LOS ANGELES

GUEST WORDS, ELECTION 2016--After years of dysfunction from the billing fiasco to mismanagement of our precious water during the drought, Angelenos are understandably concerned about the failures of the Department of Water and Power. As such, this mishandled department is in serious need of real, meaningful and lasting reform. Here’s the problem. The status quo clearly isn’t working, but the proposed Los Angeles Charter Amendment RRR, a so-called “reform” measure, is in fact counterproductive and dangerous, making the utility less responsive, accountable and transparent to voters, and at the same time will increase the likelihood of corruption within the DWP. 

Although proponents of the misleading measure claim it would make the DWP more accountable and halt rate increases, the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead of bringing the real and transparent change we need, Charter Amendment RRR is in fact a power grab by DWP insiders that paves the way for deregulation of the nation’s largest municipal utility, nearly eliminating the oversight by ratepayers while giving enormous, unprecedented power to the DWP’s faceless and unelected bureaucrats. 

The suggested measure proposes to have the City Council and the Mayor virtually relinquish their oversight over the DWP’s Board of Commissioners and the department’s General Manager outside of approving a “strategic plan” every four years. Once the plan is approved, the DWP General Manager and Commissioners will be able to unilaterally implement rate hikes without any checks and balances from the City Council or the Mayor, an extraordinary power for any unelected official who isn’t held accountable to the voters. 

Charter Amendment RRR would also give the new seven member Board the authority to enter into a contract with any corporation to share in ownership, operation, and the maintenance of the facility for the generation, transformation, and transmission of electric energy for up to 30 years without notifying the city council or the Mayor. Additionally, the DWP Board would be able to approve multi-million dollar contracts without Council oversight. These disastrous changes to the charter would help open the door to deregulating the people’s owned utility, the DWP, by providing an unchecked path for massive privatized facilities. 

These proposals aren’t necessarily new, but they have proven to be destructive. Soon after the state’s energy industry deregulated about 15 years ago, cities throughout California began experiencing rate hikes, power shortages, and blackouts due to the cost cutting nature of private utilities like Southern California Edison and PG&E. However, the DWP was spared from the crisis because it did not opt into the state’s deregulation program and instead produced surplus energy during this time that helped the state and other municipalities. 

Passing RRR would repeat the state’s mistake and virtually guarantee that rates will rise and power outages will be more frequent. LA residents need to avoid this path. Instead, we must preserve the checks and balances in place to ensure that the nation’s largest municipal public utility is accountable to the residents that use its services. The way to accomplish this is to ensure that LA City Council and the Mayor maintain full, unhampered oversight over the DWP. 

Beyond rate hikes and contracts, Charter Amendment RRR also enables the DWP to opt out of the civil service system, which is a recipe for disaster. The system requires merit-based hiring and has assured women and people of color equal opportunity in applying for city jobs. It also prioritizes veterans and provides transparency to the public about hiring practices. Removing these requirements for DWP employees would eliminate vital protections against corruption that all other city agencies have in their employment process, and could lead to unethical, politicized hiring. 

Although the DWP certainly needs to be significantly overhauled and reformed, Charter Amendment RRR is a wrongheaded measure. It destroys existing checks and balances and puts residents at risk of rate hikes and shady contracts that will lead to deregulation, without genuine recourse. If we go down the path of deregulation, voters should expect more blackouts and brownouts in addition to greater rate hikes. 

Voters shouldn’t be fooled by the so-called DWP “reform” measure and elect to give their decision-making power to unelected bureaucrats. While DWP is in desperate need of major structural changes, this isn’t the change we need. These structural changes should be done by ordinance. A charter amendment is not the answer! That’s why I and many other former LA City Council members are urging voters to reject Charter Amendment RRR, the DWP power grab.

(Nathaniel N."Nate" Holden served four years in the California State Senate and 16 years on the Los Angeles City Council.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THE PLANNING REPORT INTERVIEW--Cecilia Estolano,  co-founder of Estolano LeSar Perez Advisors, advises public & private sector clients as well as foundations and urban stakeholders on how to build thriving, healthy and vibrant communities. Prior to this, Estolano both led the city of LA's Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA/LA) and practiced land-use law at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher. In this TPR interview, Estolano draws on her nationally recognized real estate and community engagement expertise to opine on the City of LA’s historically flawed planning and development process, and to diagnose the current policy landscape in Metro Los Angeles and state that inhibits the production of workforce housing. She also expands upon her personal mission to address inequitable economic development.

"Los Angeles is not a city that actually believes in planning. It doesn't respect community plans ... Comprehensive planning around a district or a community area is what it’s going to take to achieve our sustainability goals in Los Angeles." —Cecilia Estolano

As someone with nearly unequalled experience in inner-city housing and city building, what public policies—accepting the disappearance of redevelopment—are currently depressing the supply of new affordable housing?

Cecilia Estolano: Number one: We need a permanent source of money to help fill the gap for low-income housing, specifically.

Number two: We need a much easier process for doing infill housing. Folks have been talking about this for years; The Planning Report has certainly followed it.

I think one of the most exciting prospects right now is the state legislation that was just approved for accessory dwelling units (ADUs). It’s really the easiest and least painful way to increase our supply of workforce housing, and it might be a way to fill in that middle gap that nobody’s addressing right now.

Why wasn’t the production of more workforce and affordable housing addressed when Community Redevelopment Agencies (CRAs) dominated urban planning and reinvestment?

From the CRA’s perspective, we were trying to get our money out the door for low-income housing. Our mandate was to fill that gap, and we had a fantastic track record: We built something close to 30,000 units over the lifetime of the agency.

But now, with those sources gone, local government—and frankly, state government—have to be a lot more creative about the land-use strategies available to increase the supply of housing in the low-to-moderate-to-workforce levels.

That’s why you see legislation like the ADU bill coming out of the Legislature: because at some point, we have to get local government to move quickly on making it possible to do things like accessory dwelling units.

To the chagrin of affordable housing advocates and developers, much of the housing built in our metropolis since the 2008 economic collapse has been high-rise and expensive. What explains the paucity of affordable housing being built since CRAs were dissolved?   

It’s expensive to build in California, so if there are no subsidies and no mandate to build workforce or affordable housing, the market will go to high-end housing.

The entitlement process, particularly in the city of Los Angeles, is quite complex, and it requires a lot of predevelopment costs, lawyers, and folks at City Hall to help you lobby to get your project through. That adds a lot of cost, so to get your rate of return from your investors, you’re going to go to the luxury side.

Given the costs of LA’s entitlement process, why, in your opinion, has the city’s uniquely uncertain planning approval process not been reformed to offer more certainty—such as building by-right—to those wishing to build workforce and affordable housing?

Candidly, I don’t think there’s the will among the elected officials in the city of Los Angeles to take that seriously. This is not a city that actually believes in planning. It doesn’t respect community plans.

But Los Angeles is not the only city in the county of Los Angeles. Other cities and jurisdictions can and have led the way in showing how to facilitate the production of workforce-level housing.

I look, in some ways, to the county of Los Angeles. Regional Planning Director Richard Bruckner, and leadership on the Board of Supervisors, are looking at innovative things like getting a few model types of accessory dwelling units preapproved—so that if you used one of these set floor plans, you could get free approvals and not have to go through any kind of discretionary approval process. The county is right on board with trying to make it easier to generate these units.

That’s not the case in the city of Los Angeles, however. The city’s having a very difficult time getting out of the way of this source—notwithstanding Mayor Garcetti’s interest in piloting some of these approaches with the Innovation Team. It’s been unfortunate to watch the city of Los Angeles create roadblocks.

When you were the executive officer of the LA City redevelopment agency and Gail Goldberg was the city’s Director of Planning, you both collaborated to save industrial land and to update the city’s zoning and community plans. What have you learned since then about the challenges of land-use reform in the city of LA? 

It’s such a different landscape now.

When Gail proposed updating 10 community plans right out of the gate, we at the redevelopment agency actually provided the funding to ensure that the three plans in South Los Angeles—which had not been updated for 20+ years—would receive the same amount of attention as, say, Hollywood. But that was a different era, when we had more resources and more flexibility in the use of those resources.

There are still tools available for cities to use, but it takes some bold thinking. Some cities have looked at Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts or the Community Revitalization Investment Authority as potential sources of funding for things like housing, or even the LA River Revitalization. But I think what we need is a source of money for planning. 

Comprehensive planning around a district or a community area is what it’s going to take to achieve our sustainability goals in Los Angeles. In fact, those two tools can be used for this type of planning, which Gail and I were trying to do.

One example of a place where I think we need to apply this kind of thinking is the area right around Union Station. ELP Advisors is working on a feasibility plan for the Park 101 project, which would cap three blocks of the 101 Freeway as it goes through Downtown Los Angeles.

That investment would create an amazing amenity: parkland right in the middle of the city. It would also knit together the Historic Core, the Civic Center, and the largest transportation hub in the region.

As we look at that, we also have to look at other investments going on in the area, including the Union Station Master Plan; the eventual advent of high-speed rail; the Regional Connector; and private investment going on in Chinatown. Altogether, we can see that this is a district that needs to be comprehensively planned.

It might be a great place to implement an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District. We’re investing a lot in the public realm that will create value for private property owners. We should be able to capture that value and use the proceeds to fund benefits like affordable housing.

Let’s put that EIFD in place now and begin to do integrated planning among the county, the city, Metro, Caltrans—and together, make that one of the most sustainable portions of the region. We could pull that off—but it would require big thinking beyond just little fixes at the level of the corridor or the intersection.

I think people are ready for this vision. There’s interest at Metro, at the county and in the city. People are ready to think big again in Los Angeles, and we finally have some tools to do it. So let’s apply them in a way that addresses our need for housing of all types, new visions of sustainability, and new connections for bike and pedestrian modes of transportation.

This is the place to do it, and it could become a showcase for the region.

Could you elaborate on the contrasting approaches that local jurisdictions other than the city of LA have taken to encourage the building more housing—for example, in Santa Monica, Pasadena, or Culver City?

ELP serves as the executive director of the Westside Cities Council of Governments, so we have familiarity with the work happening in Santa Monica, Culver City, West Hollywood, and Beverly Hills. Those cities have had a very strong commitment to the production of affordable housing.

We went through a planning process with a team at the Westside Cities COG, and found that the No. 1 priority for those cities is to address the issue of homelessness. In a few days, our Board of Directors will get a presentation from the regional representative for the county’s homelessness initiative to see how the Westside cities, as a sub-region, might work to address homelessness issues. Some of those cities are already digging in. They’re working on rapid rehousing and vouchers. They want very practical solutions.

It’s certainly easier to work at a smaller scale than that of the city of Los Angeles, but there’s also a strong commitment to addressing the need for housing at all income scales, and not just at the luxury level.

But let’s also give the city of LA credit—particularly CAO Miguel Santana—in proposing Prop HHH as a way to fund the production of housing to accompany the county’s enhanced services effort. We’ve seen an unprecedented level of coordination and cooperation between the city and county on homelessness. That gives us the best hope for a comprehensive approach than we’ve seen in many years.

 What reforms need to happen in the city of LA, in your opinion, to meet and surpass what Santa Monica and West Hollywood are doing to encourage the building of more affordable housing?

It comes down to leadership and building a constituency for support for affordable housing policy. We just haven’t seen that in a consistent way over the last few years.

There have certainly been efforts to address the homelessness issue, but in terms of using any of the tools still available to the city related to affordable housing —even land-use tools—there’s been a pretty laggard response.

There’s also been talk about having a fee associated with new development. But it’s probably the third time in my career that I’ve seen the city of Los Angeles debate this, and I just don’t know what the prospects are for success.

 Clearly, a strong commitment to city planning has not interfered with Santa Monica and West Hollywood’s ability to encourage the building of affordable and workforce housing. Some critics have suggested that the motto in the city of LA seems to be: “We don’t need planning; planning gets in the way of building.” What’s your take on this argument?

 The issue is: What is your vision for the city? What is your vision for how it will look and what we expect of development in the city?

The cities we’ve mentioned on the Westside have a very clear vision. They have high expectations of the quality of life that they want to achieve and maintain in their cities, and they use planning to do that.

They go through a rigorous process of community planning with deep, extensive community engagement. These are difficult battles at the time. But once that plan has been adopted—precisely because of that rigorous process and community engagement, and because it’s a process that everyone has agreed on—they stick to it. That planning document becomes the guidepost, and city councilmembers defer to it.

That is not at all what happens in the city of Los Angeles. Here, there’s a much more politicized approach. Councilmembers zealously protect the extraordinary discretion that they have over how developments will move forward.

Los Angeles is a city that grew on real-estate speculation. It’s always been a source of quite a bit of power for councilmembers, and they haven’t been willing to give it up.

In an interview with The Planning Report last month, Bill Witte of Related—the largest developer of affordable housing in the region—dismissed the Build Better LA ballot measure, which is touted by labor as a solution to growing the supply and affordable housing. What are your thoughts on this ballot measure?

I think it’s a very Los Angeles approach to force this issue by putting it on the ballot.

It’s interesting to see labor unions—which are probably one of the strongest constituencies outside of developers—come together with some aspects of the business community and the affordable housing community to take this approach.

Certainly, it’s a response to the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative—the potential March ballot measure that would put a two-year moratorium on development in the way the city of Los Angeles does it.

It’s not nuanced. But it’s born out of a sense of desperation that if someone doesn’t move forward with an idea that’s better than zero growth, the council won’t come up with an alternative.

Of course, there’s desperation on both sides. There’s a sense that the city on its own just can’t find ways to use their planning tools effectively, and to respect those tools.

These initiatives are a reaction to generations of dysfunction in Los Angeles. We’ve had the greatest run-up, and one of the greatest real estate builds in the last few years, after one of the greatest crashes. Yet we’ve had no appreciable increase in the amount of affordable or workforce housing—because of complete paralysis by the city council and the mayor.

I am not a proponent of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative; I think it’s the absolutely wrong approach. But it certainly has focused the mind of the elected officials.

Mayor Garcetti has now proposed banning ex parte communications from the Planning Commission. Sadly, that would not have happened but for the threat of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative.

Cecilia, if someday you were to seek to be LA’s mayor, what would you do over the course of four years to create a planning process in the city that would bring relief to those who are exasperated?

You’d have to build a broad political movement that could transcend city council boundaries.

You’d have to spend a lot of time building an enduring coalition of labor, affordable housing advocates, and some of the reasonable elements of the development community, and make the case that Los Angeles cannot prosper without a balanced economy and a balanced residential population.

You’d have to outline a plan to construct, not just low-income housing, but workforce housing.

You’d have to combine regulatory reform, entitlement-processing reform, and a genuine community planning process—and it would have to be accelerated. We can’t take 10 or 15 years to do community plan updates; that’s exactly the problem we’re in right now.

I think you have to do all of the updates within five years. Otherwise, there’s no legitimacy to the process.

That may seem like a Herculean and impossible effort. But that is what it will take to tackle this. Otherwise, why would anyone lend any credibility to the city’s commitment to planning?

Before closing: TPR covered community planning and wealth-building in East LA in our last issue. You’ve been working on a bioscience hub in East LA; talk about what motivates you to be involved in this project. 

The vision for a bioscience or biomedical hub in the area has been there for at least 15 years. We looked at it when I was at the redevelopment agency. We combined two project areas—the county’s and the city’s—to create it, and then redevelopment went away. But we never lost that commitment.

There’s a clear concentration of uses in the area: the LAC+USC General Hospital, the Keck Medical Center, the USC Health Sciences Campus, Cal State LA, which has a terrific STEM program, and Grifols, which is an international biopharmaceutical company. Those are the makings of what ought to be an industry cluster.

During the recession, while private industry and other sectors were declining, biotech actually gained jobs. It has strength in this region, but it could be stronger. It’s a sector that could grow and create jobs—and more importantly, create an avenue of opportunity for folks on the Eastside.

We partnered with East LA College this year on a program called the Biotech Leaders Academy. We were very fortunate to get an LA2050 challenge grant to fund it. We placed 10 East LA College students in industry internships in the bioscience sector, many in startup companies. We also gave them training on entrepreneurship—what it takes to start a biotech company. This fundamentally transformed these students’ views of their careers and what they could do with the degrees they were attaining.

This is the nuts and bolts of equitable economic development: hitching the economic opportunity of disadvantaged communities to the rising tide of a growing industry from the start.

These companies now see East LA College and Cal State LA as sources of talent. They typically recruit from graduate programs at UCLA, USC, or Caltech. But after the program, employers told us that these students were focused, mature, and motivated—some of the best interns they’ve ever had—and that they would consider taking future interns from East LA College.

That is equitable economic development, and that’s the kind of work we need to continue to do if we want Los Angeles to thrive throughout the region and not just in pockets on the Westside.

(This article was posted originally at the excellent Planning Report. CityWatch is reposting it because The Planning Report does exceptional work and because few things affect the lives of Angelenos or dominate the city conversation as thoroughly and dramatically today as passionately debated planning future of Los Angeles.)

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EDITOR’S PICK--The powerful economic resurgence that has swept Southern California is on display almost everywhere here, visible in the construction cranes towering on the skyline and the gush of applications to build luxury hotels, shopping centers, high-rise condominiums and acres of apartment complexes from Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles.

But it can also be seen in a battle that has broken out about the fundamental nature of this distinctively low-lying and spread-out city. The conflict has pitted developers and some government officials against neighborhood organizations and preservationists. It is a debate about height and neighborhood character; the influence of big-money developers on City Hall; and, most of all, what Los Angeles should look like a generation from now.

This is a city that has long defied easy definition — at once urban, suburban and even rural — filled with people who live in homes with year-round gardens and open skies dotted by swaying palm trees, often blocks away from gritty boulevards, highways and clusters of office buildings. And it is no stranger to battles between entrenched neighborhood groups and well-financed developers seeing opportunity in a wealthy market; the slow-growth movement thrived here during the 1990s.

But the debate this time has reached a particularly pitched level, fueled by a severe shortage of affordable housing, an influx of people moving back into the city center and the perception that a Southern California city that once seemed to have unlimited space for growth has run out of track. “What’s that old cliché?” Mayor Eric M. Garcetti said in an interview. “The sprawl has hit the wall in LA” (Read the rest.) 

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THE SNUB RUB--Ah, Council District 5’s so-called representative, Paul Koretz (photo above right), is at it again. As the Daily News reports.

Jonathan Weiss published a letter two weeks ago in the Los Angeles Daily News slamming the councilman’s leadership on the Westwood Greenway, a planned 800-foot park in Koretz’s district.

The park, first proposed by Weiss in 2009, would rise near the Expo Line’s Westwood/Rancho Park stop.

Weiss’s letter outlined his support for Jesse Creed, Koretz’s opponent in next year’s race for City Council District 5, because Weiss believes Creed would be better at getting projects completed.

NC ELECTIONS RE-BOOT-We take issue with “Build Bridges Instead of Firewalls…”, Jay Handal’s CityWatch article that contains his NC Election Report. In it, he distorts the facts and offers little by way of practical solutions for future elections. 

Issues with the voting process are not the fault of the Neighborhood Councils (NC) or their Bylaws, but of the dictates delivered by the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE). Much of what has been outlined disregards the real issues facing NCs and their relationship with DONE. Neighborhood Councils are the bridges for the stakeholders to the City and DONE has become the firewall. 

The Los Angeles City Charter (Charter Section 900) in 1999 intended “to promote more citizen participation in government and make government more responsive to local needs….” The purpose of the Neighborhood Council System is to bring self-governance to the local level and engage stakeholders in that process. But standardization is the bane of NCs as it limits their individuality. Some NCs are round pegs and some NCs are square holes. This is hard for the bureaucrats to understand. Basically, NCs are like individual states in our country and are unique within themselves; no two states have the same election requirements or voting laws. NCs must have this same autonomy over their bylaws and elections. 

Since the elections were taken away from the NCs, problems have increased exponentially. Every election cycle has been run differently with changes to election procedures, election dates and forced requirements that do not always comply with individual NCs’ Bylaws. Originally, NCs ran their own elections under the direction of DONE. Then they were given to the City Clerk. Then they were given back to DONE and the City Clerk, which is where we stand today. It is time for the experimenting to end. Stakeholders deserve better. DONE and the City Clerk are supposed to be the support for the NCs, not the master. 

Handal misses the point when discussing the individual NCs’ Bylaws and their attempts to limit or exclude certain stakeholders within their districts. All NCs adhere to the definition of a stakeholder: “A ‘stakeholder’ shall be defined as those who live, work, or own real property in the neighborhood and also those who declare a stake in the neighborhood as a community interest stakeholder….” NCs may have different criteria for specific seats or categories on their board but no one is excluded, including non-citizens, the homeless, or the village gadfly. What works in Sunland-Tujunga or Studio City or San Pedro, may not work in Westwood or Chatsworth or Encino. One size does not fit all.

As far as the online voting debacle is concerned, California State Law prohibits electronic or online voting statewide, yet it was deemed by the powers-that-be in the City of Los Angeles that this does not apply to NC elections. The law applies to City elections, County elections, and State elections so why is a City government entity which receives taxpayer dollars excluded? 

DONE courted the NCs to get them to approve online voting. In order to enlist the services of Everyone Counts, DONE reported they needed 35 participating NCs to cover the costs. They achieved that number but in the process gave wrong and misleading information to the NCs. None were advised that documentation requirements for online voters was not advised by the City Clerk. 

The Studio City NC, for example, voted for online voting but added the documentation requirement out of fear of potential voter fraud issues with a new, experimental online voting system. Their fears were well-founded but for different reasons. Other NCs faced similar problems. A major issue with online voting was the impossibility of doing election verification after the election. No actual ballots were kept for the online votes and no final tally that reconciled the ballot count issued. Contrary to Handal’s calling the online voting a success, it was a huge failure and most NCs that participated would not do it again. 

What faith can anyone have in an election outcome if it cannot be verified, especially when there are challenges of voter fraud? 

Many NCs that used online voting had a decrease in voters compared to previous elections. Much of this is attributable to the difficulty of registering and voting online, disenfranchising the stakeholders. Some then came to the polls to vote but many did not. The actual figures do not exist, or DONE has not released them.

Duplicate voting was not the major issue surrounding the elections, whether online or at the polls. In at least two elections, Studio City and Sunland-Tujunga, these NCs’ specific documentation requirements and the proper completion of the voter registrations, were not followed. DONE enabled this lapse in protocol and tried to blame the NCs for their documentation requirements being too complicated. Election Day was not the time to make this allegation, particularly to complaining stakeholders. As far as it being easier to vote for president than in a NC election, it is important to remember that you must be registered in advance to vote in all City, County, State and Federal elections and you can only vote in the district in which you live. NC stakeholders do not have to live in their district, and can vote in as many NC elections for which they may qualify. In other words, it’s apples to oranges. 

Another major issue is the misguided rules and enforcement of election challenges. Seamless is hardly the adjective that applies. There were no clear-cut guidelines and no specific election challenge panel(s) established. DONE relied on Regional Grievance Panels which were not really applicable. The rules fluctuated, and there was no transparency in the process. Challenges were dismissed without explanation and by an unknown entity. A specific case-in-point was the deplorable handling of the Studio City NC challenges and the reversal of an “unappealable” ruling. DONE maketh the rules and DONE breaketh the rules. 

Due to the flawed elections, these motions by Councilmember Paul Krekorian are pending before the Los Angeles City Council:

File Number 04-1935-S1 motion (Krekorian-Wesson, Jr.) – instructed the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) to report on improving the voting environment for future elections and on the actions that DONE intends to take to train staff, engage stakeholders to create uniform policies across all neighborhood councils, and insure a safe environment for voters free of electioneering. 

File Number 15-1022-S2 motion (Krekorian-Wesson, Jr.) – instructed the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) to cease the implementation of the online voting system for future elections until DONE completes a report with information about the experience of online voting for candidates, voters, staff and other stakeholders and on the actions that DONE intends to take to improve the implementation process, outreach, training, data security, and other processes. 

There is much more that can be discussed but we will leave that for another day. In the interest of brevity, we have chosen to offer our experiences on the most serious issues addressed in Handal’s election report. In conclusion, if DONE really wants to empower LA, it should engage with the NCs before issuing new rules or changing the rules. DONE’s sole role should be to provide support to the NCs in building the bridges to empower LA.

(Lisa Sarkin is the current past President of the Studio City Neighborhood Council and has participated in the Neighborhood Council System since 2005. Judy Price is a past President of the Greater Valley Glen [Neighborhood] Council and has participated in the Neighborhood Council system since its inception.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

POLITICS--Not many politicians have risen as fast as Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego. She just scored the 35th spot on Politco Magazine’s annual list of the Top 50 politicians in America, its “guide to the thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2016.” She’s listed as “The progressive ideas lab.” 

“If states are the laboratories of democracy, then Lorena Gonzalez might be the nation’s most ambitious progressive scientist,” Politico enthuses. “After decades of lurching from crisis to crisis, California has emerged as a test case in how progressive government can work. And since 2013, Gonzalez, an assemblywoman who represents the state’s southernmost district, has become the brain trust for California’s most ambitious policy ideas – in the process, mobilizing liberals across the country too.

Her polices: The “Motor Voter” law for voter registration. Co-authoring the rise in the state minimum wage to $15 an hour. [The nation’s strictest law aimed at closing the gender pay gap, as well as proposing a bill this year to expand overtime for farmworkers. But it’s Gonzalez’s trailblazing advocacy of mandatory paid sick leave that could make the biggest difference nationwide.”

And let’s not forget the former cheerleader’s bill that designated part-time cheerleaders as full-time employees earning full-time benefits. Rah Rah Rah! Cis Boom Bah!

Except that all the economic policies impose higher costs for hiring people. As you learn in Economics 101, if the price of something rises, demand goes down. So the demand for workers will go down, raising unemployment.

But in politics, being lucky counts more than being right. And these policies occur as the country’s economy is growing, albeit at a slow pace. And in California, Silicon Valley’s extraordinary growth is paying for the higher cost of state government.

But the growth largely is in stock and real estate values, which artificially are pumped up because of the Federal Reserve’s zero-interest-rate policy, or ZIRP, now in its eighth year. When that ends, which might be next year, the economy will contract as it did in 2007-08. California’s unemployment rate will rise back to 10 percent – or higher, thanks to the new Gonzalez legislation.

And state deficits will soar back above $20 billion a year, despite (or because of) the two massive tax increases on this November’s ballot, which likely will pass. They are Proposition 55, $7 billion on those making incomes over $250,000 a year, which number actually puts one in the middle-class in California, because it’s already so expensive to live here. (This shocks folks from other states, but it’s true. What’s left after paying sky-high state taxes and a $4,000 monthly mortgage payment on a dinky home?)

And Proposition 56 ignites taxes $2 a pack, primarily on poor people, about the only ones left who smoke here. It also will boost a larger black market to fund terrorists.

But nobody will blame a mere state legislator for any of those disasters. The politicians at the top will get blamed. So, if a massive recession hits, it will be Gonzalez’ hour.

Her rivals: As the lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom will get much of the blame, even though his influence in that position is less significant than Jerry Brown’s dog, Colusa. Treasurer John Chiang, the other announced candidate for governor, will be hit with less blame, especially because of his reputation for frugality; but he’s still part of the state bureaucracy. And Antonio Villaraigosa’s mayoralty of Los Angeles (2005-13) is not remembered with fondness, as the latter part coincided with the Great Recession and the great city’s near bankruptcy.

Republicans, of course, are out of the running for statewide offices.

Voters also seek a fresh, cheery face. Gonzalez is a kind of Democratic Ronald Reagan, who actually was a Democrat the first part of his life. Add to that Democrats’ desire to advance women (see: Hillary Clinton, and the California Senate race) and Latinos/Latinas, and Gonzalez’ candidacy for governor seems inevitable.

(John Seiler is a former editorial writer at the Orange County Register. He is a veteran California journalist and can be reached at The Seiler Report. This piece was posted most recently at Fox and Hounds.) 

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CHARTER WARS-Oh, edu-friends! Sometimes I can hardly keep a straight face at the forces trying to destroy public education. So, this time, I didn't even try. I hope you'll laugh, too. 

I wish you could have been in LA LA Land with me last weekend! I made a video for you in case you missed the charter rally in the valley! 

Now that headlines from across the nation, of the NAACP, Black Lives Matter, the Network for Public Education, and the ACLU have all made clear—and John Oliver made hilarious—that the charter emperor has no clothes, the California charter lobby took its carnival to its favorite corporate reform playground, Los Angeles. Pacoima to be exact. The last bastion of that little inconvenience of democracy, the largest school district in the country that still holds school board elections, LAUSD. 

Edu-friends, I thought I had stumbled into a Trump rally. It really made me feel like these folks are our only chance at making education great again. 

“When I say ‘parent’ you say ‘power’!” Corporate reform champion and LAUSD board member Monica Garcia shouted. 

There were t-shirts with catchy phrases like “Fierce Learner”. Although I don’t know who let the guy slip in with an off-message t-shirt that read, “Public education is not for sale.” Ha! 

There were t-shirts with metaphors like Phoenix! I could almost smell the smoke rising from the ashes. Although, let’s face it, that might have been the fresh aroma of bull****. Some hoped you’d forget they were any metaphor at all. Could the M.I.T. t-shirts actually, officially, almost be connected to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology? Oh, who cares? Details, details! 

The point is, these kids have a great shot at getting into a school like that because they received extra credit for attending this rally! Several of them told me so. 

There were other ways to tell this was no ordinary rally. It was literally on—wait for it—AstroTurf! That’s right, edu-friends. Mere grass isn’t good enough for these disrupters! 

It was like a carnival! 

Just listen to this charter school principal shriek -- I mean lead -- the crowd. 

“You have MORE accountability for MORE student learning! Can we do it? YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN! SI, SE PUEDES [sic],” she cheered. 

Only 5% of California’s students attend charters, but this rally looked like the whole world had descended to celebrate charters! They boasted 3000 attendees. The cop I asked estimated 900 to 1000. 

So how did these folks get here? Nothing is left to chance by the charter lobby. They had buses! But it was billed as a march, so a march it will be! Buses dropped folks off three blocks away so they could march into the rally! 

And at the pilgrimage to Pacoima, the messianic theatrics did not disappoint. 

The charter principal tells the story of “throwaway schools” and trashes the idea of integration. 

And if you think anyone in LAUSD has the solution, you just don’t know how to let private enterprise capitalize on a good old fashioned crisis. I couldn’t find anyone in LAUSD there to set folks straight. 

Chan ends her dramatic oratory with the 1993 miracle of miracles, the charter school law. That’s the law that lets some students into a charter if they win the lottery. 

By the way, what rally could be complete without a drawing of its own? Just fill out the address card and give it to CCSA Families. Gotta capture your personal data somehow. 

And it’s going to take a lottery—or maybe that principal’s miracle of miracles—for our public school system to survive charter schools sucking them dry. 

What are our district leaders doing about this? What of LAUSD Board member Monica Ratliff, a headliner at the charter rally? 

“I believe that parents should have the right to choose the school that they think is best for their children: Charter schools, magnet schools, pilot schools, private schools, traditional public schools…” Ratliff said. 

And if you think a debate about opposing views was a good idea, think again. 

“Rhetoric that turns discussions about education into an ‘us against them’ narrative is never, ever helpful,” Ratliff finished. 

A narrative. So it seems that it’s all about a story. Is the story about re-segregation of schools? Or discriminatory enrollment practices? Or the bilking of millions of public dollars into private hands? 

Edu-friend, that rhetoric is never, ever helpful! Especially with a new campaign beyond LAUSD where the charter debate is just icky. In fact, maybe she’s right. Maybe the real problem is those of us who talk about the problem. 

But hey, politician’s speeches are nobody’s favorite part of a rally. And at this rally, EVERYBODY loves charters! In fact, they’ll pledge their allegiance to them, and that’s exactly what they did before boarding the buses to return home.

(Karen Wolfe is a public school parent, the Executive Director of PS Connect and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY--One of these Tuesdays the LA County Board of Supervisors plans to vote on whether to grant a 60-year lease to MDR Boat Central, L.P. and so remove the final obstacle to that company’s construction of an 80 ft. high automated dry stack boat storage facility which will extend 11,600 square ft. over the water. (Photo of proposed project above.) 

The vote should be continued until after the forthcoming election and subsequent installation of District 4’s next County Supervisor. It’s the people of District 4 who will be most directly affected by the project. 

The dry stack boat storage facility is an ineffective solution in search of a problem. As we reported in an earlier CityWatch piece, Marina del Rey doesn't happen to have a shortage of affordable dry stack facilities and boat slips; and contrary to what the Coastal Commissioners were led to believe (during a festival of ex parte meetings with the applicant,) there's only one operational, fully automated dry stack boat storage facility in the world. It's associated with the neighboring luxury condominium complex and does not even have the ability to store non-luxury sized boats. We could go on. 

Far more important are the voices of the people who use and love Dock 52. No one is more eloquent on the topic than one of the public speakers at a recent public hearing on the project. What follows are the words of Dr. Patrick O'Heffernan, edited only for space:  

“Dock 52 is more than a parking lot and a boat ramp. It is a community resource used by people from around the county. On any given Sunday morning you will see my club there with thirty or forty people. You will see other bike clubs, many who are African American, as is my club. You will see groups of people in buses and vans from Koreatown to go fishing. You will see church groups who use this as a stage for their fundraising. This is more than a parking lot. It is a community resource. 

“I did a little survey of my own and found that people come from at least five different congressional districts in Los Angeles to be here. They come from Menlo Park, from west Adams to east Compton to the Valley, all over. One of the reasons that they come here is this is the only free parking lot in the Marina and there are many, many families and many, many groups that get together to come down there with their children and can spend the day over on the bridge, over by the Ballona Creek fishing, teaching their children how to fish, and they won't do it if they had to pay for parking. 

When you look at social benefits of Dock 52 and begin to calculate those, and there are many of you that do that, you see that any benefits that might accrue to the 235 people that might possibly use some of the slips in this, some of the storage in this -- there is no question. It fails a cost benefit analysis for the same reason it fails the social benefits. The social benefits accrue to 200 people or less, depending or whether or not the facility is used and to the investors, but thousands of people use Dock 52 over the year. They use it for parking to go into the path. They use it for fishing. They use it for boat launching. Thousands of people use it, so when you balance that against the possible utility of 200 people with their boats, there is no question." 

(Eric Preven is a CityWatch contributor and a Studio City based writer-producer and public advocate for better transparency in local government. He was a candidate in the 2015 election for Los Angeles City Council, 2nd District. Joshua Preven is a CityWatch contributor and a teacher who lives in Los Angeles.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EASTSIDER-Every so often I forget that there is City Hall villainy over and beyond the Northeast’s very own trio of Jose Huizar, Gilbert Cedillo, and Mitch O’Farrell. Although led by Jose Huizar, as the Chair of the PLUM Committee, I do believe that this gang has approved enough mega-development to make the land subside by at least ten feet, and maybe even cause a shift in the tectonic plates. Heck, Eric Garcetti was a piker compared to these guys -- at least until he became Mayor and had more land to sell off. 

On the other hand, a CityWatch reader contacted me with yet a different dastardly bend over, kiss the developer and sell out the community mega-development act perpetrated by another one of our model-of-integrity City Council members -- this time, Mike Bonin (CD 11). Take a look at the picture of the Martin Expo Town Center (photo above.) It reminds me of some planetary headquarters of the evil empire in a Star Wars movie.

Located on Bundy and Olympic Blvd., this monster ought to permanently block the ability of anyone to get from downtown LA to the Westside and vice versa. Not to mention that the folks who live there won’t be able to get anywhere at all. Proponents note that it’s being built near the Expo Line extension, I suppose implying, yet again, that mass transit will eliminate the need for cars in Los Angeles. But I seem to remember that the Expo Line is already overburdened with riders, so maybe this project can create a first in LA: Metro gridlock on one of their routes. 

So back to Mr. Bonin, the replacement for Councilmember Bill Rosendahl. Bonin really makes some of us rue the untimely demise of his former boss: he isn’t a Bill Rosendahl. For those of you who remember the Airbnb wars, Mr. Bonin was the author of that fatuous statement that he supported “good short-term rentals” and opposed “bad short-term rentals.” What a guy. 

You might also remember Mr. Bonin for being the second to Herb Wesson’s original Airbnb motion, even while his constituents in Venice were being illegally evicted from their rent-controlled units that were replaced with Airbnb hotels. In fact, Councilmember Bonin is so beloved in Venice that some there are attempting get out of Los Angeles completely and form their own city, a move referred to as Vexit.  

Bonin’s Deal Hits a Bump 

So what’s new with Bonin’s dialing for dollars on the Martin Expo Town Center? 

Here are the details: In order to build the monster Martin Expo Town Center, the Council has to fiddle with the City’s General Plan to change the designation of the area from Light Manufacturing to General Commercial. This is not trivial, especially since the General Plan has not been changed for something like 20 years and going from a Cadillac dealership to a huge mixed-used mega-development is a huge change. We won’t even get into Community Plans. But there is a process that should be followed. 

On the same PLUM Committee agenda that lists the Martin Expo item is another item, 14-1719, regarding possible zone changes for a project in the Valley. In this case, it looks like they got it right by making the Planning Department, in conjunction with the City Attorney, prepare a report regarding possible zone change options. 

So why didn’t they do the same for the Martin Expo project? How about because Mr. Bonin has already partaken of the developer’s kool-aid? 

Tuesday, September 20, was the last day for Council action on the General Plan Amendment/Zone Change for the Martin Expo Town Center. If the Council didn’t act by then, it would be goodbye to whatever goodies Bonin stands to get. But it turns out that there was a big “boo boo” in the PLUM Agenda: Planning filed a new Addendum to the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) on the day of the PLUM meeting. This meant that the items were out of compliance with the Brown Act so the PLUM Committee wouldn’t be able to discuss or vote on the items. And the last day to act was coming up, which meant they wouldn’t be able to fix it by having the PLUM Committee re-agendize the item and get Council to act before September 20. 

For those who think I’m imagining things, the project was already set for the City Council meeting of Friday, September 16 -- obviously, assuming that the same PLUM Committee would have approved the project. 

But this is the City of Los Angeles, so there’s always a way to fix the error and still ram through the project. The “powers that be” had the PLUM Committee “waive consideration of item” and quickly put the project directly on the City Council agenda for September 20, the last day for action. And guess what the vote was? 

For a more detailed look at manipulation of the General Plan and planning in general in the City of Angels, take a look at Dick Platkin’s recent CityWatch articles. I particularly enjoyed, “Who’s In Charge at LA’s City Planning, the Queen of Hearts?”  

And why, pray tell, would a City Councilmember resort to such obviously disingenuous behavior, evading the very spirit of open government and the Brown Act? How about pushback from the affected communities that are refusing to roll over for this repurposing of a Cadillac dealership that will cause the wholesale destruction of their deeply affected neighborhoods? Irony intended. 

All you have to do is take a look at the coalition that organized to see why Mr. Bonin is trying to sneak this project by. It’s a pretty potent, activist set of folks -- the West of Westwood Homeowners Assn, West LA/Sawtelle Neighborhood Council, the Brentwood Homeowners Association and the Westwood South of Santa Monica Homeowners Association, to name a few. 

The Takeaway 

Sadly, Bonin is just a symptom of City Hall dysfunction. If you add up all of the recent actions by the City Council, I think the conclusion is inescapable. City Hall has contempt for our neighborhoods and Neighborhood Councils. Oh, they will have a Congress of Neighborhoods, and the elected officials will take pictures and hand out scrolls, but that’s it. Input not welcome. Charter reform? What Charter? 

In addition to our own experiences in Northeast LA, and the current Martin Expo Town Center contretemps of Mr. Bonin, here are a couple of other recent developments which demonstrate my point. 

First, as an exemplar of hubris, Council President Herb Wesson has announced that he will personally run Felipe Fuentes’ Council District (CD7) until next March when an election will take place. For those who missed this news item, Mr. Fuentes recently resigned his position to become a full time lobbyist in Sacramento. And no, I’m not making this up. 

But Herb says “not to worry” because he will not vote on items for Council District 7. In short, many of our best and vocal Neighborhood Councils in the Valley and foothill areas will be disenfranchised until we have results for next year’s election. Talk about taxation without representation. I thought Fuentes’ throwing the Sunland/Tujunga Neighborhood Council out of City offices was reprehensible. But, boy, did I underestimate Herb’s ability to manipulate the system. This one was so raw it even took the LA Times by surprise. 

Second, Mike Bonin’s next door neighbor, Joe Buscaino (CD15,) recently blew off the San Pedro Neighborhood Council to unilaterally do his own “homeless deal.” 

It’s really a shame. Mr. Buscaino, a former LAPD officer, got elected on an honest, open and transparent platform back in the day when he replaced Janice Hahn. 

I am at a loss to explain the behavior of our elected officials. Honest. We pay them close to $200,00 a year (the highest in the U.S.) They really don’t have to do much except collect a paycheck, and yet they all seem compelled to bend over for real estate developers and billboard companies, betraying their fiduciary obligations as public servants.

Anyhow, to end on a more positive note, there are a couple of things we can do. On the development end, sign up and vote for the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. Campaign Director Jill Stewart’s very good article about it is here.  Second, the Neighborhood Councils have to figure out how to get together and organize on their own, knowing that BONC, DONE and the City Attorney are not our friends. LANCC is the logical place, but to make that work we need a charismatic figure who is willing to step up and reinvigorate the NCs into being the check and balance on City Hall that Charter Reform envisioned. 

Any takers?

(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.

SPORTS POLITICS--You may have heard that the National Football League’s Rams are back in Los Angeles. The football is no doubt exciting, but the team’s presence has also elevated Southern California conversations about parking, congestion, transit, and traffic. 

Now through 2018, the Rams play home games at the Coliseum in Exposition Park, a stone’s throw from the Metro Expo Line. (see photo above) In the future, the Rams will be playing at a new stadium under construction in Inglewood. The new stadium, expected to be completed by 2019, will be just over a mile from Metro’s under-construction Crenshaw/LAX light rail line. 

At the Rams first regular season home game, the Los Angeles Times reported parking prices surging well over $100. Rather than proclaiming parking doom, the paper interviewed parking expert Don Shoup, explained “congestion pricing,” and declared high prices to be “good news for mass transit backers.” Metro’s The Source reported that 26 percent of Rams attendees, 21,000 of the 80,000, took transit to the game. This is nearly quadruple transit’s seven percent share of LA County commute trips. 

Though SBLA will offer some advice after the jump, first a couple of caveats: 

• First, kudos to Metro for already doing a good job managing football crowds. During pre-season games, Metro anticipated and managed serious crowds. Metro promoted transit to get to games, added signage, increased service on the Silver and Expo lines, and deployed staff to manage queues. According to a staff report, Metro transit carried 10,600 and 12,200 riders to the Rams preseason games, representing 13 and 20 percent of the attendance. 

• Second, crowding expectations (and transit promotion) should be realistic. Fans should expect post-game transit to be packed, as it is around the world when big events let out. The goal is crowded trains and buses full of fans. Too many riders is a nice problem to have – it makes transit operate in a more efficient, more cost-effective way. 

• Third, though these crowds are big, 20,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to 1.4 million weekday boardings systemwide. Football stadiums are important to serve, but they deliver up riders only a half-dozen or so Sunday afternoons a year. This tail should not wag the entire dog. Adding tons of service could mean tons of cost to Metro, given that transit rides are subsidized. It is important not to mortgage the system’s daily ridership to chase a massive infrequent bolus. Nonetheless, like CicLAvia, game day ridership can be a sort of gateway drug. Ride a bus to a Rams game today, then maybe ride a bus to work in the near future. 

The Source asked for suggestions on what Metro can do differently. SBLA has some ideas below. 

These are all relatively low cost programs, not infrastructure-intensive people-mover construction. None of these will carry tens of thousands of riders on day one, but expanding transportation options for game day can give people choices. Diverting a thousand fans here and a hundred fans there can take the edge off of the surge that occurs at the end of the game. In expanding options, it is important to benefit not only sports fans, but also provide ancillary benefits to the rest of Metro’s riders, and to the neighborhoods impacted by car-choked streets around the stadium. 

1. Promote Walking – From the Coliseum, it is a two mile walk to LA Trade Tech Blue Line station, or a three mile walk to downtown LA’s 7th and Metro Red Line station. Those walks will not be for everyone, but if a couple hundred fans walk, then they are healthier, happier and the Expo Line peak crowding is reduced. Perhaps Metro and the Rams (perhaps partnering with public health community groups like LA Walks) could form some sort of Rams Walking Club. The club could operate a sort of walking school bus that would have regularly scheduled walks on pre-arranged routes. Perhaps there could be incentives, such as Rams Walking Club caps or T-shirts, or even some kind of promotional event along the way. It is probably too much to ask that a Rams player might make a guest appearance along the way, but perhaps walks could be led by a costumed mascot giving out Rams pennants, so the walk becomes a sort of moving pep rally for the team. Walk trips could be logged and entered into a drawing for prizes. Even if walkers did not walk the entire way, organized walk trips could open additional much-lower-cost car parking, such as at or near LA Trade Tech College. 

• Extend downtown L.A. Metro Bike Share – Metro’s current bike-share system already extends to LA Trade Tech, two miles from the Coliseum. It may be worthwhile to add a bike-share hub near the stadium. This would serve to connect Rams fans to downtown LA where they could connect with extensive rail and bus networks there. This could relieve eastbound Expo Line crowding, as riders could bike to the Blue, Red or even Gold lines. Perhaps there is a way to set up a staffed temporary bike-share drop-off/pick-up area to test the idea. This has been done in other cities, including in New York City during their open streets events.

• Bike Parking – In San Francisco, the SF Bicycle Coalition runs valet bike parking for Giants baseball home games.  A similar arrangement could be made with an L.A. bicycle non-profit, such as the L.A. County Bicycle Coalition. Bikes would need a convenient parking area, but bike parking takes up a lot less space than car parking (a standard car parking space easily accommodates a dozen bikes)  so the space would not need to be massive. If the rams are able to provide space for free, a nominal parking charge (say $1-2 per bike) could cover staffing. It might make sense to combine private bike parking area and the public bike-share docking mentioned above.

• Shuttle Buses – Similar to Hollywood Bowl shuttles, Metro’s Dodger Stadium Express, and programs in other regions, Metro could operate fixed-route, potentially pre-paid shuttle service to the stadium. This service makes sense only if it does not require major subsidies. Better to improve existing rail and bus lines on game days than to create low ridership boutique new service.

• After-Game Activities at Exposition Park – One way to reduce peak traffic for transit (and for cars) is to get people to stick around after the game, and get home later. Metro and/or the Rams could work with Exposition Park museums to host special open house extended hours that coincide with game-end times. Perhaps there could be a rotating schedule between various museums to focus attendance to make it worthwhile. Alternately, there could be entertainment (a small concert, a mascot) for transit riders while they wait to board.

• Promote Taxi and Ride-Hail ride splitting – From comments, some transit riders looked at large lines for Expo and decided to take Lyft or Uber instead. Ride-hail cars contribute to traffic congestion around the stadium. To the extent that taxis and ride-hail companies can encourage fans to pile in and pool their rides and fill these vehicles, they will serve fans more efficiently and lessen their adverse impact on nearby streets. 

While these recommendations apply to Rams games, they also apply to other sports and other stadiums, and even concerts and other events. Even though the Rams will be moving in 2019, Exposition Park will continue to host large-scale events, including, soon, Major League Soccer.  Programs piloted now could be transposed to Inglewood in 2019. 

What do you think readers? Would these programs work? How do you think Metro should serve game day crowds?

(Joe Linton is the editor of StreetsblogLA ... where this perspective was first posted. He founded the LA River Ride, co-founded the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, worked in key early leadership roles at CicLAvia and C.I.C.L.E., served on the board of directors of Friends of the LA River, Southern California Streets Initiative, and LA Eco-Village.) Photo: Metro.

VOX POP-Last week, Los Angeles music fans were shocked to learn that development firm GPI Companies may demolish the Amoeba Music building and construct a glass-and-steel skyscraper in its place — effectively ending Amoeba’s existence in Hollywood. But that, in fact, wasn’t the whole story.

What reporters didn’t reveal is the exact name of the developer, its big-money ties to City Hall and its involvement in a controversial mega-project in North Hollywood — which may signal what lies ahead for Amoeba Music and how the politically connected developer will be a difficult adversary if Amoeba devotees try to save the cherished cultural treasure from destruction.

GPI Companies is another name for Goldstein Planting Investments, which is based in Los Angeles. According to its website, Goldstein Planting describes itself as “a real estate investment and development firm that pursues a targeted range of properties where value can be enhanced through repositioning, redevelopment, or increased operational efficiency.”

In other words, the developer doesn’t often buy a property and simply let it sit. Goldstein Planting does something with it — like build the kind of 20-story glass-and-steel skyscraper that may go up at 6400 Sunset Boulevard, where Amoeba Music currently stands. The developer bought the Amoeba Music building, located on a stretch of Sunset Boulevard that developers have been actively seeking to construct tall mega-projects, for $34 million in 2015.

Goldstein Planting would be a powerful, politically connected, deep-pocketed opponent for any grassroots movement trying to save the Amoeba Music building.

Since 2009, and especially within the past few years, the developer has spent at least $258,621 in high-priced lobbyists and campaign contributions to L.A. politicians, according to the city’s Ethics Commission. It’s a longtime method used by many development firms to get special favors from LA elected officials and bureaucrats — spread around big cash at City Hall.

The Amoeba Music building stands in the heart of City Council District 13, which is represented by Mitch O’Farrell. Council members have incredible power and influence at City Hall when it comes to planning and land-use policy in their individual districts, and developers know that all too well.

Since 2013, Goldstein Planting Investments and its representatives have given a sizable total of $7,700 to Councilman O’Farrell — a sure-fire way to grab a politician’s attention. O’Farrell received $3,500 in campaign contributions and $4,200 for his “legal defense fund.”

Goldstein Planting Investments and its representatives also contributed $4,700 to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s 2017 re-election campaign.

In total, according to the city’s Ethics Commission, Goldstein Planting Investments forked over an eye-popping $45,700 in campaign contributions to LA politicians since 2009 — 17 percent of which went to O’Farrell.

In addition, the developer has spent a total of $212,921 on high-priced, City Hall lobbyists, who then curry favor with LA politicians and bureaucrats. It’s the kind of insider access that everyday Angelenos can never afford to buy — and they shouldn’t need to.

But that’s how LA’s rigged and broken planning and land-use system works in favor of deep-pocketed developers like Goldstein Planting Investments.

Goldstein Planting Investments is currently teaming up with another wealthy developer, San Francisco-based Merlone Geier Partners, to build a controversial mega-project called NoHo West in a low-slung, middle-class neighborhood in North Hollywood.

The two developers stand to make a whopping $25.2 million in annual revenue from 642 luxury, rental units at the proposed site — and millions more from retail and office space. Community people have complained that the mega-project will overwhelm their neighborhood with traffic. Although Goldstein Planting and Merlone Geier stand to make hundreds of millions off NoHo West over the years, the developers have not offered substantive measures to mitigate the traffic.

LA Councilman Paul Krekorian, who represents North Hollywood, completely supports the mega-project — and has not used his power and influence to help the NoHo West-adjacent residents.

NoHo West is one of the largest mega-developments in the San Fernando Valley — and Los Angeles County. It signals the kind of gigantic projects Goldstein Planting may continue to build in the future — like replacing the Amoeba Music building, a vital, culturally important independent music and film store, with a corporate 20-story skyscraper.

The Los Angeles Times tried to play down the possible demolition of the Amoeba Music building, but judging from Goldstein Planting Investments’ track record, the developer has the political clout and business inclination to do exactly that. 

(Patrick Range McDonald writes for Preserve LA. Read more news and find out how you can participate: 2PreserveLA.org.) 

-cw

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-A reporter’s question about real estate trends in Los Angeles led me to ask and hopefully answer two questions. 

Q:  What do we mean by “development?”

A:  Development includes the entire built environment. It is not strictly private speculation in real estate projects by individual and institutional investors. 

Q:  Does Los Angeles need more “development?”

A:  LA absolutely needs more development, but it should be the right type of development. When it comes to private investment, density is not an issue, as long as it is it planned development. When it comes to public investment, development should also be linked to the City’s planning and budgeting processes. 

Now, the longer version: 

Development is a misleading term for all investment in the built environment. The term is intended to give private real estate speculation a veneer of respectability. The role of this euphemism is to camouflage the impetus of private development: speculative investment with a high rate or return regardless of adopted laws or neighborhood context. 

In contrast, when public investment creeps into view, whether water mains, fire stations, schools, or hundreds of other municipal facilities, “development” suddenly goes missing. Apparently the primacy of the public sector in planning, implementing, and maintaining this part of the built environment does not generate enough return on investment for the private sector and our public officials to consider these projects to also be “development.” 

Most of what they consider to be “development,” probably around 90 percent of private projects, straightforwardly complies with the City’s legally adopted zones, building codes, and General Plan land use designations. But, some of these projects are not consistent with zones and plans. They require a special review by the Department of City Planning.  Most of these cases are small, such as over-height fences. But a tiny fraction is over-sized mega-projects. They are straightforwardly illegal, and only the City Council can legalize them through special ordinances that change the underlying General Plan designation, zone, and/or height district. These legislative actions are the spot-zoning cases that the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative intends to stop. This Initiative would spell the end to parcel level projects that get approved because of slick lobbyists and lawyers, AstroTurf organizations, political contributions, and unverifiable promises of jobs, transit use, air pollution reductions, and off-site quasi-public improvements.

Los Angeles needs much more development: As for the developments that Los Angeles needs, investment in the city's public areas should be the highest priority. (Photo above: My Figueroa, a new public development, ready to break ground.) These developments make the most difference, especially for mitigating and adapting to climate change. This is where Los Angeles is most vulnerable, especially when compared to the unconvincing need for more luxury high-rise apartments serving occasional ultra-rich visitors. 

This is why Los Angeles needs many billions dollars in public development, and why it needs investment in projects that can dramatically change the character of the entire city. While the following list is hardly definitive, it should help you understand some of the investment that our elected officials should proactively prioritize, instead of unplanned, ad hoc mega-projects hawked by private investors wearing expensive tailored suits. 

In my list I have focused on public investments that are low hanging fruit and that will either slow climate change or help us adapt to climate impacts already underway. 

• Los Angeles urgently needs a drought tolerant urban forest in its public and private areas. Median strips, sidewalk planting areas, and parks are in dreadful shape, as well as most yards. Many of the city’s trees are dying because they are not drought tolerant, and in to many areas there are long, bare stretches without any trees at all. But, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and Culver City have all demonstrated that a drought tolerant urban forest is possible. Therefore, the only question is how to make trees, not real estate speculation, the priority of our elected officials. 

• In conjunction with a drought tolerant urban forest, Los Angeles urgently needs to reinstate and upgrade the LADWP program to replace lawns, whether in parkways, front yards, or back yards, with drought tolerant gardens.

• Decentralized rooftop solar is begging for a massive roll out because of LA’s sunny climate. It not only makes houses and businesses energy independent, but excess power flows back to the LADWP’s grid, reducing its need to burn highly polluting coal and natural gas in distant power plants. 

• Natural disasters, whether fires or earthquakes, are waiting to happen. Our vast network of overhead utility wires and aging underground water, gas, and sewage lines are highly vulnerable. It might be expensive, but LA needs an integrated public works program to underground above ground utilities, while replacing and upgrading the systems that are already undergrounded. If streetlights and gas lines are already buried, why not electricity and telecommunications? 

• METRO’s plans, now on the ballot through Measure M, will go a long way to accelerate the transition from private cars to many alternative transportation modes, including repairing LA’s beat up sidewalks to promote walking. But, why should these improvements depend on a regressive sales tax, when trillions have already been thrown down the rat holes of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya  – with no end in sight, regardless of who wins the Presidential election?

Of course, none of this public development happens by itself. We cannot depend on a private tycoon to knock on the door of your local Councilmember with an offer to repair miles of broken sidewalks on his dime. Instead, it requires a rigorous planning process, including taking LA’s old infrastructure and public services General Plan elements out of mothballs so they can be updated. It also requires an annual monitoring program, and finally it requires that these plans be integrated into the City’s annual budget. 

It might also require a few fiscal changes, such as fixing Proposition 13, reprioritizing the City’s budget, and reinstating many Federal urban housing and transportation programs that slowly bit the dust during and after the Vietnam War. The money is undoubtedly there, and our elected officials need to tap into it.

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

RANTZ & RAVEZ--Did the City of Los Angeles ever promise to provide you with efficient and timely service? 

Since preparing the RantZ and RaveZ articles, I have been on the lookout for stories that illustrate the functions of Los Angeles. Good and/or Bad. Unfortunately, I keep finding problems and very few positive items to illustrate to the readers of my column. 

A recent simple phone call to 311 is a prime example of the poor service the city provides taxpayers. 311 is the phone number to call in Los Angeles when you need to connect with a city department or elected official. It is an information service for LA City residents and business owners. 

On September 12, 2016, at 3:40 in the afternoon I phoned 311 attempting to obtain the phone number of an elected official’s valley office. I waited a total of 6 minutes until the operator answered the call. Six minutes waiting for the operator to simply answer the call and provide me with the contact number. I have no idea how many operators work the 311 system, but I do know that the city can do much better in serving the people who pay the taxes and fees in Los Angeles. 

The next time you need to connect with an LA City Dept., try using the 311 System and see how efficient it is for you. It is truly a RantZ this time around.

What the Hell is City Controller Ron Galperin doing to protect the city’s tax dollars? 

The LA Times has rated Mr. Galperin, the elected City Controller, as a “C in Leadership and Effectiveness.”With that type of rating by the most Liberal and bankrupt LA Times, what can we honestly expect from the elected official charged with maintaining Integrity, Honesty and Efficiency in all city operations? 

Shortly after being elected to the Controller’s Office, Mr. Galperin challenged the council approved agreement between the DWP and the Union representing the workers that provides funds for the safety and training of DWP employees. The matter was a major news story at the time and ended up in court. In the end, the union received all the funds they were due and Mr. Galprin ran back into his office and realized that he tackled a powerful union with a legitimate safety and training fund and lost the battle. The Controller spent huge sums of money and personnel on his crusade that fizzled like a balloon without helium. 

While Mr. Galperin counts the pebbles at the asphalt plant and cans of paint at the paint shop, the city is on track to continue losing millions of dollars in all types of lawsuits. Has the Controller done anything to stem the tide of millions of dollars lost in all the lawsuits? The simple answer is NO. The following list is an example of payouts in litigation against the city and the taxpayers of LA. These claims have all been paid while the Controller’s office has been run by Mr. Ron Galperin who truly lacks Leadership and Effectiveness.   

1. $ 23.7 Million paid out in a Dangerous Intersection Death.
2. $ 950,000 in two cases involving homeless people.
3. $ 1.1 Million in a homeless case.
4. $ 725,000 in legal fees to lawyers in a homeless case.
5. $ 450,000 settlement by USC Students.
6. $ 750,000 settlement with former City Official.
7. $ 50,000,000 to DWP Customers.
8. $ Millions to multiple LAPD Officers involved in ticket Quotas.
9. $ 5.9 Million to a group of officers in a ticket quota case.
10. $ 10 Million paid out in ticket quota cases.
11. $13 Million is attorney fees involved in DWP Case. 

While the cases mount and the city continues to pay millions upon millions of dollars in case after case, Mr. Galperin completes audit reports on the amount of overtime city employees are paid for the work they do. 

With a reduced work force in the past, it is often necessary to work overtime to get the job done. Instead of working with the numerous city departments engaged in city projects and programs, he spends his time spinning his wheels trying to justify his position. I hope someone comes around that will turn the Controller’s office into the watchdog it is designed to be. 

For the record, I am viewing various elected offices to possibly run for in the future. Could it be Neighborhood Council, Mayor, Controller, State Senator or Assemblyman? Time will tell. I will keep you informed as the days roll along. 

ZINE ELECTION CARD, Cont.

While most of you will agree that transportation in the Los Angeles region is totally and unquestionably at a gridlock stage most of the time, what is the answer to free up our local roads and freeways so we can drive our vehicles at or near the speed limit.   Freeway congestion is a fact of life on all Los Angeles Freeways. Take for example the 101 in the San Fernando Valley. It is listed as the most congested freeway in America. 

Then we have the 405 Freeway with the Billion plus Dollar improvements. If you ever have the opportunity to commute on the 405, you will find that it is at gridlock stage most days just like many of the freeways in the Los Angeles area. 

The solution coming from the elected officials and Cal Trans involves lots of money. More and money to correct a situation that is not going to change as long as Los Angeles and the cities in this region have growing populations. 

Glendale and every other city in the Los Angeles Area are planning more and more housing developments. Thousands of new residential units are in the planning, development and building stage all over Southern California. 

The answer from elected officials is naturally more money. More of your money to fix a problem that is out control and just getting worse. Transportation officials are attempting to have hundreds of thousands of Southern California motorists give up their cars and opt for public transportation. 

One thing is for sure, in our generation and into the future, we are not going to give up our cars like other cities in America that have had efficient and public transportation for years. The cities on the East Coast have very efficient public transportation that the public uses on a regular basis. It will not happen here in my lifetime or yours. 

A transit tax of ½ cent sales tax added to the already approved ½ sales tax that was added a few years ago will bring our sales tax to 9 ½ cents. This is only the beginning. There are additional taxes being proposed by the City and County of Los Angeles. I say enough with the pie in the sky solutions. 

I urge you to read the ballot measure on the ½ Cent Transportation Sales Tax and VOTE NO. We must send a message to City Hall and say NO NEW Taxes …Vote NO on Measure M.

(Dennis P. Zine is a 33-year member of the Los Angeles Police Department and former Vice-Chairman of the Elected Los Angeles City Charter Reform Commission, a 12-year member of the Los Angeles City Council and a current LAPD Reserve Officer who serves as a member of the Fugitive Warrant Detail assigned out of Gang and Narcotics Division. Disclosure: Zine was a candidate for City Controller last city election. He writes Rantz & Ravez for CityWatch. You can contact him at [email protected]. Mr. Zine’s views are his own and do not reflect the views of CityWatch.)

-cw

GELFAND’S WORLD--It's that time of year when the new neighborhood council members are trying to learn the ropes. Some do admirably well. Some not so much. The worst actors are the ones who think they already know everything. They figure they can get by on innate smarts without studying either the history of their organization or the nuts and bolts of parliamentary procedure. A committee meeting I attended the other evening demonstrated these points all too well. 

First a little glossary: When we take up a motion for discussion, it is said to be on the floor. When we decide to stop considering the motion, it goes back on the table. The use of such archaic sounding words is a matter of parliamentary history. These words may sound strange in the modern context, but they have the advantage that anywhere you go in the United States, you will be able to understand it when people use them. 

So there we were, sitting around the conference table. The group was discussing amending a motion which had been placed before us. The discussion wasn't very productive. We were all beginning to get the idea that we didn't have the information we needed to make a decision. The way to deal with this kind of problem is simply to remove the motion from consideration -- send it away to be taken up some other day, or possibly even forgotten entirely. 

This is what one of my colleagues did, by making a routine motion to Table the motion under consideration. (Technically speaking, the books refer to this as lay the motion on the table, but everybody understands Table as verbal shorthand.) This motion is not only routine, it is one of the most common of the ten or twelve that we ordinarily use. So what happened next? 

One of the newcomers objected to the motion to table, on the grounds that you couldn't do that while an amendment was being debated. Those of us who actually know something about parliamentary procedure just glanced at each other with raised eyebrows. I mean, you can search through the 700+ pages of Roberts Rules of Order Newly Revised, and you won't find a rule like that. In fact, numerous (much shorter) textbooks on how to use Roberts Rules discuss the use of the motion to Table under all sorts of conditions including the one I have just described. 

So once again, for the zillionth time, a committee had to deal with a time wasting mistake, due solely to the fact that a participant was ignorant of standard parliamentary procedure. As a result, we all had to wait while the rules were explained. 

This, at least, was an innocent mistake. It was dealt with by other members of the committee taking the newby to school, so to speak, on what was legal. 

There is another kind of rule misinterpretation that is more serious, because it goes to the question of whether the rights of all participants are being defended. 

If you read through Roberts Rules of Order carefully, you will begin to understand the basic philosophical principal that is implicit in the entire structure. All participants are equal. There is a presiding officer (whether we call him/her the chair or the president), but that person is simply first among equals. A chair who is properly trained will preside over a meeting with the intention of defending the rights of all participants. This principal is superior to the principal that the chair should also help the meeting to run efficiently. It's nice to do both, but violating peoples' rights to gain efficiency is not acceptable. 

No right is more fundamental than the right to be heard during a discussion. As parents say to children, "Everyone gets a turn, but you have to wait for your turn." That's the way it is supposed to be in a neighborhood council meeting -- everyone should be allowed a turn to speak. A neighborhood council is a government entity in which all participants are, by definition, equal. For some reason, a lot of elected governing board members fail to realize this truth. 

So there we were on another topic which also had engendered considerable discussion. One member of the committee apparently decided that he had heard enough debate and wanted it to stop. He said, "I call the question." What happened next is one of the most widespread errors that happen in meetings run under Roberts Rules. The effect, had it not been stopped by wiser heads, would have been to disenfranchise a number of other people who wanted to speak. 

The chair, new to the position, took the motion to call the question as having legal authority, and immediately called for the committee to vote on the item under discussion. This was ignorant, and wrong in many ways. The most egregious offense was that the call for an immediate vote infringed on the rights of several people who were intending to speak. Not only that, but some of us had not spoken on the issue at all up to that point. 

Let's review the legitimate use of this motion, which won't take long. 

The motion to call the question is referred to in the books as Call for the Previous Question, an archaism which translates as, "I move that we stop debate immediately and vote on the motion right now." It's a way for a supermajority of a board to deal with truly time-wasting conduct. Suppose your group has been debating a motion that clearly has strong majority support, but a couple of individuals are stalling by raising amendments, one after the other. Each amendment in turn has to be considered and then voted down. Eventually, most of the board and all of the audience realize that there is overwhelming support for the motion and what is transpiring is just a waste of time. 

It is at this point that the motion, "Mr Chairman, I call the question" is appropriate. But there is a complication here. The motion, if passed, would infringe on the rights of the two opposition members to continue to offer amendments. Ordinarily, their right to offer amendments is not limited. For this reason, the motion to call the question requires three things: 1) a second 2) an immediate vote on the motion without further debate and 3) a two-thirds vote of all those present and voting. 

Roberts Rules is pretty solid on protecting the rights of the minority. The requirement for a two-thirds vote is fairly widespread in the rules structure, mainly dealing with moments when the rights of some minority will be limited. 

For some reason, my neighborhood council has to reteach the rules for calling the question every year. Apparently there are other organizations which fail to teach its proper implementation. The misuse of the motion to call the question is to give any one person a veto power over other people speaking. 

Some people like to argue that Roberts Rules is inadequate because it allows one person who knows the rules to lord it over everyone else. I think this argument is completely backwards. As our committee meeting showed, it is the ignorance of the rules that wastes time and allows the ignorant to attempt to control matters inappropriately. The remedy is not to abandon Roberts Rules. The rules provide the level playing field we all like to talk about. The remedy is to teach the rules to your board. 

By the way, I put my time where my mouth is when it comes to Roberts Rules. I will come to your governing board and teach you how to make your meetings shorter and more efficient by the proper use of parliamentary procedure. It takes about 90 minutes.

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

NEWGEOGRAPHY--As its economy started to recover in 2010, progressives began to hail California as a kind of Scandinavia on the Pacific — a place where liberal programs also produce prosperity. The state’s recovery has won plaudits from such respected figures as The American Prospect’s Harold Meyerson and the New York Times’ Paul Krugman.

Gov. Jerry Brown, in Bill Maher’s assessment, “took a broken state and fixed it.” There’s a political lesson being injected here, as well, as blue organs like The New Yorker describe California as doing far better economically than nasty red-state Texas.

But if you take a look at long-term economic trends, or drive around the state with your eyes open, the picture is far less convincing. To be sure, since 2010 California’s job growth has outperformed the national average, propelled largely by the tech-driven Bay Area; its 14% employment expansion over the past six years is just a shade below Texas’. But dial back to 2001, and California’s job growth rate is 12%, less than half that of Texas’ 27%. With roughly 10 million fewer residents, Texas has created almost 2.8 million jobs since the turn of the millennium, compared to 2.0 million in California.

Even in the Bay Area, the picture is less than ideal. Since 2001, total employment in the San Francisco area has grown barely 12% compared to 52% in Austin, 37.8% in Dallas-Ft. Worth, 36.5% in Houston and 31.1% in San Antonio. Los Angeles, by far California’s largest metro area, scratched out pedestrian job growth of 10.3%, slightly above the national increase of 9.3% over that time span.

Remarkably, despite the recent tech boom, California’s employment growth in science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related fields (aka STEM) since 2001 is just 11%, compared to 25% in Texas. Both Austin and San Antonio have increased their STEM employment faster than the Bay Area while Los Angeles, California’s dominant urban region and one-time tech powerhouse, has achieved virtually no growth. This pattern also holds for the largest high-wage sector in the U.S., business and professional services.

Geographic Disparity: Relying On Facebook

“It’s not a California miracle, but really should be called a Silicon Valley miracle,” says Chapman University forecaster Jim Doti. “The rest of the state really isn’t doing well.”

This dependence on one region has its dangers. Silicon Valley has only recently topped its pre-dot-com boom jobs total, confirming the fundamental volatility of the tech sector. And there are clear signs of slowing, with layoffs increasing earlier in the year and more companies looking for space in less expensive, highly regulated areas.

Consolidation and dominance by a few giants like Google, Facebook, Apple threaten to make Silicon Valley less competitive and innovative, as promising start-ups are swallowed at an alarming rate. Even Sergei Brin, a co-founder of Google, recently suggested that start-ups would be better off launching somewhere else.

Housing poses perhaps the most existential threat to the Bay Area, particularly among millennials entering their 30s. Only 13% of San Franciscans could purchase the county’s median home at standard rates and term. For San Mateo, the number is 16%. No surprise that as many as one in three Bay Area residents are now contemplating an exit, according to an opinion poll this past spring.

Outside the Bay Area, where tech is weaker, the situation is much grimmer. In Orange County, the strongest Southern California economy, tech and information employment is lower today than in 2000. In Los Angeles, employment has declined in higher-wage sectors like tech, durable goods manufacturing and construction, to be replaced by lower-wage jobs in hospitality, health and education. A recent analysis by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. predicts this trend will continue for the foreseeable future.

Expanding Inequality

Perhaps nothing undermines the narrative of the California “comeback” more than the state’s rising inequality. A recent Pew study found California’s urban areas over-represented among the metro area where the middle class is shrinking most rapidly. California now is home of over 30%  of United States’ welfare recipients, and almost 25% of Californians are in poverty when the cost of living is factored in, the highest rate in the country.

Even in Silicon Valley, the share of the population in the middle class has dropped from 56% of all households to 45.7%, according to a recent report by the California Budget Center. Both the lower and upper income portions grew significantly; today lower-income residents represent 34.8% of the population compared to 19.5% affluent.

Such disparities are, if anything, greater in Los Angeles, where high rents and home prices, coupled with meager income growth, is deepening a potentially disastrous social divide. Renters in the L.A. metro area are paying 48% of their monthly income to keep a roof above their heads, one reason why the Los Angeles area is now the poorest big metro area in the country, according to American Community Survey data. Overall California is home to a remarkable 77 of the country’s 297 most “economically challenged” cities, based on levels of poverty and employment, according to a recent study; altogether these cities have a population of more than 12 million.

One critical sign of failure: As the “boom” has matured, the number of homeless has risen to 115,000, roughly 20% of the national total. They are found not only in infamous encampments such as downtown Los Angeles “skid row” or San Jose’s “the Jungle” but also more traditionally middle class areas as Pacific Palisades and through central parts of Orange County.

The Fiscal Crisis

California’s “comeback” has been bolstered by assertions that the state has returned fiscal health. True, California’s short-term budgetary issues have been somewhat relieved, largely due to soaring capital gains from the tech and high end real estate booms; just 5,745 taxpayers earning $5 million or more generated more than $10 billion of income taxes in 2013, or about 19% of the state’s total, according to state officials.

Most likely this state deficit will balloon once asset inflation deflates. Brown is already forecasting budget deficits as high as $4 billion by the time he leaves office in 2019. The Mercatus Center ranks California 44th out of the 50 states in terms of fiscal condition, 46th in long-run solvency and 47th in terms of cash needed to cover short-run liabilities.

Despite this, the public employee-dominated state government continues to increase spending, with outlays having grown dramatically since the 2011-12 fiscal year, averaging 7.8% per year growth. No surprise that Moody’s ranked California second from the bottom among the states in its preparedness to withstand the next recession. Brown’s own Department of Finance predicts that a recession of “average magnitude” would cut revenues by $55 billion.

The Cost Of The Climate Jihad

Relieved over concerns in the short run budget, the rise in revenues has provided a pretext for Brown to push his campaign to fight climate change to extremes. New legislation backed by the governor would impose more stringent regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, mandating a 40% cut from 1990 levels by 2030.

Brown has no qualms about the economic impact of his policies since he tends to prioritize one sin — greenhouse gas emissions — even above such things as alleviating poverty. Brown’s moves will, by themselves, have no demonstrable impact on climate change given California’s size, temperate climate and loss of industry, as one recent study found. Brown knows this: he’s counting on setting an example that other states and countries will follow. Perhaps less recognized, California’s efforts to reduce emissions may account for naught, since the industry and people who have moved elsewhere have simply taken their carbon footprint elsewhere, usually to places where climate and less stringent regulation allow for greater emissions.

California’s climate policies, however, are succeeding in further damaging the middle and working class. Environmental regulations, particularly a virtual ban on suburban homes, are driving housing prices up; mandates for renewables are doing the same for energy prices. This hits hardest at traditionally higher-paying blue-collar employment in housing, manufacturing, warehousing and even agriculture.

California’s climate agenda has accelerated the state’s continued bifurcation — by region, by race and ethnicity, and even by age. Of course the green non-profit advocacy groups and the media will celebrate California’s comeback as proof that strict regulations and high taxes work. They seem not to recognize that that human societies also need to be sustainable, something that California’s trajectory certainly seems unlikely to accomplish.

(Joel Kotkin is a R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism in Houston. His newest book is “The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us.” This was first posted at newgeography.com.)

-cw

REDISTRICTING POLITICS--Among California’s great strengths is that our local government offices are nonpartisan, unlike many states where partisan politics dominates at the local level. But once in a while aspects of our Progressive Era reforms come under attack; and that is the case with Senate Bill 958 currently on Gov. Brown’s desk. It is a bill he should veto with vigor.

SB 958 sounds like a good idea, it sets up a 14 person commission to redistrict the five-member Los Angeles Board of Supervisors at the next round of redistricting in 2021. The problem is that it would be done by a partisan panel; the commission the bill establishes would have to reflect the partisan make-up of Los Angeles County.

The commission would thus have to be made up of seven Democrats, reflecting the 52 percent Democratic registration in Los Angeles County, three Republicans, reflecting the 19 percent GOP registration and four non-partisan members for the 29 percent non-partisan and others.

But local government interests are not measured in partisan terms. In the 1990s a court case required Los Angeles to draw supervisor districts to unite its Latino neighborhoods, and that district is now represented by Latina Supervisor Hilda Solis. Los Angeles has an historical black district, represented by Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas that acknowledges the long African American role Los Angeles politics – California’s first black legislator was elected from South Central Los Angeles in 1918.

Two of the other districts are basically suburban, and the fifth district is centered in the many communities of West Los Angeles. This formula has worked well, and Los Angeles redistricting has not been a big issue in the past two redistrictings.

So SB 958 is a solution in search of a problem that does not exist, as the Los Angeles Supervisors pointed out to Gov. Brown in their letter asking him for a veto. The bill is also opposed by the Board of Supervisors in Kern and Riverside Counties, the Urban Counties of California, and the California State Association of Counties. Among the reasons for opposition from these local government bodies is that this bill is a camel’s nose under the tent to inject partisan politics into California local government, which thankfully has been free of it.

Partisan politics at the local level has historically been the source of political corruption, from Tammany Hall to the Chicago machine. Many political scientists believe partisan local races are a terrible idea, as the Texas experience shows.

More than a century ago, Texas developed what was called the “White Primary,” a primary election system where only white voters could participate. Texas justified this system by insisting the primary election was “private affair”, just simply nominating candidates of a political party.   In order for that to work, every election in Texas had to be run through a partisan primary.

Although the courts years ago threw out the White Primary as obviously discriminatory, the partisan primary structure has survived to this day. Republicans now totally control the state of Texas so all of its state and local office holders – including all justices to the Texas Supreme Court – must first be nominated in the Republican primary. Since 1994, the general election has been perfunctory; winning the Republican primary has been everything.

Judges and local government officials thus have every reason to fear they might lose the party primary, and this year a Supreme Court justice was opposed in the Republican primary as being “not Christian enough.”

Do we want this kind of a system in California? Of course not. Our politics have stayed cleaner than most states because we keep partisan politics out of local and judicial offices. SB 958 would interject partisan politics where it does not belong, and for no good reason. It should be vetoed.

KISSING THE LA WE LOVE GOOBYE--I have had the pleasure of living in Los Angeles for thirty-five years and have loved it, warts and all. I’ve been a great defender as I’ve travelled the country and world, confronting many others (especially New Yorkers) who have made LA bashing a sport. That is, until they all decided to move here. 

But something huge and ominous has taken hold recently that threatens our very way of life: rampant over-building and over-development. Where are the voices speaking out against this threat and outrage? 

Where is the counter-narrative to the party line coming from Mayor Garcetti and the rest of City Hall that densification is not only inevitable, but desirable? If you are a citizen of this city, do you, or any one you know, favor this onslaught? 

I have yet to talk to ONE Angelino who is happy about the traffic and congestion that has gone from bad to impossible in the last few years. Try going anywhere on the west side, anytime, and not finding complete gridlock. Or the 405. Or 101. Or West Hollywood and Beverly Grove. And don’t even mention the downtown core. 

And now Hollywood is on the brink of obliteration. If you haven’t been paying attention, the amount of building there is beyond the pale – ALL of which required spot zoning changes to allow these massive projects to go ahead, violating basic zoning statutes (statutes there to protect our neighborhoods and quality of life.) 

And that does not even begin to count the eight or so mega-projects on the books for Hollywood, including hideously over-scale projects like the one planned for Crossroads Of The World (near Sunset and Highland) where a developer is in the process of ramming through a billion dollar project of high rises (one well over 30 stories,) massive condo and hotel units, which can only result in permanent gridlock in Hollywood as well. 

Where is the outrage? Where is the voice of the people? Why do we not get a say? 

Why do we allow 15 overpaid City Council members to sell out our great city to greedy developers (for pathetically small campaign contributions at that) and power hungry union bosses? Talk about a good return on investment. When you see the paltry sums contributed, the developers and unions are dropping pennies to reap millions. 

We hear a constant drumbeat of “experts,” many of which have written Opinion pieces in the LA Times, LA Weekly and elsewhere, crow about the benefits of increased density. How is this beneficial and to whom?

We hear that we are all just NIMBYs if we don’t fall in line, and it’s just “wealthy homeowners” who want to stop the splendid progress. No, it is not. It is rank and file Angelenos like you and me who want to preserve some quality of life. 

We are told we must allow developers to drop these monstrosities into any neighborhood, cheat on parking requirements, and get a pass on CEQA safeguards. Again, why? What are the benefits for the four million of us who have lived here happily for years? We are told we must just hand over our city and quality of life and not raise a peep? 

Well, I say no. This is OUR city and it belongs to the people, not for-sale politicians, not greedy developers, not union bosses, and certainly not pointed-headed theorists. The fact is, whether it’s an airplane, Disneyland, or a city, there is a point when it has reached capacity and is FULL. 

And the core areas of Los Angeles are full. Period. 

We should encourage development in many other places but not in the core or what little quality of life we have left will be gone forever and our great city will just be another ghastly mega-tropolis with impossible pollution and traffic. Have you been to Mumbai or Mexico City or Bejing? Enough is enough. 

Get busy and start speaking out, and fast. 

Contact your City Council member and register your outrage. Support the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. Support groups like Fix the City and Coalition to Preserve LA, or start your own. Or kiss the LA we’ve loved for decades goodbye. Forever.

(Michael Wilson is a director and producer who has lived in Los Angeles for thirty-five years.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA-Californians may think we have a system of public education. But what we really have is a state system for rationing public education. 

I got a personal taste of this in the spring, when I took my five-year-old son to our local school district offices to determine his educational future. This being California, the determination was made not by a test of his abilities or an assessment of his educational needs. Instead, it was a lottery. A school administrator pulled names out of the hat to determine whether he would get one of 24 coveted spots in our elementary school’s new Mandarin language program. 

The month of September, early in a fresh academic calendar, is the time of year when we hear fine speeches and noble promises about how our state and its school districts are committed to doing the very best for every child. School superintendents and politicians often point to our state constitution’s commitment to universal education, which includes a funding requirement to deliver on that commitment. But when you experience how our schools operate, you learn quickly that such lofty, sweet sentiments and guarantees are so much Fang pi (a Mandarin approximation for cow dung). 

In California, when it comes down to who gets precious educational resources, schools as a matter of policy and law leave much to chance. 

We do this for two reasons: scarcity and avoidance. Educational resources here are scarce—there is simply more demand for schooling than the state’s wobbly budget system can accommodate. And so we’ve come to use lotteries and formulas, so that our officials can avoid the work of deciding who deserves resources, and so that the rest of us Californians can avoid reckoning with our collective failure to support public education. 

Yes, it’s true that K-12 (and community college) education is the top spending item in the state budget, but there is no area in which our school spending—which remains below the national average despite recent increases—meets education needs. 

In California, when it comes down to who gets precious educational resources, schools as a matter of policy and law leave much to chance. 

By all reliable accounts, there aren’t nearly enough good, experienced teachers in our schools. The state offers only 180 days of instruction (when research suggests there should be more than 200 days and more hours of instruction), and only provides half-day kindergarten. And the inadequacy of newer programs and schools offered by some districts in the name of educational choice only underscore the ongoing scarcity. There are simply not enough Advanced Placement classes, career-readiness programs, charters, magnets, or language immersions to meet the demand for high-quality options. 

There’s little hope of trying to do more to meet those needs. California long ago decoupled school funding from educational needs. Our school funding formulas, known collectively as Prop 98, are baked into the state constitution, and are driven by tax revenues, the budget, and income growth, not academic needs. Effectively, Prop 98 guarantees only a portion—you might say a ration—of the state budget to schools. (Tellingly, that money is supplemented by a small amount—usually $1 billion or less than 2 percent of annual education funding—from the state lottery.) 

So in the absence of funds to meet all our students’ needs, we turn to education’s version of lotteries to allot scarce resources. State law (mirroring federal guidance) directs school districts to use a lottery system for charter school admissions once the number of pupils who want to enroll exceeds the number of spaces. Districts with magnet programs do the same. Many of these lotteries have complicated rules and exclusions, often to help kids go to schools in their own neighborhoods, keep siblings together in the same school, or to make sure campuses are diverse. L.A. Unified has a system of points to govern its lottery for magnet school placement so complicated that a cottage industry (check out “Ask a Magnet Yenta”) has sprung up to help parents navigate it. 

Of course, such lotteries are not all that fair. The winners in lotteries are more likely to be the children of parents who have the time and resources to investigate their local educational possibilities, sign their children up for the lotteries and, in some cases, write letters or pursue strategies to help their chances. 

And the lotteries raise a bigger question, now being debated in California’s courts. Does “random” allocation of educational resources really represent justice? 

Earlier this summer, the California Supreme Court showed itself to be divided on the question. A 4-3 majority of justices refused to hear challenges to the state’s systems of hiring and firing public schoolteachers and funding schools. The challengers said that those systems were violating the rights of students, because they didn’t produce enough money and qualified teachers to meet the state constitution’s guarantees of education for all. But the Supreme Court majority, in declining to hear the challenges, endorsed the position that while there might be problems with funding and teachers, these weren’t constitutional problems—because the impact of bad policies was random and arbitrary, and not felt by any particular group of students. 

Mariano-Florentino “Tino” Cuellar, a young associate justice of the Supreme Court, dissented powerfully from that logic. Curtailing access to educational opportunity, the justice argued, doesn’t become justifiable simply because it’s done arbitrarily. 

“Arbitrary selection has at times been considered a means of rendering a governmental decision legitimate,” he wrote. “But where an appreciable burden results—thereby infringing a fundamental right [like the right to an education]—arbitrariness seems a poor foundation on which to buttress the argument that the resulting situation is one that should not substantially concern us.” 

The brilliantly cynical filmmaker Orson Welles once said, “Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.” He wasn’t wrong—our parents, where and when we were born, the people we happen to meet, all influence the direction our lives take, through no fault or deed of our own. 

My own son was lucky. His name was pulled 16th out of the hat, giving him a place he now enjoys in that Mandarin immersion kindergarten. His own luck will transfer to his younger brother, who is automatically eligible to join the program when he reaches kindergarten age. 

But California is not as fortunate in leaning its educational system so heavily on luck. Our schools are supposed to be equalizers, helping counter the lottery of life. Instead, they are emulating it.

(Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square … where this column was first posted.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ALPERN AT LARGE--The doctor is IN, folks!  Yes, I very much DO care about your sanity, and about your health.  I care about your mental health, and your financial health (and that of the City and County of LA, as well as that of Sacramento).  So while some of you may scream at this article, "Stick to dermatology, Doc!" I still aim to please, and to help you figure out how to address all the November tax proposals. 

It comes down to these two questions, in terms of whether or not to raise taxes: 

1) Does the tax address a problem or priority we've underfunded? 

2) Will the tax money be spent well? 

I've quoted it before, but it bears repeating that "Alpern's Law of Taxes" (while not really MY law, because it's just common sense) states that taxpayers will only get upset by one thing more than the amount of taxes they're being asked to pay:  the perception of how the taxes will be spent. 

In a nutshell, here is my recommendation: definitely vote YES on LA County Proposition M, maybe vote YES on the LA county parcel tax to fund its parks, and definitely vote NO on everything else. 

This is with the understanding that we've misspent most of our past and present state budgets on pensions, which the LA Times has only now begun to confront, to the point where it's not an issue of whether we love and respect firefighters, police officers, and government workers:  it's just not sustainable when we're spending more on retired workers than current workers. 

It's just not sustainable, and our taxes (city, county and state) are already among the highest in the nation. 

Yes, I am a transportation advocate (so I am biased), but I am also aware of where transportation funding is in our city and county--we're still in need for funding projects and transportation-related infrastructure that should have been built 50-100 years ago.   

Measure M is transparent, funds the long-overdue Subway to the Sea and the north-south Valley to LAX railway.  It also funds a host of countywide freeway and rail projects, and gives both new funding for roads and rail operations and allows for long-overdue maintenance. 

Am I infuriated that the sidewalks and roads aren't included for the amount/portion of Measure M that goes to the City of LA?  Yes, but that is a battle for another day, and one that can be helped by altering what we budget at Downtown and what we DEMAND of developers asking for variants. 

So for now, Measure M is a solid YES...despite the higher taxes, and despite the fact that City and County Planning needs to be brought to bear--voting YES on Measure M is NOT the same as voting yes on overplanning. 

As for our parks, the question must go out--do we spend enough on them?  Are our county parks funds spent well...because we DO need more parks.  Hence my tentative "yes" suggestion, but I'd like to see more info on that. 

But let's make this quick and easy for the other tax propositions:  VOTE NO!!! 

Do we spend well, or spend enough, on K-12 and community colleges?  Yes, we've spent plenty, and the funds are hideously unaccounted for and misspent.  Just vote no--these priorities will be better funded by appropriate accounting and budgeting, not by more money that would be akin to giving a drug addict a new bank account on which that person would inevitably just get high. 

As for water/electricity-related funds, our rates and taxes are already going up.  End of story--no need to throw more money this November. 

Do you really want retirees and professionals to flee the City or County of LA, or even the state, more than the phenomenon already under way?  I doubt it. 

So let's vote "YES" on LA County Measure M, keep an open mind on the county parks measure, and vote "NO" on everything else. 

That wasn't so hard now, was it?

(Ken Alpern is 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 Mr. Alpern.)

-cw

@THEGUSSREPORT-Herb Wesson, the current LA City Council president (and former Speaker of the California State Assembly), forgot the adage always tell the truth because it’s the easiest thing to remember. 

This much we know. Herb Wesson lied repeatedly about where he lived. He voted where he should not have voted, went out of his way to do so, may have illegally run for office where he did not reside, and he did it for personal gain. And many if not most of these lies may have been committed under the penalty of perjury.

We already know that Wesson is inclined to mislead the public about his recently exposed financial and housing problems. In the LA Times’ August 17 follow-up to my August 9 CityWatch article, Wesson (through his media flack) falsely stated that his personal problems date back to the 2007 purchase of his current home, which cost $759,999. As subsequently exposed, Wesson’s problems date back to the 1980s. And that house cost 25% more than he said: $950,000, according to public records, a pointless lie unless it was done to protect a bruised ego.

So on to Wesson’s purposeful lies. 

Wesson had three curious real estate transactions on the same day, November 24, 1993. On that Wednesday, he and his wife Fabian purchased a $425,000 house in Ladera Heights, an unincorporated section of Los Angeles County. The Wessons also defaulted on their then-residence in Culver City which sold that day at a tremendous loss to them. They purchased it in the late 1980s for $153,000, sold it for just $60,000 (a 61% loss) and the buyer walked away with a hefty payday a little more than a year later after selling it for $168,500 (a 180% profit). 

Exactly how the Wessons defaulted on a mortgage on the same day they bought a house that cost 700% more is anyone’s guess and might be revealed on their loan documents. But only the District Attorney or FBI can access those records, and they should. 

What matters just as much is who bought that Culver City house, and Wesson’s ongoing relationship to that address from that date in 1993 all the way to June 14, 2005 when his voter registration changed, because Wesson continued to certify under penalty of perjury that the Culver City house was his legal residence during that entire time. This span encompasses his six years in the California Assembly, including two as its Speaker. If anyone in the state is familiar with the nuances of voting districts, it is the Speaker, and there is zero chance that Wesson did not know he was voting where he did not live, and that doing so is a crime. 

If Wesson were to claim that he sold the Culver City house but remained there as a tenant, it would mean that he lived apart from his wife and young sons for those 11 years, 6 months and 21 days when his voter registration changed on June 14, 2005. 

But if Wesson were to make such a claim, he would be lying again. 

After the Wessons sold their Culver City house, Fabian soon changed her voter registration to the address of their newly purchase home in Ladera Heights. She was registered there, as were two of their sons (their other two sons do not appear to have ever registered to vote in LA County) while her husband remained registered to vote at the house in Culver City. Since both are affidavits, they are signed as follows: “I certify under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California, that the information on this affidavit is true and correct. WARNING: Perjury is punishable by imprisonment in state prison for two, three or four years.” 

The Wesson who committed perjury was not Fabian. It was Herb.

On Wesson’s subsequent voter registration affidavit, signed by him June 2, 2005 (made official on June 14,) in the section where he stated his previous address, Herb Wesson asserted that his previous address was the house they bought in Ladera Heights on that date in 1993….an address at which he never registered to vote. In writing that, Wesson confirmed that he falsely and deliberately continued to vote using the Culver City address that he sold 11½ years earlier. 

Unless you believe that the Speaker of the California Assembly did not know he was voting using an address that was different than that to which his wife was registered, he broke the law each and every election in which he voted. 

Wesson also utilized a post office box in Culver City during his campaign for the Assembly. What the District Attorney and FBI may want to explore is what is the physical address listed on the USPS box card for it because putting false information there would be a big federal problem, as well. 

When I reached out to the Press Office of California Secretary of State Alex Padilla for the definition of residency, they responded quickly with it. But they ceased all communication with me when I subsequently requested copies of Wesson’s Assembly campaign documents and certification on whether Wesson’s Culver City or Ladera Heights addresses were redistricted out of the territory Wesson represented and, in particular, just prior to his Speaker ascendency. (Padilla is part of the LA City Council presidency clique. He served in that capacity from 2001 to 2006, preceding Eric Garcetti who held that position from 2006 to 2012, when Wesson took it over, holding it to this day.)

None of these residency shenanigans come as a surprise. Wesson’s former colleagues, California Assemblyman Roderick Wright, LA City Councilmember Richard Alarcon and his former bosses LA County Supervisor Yvonne Burke and LA City Councilmember Nate Holden all found themselves in varying degrees of hot water and/or legal jeopardy for allegedly living outside of the area each represented.

And this was not the only time Wesson played a curious shell game with his residency. 

In 2005 when LA City Councilmember Martin Ludlow shockingly left that job after only two years into his first term (and soon thereafter became a felon) Wesson needed to quickly establish residency within the City of Los Angeles and its Council District 10. 

And did he ever scramble…. 

To be continued.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a writer who contributes to CityWatch, Huffington Post and KFI AM-640. He blogs on humane issues at http://ericgarcetti.blogspot.com/ . Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. Views he expresses here are not necessarily those of CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

PERSPECTIVE-Through the efforts of Valley Village Homeowners Association and Neighborhood Council Valley Village, a homeless encampment along the 170 embankment, adjacent to Valley Village Park, was cleared. 

Since the camp was on Cal Trans property, we asked for and received support from our State Assembly Member. The CHP posted warnings before arranging for the removal of the personal items and trash – there was a considerable amount of the latter. 

I was not around to witness the intervention, but there is every reason to believe it was handled as responsibly as possible. No complaints were filed; no reports of violence or excessive force.

The North Hollywood side of the 170 has a homeless problem of its own, too, especially along Tujunga Avenue, where a dozen or so RVs and vans have become permanent fixtures, and homeless prowl the grounds of the Amelia Earhart Regional Library. 

While I am pleased by the removal of the Valley Village Park camp, I acknowledge society’s failure in dealing with the underlying problem. 

The knee-jerk reaction would be to cast a vote for the city’s proposed $1.2 billion bond measure, the objective of which is to acquire land and construct housing. It is certainly preferable over a parcel tax, but the cost ultimately still flows through our property tax bills. 

But I am not ready to support handing the City Council (or the County Supervisors, for that matter) massive amounts of money when there is no outline or plan to organize, manage and, most importantly, perform timely audits of effectiveness. I would feel a little optimistic if the activities were supervised by financially responsible officials – competent individuals, say someone comparable to City Controller Ron Galperin. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough of Ron to go around. 

Whatever the plan, if it does not recognize the distinct challenges posed by the two major component groups of the homeless population – economic victims and those afflicted by mental illness or substance abuse – it is doomed to fail. The plan must allow for triage: the chances of helping the former group are far greater than the latter. $1.2 billion may sound like a lot, but it is less than $50K for each of the estimated 26,000 homeless. How much housing and services can $50K buy? 

We need to focus, then, on making the maximum impact and accept the fact there will be many who are beyond assistance. I am referring to the persons who require institutionalization. Sadly, our laws prevent involuntary medical intervention. 

Progress has its own issues, too. There is truth to the line from the film Field of Dreams, “Build it and they will come.” Even if we achieve a degree of success, there is a risk: we will create a magnet for new waves of homeless persons from other regions, which would offset, if not overwhelm, our capacity to deal with the problem. 

Triage is the practical approach, then. Help the homeless in manageable increments. Also, a one-size-fits-all style of housing will not work. Everything from dormitories to well-organized, military-type camps must be considered. Experimentation will be required. We should not hand over a billion dollars until officials can provide evidence of success on a limited scale first. 

Lastly, we must not dig ourselves a deeper hole. It is absolute insanity to encourage the destruction of serviceable, affordable housing units, as the city presently does. I was heartened to hear the news that the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative received many more signatures than necessary to qualify for the March 2017 ballot. Without it, our elected officials would be content to create the next generation of homeless in exchange for campaign contributions from developers. 

And you are unlikely to find a homeless politician in this city or any other.

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