Sacramento Bee, the LA Times and NPR -- covered the group more seriously,” KQED noted. “The story got new legs because several influential tech figures took to Twitter to voice their desire for California to leave the union after Trump’s election. Among them was Shervin Pishevar, an investor and co-founder of Hyperloop One, a startup promoting a futuristic new transportation technology.” 

Although no elected officials have promoted the breakaway effort, tempers have flared around the idea that a Trump presidency would try to stymie state Democrats, seen by many party members nationwide as a progressive vanguard on social and environmental issues. 

In a recent San Francisco speech before the American Geophysical Union, for instance, Gov. Jerry Brown vowed to press ahead with the state’s current climate policy regardless of what happens in Washington. “If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite,” he said, according to the IBTimes. “We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers and we’re ready to fight.” 

Rough going. 

Despite the flurry of attention from Russia, Marinelli’s personal political reach in California was likely to remain limited. To date, his track record has been spotty. He “filed a handful of statewide ballot measures related to secession in 2015 and none qualified for the November ballot,” the Sacramento Bee recalled.  “He also waged an unsuccessful campaign to represent state Assembly District 80, but didn’t advance beyond the June primary.”

 

(James Poulos blogs for CalWatchdog.com where this perspective was originally posted.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

Neighborhood Council Highlighted In LA Times Pay-to-Play Expose

EXPOSES NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL INFLUENCE—(Editor’s note: We decided to re-post this possible pay-for-play eye-opener for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a CityWatch kind of story and we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss it. We think that the flow of big dollars from developers to elected officials voting on their projects is a serious ethics violation and should be a violation of the law. And finally, we think the attention paid by Mr. Caruso to the Mid City Community Council was at the least interesting if not extraordinary. Neighborhood councils celebrate the 15th anniversary of certification of LA’s council this month. NCs have come a long way.)

Real estate developer Rick Caruso has been a reliable benefactor at Los Angeles City Hall, giving donations big and small to the city’s politicians and their pet causes.

Caruso, known for the Grove and other shopping destinations, has donated to all but one of the city’s 17 elected officials. His charitable foundation provided $125,000 to a nonprofit set up by Mayor Eric Garcetti. And his companies recently gave $200,000 to the campaign for Measure M, the sales tax hike Garcetti championed in last month’s election.

Add in money from his employees and his family members, and Caruso-affiliated donors have provided more than $476,000 to the city’s elected officials and their initiatives over the past five years, according to contribution reports.

Now, Caruso wants Garcetti and the council to approve a 20-story residential tower on La Cienega Boulevard, on a site where new buildings are currently limited to a height of 45 feet. Opponents of the project view Caruso’s donations with alarm, saying the steady stream of contributions has undermined their confidence in the city’s planning process.

“I'm sorry, but that’s a lot of money,” said Keith Nakata, a foe of the project who lives roughly five blocks from the site. “That is obviously something that the community cannot compete against.” (Read the rest.)   

-cw

Can the Cheap Perfume of “Approve-with-Conditions” Mask the Stink of Bad Planning?

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-In previous CityWatch articles I have spelled out the many long-term and harmful consequences of bad planning. Yet, in Los Angeles truly bad city planning just keeps rolling along, in particular, repeated cases of City Hall decision-makers overriding legally adopted Community Plans and local zoning through speculator-friendly spot-zoning and spot-planning enabled by campaign contributions. 

While we wait for evidence that this bothers the decision makers, it clearly bothers the engaged public. In fact, this is why Los Angeles has had so many planning-related voter initiatives, lawsuits, and Sacramento legislative directives over the past half century. Furthermore, this push back against bad planning and the Big Real Estate interests behind it will continue as long as “legal corruption” is rooted out. 

To cite but one example, Los Angeles voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition U in 1986 to limit the size of commercial buildings. Now, 30 years later, in March 2017, they can bring Proposition U into the 21st Century through Proposition S, also called the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. As frequently discussed at CityWatch, Proposition S will stop most spot-zoning and spot-planning, while also jumpstarting the update of LA’s General Plan, including the 35 Community Plans. 

An excellent example of spot-zoning and spot-planning in the cross hairs of Proposition S is close to where I live. It is the Caruso Affiliated project at 333 S. LaCienega, the site of former Loehman’s discount clothing store. Located at the “Bermuda Triangle” intersection of San Vicente Boulevard, Third Street, Burton Way, and LaCienega, it is one block south of the Beverly Center and one block west of the Cedar-Sinai Hospital. Now under appeal to the City Council, the City Planning Commission has already awarded this project six separate zoning and planning approvals.  If sustained, these bennies would permit the construction of a 240 foot high rise luxury apartment tower on a parcel whose current height limit is 45 feet. While height is certainly a problem with this project, it also has other serious problems that I highlight later in this article. 

But, first let’s examine how this malodorous project bulldozed its way through a City Council office, a neighborhood council, the Department of City Planning, and the City Planning Commission. Part of the answer is heavy lobbying, as described in another CityWatch article, “How Big Real Estate Manufactures Consent.”  But, a second part of their formula is masking the bad planning that pervades this and similar projects with the cheap perfume of “conditions of approval.” In this case, there are nearly 40 pages of approval conditions all neatly folded into this project’s two determinations.  

This is standard practice since nearly every case that the Department of City Planning handles, including those that the City Council later approves through lot specific ordinances, is weighted down by pages of conditions. Having written some of these determinations and read far more, I now believe that their real purpose of these many promises is to gain the support of community groups who do not like specific projects.   

Flaws in Conditions of Approval: There are, however, eight serious flaws in this Big Real Estate tactic, even though it often succeeds in convincing local planning light weights to begrudgingly support a project. 

1)  The conditions cost the developers very little. They are a tiny fraction of the budget for a major project, and I suspect some conditions also qualify as tax credits or deductions, including those that were added as promises to community groups. 

2)  Most of the conditions mitigate a project’s construction and operational impacts. They are, therefore, not true community benefits. Instead their ostensible role is to buy off opponents to controversial projects. 

3)  A project’s developer and his/her tenants also benefit from conditions to offer on and off-site improvements, such as tree planting.  The improvements spruce up projects, and therefore make them more appealing to potential tenants. 

4)  Some conditioned improvements, such as quasi-public fountains, can be used to offset L.A.’s one percent Public Arts fee.  

5)  Off-site improvements promised through conditions are minimal. They do not address the real infrastructure deficits in most of Los Angeles, including but hardly limited to sub-standard street trees, crumbling sidewalks, missing ADA curb cuts, dangerous pot-holes, thirsty grass in yards and parks, decrepit alleys, dangerous overhead wires, unsightly supergraphics and billboards, lax code enforcement, old and failing water mains, missing bicycle infrastructure, slow internet, and unreliable electric power. 

6) The only conditions that City Planning actually monitors are contained in alcohol permits (CUB’s). As for more powerful discretionary actions adopted through City Council ordinances -- such as Zone Changes and General Plan Amendments -- City Planning has no monitoring staff or procedures. 

7)  The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) also does not have any proactive procedures for enforcing these hundreds of conditions for hundreds of cases.  Like all code violations, it is up to local communities to submit complaints that approval conditions have not been complied with. But, as many Angelinos have slowly learned, these complaints are frequently ignored. In fact, this is why experienced residents resort to City Council interventions in order to get LADBS to finally move on code violations. 

8) Once a building is permitted and completed, there are no consequences for unmet conditions, such on and off-site improvements. In Los Angeles, buildings are not partially or wholly demolished when they fail to meet the building code, zoning code, or compliance with the conditions imposed on all discretionary zoning and planning actions. 

Considering these eight gaping loopholes, my conclusion is that the real purpose of conditions of approval is to assuage community opponents by offering mitigation to their complaints about major projects. It is to get them to approve an otherwise bad project when measured against legally adopted General Plan elements, Height Districts, and zones. 

In my next City Watch column, I will address explain why projects like 333 S. LaCienega are truly awful city planning. For now suffice it to say the following: 

  • It sets an ominous precedent for future General Plan Amendments, Zone Changes, and Height District Changes.  If this project is successful, similar requests to build other new high-rise luxury projects in this area will methodically appear. 
  • It does not comply with the legally required findings that the project be consistent with the scale and character of the neighborhood. As for scale, the projects will be 240 feet high and have a Floor Area Ratio (i.e., mass) of 6.0 on a lot where the height is restricted to 45 feet and the mass of a building is limited to an FAR of 1.5. As for compatible character, the proposed tower has a nautical architectural style, similar to a cruise ship, while most of the surrounding residential buildings have Spanish Revival design features. 
  • It does not comply with the City Charter Section 555, which is clear that the City Council can adopt legislative actions, such as General Plan Amendments, “… provided that the part or area involved has significant social, economic or physical identity.” A parcel that is bequeathed spot-zoning because it allows a more lucrative project hardly has a distinctive and significant identify. 
  • It has not demonstrated that there is such a shortage of lots zone for luxury apartments in the Wilshire Community Plan area that the City Council should require adopted zone changes to meet this need. 
  • It purports to be a transit oriented project, but the nearest mass transit station – at Wilshire and LaCienega-- will be more than a half-mile from the tower, and the transit station will not open up until 2023. Furthermore, the proposed project has 24/7 on-call, chauffer driven luxury car service for all tenants, making it high unlikely that these high flyers will walk a half-mile to hop on the Purple Line subway to travel 
  • It is located at one of the most congested intersections in Los Angeles. Called the Bermuda Triangle, the site is the convergence point of San Vicente Boulevard, Third Street, LaCienega Boulevard, and Burton Way. No combination of street signs, signal lights, and traffic officers have ever managed to keep this intersection clear. 
  • It claims it needs large amounts of additional height and mass economic incentives to add new pedestrian oriented features, even though this part of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills has many pedestrian-oriented projects and corridors, with buildings that conform to plans and zones. 

 

(Dick Platkin is a veteran city planner. He reports on local planning issues for CityWatch, and he welcomes comments and questions at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

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