LOS ANGELES

THERE’S MORE TO IMMIGRATION THAN LAWS-In late 2012, I got a call from a church member. “Seth, Harry’s picking his daughter up from school? Is Sanctuary over?” he asked me. It wasn’t, and Harry -- an undocumented Indonesian immigrant we were sheltering in our church -- wasn’t supposed to be out and about. 

In conversations with the media and our neighbors we had claimed, over and over, that the men we were protecting stayed put inside the walls of the church. It didn’t look good, my parishioner reminded me, for Harry to be walking around our tiny borough of Highland Park, New Jersey, the kind of place where the townsfolk know one another and can spot an outsider on sight. I knew he was right, but I also knew that from Harry’s point of view, picking up his daughter must have outweighed safety that day. I’d rather have bad optics than kill Harry’s soul, I told the church member. 

We had been experiencing many of these uncomfortable moments. For 11 months -- from the beginning of March in 2012, until mid-February in 2013 -- my congregation, the Reformed Church of Highland Park, offered sanctuary to nine Indonesians at risk of deportation. We offered it to keep families together and to keep the government from ruining lives and community, and because of our faith commitment to siding with the oppressed. 

But we learned that while our sanctuary offered freedom from persecution and deportation, it was also a kind of jail. We were locking up free people -- hindering the movement of men who had previously had at least the degree of “freedom” required to make a living, to cover the rent, pay for food, and otherwise contribute to their families’ well-being. They had the freedom to embrace -- and be embraced -- by their wives, to soothe their children, to be comforted by the feeling of family and community. Our friends might have been safe, but they were trapped, dependent on us for pretty much all of their material and emotional needs. Sanctuary turned out to be a perfect storm for depression and despair. 

The refugees’ stories were tragic. Indonesians of Chinese descent, including many Christians, had first fled to the U.S. during the 1990s, targeted as scapegoats during the collapse of the Suharto regime. Saul, who was the first Indonesian refugee we sheltered, told us that his brother-in-law, a priest, was attacked in his own pulpit. Militants cut off his head and then torched his church. Saul’s story was not an anomaly. More than 1,000 churches in Jakarta and beyond were burned to the ground. 

Many people fled, and thousands entered the U.S. on tourist visas. At least 3,000 came to New Jersey, where they got factory jobs. It was the late ‘90s, companies needed low-wage workers, and nobody was asking for work permits. The refugees overstayed their visas, with few consequences. Most opted not to file for asylum, in some cases for fear of government reprisal, or for lack of the language skills perceived to be necessary to make a successful case. But also, some later told me, Indonesians were surrounded by many other undocumented workers from many other lands. It seemed to be the American norm. 

After 9/11, things changed, and by 2006, deportations were in full swing. The first people targeted were often the upstanding ones who had tried to work together with immigration authorities. One night in May of that year, in a town near mine, 35 Indonesian men were rounded up in a predawn raid. None were criminals. Almost all were fathers, with undocumented wives and some combination of older Indonesian and younger American children. We watched in horror as the men were all deported within a month. That was when our church vowed not to let the government abuse immigrant families anymore. 

At first we took things slow, engaging in what I call “sanctuary behavior,” all within the law. After the raid, we invited the families of those who were taken -- and who had fled their homes for fear that they, too, would be deported -- to camp out at the church until they found new housing. We collaborated with immigration advocacy groups and supported pro-immigrant legislation. We visited detention centers, and held vigils. We forged a special relationship with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Newark that lasted for 11 months and brought temporary protection to many people. 

It was only after that relationship broke down and agents started again coming -- this time for Saul and others -- that we began to wonder if it was time to take more drastic action. Our church board prayerfully and methodically considered the implications of going against the government. Ultimately we decided that the only way to help these men that would be truly useful, that might provide some protection from deportation, would be to lock them in the church. 

Saul came first. In a few weeks, the others followed. By April we had transformed almost every Sunday School room into a bedroom, setting up futons that could be folded up during the day, so classes could still take place. At first, the sanctuary-seekers bathed in a kiddie pool; after a month, we installed two showers. We set aside a special section of the church kitchen for “sanctuary tenants.” Area churches brought food. One congregation donated a badminton net, which was put to frequent and appreciative use. 

Our close-knit community rallied to the Indonesians’ aid. We worked to lift the men’s spirits, with games and hymn sings, and hosted dinners for their families on the weekend. Doctors provided free medical clinics. We kept watch for undercover ICE agents, who patrolled in unmarked cars, scouting for “fugitive refugees.” When a town manager expressed concerns about the church not being zoned for housing, we assembled a cadre of volunteers to stand sentry and conduct a daily “fire walk” to ensure everyone’s safety. 

Sanctuary is beautiful, but messy. The narrative is written through real human lives. Those sheltered must have a voice, and the possibility to rewrite the narrative in ways that protect their hearts, minds and souls. 

There were interviews: with CNN, with the New York Daily News, and with The New York Times. People were noticing what we were doing. It was exhilarating, for the Indonesians and for us. The media attention, the ICE sightings, the local support (and anger): all of it felt like important elements in the fight for justice. 

But before long, the reality of what we were doing set in. Our guests were trapped, mere steps down the road from where their children played Little League and went to school -- because of ICE, which would pick them up if they left, and because of us. I was putting myself and the church on the line, and they loved and respected us for it. They felt obligated to abide by sanctuary at its strictest definition, but, over time, the accumulated emotional weight of being shut off from free life was too much to take. People like Harry (photos above) began to slip out to see their families. 

Sanctuary proved psychologically draining for us, too. The hardest part was that there was no obvious end in sight. I felt very guilty about this, and struggled with extreme fatigue (I was also trying to keep up with my church responsibilities). When the men started to leave the premises, I had to unlearn sanctuary a bit. This could only work, I began to realize, if these men could escape from time to time to their true sanctuaries -- their homes and wives and children. I had to learn to accept a possible accusation of fraud, as I publicly staked my reputation and the reputation of my congregation on the sanctity of physical sanctuary while privately knowing that those in my care were buckling under the rigidity of the claim. 

As time dragged on we found ourselves not only supporting the men but also providing major rental assistance to their families, who were on the verge of losing their housing. One church couple renewed their vows to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary and raised $5,000 to help with rent. That got us through a particularly difficult month. In all, we put at least $15,000 toward rental assistance. 

I struggled to take things one day at a time. To be honest, it was way too scary to look into the horizon and not be sure how this would all end. In the end, I finally got through to Gary Mead, the head of Enforcement and Removal Operations for ICE, in Washington. He heard us out and instructed the ERO director in Newark to offer Stays of Removal to the refugees in our church. Our dilemma ended. 

Now, nearly four years later, the Indonesians’ families are intact -- a relief and a blessing -- and life has returned to “normal.” Still, none have been granted citizenship. They would have benefited from Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, which never happened, or from other immigration reform efforts. I see them regularly. Some worship here. Some just stop by, to remember the blessings, and trials, of living here. 

In recent months, with talk of renewed deportations, increasing numbers of congregations, colleges, and municipalities have said they want to extend sanctuary to their undocumented neighbors. I hope they do—whether that means providing physical sanctuary or engaging in creative, combative, and sustained “sanctuary behavior” such as protesting, advocating with officials, or vigils of support. I hope that as communities make this choice they’ll remember that sanctuary is beautiful, but messy. The narrative is written through real human lives. Those sheltered must have a voice, and the possibility to rewrite the narrative in ways that protect their hearts, minds, and souls. 

And also, would-be sanctuary providers: Relish the moments of hope and possibility. Sanctuary can feel like jail sometimes, for those inside and for those offering protection. Thank God, for us, in the end, it felt like Shalom.

(Reverend Seth Kaper-Dale is pastor of the Reformed Church of Highland Park in Highland Park, New Jersey. He is running for governor of New Jersey on the Green Party ticket. This essay is part of a Zócalo Inquiry, Do Sanctuaries Really Bring Peace?  Photos courtesy of Reformed Church of Highland Park. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

HE DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH-President Trump gave his informed testimony this week that people were registered to vote and had voted in multiple states in this last election. It seems for once he knew what he was talking about.

As it turns out, members of Trump’s own family, Tiffany Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner are both registered to vote in two different states. The difference is that, unlike most of the rest of us, they are rich enough to jet set from state to state on Election Day, to vote in more than one state at once.

In fact, he is surrounded by such double registering fraudsters, including Steve Bannon, his radical alt right top adviser, Sean Spicer, his press secretary, and Steve Mnuchin, his mortgage document forger nominee for treasury secretary.

His big expert on voting fraud, Gregg Phillips -- who was Trump's source when he retweeted the lie that three million people had voted illegally -- is registered to vote in three, count them, three separate states.

So when Kellyanne Conway asked rhetorically what everyone is afraid of from an investigation of voting fraud, the most fearful would seem to be Trump himself.

In the meantime, the abuses of power continue to escalate. Sally Q. Yates was required to promise, by no less than Trump's now nominee for U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, she would be independent, as a condition of being approved for the position in the Justice Department. After approval, Acting Attorney General Yates was summarily canned for refusing to defend Trump's unconstitutional ban on Muslim immigrants.

It didn't work for Nixon, when he executed his Saturday Night Massacre, but then of course he had not already stacked the judiciary with pliable quislings.

This dramatically raises the stakes on all judicial appointments going forward, especially the Supreme Court nominees. The Democrats have already vowed to filibuster anyone Trump nominates, justifiably presuming it will be someone from the far right.

We will thoughtfully hold our fire until the nomination is announced. There will be plenty of time for strong opposition, and we will no doubt oppose.

In particular we will require that whoever is nominated must forcefully and unequivocally repudiate both torture and the blanket discrimination against people based solely on their country of origin. We have no doubt that Trump is in the market for torture and prejudice-happy judges, who will do his authoritarian will. We may be seeing just the beginning of more decisions as bad as the Dred Scott case.

Let us remember that in Nazi Germany there were many judges without the basic integrity to resist Hitler's mounting crimes against humanity, who, to their eternal shame, went along with the will of the dictator. This was sold to them as a Christian theocracy too, you know.

It will not happen here because we held our tongues. 

In the meantime, please continue to protest the extreme ignorance of Trump's so-called extreme vetting.

(Michael N. Cohen is a former board member of the Reseda Neighborhood Council, founding member of the LADWP Neighborhood Council Oversight Committee, founding member of LA Clean Sweep and occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

RIGHT WING POWER GRAB--President Donald Trump reportedly did not realize he was promoting chief strategist Steve Bannon to the National Security Council (NSC) Principals Committee when he signed the executive order dropping intelligence and defense officials from the top government panel and elevating the former Breitbart News chair in their place.

The New York Times reported over the weekend that Trump had not been fully briefed on his own executive order, which became "a greater source of frustration to the president" than the protests and legal actions over his travel ban blocking immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries.

Reporters Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman depicted an administration that's just barely keeping a lid on its internal crises, turf wars, and lack of preparation—and a scheming chief strategist that's successfully taken advantage of it all.

They wrote:

[White House chief of staff Reince] Priebus told Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon that the administration needs to rethink its policy and communications operation in the wake of embarrassing revelations that key details of the orders were withheld from agencies, White House staff, and Republican congressional leaders like Speaker Paul D. Ryan.

Mr. Priebus has also created a 10-point checklist for the release of any new initiatives that includes signoff from the communications department and the White House staff secretary, Robert Porter, according to several aides familiar with the process.

Mr. Priebus bristles at the perception that he occupies a diminished perch in the West Wing pecking order compared with previous chiefs. But for the moment, Mr. Bannon remains the president's dominant adviser, despite Mr. Trump's anger that he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed giving his chief strategist a seat on the National Security Council, a greater source of frustration to the president than the fallout from the travel ban.

Trump seemingly clarified on Twitter that he calls his own shots, "largely based on an accumulation of data, and everyone knows it." He also accused the Times of writing "total fiction" about him.

The executive order promoted Bannon, a white nationalist with no foreign policy or government experience, to a regular seat at some of the most sensitive meetings at the highest levels of government, along with other NSC meetings. Meanwhile, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—who need to be confirmed by the Senate—were directed to only attend meetings when discussions pertain to their "responsibilities and expertise."

The memo led to speculation that the right-wing power grab in the executive branch could be setting the stage for a coup d'état.

(Nadia Prupis writes for Common Dreams  … where this report was first posted.)

-cw

APLERN AT LARGE--In my last CityWatch article, I emphasized what the Measure S supporters are FOR.  A few key questions are in order for those opposing Measure S, particularly because those of us supporting the measure are virtually all volunteers, and virtually all opposing Measure S are getting PAID. 

PAID as in "Primarily Associated In Development", and who are getting either direct or indirect support from developers, either through their salary/job or the promise of new jobs if we continue our out-of-control development policies--er, I mean practices, because we HAVE no coherent policies with respect to Planning, despite it being illegal to not follow our City Charter and Bylaws. 

A few questions are in order for those who oppose Measure S--particularly for the benefit of Angelenos on the fence on this measure, and particularly aimed at those who recognize why the measure is being pushed but fear any "unintended consequences": 

1) How will you address the concerns and needs of those who have--either enthusiastically or with the resigned determination that we now have no choice to save our City--supported Measure S? 

2) Why is the recent "reform in financing City Hall campaigns" and "getting developer money out of politics" something we didn't see before Measure S, and are these talking points from City Hall to be believed at this time, and under these circumstances? 

3) Have more affordable housing and sustainable development been occurring under Mayor Garcetti and the City Council, or have these problems been sharply worsening under their "leadership"? 

4) If Measure S limits OVER-development, but allows legal development that could virtually double our supply of homes and apartments within five years, HOW does Measure S prevent sustainable development and affordable housing? 

5) Do our current development practices at Planning really favoring the average Angeleno, or just the wealthy and connected...and why are so many homeowners groups and affordable housing/homeless advocacy groups supporting Measure S? 

6) Are their enough parks and open space being created by our current development practices in Los Angeles? 

7) What's wrong with City staff, and not "hired guns" paid and influenced by contractors, performing legally-mandated EIR's to ensure their accuracy and impartiality? 

8) If we're to allow decreased parking for developers on certain products, how are we to protect these developments' neighbors from being impacted by cars parked on/next to their private properties, and how we will demand and ensure alternative legal and financial mitigations to secure the transportation/mobility/infrastructure of our City? 

9) How much of these projects are being approved for the financial betterment and welfare of overdevelopers, and why are City residents and neighborhood councils routinely ignored if not demeaned by our City Planning Department? 

10) How DO we prevent spot-zoning, and how DO we expedite the updating of our City Charter and Community Plans? 

Measure S remains supported by a growing number of volunteers and grassroots/non-profit groups who want an accountable and sustainable and environmentally-friendly City, and remains opposed by those getting PAID (Primarily Associated In Development). 

And those who oppose Measure S?  What are they FOR?  Do they want laws to even exist in City Planning and associated with our Community Plans? 

Beyond the platitudes by those opposing Measure S, what are THEIR ideas to ensure the rule of environmental law and rights of individuals living in the City of Los Angeles?   

And is continuing down our current path something we're OK with? 

Vote YES on Measure S on March 7th--a happier, healthier, and more representative City is closer than you think!

(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties.  He is also a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at   [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.) 

-cw

EDUCATION POLITICS-On March 7, 2017, Los Angeles will play a duplicate round of last November’s presidential election, and we’ll have the opportunity to trump last year’s presidential fiasco. 

Since January 20, the billionaires have displayed a dummy hand of hubris, lies and slander. That is, the same hand playing out right now in D.C., is being played right here in LA by multi-millionaire, former-mayor Dick Riordan. It’s the choice of the monied-1%, the champions a dystopian DeVos-flavored future devoid of truly accountable or equitable public education. 

In contrast, our path of Resistance steps neatly across the millions of dollars employed to hobble Steve Zimmer’s people-responsive, and people-powered policies. You vote to resist deep-pocketed, super-wealthy, 1%-politics when you vote in March for LAUSD School Board District 4’s incumbent, Steve Zimmer. 

These are some issues to consider when reviewing the leaflets and innumerable forums and conversations littering the landscape: 

1) A school’s “chartering” agency is tasked with its oversight. That means assuring its policies and operations are truly accountable to the public; that means assuring all the public is served, and not just some of it. 

At the same time there is inherent tension between any special interest and its regulators, even not-for-profit Charters. 

So what will a school-regulatory system look like when it is governed by electeds who are financed by Charter partisans such as the CA Charter Schools Association and private equity education-sector investors? 

Two of Steve Zimmer’s challengers are beholden financially to precisely such groups and individuals vested in the special-interests of Charter Schools. 

But Steve Zimmer is not. 

So who will be free of bias to regulate these schools in the best interests of all our public school children? 

2) A school board is concerned with ideology; its superintendent and staff with operations and realizing policy. 

LAUSD’s expensive escapades with technology-driven chicanery were coaxed by LAUSD staff, approved and overseen by its board. It’s an intimate tango to be sure, but the original sin lies in the folly of its architect and engineers, not the signal operators. 

The financial underwriters of the creative team choreographing LAUSD iPad ignominy were Eli Broad and his allied billionaires. John Deasy was their impresario, hand-picked to lead LAUSD. And it was the leadership of Mónica Garcia that orchestrated board approval and oversight of Deasy’s debacle; Eli Broad’s billions supported both Deasy and Garcia. 

Deasy is long-gone but his operations remain under legal scrutiny. Garcia is displaced as board president yet her role as promoter of Deasy’s technology-agenda is unchallenged and her mantle as Broad’s acolyte uncensored. 

Fast-forward to March’s school board election where three candidates benefit directly from Broad and his allies’ wherewithal. Two would tar Zimmer falsely with exclusive blame for the iPads via mailers from Independent Expenditure Committees of the 1%, while the third – Garcia – actually was the scheme’s chief champion. Taxpayer accountability should swamp all three. 

3) Broad’s wealthy billionaire-class underwrites and motivates a central stalking-horse of “Education ®eform”: to disintegrate that core of the teaching profession, its professional teachers. 

As financiers of the defeated Vergara v California, the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of five statues “protecting” classroom teachers, Education-®eforming industry titans seek to circumvent this judgment through elections. By supporting a plaintiff’s witness for LAUSD school board, a defendant would be transformed to plaintiff; the LAUSD itself would accuse its very own constituent teachers. 

This trojan-horse strategy could inflict widespread collateral damage on business-labor relations, tilting the advantage toward those billionaires whose special interests are advanced in supporting their candidate’s role-reversal. 

Obligated by financial support and legal testimony, such a board member’s fealty would be inherently compromised. These candidates are unqualified, in the paradigm of Rick Perry who would shutter the department he is appointed to run, or Steve Mnuchin who would abolish all populist protections governing his department of Treasury. 

Consider how these three issues support the billionaires’ latter-day agenda for a privatized America.

Resisting the will of the 1% means transcribing the will of the 99% onto ballots. 

Listen carefully to the underlying agenda of transformative candidates: reconstitution is not necessarily constructive or progressive. 

Vote for Steve Zimmer and Resist Trumpism.

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

BACKTALK—(Editor’s Note: This is a response to Jack Humphreville’s CityWatch article ‘La Kretz Innovation Center: A Pay to Play Pet Project’).  I am the Co-Founder and CEO of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), the primary tenant of the La Kretz Innovation Campus (LKIC).   I can’t speak to the primary thesis of your article on the LKIC – that somehow the LKIC campus is some kind of quid pro quo for Mr. La Kretz’s Hollywood development – but I can speak to some of your points regarding the Campus.

1) The La Kretz Innovation Campus is not a “pet” project of Mayor Garcetti nor Councilmember Huizar.   The project was envisioned by Mayor Villaraigosa in 2008 and the campus was purchased in 2010.  LACI was born in 2011 and is part of a comprehensive plan to build a green economy for the City of Los Angeles.  To describe it as a pet project denigrates the thinking, hard work and commitment of dozens of people who have devoted themselves to helping Los Angeles become a green technology leader.

2) The LADWP was not “forced” to invest in this project as the Department has been a leading proponent of the work we do at LACI and the Campus that supports our work.  You may not be familiar with the requirements of AB32, which makes State utilities seek new sources of sustainable energy for generation, but LACI/LKIC is one of many initiatives that the Department is undertaking to meet these challenging requirements.

3) You note a City Council motion by Councilmenber Huizar to periodically report on the progress of LKIC.  For perspective, we continuously provide metrics to various departments of the City that monitor the progress of LACI and (now) the LKIC campus.  A few key highlights: 

1. LACI has generated over $270million dollars in long-term economic value for the City of Los Angeles including more than 1200 direct and indirect jobs.
2. LACI has helped 100 clean technology start-ups locate and prosper in the Los Angeles area.  Our companies have attracted more than $115 million in investment capital and filed over 200 patents.

4) You point out that LADWP has invested about $20M (it’s actually closer to $18M) and that its real estate investment should be closely evaluated.  I think this misses the point of LKIC – it’s not a real estate play but an economic development initiative – whose mission is to help develop family supporting jobs for the citizens of Los Angeles.  Yet, if one were to evaluate LKIC strictly from a real estate perspective, one would find that LADWP has leveraged its investment by more than 2:1; that it now owns a large piece of property in the fastest growing part of Los Angeles; and that it could sell this property tomorrow for a very sizeable profit.

Taking a step back, I would like to editorialize a bit myself on the importance of making the City of Los Angeles a cleantech innovation center, thus building a huge green economy for the City of Los Angeles and the role that LACI/LKIC play in this effort.

As background, the clean technology business sector has been the fastest growing sector on the face of the earth for the past five years, growing more than 25% annually.  Most experts predict continued growth for decades to come.  Frankly, we want to grab more than our fair share of this new business growth for Los Angeles’ citizens, thus providing long term job creation.   Not only are these higher paying jobs, but research shows that 1 out of 4 cleantech jobs are manufacturing jobs vs. 1 out of 9 in non-cleantech.  Building a huge green economy for LA will rebuild Los Angeles’ industrial base in tomorrow’s fastest growing industry.   In my way of thinking, this isn’t an optional extra pet project but a critically important long term initiative for Los Angeles.

Creating companies that have innovative clean technologies and helping them get to market is the most important component of expanding this embryonic market.  Cities that create an environment that nurtures these companies will reap long term rewards.  Think Silicon Valley.  Think San Diego’s biotech hub.   Think Boston’s Route 128 technology corridor. And this is exactly what the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator does at its La Kretz Innovation Campus.  We help create innovative start-ups.

 How do we do that?  Well yes, we provide under-market priced real estate to our Portfolio Companies because these companies can’t afford market rates in Los Angeles. (they will simply go elsewhere if they can’t afford to do business here).  But, the heart of our efforts to help these companies is to provide them with seasoned, experienced coaching by successful entrepreneurs and -- once they’re ready – we introduce them to people/companies that might help them.  For example, right across the hall from where these companies are seated is the LADWP energy and water efficiency test and certification R&D labs.  This accelerates the growth of our Los Angeles-based start-ups by providing easy access to a leading utility’s R&D lab.  Nowhere else in the country – and perhaps the world – is there such close cooperation between innovators and utility engineers than at LKIC.

I have given close to six years of my life to this project because I believe it represents the future for Los Angeles.  I urge you and your readers to not only support this effort, but to encourage the City of Los Angeles to double-down on its investment.  It will pay off in ways unimaginable.

 (Fred Walti is the founder and chairman of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator.)

-cw

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Mr. Mayor, other than reelection, you have a tough assignment, and it is much more than finding unusual photo ops. You are the mayor of the second largest city in the United States, and one of our planet’s creative capitals. Los Angeles’ population is approaching 4,000,000 people, and 2,000,000 work in Los Angeles. City Hall has a work force of 50,000 employees and an annual budget of at least $9 billion. It covers over 550 square miles, and has the largest and most congested street system in the United States. (Photo above: Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.) 

This is why the public – knowing your fine education, extensive political connections, and obvious hopes for higher office – wants you to lead. They don’t want a Mayor who just echoes the talking points of financial backers from the real estate sector, as you did last week at an anti-Measure S press conference.  

This is when you became the lead mouthpiece for some of the major real estate players that the Los Angeles Times exposed as engaging in soft-corruption.  According to the Times, these companies engage in City Hall pay-to-play to obtain spot-zones and spot-General Plan Amendments for their unplanned mega-projects. 

As I review your comments, it boils down to a basic claim. A deregulated private market can do a better job in addressing such pressing issues as homelessness and high rents than preparing, adopting, implementing, following, and updating a carefully prepared and monitored General Plan. 

Mr. Mayor, when you return from you photo-ops, just look at that Los Angeles that will be maintained if your advocacy against Measure S prevails. All the dire things you predict with a Measure S victory are already widespread in today’s Los Angeles. Your case that conditions will get better by maintaining the status quo is just not credible. The evidence is right in front of us. We only need to look at nearby cities with current General Plans that they adhere to, like Pasadena and Santa Monica. Without the spot-zone changes and spot-plan amendments stopped by Measure S, these cities demonstrate that good planning can address a housing crisis, a well-maintained infrastructure, and robust economic activity. They have no need to give away the store in exchange for handouts from developers. 

Now, let’s get into the specifics of the Chicken Little sky-is-falling claims about Measure S. 

1) No, Mr. Mayor, Measure S does not stop housing construction. 

Nearly all housing, including apartments, in Los Angeles is built by-right. It does not require a spot-zone change or spot-General Plan Amendment from the ever-obliging City Council. The projects requiring these special City Council ordinances, like the Caruso project on LaCienega, are a small percentage of residential construction projects. 

The underlying problem is that because of economic inequality, few people can afford the rents of these new apartments, especially the luxury ones that Measure S opponents, like you, so venerate. There is also no evidence that a glut of luxury units, which is already happening in Downtown Los Angeles, cause landlords of less expensive apartments to lower their rents to make them affordable for the rest of the public.

This is because the "free" market will never build more than a minuscule amount of affordable housing through programs to privatize affordable housing, like SB 1818 (density bonus). The real way to expand the supply of affordable housing is for the public sector to build affordable housing, and that requires government programs, such as Measure HHH, an approach consistent with Measure S.

2) No Mr. Mayor, Los Angeles is not on verge of a population boom and must therefore open the floodgates to unplanned luxury apartment construction. 

The General Plan Framework, and the City's population prediction was 500,000 people too high. At present, LA has 3.9 million people, and it is only growing by about 10-20,000 people per year. It is doubtful LA will even reach the 2010 figure by 2050. 

The Framework and the prior AB 283 project also concluded that LA could reach a population of 8 million residents based on existing zoning. This clearly means that LA’s existing zones and plans do not present any barriers to (legal) housing construction.

3) No. Mr. Mayor, Los Angeles does not have a shortage of lots whose plan designations and zones permit apartment construction. 

If or when LA reaches the Framework’s demographic forecast, the city will have more than enough existing zoning to accommodate that population. Los Angeles has no need for the spot-zones and spot-plans you champion. For example, every commercially zoned parcel in Los Angeles already allows R-4 apartment houses. This means that all of LA's long commercial corridors, such as Vermont, Van Nuys, Pico, and Washington, could accommodate three story apartment buildings, including optional ground floor retail. They would not require any zone changes or plan amendments. And with SB 1818 incentives, these new buildings could incorporate four or five stories of apartments.

4) No Mr. Mayor, Measure S does not stop high density housing at subway stations. 

For example, on Wilshire Boulevard, where METRO is constructing the Purple Line Extension, existing plans and zones allow unlimited height. If, for example, the Caruso project were built one-half mile to the north, at LaCienega and Wilshire, it would not need to all those planning entitlements you support. It would also be adjacent to a future subway station. Furthermore, building luxury housing near subway or light rail stations does NOT create affordable housing. There is no supply and demand linkage between these totally disconnected parts of the housing market.

5) No Mr. Mayor Los Angeles does not have high rents because of its existing zoning. 

Rents are high because of four other reasons:

-  LA’s rent stabilization ordinance is weak, and it needs to be amended to stop vacancy decontrol and automatic annual rent increases. 

-  Congress eliminated nearly all Federal affordable housing programs, beginning in the 1970s.

- The California State Legislature dissolved the Community Redevelopment Agency, which spent 20 percent of its budget on affordable housing.

- In Los Angeles the real estate developers who fund City Hall campaigns do not want to build by-right affordable housing and market housing where it is permitted because they make fatter profits through luxury high rise buildings. Their business model, not zoning, is the barrier. 

6) No Mr. Mayor, the purpose of updating LA’s General Plan is not to facilitate the wishes of real estate investors. 

The reason we need to update the General Plan is to address climate change, determine where there is adequate infrastructure and services for existing and future development, where geology and hydrology affect the built environment, and where there is the greatest demand for housing, jobs, infrastructure improvement, and public services. 

7) No Mr. Mayor, Measure S does not prevent the City of Los Angeles from using City-owned property for affordable housing. 

This program has been on the books since the 1980s, initiated by your predecessor, Mayor Tom Bradley. The City Council then hired consultants to identify thousands of city-owned properties, but in the intervening 30 years only the air rights over several parking lots have been used for affordable housing. 

Now, coming out of a Rip Van Winkle sleep, your administration has resurrected this Bradley-era program, selecting 11 out of 9000 separate parcels that may or may not be stopped by Measure S. The thousands of parcels that would NOT be blocked by Measure S have been kept out of view, and there are no details on what is actually proposed for the 12 sites since, so far, there is only a Request for Proposals (RFP). 

If this results in serious proposals, and if they are for 100 percent affordable housing, and only need a zone change, Measure S would not make any difference. 

Meanwhile, stop scraping the bottom on the barrel to find a few hypothetical conflicts with Measure S. It is high time for you to direct your staff to identify which of the remaining 8,993 City-owned parcels are already suitable for by-right affordable housing construction. 

LA’s Cycle of Decline 

Mr. Mayor, the approach to governance revealed by your public opposition to Measure S draws Los Angeles into cycle of further decline. In LA, with all it complexity and energy, City Hall is now just governing by the seat of its pants, lurching one way or another depending on which real estate honcho walks through the mahogany doors. A diametrically different approach, one based on the careful planning and monitoring mandated by Measure S, is the leadership Los Angeles now needs.

(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles City Planner who reports on local planning issues for City Watch. Please send any comments or corrections to [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

@THE GUSS REPORT-LA City Council got a sliver of local media attention last week when it stated its objection to President Trump’s nomination of Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), even though it regularly prevents members of the public from speaking on issues not under its purview. Regardless, Pruitt was approved 11-0 in the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee and his nomination now moves to the full Senate. 

So the Councilmembers threw caution to the wind at their subsequent meeting on Friday with an agenda item that objected to all of Trump’s other nominees. Kinda. Sorta. Well, not really. 

What they ended up doing is not thinking things through, and it could cost LA big-time, including the Olympics. 

For instance, the Councilmembers objected to Trump nominee Rex Tillerson to head the State Department. But it must have been lost on them that Tillerson is no longer a nominee, but the actual Secretary of State, sworn-in and presently overseas on his first trip. Details, details. 

Wait, wait, it gets better … 

I pointed out to City Council president Herb Wesson that for a city seeking the Olympics and in desperate need of infrastructure for it, it is not a good idea to oppose Elaine Chao as Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Transportation -- especially since she, too, was already approved, sworn-in and on the job. And one more thing: she is married to Mitch McConnell, the all-powerful U.S. Senate majority leader; not a good guy to piss-off. 

Aside from that, the blurb on City Council’s agenda condemning Chao erroneously reads that Chao’s appointment as Secretary of Transportation would, among other things, negatively impact “the rights of employees” and “a fair minimum wage.”

Huh? Since when does the Department of Transportation handle what the Department of Labor and Congress do?

Whoever wrote these blurbs for City Council may have tried to do their homework, but got it completely wrong.

Chao was the 24^th Secretary of Labor for President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009, the longest tenure in that role since WWII. And she was the Director of the Peace Corp. And she was the President and CEO of United Way. And she has a Harvard MBA. And she was the first Asian female ever to serve in a presidential cabinet. She came to the United States at age 8 from Taipei, Taiwan, not speaking a word of English and grew to personify the American Dream. 

Yep, Elaine Chao is thoroughly unqualified for a presidential cabinet position, according to the Los Angeles City Council. 

Later, Wesson sheepishly directed his colleagues to strike their objection to Chao. They did -- after I pointed out that she was already approved by the U.S. Senate 93-6. 

The Councilmembers also oppose Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, citing (among other inane notions) not that he lacks experience in this field, but that he would bring a negative impact on….religious tolerance? Carson, it so happens, was approved in the first round of screening by none other than the Democrats’ leaders of the left Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, among others. 

When it came to Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, who is actually still a nominee, City Council cited in its objection to her possible negative influence on “the economy of the American people.” 

Say what? 

If LA City Councilmembers think that the Secretary of Education influences the nation’s economic policy, perhaps DeVos should dismantle the public education system….at least those schools attended by these Councilmembers….and with good cause. 

Seriously, who wrote this stuff…former Councilmember Tom LaBonge? (Thank you, Ron Kaye, former Editor of the LA Daily News for forever memorializing this clip.) 

Councilmember Paul Koretz admitted an oversight on the list: his colleagues should also disapprove of Steve Mnuchin, the nominee for the Department of Treasury. 

It was hardly their only omission.

Does the LA City Council not object to conservative federal appellate judge Neil Gorsuch as Trump’s nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court? He is Columbia- , Oxford- and Harvard Law-educated and, at age 49, could serve 35 to 40 years on the bench, and have immense impact on the lives of all Americans. Given the blanket nature of City Council’s hit list, our 15 lawmakers either implicitly approve of Gorsuch by not having his name on it … or their lack of awareness of his name in the headlines is pretty half-baked. Or it was fully-baked, as Benjamin Braddock said in The Graduate.

Watch and see if City Council scrambles in the next week or so to voice its objection to Gorsuch now that I have pointed it out here. 

They also forgot to add objections, assuming they have them, to already-approved General James Mattis of the Defense Department, Mike Pompeo of the CIA, General Mike Flynn of the NSA, and so on and so forth. If they do not do this, it means that they either implicitly approve of these Trump appointments, given their public decrying of Trump’s other nominees, or their opinions on them are a day late and a dollar short. 

When all was said and done, the Councilmembers voted unanimously against all of them…except Chao, of whom they did not explicitly approve. You could hear a pin drop in the room. It was a bunch of ceremonial nothingness, and equal to the amount of thought they put into it. 

In an ironic twist, City Council’s opinion on these appointments will be considered by the White House with the same degree of disregard that City Council pays to the public at its own meetings.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatch, Huffington Post, KFI AM-640 and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

MIRACLE MILE--I’m sure if Mayor Eric Garcetti were asked to vote for more homelessness in Los Angeles he would answer resoundingly: NO! I’m equally sure that were each member of the Los Angeles City Council asked the same question we’d hear the same resounding answer: NO. Some might even say HELL NO! 

So, that leaves many of us in the Miracle Mile thoroughly puzzled by Councilmember David Ryu’s answer to us when he was asked to save the 500 rent stabilized (RSO) apartments the City Planning Commission ripped out of the Miracle Mile Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ). Ryu has been a consistent advocate for rent controlled housing, yet he seems genuinely convinced that one or more of his colleagues will vote to sink the entire HPOZ if he steps up and demands that the Council save the rent stabilized apartments in the heart of the Miracle Mile. 

Perhaps Ryu is worried that the Mayor will veto an HPOZ that preserves those rent stabilized apartments, which stand in the path Garcetti and his allies have carved out for supersized, transit-close development. If Ryu successfully convinces Council to restore the original HPOZ plan drafted by the Planning Department and approved by the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission, Garcetti will be foiled. The Mayor’s appointed Planning Commission eliminated those 500 RSO units from the HPOZ, so that gives us a clue as to what the Mayor might do—but maybe not. What we do know is that approximately 1000 renters will face imminent eviction if their apartments lose HPOZ protection. 

Statistically that could mean that 7 of those individuals will end up homeless. And there could be more if Council President Herb Wesson follows through with his unwarranted and unscientific poll – taking in only the views of owners, not renters – that could result in another 300 rent stabilized units being sliced from the CD 10 portion of the Miracle Mile HPOZ. 

The tenants of these RSO units are our brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and friends. They are valued members of our community and they cannot be cast into the streets because of the “significant investment that we’re making in Wilshire Boulevard,” as Planning Commission President David Ambroz recently said. Fellow Commissioner Dana M. Perlman echoed Ambroz: All those historic, small-scale, rent controlled apartments in the Miracle Mile between 8^th Street and Wilshire had to go because the multibillion dollar investment in the Purple Line subway extension requires a future of high-rise, high-density, luxury apartments. 

Preserving the neighborhood, and saving the homes of countless residents, Perlman dismissed as short-sighted. “We’re doing it for today and we’re not planning for the future, and part of our responsibility, of course, is to look to the future,” Perlman said. A future, that is, without affordable housing within walking distance of the subway being built specifically to address the needs of the transit-dependent – which is to say, people who do not live in luxury apartments and do not drive luxury cars! 

Thus far, the city’s carte blanche for developers in the Miracle Mile has eliminated 100 rent stabilized apartments, constructed 1,800 market-rate luxury units, and built just 2 low-income dwellings. This is the reality which Ryu now seems willing to embrace and extend, and with it, the guarantee that some residents will end up living on the streets. Meanwhile many others will be pushed further away from the very transit corridor they were living in because they’ll be permanently priced out of the new housing being built. That’s a morally bankrupt tradeoff, plain and simple. 

So it goes. Planning Commissioner Robert Ahn (now running for U.S. Congress), made the objective all too clear when he applauded the removal of Olympic Boulevard from the HPOZ. He inadvertently let the cat out of the bag when he said “I think we need to maintain flexibility on a major street like Olympic Boulevard for the future planning purposes.” Is no street safe from the gilded grasp of the Mayor’s developer buddies? 

Will there be a vote in favor of more homelessness? If the answer is NO, then it can only come if Councilman Ryu refuses to support the CPC gutting decision and demands all the removed properties be reinstated. And then he’ll have to show his mettle in City Council. He will need 9 other members to stand with him to override the CPC. 

Councilman Ryu supports saving RSO units. He has proven that on several occasions. We need to support and encourage him to take a stand against the CPC and the Mayor. This is his Council District and he was elected to protect our neighborhoods. 

No excuses will be entertained. A vote to sustain the CPC decision is a vote for homelessness. A vote to restore the RSO units is a vote against homelessness. Let’s make sure all our elected officials say NO to homelessness! Reinstate the Miracle Mile HPOZ! Save historic, affordable, rent-controlled housing!

(James O’Sullivan is President of the Miracle Mile Residential Association and co-founder of Fix the City … a non-profit, citizen association whose stated goal is its name … to Fix the City. He is an occasional contributor to CityWatch.)

-cw

@THE GUSS REPORT-Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin finally woke up from the slumber he has been in during his first term in office regarding alleged LAFD fire inspector fraud, a subject about which he and Mayor Eric Garcetti have long since known, but failed to remedy. Or even address.

It was here on CityWatch where the alleged fraud was first exposed in 2016, followed by stories in the LA Weekly by Hillel Aron and then on KCBS by David Goldstein. The LA Times has yet to correct its fallacious story on Deputy Fire Chief and fraud whistleblower John Vidovich. 

While there is proof that Galperin’s office is finally poking around the edges of the story, you wouldn’t know it by speaking with anyone there.

Deborah Hong, Galperin’s Assistant Deputy of Communications, a week ago denied knowledge of an investigation. Then, late last week, she said “our office’s policy is to neither confirm nor deny whether we are investigating.”  

But when asked why that rule didn’t apply to Galperin’s abundance of public appearances on radio and television during his investigation of the $40 million that disappeared within two LADWP non-profits, Hong said that she wasn’t with Galperin at the time and didn’t know the answer. 

Instead, she referred me to Ted Rohrlich, Galperin’s Deputy Controller, Policy and Internal Affairs.

Rohrlich, too, sidestepped the issue of LAFD fraud, the LADWP, LA Animal Services and other cases where the rule didn’t apply.

The other questions which Galperin’s office refused to address are as follows: 

1. Why is the Controller’s office investigating the LAFD now, even though there is documentation that they have long since known about the fraud allegations? 

2. Did Galperin’s delay have anything to do with the $350,000 that the firefighter’s national union donated to local incumbents up for re-election? 

3. Did the delay have anything to do with LAFD firefighter trainees being allowed – for the first time – to vote in union leadership elections? 

And…

4. Does Galperin acknowledge that his failure to proactively pursue a fraud investigation, and make referrals of any wrongdoers to District Attorney Jackie Lacey for prosecution, resulted in the racial discrimination lawsuit filed last week in which several of the plaintiffs were fire inspectors implicated by Vidovich? 

According to FireLawBlog.com: 

“The suit was filed yesterday in Los Angeles County Superior Court by Battalion Chief Jerome Boyd, Captain Gary Carpenter, Captain Andre Johnson, Captain David Riles, Inspector Aaron Walker and Inspector Glenn Martinez. The complaint describes Chief Boyd, Captain Carpenter, Captain Johnson, David Riles, and Inspector Walker as African American and Inspector Martinez as Hispanic.” 

Martinez and Walker are two of the inspectors identified as fraudsters by Vidovich, who is a co-defendant in the lawsuit along with LAFD Chief Ralph Terrazas, Assistant Chief Kwame Cooper and the City of Los Angeles, which is sure to cost the taxpayers a fortune to defend. 

In what may be the ultimate irony, the lawsuit alleges that the LAFD is an “all-white boys club.” Terrazas is Latino and Cooper is black. 

Instead of a good, proactive performance as City Controller, Galperin now has the City of Los Angeles playing defense. 

An even bigger breach of civic duty might have been committed by the LA Times, which does not appear to have reported on the discrimination lawsuit or Galperin’s investigation at all, based on a cursory search of its website.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatch, Huffington Post, KFI AM-640 and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

SPORTS POLITICS--To put it mildly, the National Football League needs the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers’ Inglewood stadium, scheduled to open in 2019, to deliver — and deliver big.

It had better, because a seemingly worst-case scenario has unfolded since the league a year ago voted to allow the St. Louis Rams to spurn public funding in St. Louis and relocate to Los Angeles.

EASTSIDER-The Developer vs. NELA Open Space fight is one we Angelenos understand all too well. What makes this dispute different is that there is a rational developer, and based on the respective positions of the two sides, there should be a solution that works for all. Since that hasn’t happened, the question is “why the heck not?” For the scene, the struggle, and possible solutions, read on. 

Background 

For those of you who don’t know, Glassell Park is that series of hills near downtown LA, bordered by the Glendale Freeway on the west, and the 5 Freeway on the south. Recently overwhelmed by a wave of gentrification, suddenly a small home in these hills is going for something like $600,000 - $800,000 and beyond. 

Aside from proximity to downtown, one of the main attractions of what was a sleepy little community is the presence of 4 or 5 (depending on how you count) of the last open space canyons in the City, preserving native species from critters to trees in a natural habitat. 

Over the last 15 years or so, these canyons have been ground zero for hotly contested disputes between developers, who see a great commercial opportunity, and a variety of community based groups, such as the Glassell Park Improvement Association (a homeowners group), the Glassell Park Neighborhood Council, the Mt. Washington Homeowners Association, and a coalition of open space groups under the umbrella of Nelagreenspace.  

To no one’s surprise, the amount of this open space has diminished to the point that we are essentially left with two large open spaces -- Walnut Canyon and Moss Canyon (Barryknoll is already in the midst of development.) 

The Shifting Sands of Northeast LA Politics 

Over these same fifteen years, there have been three Council Districts involved with Glassell Park -- CD1, CD13, and CD14. During that time, the political elite of the City have seen fit to gerrymander the area covered by each of these three districts so that there is little political continuity, a fact which I believe has led to the tenuous interest of the current crop of Councilmembers in actually giving a damn about the folks who live here. Two of our three Councilmembers (Huizar and Cedillo) are on the PLUM Committee. 

For example, our very own Mayor, Eric the Bold, used to have a good chunk of the community in CD13, but that has now diminished to a teeny area mostly around San Fernando Road and Fletcher Square. The District is now run by his former staff person, Mitch O’Farrell.

CD14, which used to encompass most of Glassell Park when Antonio Villaraigosa was the Councilmember, got shrunk to a pittance after his successor, Jose Huizar, decided he could make more money selling off Boyle Heights and Downtown LA. 

And finally, CD1, which was run by that paragon of planning, Ed Reyes, got radically expanded in the last redistricting exercise, and is now under the tutelage of Gilbert Cedillo. His district now includes the bulk of these canyons. 

I think the redistricting shuffle is a pretty good variation of three card monte, and gives you a clue as to exactly how rotten the state of politics currently is on Northeast LA. 

That said, accompanying the gerrymandering there has been an equal upheaval in how the politicians view Glassell Park. Back in the day, our Three Amigos (Reyes, Huizar, and Garcetti) were dead against building in the hills. They passed a bunch of legally questionable Interim Control Ordinances, Community Design Overlays, Q Conditions and many more bogus “planning tools,” all of which had the effect of stopping virtually all building of single family homes in the hills.   

The open space people were ecstatic, but some of us noticed that the real thrust of the Council actions were aimed against the right of individual people like you and me to be able to build our own home on a lot in the hills. They didn’t touch their big time campaign contribution base of large developers. The land was being warehoused. 

Of note, the bulk of the people wanting to build were multicultural families who had owned these lots for some time, and simply wanted to build their family a home. In other words, people with no real money and therefore no political power. 

Then came the housing crash in 2007-2008, and god took care of the hillsides for a while. Instead of open space, we all concentrated on figuring out how to cope with a 40% drop in the value of our homes, not to mention staying employed to pay the bills. 

The Adobe at Glassell Park 

Now the worm has turned, and housing near downtown is hot! Silverlake properties are largely unattainable, unless you are running an Airbnb party house, and anything around Echo Park has popped up like pot grown in a hothouse. We in Glassell Park (and to some extent, Cypress Park) have gotten discovered as the next great thing. 

In the midst of all this, along came the developers of The Adobe at Glassell Park, a four-acre piece of the 30-acre Walnut Canyon. Unfortunately for those who want to preserve the canyon, Adobe has the legal ability to build 32 single family homes on their four acres. This is because that land was zoned and 32 lots were approved way back when. 

With virtually no inventory in Glassell Park and a housing comeback, in 2014 the developers got serious about moving forward with their plan. It’s Unusual for developers, but these folks actually did engage the community and have a number of community meetings. Furthermore (gasp), they were and continue to be open to selling their property as open space, for a park or such, and reaffirmed this willingness last Saturday at the Glassell Park Community Center. 

On the other hand, this is a capitalist country (even before Trump), and the developers are interested in making a decent profit out of the deal. Duh. 

Saturday’s Meeting at the Glassell Park Community Center 

On January 28, a community meeting was held at our community center, a space leased by Council District One. The event (and thank you very much) was cosponsored by the Glassell Park Improvement Association and the Glassell Park Neighborhood Council. 

As usual, the crowd was huge, and the rhetoric was as toxic as the bike lane meetings were in Highland Park/Cypress Park/Glasell Park. Toxic indeed. While it is clear that the community will do everything in its power to stop the development and preserve Walnut Canyon, it is equally clear that the owners have a right to build, and the most the community can hope to do is delay the project, not stop it. 

I think it is that frustration which has led to the vehemence in attempting to block the project, a frustration over our community’s lack of political power to preserve the canyons. 

Of course an unmentioned fact is that most of the groups in our area supported the loser in the last race for CD1: Ed Reyes’ Chief of Staff Jose Gardea. In an almost $2 million dollar campaign, Gil Cedillo won by 52% to 48%. And wouldn’t you know it, the Mt. Washington crowd was prominent in the Gardea camp, many of whom had some pretty incendiary things to say about Mr. Cedillo. I won’t say that elections have consequences, but I haven’t seen a lot of kiss and make up since the election. Sigh. 

The Takeaway 

The real problem is that public institutions have failed in step up to actually do something to preserve what little open space there is left in Glassell Park. For example, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and its OberGrupenFuhrer ‘Ranger Joe’ Edmiston, has been too busy posturing to come up with the money from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to buy the land. 

It also turns out that the spiffy new Measure “A” Parks money which was just passed by the voters won’t really be available until sometime in 2019. After all the hype it turns out that even then the funds will be up for grabs by various denizens of the Supervisorial District. So good luck to our local open space folks. 

That leaves the City of Los Angeles. It seems to me that this is a grand opportunity for Council District 1 to see about some fresh ideas on how to keep Walnut Canyon as open space. God knows the rest of LA is turning into a concrete jungle, a place where the only open spaces are the potholes.

There is precedent for the City stepping up for open space. After all, a few years ago Jose Huizar proudly bought Elephant Hill for over $9 million bucks and hailed it as a great victory. 

The value of a pristine canyon or two is inestimable to all the citizens of Los Angeles, particularly those people squashed into outrageously priced condos in the downtown area. Maybe Huizar could help out, since he runs the PLUM Committee. He, after all, was the one who gerrymandered his way out of Northeast LA in favor of downtown, and I think his constituents just might like to take a ride and see a tree, or a critter, in a canyon. 

(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.

REFORMING LA FOR THE PEOPLE-While I can't reasonably speak for all of those who advocate for Measure S, I can reasonably say the following: neighborhood/volunteer/community advocates have been stymied by a Downtown/Mayor/City Council/Planning elite for decades. This elite has thwarted attempts by neighborhood councils and grassroots groups to create affordable, sustainable, environmentally-favorable, and economically-beneficial living conditions in the City of Los Angeles. 

Common sense, right? And this same elite is coming out against Measure S. Most of their allies are comprised of the same ilk that has benefited financially while causing the majority of Angelenos to suffer a decrease in quality of life or to flee the City altogether, often after years of fighting against this elite. 

Despite the lies and distortions, most of this unholy alliance of builders and developers are the same people who flout the laws themselves or pay off Downtown to flout the laws. They benefit financially while they do this and -- as would be expected -- have overseen a worsening of the environment, economy and quality of life in LA as a result of their actions. 

So the same folks who have fought for grassroots voices and for neighborhood councils are fighting for Measure S. Perhaps it's sad we have come to this, but has the City Council elite (those who oppose Measure S) bothered to police itself over the last few decades? 

The answer is No. So this is what Measure S is FOR, as per Ballotpedia:  

1) FOR TWO YEARS, WE WILL STOP MEGADEVELOPMENTS, ALLOW DEVELOPMENTS THAT DON'T NEED HUGE VARIANCES, AND UPDATE OUR GENERAL PLAN/COMMUNITY PLAN/ZONING LAWS.  WE WILL HAVE THE CITY OBEY ITS OWN LAWS, AND THEY WILL BE UPDATED WITH LEGAL/COMMUNITY INPUT. 

2) THERE WILL BE A PERMANENT PROHIBITION AGAINST "SPOT-ZONING", WHICH IS WHEN THE CITY VIOLATES THE LAWS FOR A GIVEN PROJECT, BUT THE ABILITY TO PERFORM LEGAL/COMMUNITY-SUPPORTED VARIANCES WILL BE MAINTAINED. 

3) THE CITY GENERAL/COMMUNITY/AIRPORT DISTRICT PLANS WILL HAVE A LEGAL REQUIREMENT TO HAVE A PUBLIC REVIEW EVERY FIVE YEARS. 

4) ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT REPORTS (EIR'S) WOULD HAVE TO BE PERFORMED BY CITY STAFF, AND NOT BY INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS PAID BY (AND BEHOLDEN TO) THE DEVELOPERS.  IN OTHER WORDS, THESE EIR'S WOULD BE UNBIASED. 

5) NO MORE THAN ONE-THIRD OF A REDUCTION OF ON-SITE PARKING REQUIREMENTS COULD OCCUR FOR A GIVEN DEVELOPMENT. 

So now you have read the basics -- the essence of Measure S. It's a shame that we have to pursue Measure S at this time, but after decades of being lied to, of being "owned" by developers and their allies who want to make big bucks and harm the daylights out of the rest of us, we have no choice. 

Measure S supporters are your neighbors, the affordable housing advocates, and the volunteers who want parks and a livable City where children and seniors and families can thrive and enjoy life. They want big projects to remain Downtown where they belong, and for there to be smaller projects in the suburban portion of the City, with accessible jobs as well. 

It's what we're FOR. And those who oppose Measure S? What are THEY for? 

Vote "YES" on Measure S on March 7, 2017. 

A happier, reformed Los Angeles may be coming a lot sooner than you think!

(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties.  He is also a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at   [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.) Photo: LA Times. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ELECTION POST-MORTEM-If you have found yourself profoundly depressed since the election of Donald Trump, you should have been at Occidental College on Wednesday night -- it would have given you hope. The Reverend Dr. William Barber II not only laid out in painful detail what put Trump in the White House, but also took the time in the clearest of terms possible to lay out the steps we the people can do about it now. It involves coming together and asserting our majority status in this democracy. 

Barber’s thesis is that endemic racism is not only alive and well, but is literally the only force powerful enough to get poor White voters in 95 of the poorest counties in the United States and elsewhere in the South to vote against their own economic self-interest. 

These poor voters should wonder why some of those pushing Trump or prior Republican candidates make as much as $97,000 an hour while they fight a $15 an hour minimum wage. The "gift" of racism is that it is able to deflect the blame of poor White exploitation by the obscenely rich to the usual Black, Latino, Muslim, and Jewish suspects, which continues to succeed in the 21st century by offering equally poor and downtrodden working class Whites the consolation prize of feeling at least nominally superior. 

What this left us with in the latest election -- and many of the ones proceeding it -- is the voting reality that this profoundly poor racist motived the voter core of 13 Southern states to give conservative Republicans and now Trump an almost insurmountable 171 Electoral College leg-up. Republicans then only need to accumulate another 99 electoral votes out of the remaining 37 states. 

But in North Carolina, Barber didn't stop at just pointing out the racist fear motivated model that has kept putting conservatives and now Trump in power. His Moral Mondays and other programs coordinated with litigation networked across racial and state lines to engage a multi-racial and ethnic have-not majority that has finally given constitutional "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" a substantive new reality as reflected in the election of a new Democratic governor and other elected officials. 

This has been accomplished, while waging a successful judicial confrontation and a reversal of what had been the systematic gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  

What I found to be a vindication of Dr. Barber's approach to all exploited people is something he mentioned briefly in passing. In the state of West Virginia where Trump won, Dr. Barber has now been asked to speak before predominantly White audiences ow that these folks have come to realize that the racially tainted Obamacare is actually the Affordable Care Act, and that is what Trump is in the process of taking away from them. 

The significance of race in the election of Donald Trump was clearly illustrated when Dr. Barber said, "There would have been no Trump without Obama first having been president for eight years" as a catalyst to White fear expressed in racism. But by the end of the evening it was also clear to the packed audience that if we organize now across racial and ethnic lines, then 95 million Americans will not sit out the next election as they did this one. And a 77,000 vote margin will never again be allowed to put a Trump into office. 

North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP | P.O. Box 335,Durham NC 27702 | 919‑682‑4700 | Fax 919‑682‑4711 | [email protected]

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

DEEGAN ON LA-Will David Ryu’s inaction, as alleged by renters, help evict 500 Miracle Mile affordable housing renters to make room for high end developers? What had been thought of as “secured borders” may now be plums ripe for the picking for developers who are aggressively moving into Miracle Mile. They want to transform up to 500 affordable housing units currently protected by the Rent Stabilization Ordinance into massive, high-end apartment and condo complexes. 

To accomplish this, they would evict workforce renters and tear down historic structures -- a blow to the community and a blow to the City’s efforts to increase the number of affordable housing units. 

This is leading to questions as to whether or not Councilmember David Ryu (CD4) has become a conduit for City Hall’s development plan for the Miracle Mile – a plan that would see it explode with high-end luxury housing taking the place of affordable housing. The upgrading of Museum Row and the installation of the Purple Line Extension subway are driving wedges between the status quo and the future. David Ryu is caught in the crossfire. 

The area between 8th Street and Wilshire Boulevard is primarily vulnerable, but properties fronting on Olympic Boulevard, as well as on the west side of Orange Grove Avenue south of 8th Street, will also be impacted. 

Concerned renters and building owners in the affected area of the Miracle Mile are upset with what they see as Ryu’s lack of continued backing, if not his reversal, of the original boundaries of the historic preservation plan contained in the Miracle Mile Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ) currently winding its way through City Hall hearings. It’s headed for a decisive vote by the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management committee (PLUM) on February 14. 

Fears of a St. Valentine’s Day Massacre by Ryu and PLUM Committee will hopefully be mitigated by a meeting with affected renters in the Miracle Mile on Monday, February 6. Ryu has been invited there so they can explain what they consider to be his abandonment of the original borders of the Miracle Mile HPOZ: namely, the strip between 8th and Wilshire, a strip along Olympic, and a strip west of Orange Grove to Fairfax – all of which have been hollowed out of the HPOZ and would be made available to developers, they say, with Ryu’s tacit approval. 

At press time, Ryu’s office was unable to confirm that he would attend the renters’ meeting, but the clock is ticking. One week after the meeting the PLUM committee is scheduled to hear and discuss the issue that has suddenly caught fire: how and why did the original boundaries change? 

On December 8, 2016, the City Planning Commission endorsed the Miracle Mile Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ), but, at the last minute, the Commission rewrote the HPOZ boundaries that had been approved by the City’s Cultural Heritage Commission, recommended by the Planning Department, and endorsed by Ryu. But these boundaries excluded properties fronting on Olympic Boulevard, properties north of 8th Street, as well as properties on the west side of Orange Grove Avenue south of 8th Street. 

These carve-outs of areas offering affordable housing, if allowed to stand, will become a developer’s playground. 

In March, the Interim Control Ordinance now protecting the Miracle Mile, will expire and without a fully approved HPOZ covering the original territory, the land grab by developers will be on. 

Until recently, the renters believed that Ryu was on their side, but in their passionate letter to him requesting a meeting, a copy of which was obtained by CityWatch, the community challenged him, saying: 

“We relied upon your promise to protect our neighborhood and your vow to ensure that multifamily residents – especially so many rent stabilized apartment dwellers – from rampant development. Why did you allow your staff to remain silent when the Planning Commission redrew the boundaries, in effect, issuing eviction notices to those of us living in more than 500 historic rent stabilized units? Unless you take decisive action to undo the newly proscribed boundaries unjustifiably drawn and adopted by the Planning Commission, our neighborhood will be left unprotected.” 

Ryu has scrambled under community pressure before and may be able to calm down the community with a public pledge to reinstate the original HPOZ borders. He will need to reinforce that by appearing at PLUM and publicly announcing his views since this is the key issue in dispute. 

This will not entirely solve his problem: Ryu would then need to explain himself to the developers and his City Hall colleagues. Or, he may just keep it a secret as to why he will not do what the community believes he originally promised them he would do. 

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

WISHFUL THINKING ABOUNDS-Thank you Kellyanne Conway. Now we have a name for the phenomenon, Alternative Facts. We needed a simple term to encompass the lies, deceit, misinformation, disinformation, “fair and balanced untruths,” the fake news, the fatally flawed data, and the wishful thinking that have been plaguing us for years. 

When his eminence President Donald Trump tweets about fake news, he too may have a point. The Left loves fake news. The media loves fake news. The Los Angeles Times has perfected Fake News by Omission. That’s why I stuck the LA Times with the motto: “All the News the Elite Wants You to See.” The media can fake the news by using misleading headlines and by omitting crucial facts. The most notorious example is, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.” As we now know, Michael Brown was not standing with his hands up surrendering when shot. 

President Trump’s greatest contribution to our understanding of Alternative Facts is his ability to “perchance” Tweet From the Hip. I imagine some of his advisers have pasted signs on the walls of the West Wing urging, “THINK before your TWEET.” If that is so, the signs have been ineffective. While Trump presents a clear and present danger to the Union, we should realize that he did not invent the use of Alternative Facts. We are all in this current nightmare because Alternative Facts have become as American as apple pie. 

Propaganda vs. Love of Truth 

Many decades ago in the build-up to World War II, Alternative Facts ran rampant in the world. Europe had the Nazi Party, but American had its Lindberghs and the American Bund Movement.  America also had a couple of Jewish kids, Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, high school students from Cleveland, who created Superman in 1933. Interestingly, Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, was a nerdy guy who worked for a newspaper, The Daily Planet – a rather universal sounding name. 

Although Superman’s powers were allegedly involved with leaping tall buildings in single bound, etc., in reality his greatest super power was his belief in “Truth, Justice and the American Way.” 

Somewhere after WW II, our belief in “Truth Justice and the American Way” waned somewhat. Instead, Alternative Facts came into favor with doctors telling Americans that smoking cigarettes was good for their health and the government warning us that smoking a single reefer would make you commit suicide. 

Yet, we Americans had our limits in those yesteryears, as was shown on June 9, 1954, when chief counsel for the United States Army Joseph Welsh brought the McCarthy Era to an end by asking the Republican Senator from Wisconsin, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” In the 1950's, Truth, Justice and the American Way was not yet a dead. 

Are Truth, Justice and the American Way, a Thing of the Past? 

With Donald Trump’s cleansing of Jews and Genocide from the Holocaust Remembrance Day, with his claims that Mexicans are rapists and drug lords, and with the banning of Muslims from certain nations while expressly exempting Christians from the ban, Americans are drowning in a tsunami of Alt-Rightism that is emanating from the White House. There is a constant barrage of Alternative Facts about millions of illegals voting for Hillary Clinton, along with Trump’s cropped photo of his inauguration he showed to David Muir on ABC. It clouds our minds to the reality that Trump did not make America safe for Alternative Facts. That happened long ago. 

We have become aware of Alternative Facts not because Trump has brought us something new. We are only shocked by the brazen absurdities of his Alternative Facts. Thus, we all need to stop and look at ourselves; we must remember Pogo who pointed out that we have found the enemy and he is us. Let me tweak that -- we have found the enemy and the enemy is our acceptance of Alternative Facts. 

Alternative Facts Govern Los Angeles 

In January 2014, Judge Alan Goodman warned Angelenos that the City intentionally used Alternative Facts to mislead the public and subvert the law. Judge Goodman’s exact words were, “fatally flawed facts,” “wishful thinking.” The judge said, “…material [facts] are necessary to informed decision-making and informed public participation.” As a result of then Councilmember Eric Garcetti’s habitual use of Alternative Facts, Judge Goodman rejected the Hollywood Community Plan. 

In its aftermath, Mayor Garcetti has repeatedly said how important community plans are for the city. Yet, more than three years have passed and there is no new draft of the Hollywood Community Plan. In April 2016, Mayor Garcetti released a foreshadowing of that Community Plan. It was intentionally based on fatally flawed data claiming that Hollywood’s population had grown from 198,288 people in 2010 to 206,000 people in 2016. He cited something called the SCAG 2012 RPT as the source for this “fact.” That SCAG document had absolutely no – nada, zilch -- population data for Hollywood. Lies, deceit, fake news, Alternative Facts are falsehoods are that are found everywhere, too numerous to mention. 

Does Garcetti’s perennial use of Alternative Facts matter? He has used them to divert over $2.5 billion to his developer buddies and he is proposing several mega-projects in Hollywood based on his lies about Hollywood’s population. 

What did the 15-member Los Angeles City Council do when they were asked to approve the Hollywood Community Plan based on lies? During a council hearing on June 19, 2012, one councilmember asked whether City Planning could redo the Plan with accurate data. Senior Planner Kevin Keller basically said, “Yes, that is possible.” Whereupon Garcetti insisted that his Hollywood Community Plan, which everyone knew was based on falsified data, be approved. The LA City Council then unanimously approved it. 

Alternative Facts that the entire City Council knew were false, ended up carrying the day. The Los Angeles City Council is often faced with projects based on Alternative Facts and each and every project is unanimously approved. 

While Mayor Garcetti and Donald Trump are habitual users of Alternative Facts, does this pollute America? Or is using them something akin to a used car salesman’s saying, “This car was used only by a little old lady who only drove it to church on Sunday.” 

The New Yorker ran an article in its January 30, 2017 issue called “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich” in which Evan Osnos noted: 

“Even financiers who supported Trump for President, hoping that he would cut taxes and regulations, have been unnerved at the ways his insurgent campaign seems to have hastened a collapse of respect for established institutions. Dugger said, "The media is under attack now. They wonder, is the court system next? Do we go from 'fake news' to 'fake evidence'? For people whose existence depends on enforceable contracts, this is life or death." 

The New Yorker, Mr. Osnos, and financiers are woefully behind the curve. Back in 1992, the California Supreme Court ruled that the court must enforce decisions where errors of fact and law are apparent on the face of the award and where they cause substantial injustice. See Moncharsh v. Heily & Blase, (1992) 3 Cal. 4th 1, 27-28. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Kennard noted, “the majority's holding requires our trial courts not only to tolerate substantial injustice, but to become its active agent.” Yes, the California Supreme Court requires its lower courts to treat known Alternative Facts as true! 

The California Supreme Court ruled that some things are more important than Truth, Justice and the American Way, and winning is one of those things. The threat facing America does not come from Donald Trump, from Breitbart, from the corrupt Los Angeles City Council, or from judges who find facts and fiction to be fungible commodities. The threat comes from our acceptance of those lies, deceit, fake news, dishonest judges, dishonest media, lying Presidents, and prevaricators calling themselves Members of Congress while knowing that they are bold faced liars. 

After the world economic crash in 2008, the nation accepted the Alternative Fact that certain Wall Street executives took unwise risks. That’s a “liar, liar, pants on fire” type of Alternative Fact. The economy crashed due to intentional multi-trillion dollar frauds perpetrated by Wall Street executives, none of whom went the prison. Why? Because we believed the in the Alternative Realty that criminality was mere carelessness. 

Our nation seems to run on Alternative Facts. The use of perjury to convict people is so common that in January 2015, the federal courts said that the California courts had an “epidemic of misconduct” after a prosecutor took the stand and committed perjury in order to convict a defendant. Did U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, who was then California’s Attorney General, do anything about that perjury? No. She just took the credit for another successful prosecution.

As bad as Donald Trump may be, we the American people have created the swamp where Alternative Facts create Alternative Realities. The difference among Trump’s lying Alternative Facts, the court’s lying facts, the media’s lying facts, and Eric Garcetti’s lying Alternative Facts is basically nothing. A lie is a lie is a lie. The fault rests not in the stars nor even in the politicos but in ourselves for pretending that falsehoods are part of Truth, Justice and the American Way.

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

MY TURN-This doesn't happen often! Remember college days when you ran to watch "Days of Our Lives" on TV, anxious to find out what disaster befell which member of the cast? Each morning I reach for the news to see what happened. It’s like living in an alternate universe and I keep hoping that, with time, I will be able to look at the "happenings" more dispassionately. 

When last I wrote at the end of the year, I was leaving on my annual R&R break, giving me a chance to travel – my second favorite thing…after writing for CityWatch, of course. Getting away is a good way to clear the head and think about the upcoming year. People who don't take a work break are doing themselves harm. No one is indispensable. 

I went to see longtime friends in Australia and New Zealand. I would suggest adding both countries to your travel "bucket" list. And it was the perfect time to be gone from all the political noise. Both countries have beautiful scenery, great food and wine, warm friendly people, stable governments and a lot of interest in the political changes taking place in the United States. 

In fact, I've not experienced this much curiosity about our country in many a year. They both have an arsenal of cartoonists and journalists who are having a great time at our expense. 

My first stop was a lake house north of Sydney that didn't have CNN or Fox News. The first couple of days withdrawing from news was like quitting smoking. But I adjusted and managed to clear my head by reading books and having huge political discussions with four generations under one roof. The patriarch of this family was a big Trump supporter but most of the rest were definitely not. The "Aussies" have always been strong allies of the U.S. but seem disconcerted about what is happening with our 45th President.

That was somewhat surprising because Australia tends to lean more conservative than its neighbor New Zealand, a country that was the birth of Greenpeace and remains very environmentally conscious. During my visit to New Zealand, I stayed with friends living in a forest overlooking a bay. There, they had both CNN and Fox News so my viewing habits returned quickly. 

I became accustomed to people asking me if I was from "Trump Land" -- and this was before the inauguration. Some of my fellow American travelers told people they were from Canada so they would avoid the usual comments and questions! 

I’ve been home for a short time now, and would say the atmosphere is certainly promoting increased sales in tranquilizers – especially for those who lost the election. Let's hope this will be a lesson learned for 2018: there is no such thing as a "sure thing" and staying involved is vital to a working democracy. 

So many words have been written about the national state of affairs. Unfortunately, much of the harsh rhetoric has extended to personal insults on social media. One of my long-term activist friends called me to say that she can't even look at her Facebook account. Many relationships have broken apart due to this Presidential election. 

One can criticize a policy but should not insult the person. President Trump was not my candidate but he won the election. No one else has called the voting into question. We need to respect the office and the people who voted for him. I am well aware that this courtesy was often not extended to ex-president Obama, but he set a great example by showing dignity and class.   

I have been paying attention to our local elections and have been bombarded by phone calls and flyers. If it was ever important before, it’s now of paramount importance. Never again will local government have as much influence on our lives as it will for the next four years. 

And no, I don't think CalExit is an option. I am an American by choice. I love this country and, like a marriage, it’s for better or for worse! 

Will we lose Federal funding? Maybe. But I believe we send more money to the Federal government than they remit to us. What are the contingency plans? There are many candidate meetings where constituents have the opportunity to ask the tough questions. The race for City Council seats is rather mild with only District 7 without an incumbent. This is the seat vacated by the infamous Felipe Fuentes where there are now 19 candidates. 

Does the Mayor’s recommendation mean an automatic winners? The majority of candidates are civic activists competing against a couple of professionals. One has to decide if political experience counts more or less than new ideas and a fresh outlook. It is really tough to raise money without strong backing. 

District 3 has Councilman Bob Blumenfield running unopposed as are Mike Feuer for City Attorney and Ron Galperin for Controller.

More and more I tend to think that in local elections like LA City Council, each candidate that qualifies should have the same amount of money to spend. How they use it will be a good indicator of how creative and financially responsible they are. 

We lose good people who would make great public servants because of unequal funding. Several candidates have stated they will not accept money from Real Estate Developers. They should also refuse union money. Both have vested interests in who is elected and have a disproportionate influence on the outcomes. 

I am sure that if every LA resident was asked to pay a small "fee"(since tax is a dirty word) to finance our local elections, the majority would do so if it would keep special interest money from gaining an unfair advantage. 

Not all "special interests" are evil. But instead of raising money for elections they could hold Town Halls and community meetings. This would give them a better opportunity to educate the electorate about their issues than sending dozens of flyers that often "stretch" the truth. 

We are a nation of survivors and if we do our part we will make sure that the next four years will not be the end of the world. 

As always, comments welcome.

(Denyse Selesnick is a CityWatch columnist. She is a former publisher/journalist/international event organizer. Denyse can be reached at: [email protected]) Cartoon: Australian Financial Review. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

SAVING A SYMBOL-Not all historic places engender strong positive feelings or associations from the public. Perhaps no place illustrates this better than Parker Center, the 1955 former LAPD headquarters in downtown LA’s Civic Center. 

Sometimes a site’s history is so mired in controversial events or personalities that people can’t imagine keeping it. Yet significance can encompass both positive and negative elements in multiple layers of history. Parker Center and other places with such importance can teach us valuable lessons and empower us to face, and own, the totality of our history – both the good and bad parts. 

Efforts to preserve places with difficult histories is not a new idea. For instance, the nearly twenty-year effort to preserve LA’s iconic Ambassador Hotel became more challenging without support from the family of Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated there in 1968.     

We all know that history is not always pretty. It can be painful, and it includes some events, actions, and outcomes that we would like to forget. We need to ask ourselves: are we being honest and preserving the full, authentic story of a place, or only the bits and pieces that form our preferred image of history? 

Located at 150 North Los Angeles Street in downtown LA, Parker Center is partly known as the backdrop for television’s long-running Dragnet television series and home to Sergeant Joe Friday. People generally feel good about this association. But there are other layers of history that evoke less nostalgic feelings, ranging from displacement to discrimination. These elements need to be confronted and acknowledged as well. 

As Parker Center currently stands vacant and in a prime location, some in the City’s administration are calling for its demolition and replacement with a new, nearly thirty-story tower for City office space. 

The Conservancy and our Modern Committee, the City’s Cultural Heritage Commission, and others are advocating for Parker Center’s preservation and reuse. Soon the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee will hear the pending Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM) nomination for the building. The full City Council will have until mid-February to decide whether to designate Parker Center as an HCM. 

When Parker Center was built in 1955, the eight-story, International Style building with integrated art and landscaping components was a significant, postwar addition to the Los Angeles Civic Center. Designed by Welton Becket & Associates and J. E. Stanton with landscape by Ralph E. Cornell, Parker Center was then known simply as the Police Facilities Building (renamed in 1966 for Police Chief William H. Parker.) 

Exemplifying Becket’s “Total Design” philosophy, the building prominently features art installations, including a piece by sculptor Bernard J. Rosenthal and one of the largest mosaics ever built, the “Theme Mural of Los Angeles” by Joseph Louis Young. The building’s innovative design, which integrated virtually all departments into a centralized facility, was critically acclaimed at the time as a model for modernizing the police force -- as were the state-of-the-art crime labs and communications center. In 1956, Popular Mechanics called Parker Center “the most scientific building ever used by a law-enforcement group.” 

By these facts alone, Parker Center’s significance is undeniable. The building has been identified as individually eligible for the California Register of Historic Resources and as a contributor to a National Register-eligible historic district of the Los Angeles Civic Center. 

Yet the stories of how Parker Center came to be and what it later symbolized make preserving it all the more challenging and compelling. Before it was Parker Center, the site contained two of the most vibrant blocks in Little Tokyo. It housed many small mom-and-pop businesses and cultural organizations serving the Japanese-American community. Starting in 1948, the City earmarked these blocks as part of a Civic Center expansion plan and an early form of urban renewal. The site was cleared of all existing buildings -- many of which would be considered historic if still standing. The property was remade into a single superblock, with Parker Center’s construction beginning in 1952. 

Despite being a federally supported program that ended more than forty years ago, urban renewal remains a touchy subject today, especially for preservationists and for those personally affected. Thousands of historic buildings, as well as part or all of neighborhoods such as Little Tokyo and Bunker Hill, were lost during this era of massive urban redevelopment. Parker Center’s construction was particularly hard felt: in addition to displacing hundreds of Japanese Americans, it spurred feelings that history was repeating itself, as some of these same people had been forcibly removed just a decade earlier and confined in World War II internment camps. 

Parker Center’s role in telling the story of Little Tokyo’s history is not without controversy. Yet it is also meaningful -- something many do not want to forget or wipe away through demolition. 

In September 2014, the Little Tokyo Historical Society joined the Conservancy in urging the City to support a preservation alternative that calls for preserving the main portion of Parker Center while allowing for an expansion at the rear of the site. In recent months, as the Civic Center Master Plan process has gotten underway, the Historical Society has decided to support demolition. Some in the Little Tokyo community are calling for Parker Center’s destruction as a form of retribution. While understandable, is this a good basis for deciding the future of LA’s Civic Center? If so, it raises similar and complex questions for other urban renewal areas in LA that have very similar origins and also resulted in displacement, including Bunker Hill and Chavez Ravine.   

In addition to Parker Center’s early urban renewal roots, its subsequent layers of law enforcement history were not always perceived as positive. William H. Parker, who oversaw the building’s construction, was one of the most distinguished -- and controversial -- police chiefs in Los Angeles’ history. During his leadership (1950-1966), he professionalized the police force and developed crime-fighting concepts that are now standard practice. Yet his tenure was also marred with discrimination against the African American and Latino communities, a deep-rooted problem brought into the national spotlight during the 1965 Watts Riots. 

Even after Parker’s death in 1966, for many the building continued to symbolize racial inequalities and police brutality in the city. The most visible example occurred in 1992, when violent protesters surrounded the building following the acquittal of four officers accused of brutally beating Rodney King.   

Some argue that it is counter-intuitive, or at the very least ironic, to want to preserve a place like Parker Center today. Yet without the physical place in which these events happened, it is infinitely harder to tell the stories and demonstrate just how far we have come. Parker Center has the ability to teach us many things, and perhaps in today’s uncertainty, is more relevant than ever before. 

The fact that Parker Center brings out so many strong feelings only underscores its important role in Los Angeles’ history and how it can help us remember our past while also allowing us to move forward. In a recent piece about why old buildings matter, Tom Mayes at the National Trust for Historic Preservation wrote, “[t]he history of an old place may be viewed differently over time -- and interpreted and reinterpreted as our conception of who we are as a people changes.” 

The effort to save Parker Center will likely continue to play out over the next month or so, as cases are made for and against preservation and reuse, and demolition and new construction, and which approach makes the most sense. That decision comes down to simple facts of dollars and cents, feasibility, and developing creative design solutions. What is not so easy to measure are feelings about a place and deciding whose feelings are more important than others. However, whether these emotions are positive or negative, there should be no question about Parker Center’s significance.

(Adrian Scott Fine is the Director of Advocacy for the Los Angeles Conservancy.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

RANTZ & RAVEZ-How much does it cost a well-intentioned community-concerned developer to buy off an unscrupulous attorney and a homeowner who filed a court action protesting a much needed eldercare residential facility adjacent to Walnut Acres in Woodland Hills? 

A number of years ago when I represented Council District 3, I was approached by a developer who wanted to build an eldercare residential facility on Fallbrook Ave just south of Victory Blvd in a mixed neighborhood. The development was within walking distance of a major shopping center consisting of a Ralph’s supermarket, a Target, a Wal*Mart, movie theaters, restaurants and a host of other retail establishments. 

The neighborhood immediately to the south of the proposed development is close to a fire station, retail stores, a medical marijuana store, a gas station, houses of worship, other markets, a restaurant and multiple single-family residences -- all located on a multi-lane roadway with a 45 mph speed limit and traffic lights at strategic intersections. In other words, the area is a mixture of business, commercial and residential. 

The prospective development site was a former private school that generated noise from the students; I received complaints from neighbors about that noise and associated factors connected with the students who played in the schoolyard at recess and other times. In negotiations with the community, the developer reduced the size of the structure and made other concessions to gain support from those who filed court actions against the project. When it was finally agreed upon by those who filed the legal action, the facility was ready to begin construction. 

To add more support for the development, the City of LA’s Zoning Administrator was in favor of it. Before the first shovel of dirt was turned, a new group of residents from Walnut Acres began to protest the facility and to pressure the current councilman, Bob Blumenfield, to deny it. I bet that this new group of “concerned residents” now wants its piece of the action just like the unscrupulous attorney and resident obtained. And what is their price to remove their objections? In a recent conversation with Councilman Blumenfield about the development, I expressed my continual support for it and urged him to move forward in spite of the opposition from this new group that wants its piece of the Money Pie.

I will continue to report on this matter as progress is made. I may even name the people that have little to no concern for the seniors in our community. 

I was involved in the Second Annual Greater Los Angeles Homeless count on January 24 

I teamed up with Valley resident Diane Jack Delaney and we headed out to our sector in the western portion of the West San Fernando Valley. We patrolled the area west of Valley Circle and north of Roscoe Blvd. While we did not locate any homeless people residing in the quiet residential neighborhoods, we did observe a quiet community reflective of tranquil mountain living.

On our way back to the Homeless Count command post at the Canoga Park Community Center, we drove down streets in the Canoga Park area and found a number of homeless people living in motor homes and on the street. In one area, the sidewalk was so congested with tents and shopping carts, you could not walk down the sidewalk. While the good people of the city are counting and providing information on the homeless population to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the number of homeless is increasing and we see little reduction in the number of people living on the streets, sidewalks and parking lots in Los Angeles. 

Those of you who voted for the $1.2 billion Los Angeles Bond measure to address homelessness in Los Angeles may want to think twice before you vote for the pending Los Angeles County Tax measure to provide supportive services for the homeless. Money alone is not appearing to help reduce the homeless population in and around Los Angeles. 

While we are on the subject of LA’s homeless, let me share with you the latest city plan for the homeless living in vehicles on our city streets: LAMC 85.02. 

As of January 5, 2017, there is now a map for “vehicle dwelling” on the streets of Los Angeles.                 

There are three areas listed: 

1) No vehicle dwelling at any time. These are Red Zones. 

2) No vehicle dwelling overnight between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. They must comply with all posted parking restrictions. These are Yellow Zones. 

3) Vehicles are permitted but they must comply with all posted parking restrictions. These are Green Zones. 

The areas approved for vehicle dwelling are along major roadways. 

For additional information go to: goo.gl/79tLQc 

Upcoming City Elections 

The Mayor, City Attorney, Controller and the odd numbered council district offices are up for election. This will be a very sleepy election cycle. After the recent Presidential election and the turmoil associated with it, few care about Los Angeles’ local elections. I will be reporting on the races in the near future. 

Building Developments and Los Angeles Politics 

Developer Rick Caruso is a former LA Police Commissioner and someone who can influence local politics. While his campaign contributions are significant, he is well connected with local elected officials. In a recent project Caruso is pursuing on the Westside, the community expressed concern about the size of the development. Being a man who likes to win, Caruso modified his project and gained the support of the local councilman and city council to approve the project. Councilman Paul Koretz supported it, then pulled his support, but then supported it once again. Talk about a councilman that can blow with the wind…Paul Koretz wins the title! He is facing a strong opponent in his re-election bid from Jesse Creed. I have met with Jesse and he is determined to beat Paul in this race. Is it time for Paul Koretz to move on? Time will tell.        

Los Angeles Traffic and Housing and Measure S 

I recently took my son and granddaughter to Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park on a Saturday. Traffic from the San Fernando Valley to Buena Park was congested both going to and returning from the park. Orange County, Los Angeles County and this entire region is smothered by excessive traffic congestion seven days a week, day and night. While the public transit system is not the answer for most of us, we continue to get more and more frustrated with the lack of traffic relief. Our elected officials can only give us false promises with no real relief or improvements in sight. 

Remember the billions of dollars spent on the 405 expansion and improvements? Not much has changed from before the construction until after it was completed. That brings me to Measure S and what it will do to force our elected officials and planning departments to deal with the traffic and shrinking quality of life we are all experiencing in this region. I say YES on Measure S. A Yes Vote on Measure S will offer an opportunity for city leaders to finally deal with development and traffic in the city. 

More election news will be coming in future editions of RantZ & RaveZ.

(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. 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.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GELFAND’S WORLD--It's 1968 all over again, except that this time people are marching in favor of science, women's rights, and the freedom of Muslims to travel. It's different than the chants of "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh," but the emotion is right up there. Oh, and there's one other difference that is as the night to the day. 

As the eleven o'clock news came on Sunday night, local television stations had something live to cover, and for once, it wasn't a car chase on the 405. For the second night in a row, large crowds of protestors gathered at the Tom Bradley international terminal at LAX (photo above). By now everyone knows about the Trump administration's moves to freeze international travel for people from a few countries. (Ironically, the countries that provided the participants in the September 11 attacks and hosted Bin Laden weren't affected.) Los Angeles has a huge Iranian community, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and it was inevitable that some local families were going to be affected. 

So there they were, thousands of protesters with signs and chants, or just being there to make a point. They filled sidewalks and parts of the terminals and from time to time interrupted traffic flow on the airport's main roads. 

And that, you see, is where that big difference between 1968 and 2017 became apparent. Blocking a street or an intersection in 1968 was a whole different affair. An earlier generation remembers the police reading out the words, "This is an unlawful assembly." There was an official script that was colloquially referred to as "reading the riot act." Failure to disperse led to the police firing tear gas and, often enough, moving forward with clubs against the crowds. 

June 23, 1967: Los Angeles residents remember the so-called police riot at the Century Plaza hotel. More than ten thousand demonstrators began in Cheviot Hills Park and walked over towards the Century Plaza Hotel to protest the presence of President Lyndon Johnson and the escalation of the Viet Nam War. The crowd got jammed in front of the hotel and backed up for blocks along the street. I remember the noise of motorcycles being gunned and people screaming, then crowds retreating back towards Pico Blvd. Middle class, middle aged white people from all over the city were shoved around and hit with clubs. The event soured relations between Angelenos and the LAPD for a decade and more. 

Sunday night was different. As one reporter explained, the police had worked out an agreement with the protesters which allowed the crowd to close down the airport road for fifteen minutes of each half hour. 

Imagine that. No tear gas or swinging clubs. The police and the protesters kept the peace. This is not to say that the situation won't break down at some point, but the attitude on the part of the city's leaders is worlds away from how things used to be. 

There are a couple of differences between 1967 and 2017 that help to explain the change in outcomes. The biggest difference is that Los Angeles in 2017 is semi-officially in rebellion against the existence of the Trump administration. It isn't surprising that residents and elected leaders are on the same side in being annoyed with how the administration is toying with the lives of our own residents. 

Los Angeles in 2017 is enormously multinational, with dozens of Asian nationalities and probably an equal number of nationalities from the middle east and Africa. A lot of this is fairly new compared to the Los Angeles of 1967 -- if you add up the Iranians and Koreans you are looking at somewhere between half a million and a million Los Angeles residents. Add Jews, Latinos, African-Americans, and Armenians, and you have a disparate population that has in common the propensity to self-identify as members of minority populations. 

The 1960s were an era in which a smaller group of white, middle class people found themselves on the wrong side of the police barricades. There was a lot of anger on both sides. Somehow, much of the bad feeling has slowly evaporated. Perhaps it's the result of changes made since the federal court consent decree, but a lot of it is just time passing since a war that much of the current population wasn't around for. There is also the fact that we no longer have to deal with people like Chief Parker, who used the police to enforce racial separation and wasn't shy about saying so. 

This obviously doesn't mean that the LAPD is without issues, but at least it has learned to deal with a serious demonstration in a constructive way, a negotiated settlement that allowed both sides to retain their dignity and pride. 

The leftside Tea Party develops 

Recently, CityWatch referred to the development of the left wing equivalent of the right wing's Tea Party. The two sides are comparable in their total opposition to an elected president and their willingness to protest. The movement has recently become symbolized by a banner that said "Resist." 

This week, Eric Loomis in Lawyers Guns and Money wrote: 

I spent the afternoon celebrating my birthday by protesting with about 2000 fellow Rhode Islanders in support of our Muslim and Latino comrades.

Standing out there today, I realized that what we are seeing is the opening of the left Tea Party. Or at least that’s how it feels in Rhode Island. 

When we start to see demonstrations, even small ones, in Alabama and Mississippi and Kentucky, we will know that change is coming.  

What would scientists march for and against? 

This is a question that merits a detailed response, possibly a column (or a book) of its own. But there is one topic that needs to be explored, and a group of scientists and people who respect the process of science would be just as good as any others to push it. We should be getting really sick and tired of this administration reveling in its lies. Whether you call them alternative facts or just plain lies, the problem is clear. We might also add, "How can anybody trust a president and his administration when they can't even deal with something as trivial as the number of people who came to the inauguration? 

What are we going to do when something serious -- like an escalation of the tension with North Korea -- lands in our lap? People remembering the 1960s may also remember that Lyndon Johnson began to suffer from what the news media called the credibility gap. It seems to me that Trump has always had his own credibility gap, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better.

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

-cw

On January 6, the Housing Committee of the L.A. Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates led by Barbara Ringuette met with Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) for a brief rundown of their program and funding. LAHSA is an independent agency established by the County and City of Los Angeles whose primary goal is to coordinate funding in providing services to homeless people throughout the City and County of Los Angeles. 

“We are a pass-through entity,” said Stuart Jackson, Chief Finance Officer of LAHSA. “We receive funds from the City, County, and the federal government –U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and we pass it on to nonprofits in the community to do the foot work.”

LAHSA works with the City and County of Los Angeles, and HUD partners to do an Annual Needs Assessment for the community. Last year, their collaborative effort culminated in the County Homeless Initiatives and City Homeless Strategies. Additional partners include the County Department of Health Services, County Department of Mental Health and the United Way. 

“We came together with a needs assessment of what types of programs are needed to address homelessness in our community, and created the Homeless Initiatives and Strategies that were approved by the County Board of Supervisors and Los Angeles City Council,” said Stuart Jackson. Based on the programs of need that were identified, the County and City provided funds to LAHSA. 

“We fine tuned the programs of need. Put them into a working process, then asked our nonprofit partners to submit proposals for funding following the guidelines of the program that they’ll be doing,” said Stuart Jackson. 

The challenge is the timing of going through the process with the nonprofit partners: Creating a list for proposals, opening a window for submission, and the scoring of the proposals that require both time and the funding. Most of the programs were ready to be funded by October 1st, said Jackson. He added that because of the lengthy process, in a sense it seems as though “we’re just getting started.” Nonprofits that were funded have experienced growth in a short period of time, as LASHA has also, he said. 

Agency funds services that range from street outreach to several different shelter types for families and singles. It includes several housing intervention types – from supportive rapid and transitional housing with short-term financial assistance to permanent supportive housing with in depth services and ongoing rental subsidies, explained the Director of Programs Paul Duncan. 

Jackson added that the main increases in funding this year have been for Rapid Re-Housing accommodating Singles and Youth Systems. In the past, United Way funded these Rapid re-housing through fundraising and other activities as a pilot program. Now that Rapid Housing has become a proven system of excellence for the community, it’s been incorporated into our government structure. Last year was the first year that the City and County funded rapid housing for singles and youth, Jackson said. 

Staffing

This year, LAHSA’s staff increased 100 %. Personnel doubled from 100 to 200 to manage the increased funding we have received from the City, County and HUD, said Jackson. 

Director of Communications Tom Walden added that LAHSA has 80 emergency response team members in the field, “a doubling from last year.” There are now more field workers dispersed throughout the City and County of Los Angeles engaging everyday with the homeless in the streets, and especially where there’s a concentration of homelessness such as Venice, Downtown, and Hollywood, said Walden. 

Funding Increase for Fiscal Year 2016-2017 (Per Records viewed on 01/06/17) 

• LAHSA’s funding from City, County, State, and HUD for FY 2016-17 increased 35% or slightly over $34.5 Million. The total funding for the whole Program and Operations was slightly over $132.1 Million. 

• There was a 53% increase or an additional $20.3 Million from the City of Los Angeles’ General Fund, totaling $58.5 Million. 

• While some County funding programs for the homeless dissolved others emerged.  The County’s Homeless Strategy Initiative dedicates nearly $12.9 Million for services to the homeless. In addition, a new state grant with funds nearing $1.5 Million has been committed by the state. 

• Department of Public and Social Services for families increased funding to the homeless by 51% or $5.7 Million, totaling about $17 Million. Also, the Department of Children and Family Services increased funding by $861,180. totaling nearly $3 Million. “The latter funds are for foster care youth,” said Jackson. 

• HUD increased funding by 12% or nearly $2.9 Million, a total of $26.9 Million for the Continuum of Care Program that includes: Permanent Housing, Rapid Re-Housing, Transition Housing, and Supportive Services.     

Coordinated Entry Systems

The fastest growing homeless population is women said Walden. We’ve seen an increase in the last three years, and often single women with kids, he said. 

Walden explained that using the Coordinated Entry System (CES), LAHSA is able to coordinate the different populations serviced: Homeless Families, and the Singles and Youth System. It tracks histories, shows where individuals are in the process as well as the assistance each individual received. 

“This is a better way to coordinate our services throughout the continuum of care for individuals,” he said.

Service Planning Area (SPA) 

There are seven Service Planning Areas in Los Angeles County. Each SPA covers nearby communities. For example, SPA 4 ---North East Los Angeles (NELA)--- encompasses 13 neighboring communities. LAHSA allocates funding across the county based on the geographical need of the particular SPA, said Duncan. “We try to distribute funds based on our homeless count,” he said. 

Winter Shelters 

LAHSA’s Winter Shelter Program provides homeless adults with overnight shelter, meals, showers, and case management services from December 1 – March 1. Free daily transportation is available to and from the shelters by going to any of the pick-up locations. Shelter Hotline: 1(800) 548-6047 

“I can’t force someone to move into housing. Therefore, I have to build a relation and through that relationship, hopefully, I built a trust that I’m looking for their best interest,” Paul explained. “We have success that we can quantify.”  

(Connie Acosta participates in the neighborhood council system and frequently reports on Neighborhood Council matters.)