LOS ANGELES

EASTSIDER-Is homelessness a real problem in LA? You betchy. Should we do something about it? Of course. Can the LA City Council handle the problem? So far, indications aren’t good. 

In the run up to passing a $1.2 billion dollar bond measure on November 8, the LA City Council was all over the problem of homelessness. I mean, we had committees, plans, pontification and platitudes galore. Political fodder of the highest order, but what was underneath the rhetoric? 

Speaking as a recovering bureaucrat, I have noticed that public agencies handle their documents in two very different ways. When they are serious and want to do something odious, the documents are usually a black and white memo, full of technical jargon and indecipherable gobbledygook. On the other hand, when they want to sell snow in the wintertime to the public, it’s an entirely different deal. In this case, they write huge full color documents, with pretty color charts and graphs and tons of headings and subheadings which prove that they know what they are doing and so you should trust them. The City’s Comprehensive Homeless Strategy is a shining example, and you can find it here.  

Be forewarned, it will take a while to even load the document in your browser, since it is a 300 page piece of dazzling you know what. The glitz starts on page 7 and goes on and on. I found a particularly pretty color flow chart on page 18 that shows all the public and private agencies that work together on this knotty problem. 

For a shorter and even flashier version, check out the Mayor’s summary version of how the Mayor is single handedly transforming LA into the vanguard of homelessness solutions. 

If you look at the fine print, the City of Los Angeles has already pledged allocating $100 million in the budget towards the problem, which they recognized was a drop in the bucket. The Committee working on this was led by no other than Jose Huizar, whose PLUM Committee has created plenty of homelessness by blessing every developer’s dream over the last few years. 

First Reports. 

A key part of the City’s Plan has been to use City owned property to provide quick housing. Indeed, City Controller Ron Galperin has developed a very cool database to map the approximately 9000 city properties which may be underutilized. For a good read on how this came to happen and how it works, check out this article at The Planning Report. 

After all this, the first public report on the homeless strategy progress was released by the Homeless Strategy Committee on November 7. It’s a good example of a “serious” memo, black and white, full of technical jargon. 

The reason for the report’s awkward language is pretty clear -- the core first steps relating to “crisis response” efforts aren’t going that well. As the LA Times  put it, “Proposals for storage lockers and toilets for street dwellers are stalled, new shelter capacity is being added at a trickle, and the city bureaucracy moving more slowly than some council members expected.” 

Buried in the report is the fact that it was community opposition that derailed storage facilities in Venice and San Pedro, and CD 9’s La Opinion site turned out to be no good “due to the rehabilitation cost.” 

Also, the 9^th District Court of Appeals torpedoed the Council’s hot flash vision of a Citywide Safe Parking Program. So back to the drawing board on that one. 

You have to wonder how much use Ron Galperin’s database of city owned properties is going to be in the face of all of this pushback. Using city owned properties was a key element in providing supportive housing for the homeless. 

Speaking of Quick Homeless Housing. 

Part of phase one of the City’s ambitious 300 page Comprehensive Homeless Strategy was to provide quick, permanent supportive homeless housing on some 12 city-owned parcels. A big part of this plan was to establish a list of prequalified developers who could quickly build on those parcels. This list ultimately included 39 developers and recommendations for the disposition of the twelve parcels. 

Well, that didn’t last long. In a mid-November move, the recommendations had suddenly winnowed down to four developers, and the types of housing now magically include “Permanent Supportive Housing, Affordable Multifamily Housing, Mixed-Income Housing, Affordable Homeownership,” and my favorite, “Innovative Methods of Housing.” 

Also, the 12 parcels are now down to 10, with the staff recommendation that the other two parcels be sold off on the grounds that “there are no recommended proposals for these sites.” The money, of course, will go to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. 

So what we are left with in the initial phases of LA City’s master plan for homelessness are 4 developers who are authorized to build affordable housing or anything “innovative.” Great. 

What Can We Expect for Our $1.2 Billion Bond? 

In a heartwarming, if naive expression of faith, over 76% of the voters approved Measure HHH on November 8, authorizing the sale of $1.2 billion in bonds to pay for about 10,000 units of affordable permanent-supportive housing in the next 10 years. It is the major long-term component of the City’s Comprehensive Homeless Strategy. 

Take a look at KPPC’s article on 10 things you need to know about measure HHH  to see what the promises were in hyping the bond measure, as well as the fears. 

If you contrast the bond measure rhetoric with what the City has actually done so far, the disconnect looms like the Grand Canyon. Affordable housing is not permanent-supportive housing; it’s simply another opportunity for real estate developers to make money building more housing. And if the 12 parcels already identified have shrunk to 10 already, where are all of these 10,000 units going to be built? Furthermore, if you believe the cost per unit for this housing, then I invite you to my lottery for the 6^th Street Bridge. 

Don’t misunderstand. Homelessness is really important, but so far, the efforts of the Council don’t seem to be remotely on track to provide the 500 units of supportive housing and key “crisis response” that was promised. As the City stated in the Executive Summary of their very own Comprehensive Homeless Strategy document: 

“In the short-term, the City must enhance its existing homeless shelter system and transform shelter beds into bridge housing by including homeless case management and integrating supportive health and social services from the County at appropriate levels of caseload via the CES.” 

Since the ability to sell bonds is not a requirement to sell the bonds, I urge all Angelenos to closely monitor the Mayor/City Council machine as they continue to try and implement their grand design. If they can’t get it right on what they have already promised to do without the bond money, maybe they should not sell bonds at all until and unless they get their act together. 

This should be about our surging homeless population, not politics as usual. 

One can dream...

(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.) Photo: Elizabeth Daniels/LA Curbed.

Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

TRUMP’S MOST IMPORTANT PICK-As the Trump Transition careens along, proposing that free speech be sanctioned by depriving Americans their U.S. citizenship, we come to the most important appointment – California’s Steven Mnuchin as Secretary of Treasury. 

As explained previously in a CityWatch article, Little Timmy Giethner turned Obama’s Administration into an American tragedy, setting the stage for the rise of Trumpism. Rather than risk being turned into a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife for looking back upon destruction, let’s affix our gaze to the future. 

What are the primary duties of the Secretary of the Treasury? 

(1) Protect the Price System (aka Price Structure.) 

(2) Institute policies to ameliorate the swings of the business cycle. Since we are in a mild upswing, the focus is to protect the economy from the down phase, i.e. recession.

The Price System. 

Neither businessmen nor family members can make wise economic decisions without knowing the actual value of everything. If a homeowner is deceived into believing that the true value of healthcare insurance is $1,500 per month when it is only $800 per month, he is losing $700 per month. That is $8,400 per year which simply disappears from his wealth and he gets nothing in return. 

On the other hand, if the homeowner is deceived into believing that a healthcare plan will insure his family for only $300 per month, but when a catastrophic illness befalls the family, he discovers that it pays only 45% of the medical bills, bankruptcy follows the illness. 

The law of supply and demand is often invoked along with some quasi-religious belief that if everyone is allowed to lie their heads off about the value of everything, the law of supply and demand will magically arrive at the correct price for everything. Troglodytes who adhere to this theory oppose regulations which would keep false data out of the Price System. Wall Street is filled with thieves who want no regulations on their power to lie, cheat, manipulate and thereby financially devastate the American people. 

We saw a fine example of the destruction of the Price System during the Subprime Mortgage frauds where Wall Street firms forced the rating agencies like Standard and Poor to rate junk securities as top grade. This practice was widespread when Henry Merritt "Hank" Paulson, Jr., the last Secretary of the Treasury, who was a scion of Goldman Sachs, reigned supreme in the Bush Administration. As a result of Hank’s treachery, America lost $22 trillion in wealth, but we hasten to add that Little Timmy Geithner gets more than honorable mention in guaranteeing that we’d never have a real recovery. 

The first step to protect the Price System is for Secretary Mnuchin to propose a stronger Glass-Steagall law to replace the laughable Dodd-Frank Act. Investment firms need to be restricted to their vital role of raising capital from sophisticated investors for needed projects. They need to be restricted not only as a means to stop trillions of dollars in fraud, but also to make certain that the capitalist system has a functioning institution for raising capital. That can only happen when investment houses have no access to commercial banking funds. 

Needless to say, many volumes can be written about protecting the Price System, especially for a society which has just elected a predatory real estate developer to be President. Even prior to the arrival of Trumpism, however, the fraud which has become pandemic in our financial institutions was rotting our economic system: ninety percent of all productivity increases since the Crash of 2008 have gone to the top One Percent. 

Secretary Mnuchin’s Duty is to Tame the Business Cycle. 

The upswing in the economy is a dangerous return to the Business Cycle with its Booms and Busts. Due to the reactionary economic policies of little Timmy Geithner, the Obama Administration failed to institutionalize additional safeguards to modulate the next Bust Phase. For some reason, people habitually believe that the Boom Phase will last forever. Let’s be blunt about who warned the world that the Boom Phase of any economy has a short life span. GOD told us and GOD told us what to do. People are usually surprised to discover that GOD is the true father of Keynesian Economics. 

Way back then, Pharaoh’s dream alerted him to the short life span of the good times. When he did not understand the significance of his dream where the seven lean cows ate the seven fat cows and remained lean, Joseph instructed Pharaoh in the first principle of Keynesian Economics. The wise Pharaoh saves during the fat years so that he can release grain from the storehouses during the lean years and avoid famine. Secretary Mnuchin’s Torah portion seems to have been Parashat Vayaeshev (Genesis 37.1 - 40.23) which stops just before the section where Joseph explains the basics of Keynesian economics to Pharaoh. Shall we mystically wonder whether Secretary Mnuchin is standing on the threshold of perfidy or greatness? Did he peak ahead to Genesis 41 et seq.? 

What Economic Policies Should Mnuchin Institute for the Trump Administration? 

While the Trump is obsessed with the idea that the boom phase of the business cycle will not only be infinite but should be 6% growth per year, Secretary Mnuchin’s real duty is to institute programs to prepare for the famine years. 

The income level on which Social Security contributions are based, for example, needs to be raised immediately. Currently, it stops at an income of $118,500 per year. Social Security payments protect businesses when the economy hits a down turn, but unless the government has saved more funds during the fat years by raising the income level for contributions, the fund will not have accumulated enough money to increase Social Security payments. This measure should have been undertaken in January 2010, but it could not be done due to Little Timmy Geithner’s reactionary policies. 

Because private pensions have all but evaporated for the average citizen, Social Security payments need to increase by 5% to 10% per year each over and above the annual increase of the CPI. The problem is that first we needed the seven fat years of increased contributions before we can responsibly increase payments. We do not have that accumulation of cash. 

Secretary Mnuchin faces a crisis. The recession will arrive before he has enough time to collect sufficiently more Social Security contributions to have instituted these increased payments. Thus, Secretary Mnuchin needs to maximize contributions as fast as possible so that the increased payments can begin as the recession starts. Ideally, the legislation which increases the contributions will also set an objective benchmark for when to start the increased Social Security payments. Keynesian mechanisms function best when they are automatic, as the politicians are mostly economic ignoramuses who think spending should be cut when a recession starts. 

How to Interface Mercantilism with Modern Economics 

From what one can tell, Trump’s plan to make America Great Again is a reversion to the Mercantilism of the 1500s to 1600s. That places Trumpism in direct conflict Secretary Mnuchin’s duty to modulate the severity of the Boom and Bust Phases of the Business Cycle. 

Will Mnuchin side with the goniff impulsive of Trumpism or will he be a mensch who promotes the general welfare of human beings?

(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.

RANTZ & RAVES--That special time between Thanksgiving and Christmas and the New Year brings families together from around the country and the world in celebration of our annual holidays. I can remember when I was a youngster and my Mom and Dad would gather me and my brother together with our aunts and uncles and cousins for great feasts and family holiday fun times. (Photo above: Holiday decorations at the May Company on Miracle Mile in 1940’s.) 

There was Uncle Eddie and Aunt Mary and Uncle Joe and Aunt Tina and Aunt Olga and Uncles Bill and Mitchell and so many others that impressed me during those early years of my life in Los Angeles. My cousins Sharon and Joe and Eddie and Annie and Mary and Beth and Kenny and so many others. Sadly many have passed and others have grown old with time. Old like I am feeling this time of the year. 

Those Good Old Days are blazed deep in my memory and come to the surface as our annual year-end celebrations approach. During those years, Los Angeles was a place where you called your adult neighbors Mr. and Mrs. There was no calling them by their first name. It was called respect for the adults in the neighborhood. 

It was a time when Mom would yell from the front porch of the Hollywood apartment at dusk … ‘Dennis and Vincent come home for dinner.’ When the sun went down, it was a time when all moms and dads gathered for dinner with the family. We would all enjoy mom’s cooking. Could Mom cook! 

All sorts of delicious food made fresh. There was no microwave cooking just fresh food cooked by Mom in her special tasty way. Cooking with love for her family. That was long ago and a much better time in Los Angeles and the world. 

There was Black and White TV, no cell phones or Internet. It was a time when people appreciated each other and gathered in friendship on a regular schedule. It was a time with great Love and Happiness. Shopping with the Sear’s catalog and J.C. Penny, May Company, Bullocks, Orbachs and Robinsons and the Broadway on Wilshire Blvd that was called the Miracle Mile. A time when Blue Chip and S&H Green Stamps were given out at gas stations where you would receive service including water, oil and tire pressure checks. Fedmart and Zody’s department stores were discount places to purchase a variety of items.   A great time in the City of the Angels. 

Traffic would flow smoothly and you could travel from the San Fernando Valley to Downtown Los Angeles on the 101 Freeway without traffic gridlock most of the day and evening. What happened to all that goodness and happiness and neighborly respect for each other? 

A time when hubcaps were stolen and not cars. A time without vicious gangs and deranged individuals that would shoot and kill police officers just because they wanted to. 

A time when a national election would take place and the will of the people would be respected and not generate into protests including the blocking of freeways. 

It is a long time past and a memory that many readers can relate to. Readers like the sweet couple I recently met at Costco … one of my favorite stores … that mentioned to me that they enjoyed reading my RantZ and RaveZ column. 

I wish each or you a Safe, Merry and Happy Holiday season.   

While I get very sentimental this time of the year, I can assure you that my RantZ will continue following the holidays. 

I welcome your comments, observations and concerns at [email protected].

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

-cw

THE REAL DEAL SPECIAL REPORT-In the first installation of TRD’s series on the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, we explain the underlying problems with LA’s planning process. We take a look at the issues that gave NII fertile ground to build a movement. Stay tuned this week as we explore the implications of the March ballot measure in depth. 

It took 18 months, four public hearings, and at least $100,000 for developer CityView to get a 160-unit student housing complex entitled in University Park, just a mile northeast of the dorm-starved USC.

And this was a lucky one, according to Con Howe, (photo above: right) managing director of the firm’s Los Angeles fund and a former Planning Director. The project had no opponents, he said. If there were protests, the process would’ve dragged on, despite the fact that the site was already zoned for commercial uses. 

As NIMBYs square off against developers over the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative — a measure that would put the brakes on most development in the city for two full years — they can at least all agree on one thing: LA’s zoning is a profound mess. 

But fixing LA’s arduous entitlement process, outdated community plans and antiquated zoning code will not happen overnight. And certainly not through a two-year suspension on developments, opponents of the ballot measure say. 

“There’s just no quick way to do it,” said Christian Redfearn, a professor of real estate and urban policy at USC. In order to “rework the land use process,” he explained, communities need to not only modernize their plans but also put in place guidelines for more by-right opportunities that minimize so-called “spot-zoning,” the process by which the city approves, piecemeal, developers’ requests for exemptions to the zoning code. The subjective nature of the spot-zoning process is one of the NII’s main rallying cries.  

Reworking the system is not easy, considering LA has 35 individual community plans, weighed down by countless specific plans, overlays and other conditions. The county’s zoning code itself has not been updated since 1946. 

“It’s just a dysfunctional process,” said Gail Goldberg, (photo above: left) the executive director of the Urban Land Institute, who was an LA Planning Director between 2006 and 2010. “I don’t know when or where it went wrong.” 

Plans, Overlays, Qs, oh my. 

Under the state-mandated General Plan, there are 35 community plans that lay out the vision for LA’s land use infrastructure. Ideally, these plans should be updated every five years to address changing demographics, according to Howe, who served as the city’s Planning Director for 13 years, from 1992 to 2005. 

Under his tenure, 33 of the 35 community plans were updated. By the time Goldberg took office in 2006, they were due for another round of modernization. At first, she was granted all the resources to start the process. Then, the recession hit. 

“The minute the economy wasn’t great, the first place they cut was planning,” she said. “If they’re going to update the plan now, [the Council] must commit to funding not only this year, but next year and the year after that. It’s a difficult thing to guarantee.” 

According to Goldberg, 29 of LA’s 35 plans are currently more than 15 years old. 

Beyond money, updating the plan would entail heavy input from the community and approval from City Council. This brings up the costliest factor: time. Goldberg worked on 10 plans during her time in the department. By the time she left, only two were adopted. 

Community plans, according to city planner Deborah Kahen, were originally intended to be updated in accordance with the zoning code; the two would go hand-in-hand. A community plan would lay out the vision for a certain region, and the zoning code would record the nitty-gritty logistics. 

But when it was first written after World War II, the very sparse code was oriented toward cars and suburban development, said Kahen, who works for the re: code LA program, which was created by the Comprehensive Zoning Code Revision Ordinance to rewrite the code. 

These old zones, she said, can’t accommodate modern needs such as sidewalks or signage, so areas instead lobby City Hall or the Planning Department to create specific plans and overlay zones.

In other words, instead of amending the code, city planners have added hundreds of pages of site-specific conditions. Two-thirds of the city is now covered in more than just the zoning code.  

“For example, there could be a place that’s zoned R4  -- high-density multifamily. But it could have something called a ‘Q condition,’ which is not easy to find in the books. It’ll say ‘for this region, R4 must have retail,’” Kahen said.  “And it’s kind of mind blowing because it’s obviously zoned for multifamily.” 

It’s re: code’s job, therefore, to reduce the need for such conditions — sometimes referred to as the phantom city code — so that zones alone could keep up with modern community plans. 

Fearing the “D” 

In LA, density is a political matter. 

Up until 1960, LA had a residential capacity of 10 million people, planning expert Greg Morrow said in Slate. But as real estate politics shifted toward the stronghold of homeowners associations, capacity diminished. Between the 60s and the early 2000s, LA was effectively “downzoned” by 60 percent, his findings show. 

Satisfying the dominant single-family interests of the time, height restrictions were enacted and commercial zones were made less flexible. The heaviest blow, however, came in 1986. Proposition U, which failed in the City Council but passed on the ballot, reduced the floor-area ratio of 85 percent of L.A.’s commercial zones by half. 

Los Angeles has yet to rebound from its downzoning in the latter half of the 20th century. Findings from a recent study by C. J. Gabbe, a recent PhD graduate of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, show that between 2002 and 2014, only about 1.1 percent of LA’s total land area had been upzoned. 

“The upzoning that occurred since 2002 to present day was a relative blip compared to the massive downzoning in the decades prior to that,” he told TRD. 

Experts project that modern-day zoning in LA can house up to 4.2 million people -- this means that LA is already at 95 percent capacity, considering its current population of more than 4 million, according to a January report published by the city. 

“Disingenuous” motives 

The NII’s Coalition to Preserve LA, which did not respond to requests to comment for this article, believe a two-year moratorium on all developments seeking a zone change will light a fire under the Council.

But some of NII’s biggest players have been instrumental in stalling planning progress in the past, detractors say. NII’s benefactor, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, hired the attorney who single-handedly defeated the Hollywood Plan update to spearhead its latest litigation against Crescent Heights, the Miami-based developer behind the Palladium Towers (photo, left) project on Sunset Boulevard. The attorney, Robert Silverstein, is known, unofficially, as LA’s most formidable NIMBY crusader. 

Sources said the AHF’s Michael Weinstein was also involved in some capacity in the fight against the Hollywood community plan update, but this could not be confirmed, and AHF and the Coalition to Preserve LA did not respond to requests for comment. 

In any case, the neighborhood associations that sued with Silverstein against the Hollywood plan were successful. In late 2013, LA County Superior Court Judge Allan Goodman ruled that city leaders did not comply with the California Environmental Quality Act when they approved the plan, which addressed the area’s projected population growth and aimed to increase density in transit zones, such as the intersection of Sunset and Vine. 

Now, Hollywood is back to using its 1988 community plan, after the city spent more than a dozen years trying to revamp it, according to Goldberg. 

“It’s just disingenuous,” said Howe, the former Planning Director. “The [planning] department spent years on the update. There were over 60 public workshops and hearings and meetings and it was approved through a legal process, and then City Council, and then these people sued.” 

Slow progress 

In addition to curbing “luxury mega-projects that cause traffic gridlock,” the controversial March ballot measure would “make the City Council do its job, by creating a rational citywide plan for Los Angeles,” the Coalition to Preserve LA’s reads. 

The reality is that the city has already taken steps toward a gradual overhaul of the current system. It just may not be happening as fast as the NII — or as developers — would like it to. 

There’s the Comprehensive Zoning Code Revision Ordinance, signed by the Council in 2012. The policy assures funding for five years of Planning Department activity to update the 70-year-old zoning code. Then there’s the updates to the he city’s 35 community plans, as well as the broader General Plan, for which Mayor Eric Garcetti will hire 28 new planners. The new staff members will cost the city about $4.2 million a year. 

Still, critics say these changes fall short of immediately addressing the city’s dire affordable housing shortage. 

Looking out for the little guy  

While developers may be gung-ho for higher building capacities, density alone will not heal LA It takes community discussions, which are easier when the rules are clear. The real need, planners say, is just a little bit of certainty, from which both community members — yes, even NIMBYs — and builders can benefit. 

“We’re not saying every project should be by-right,” Howe said. “No one should be able to drop an application on the desk of the planning department and say, ‘Here it is.’ You’re supposed to talk about it.” 

Right now, only the developers with the resources and money to hire the most clever land use consultants can get their projects through. The dubious Sea Breeze development is a prime example of this flaw. In pursuing approval for the 352-unit development, developer Samuel Leung funneled $600,000 in campaign contributions to local politicians through his employees, friends and relatives, according to an October investigation by the LA Times. If the rules are clearer, Goldberg said, smaller builders will also be able to present their visions for the city. 

“It’s hard to build trust,” Goldberg said. “But I believe you can build consensus around the plan if you bring all the right people to the table.” 

Updating community plans does not mean resident input will be deemed obsolete. It is embedded in not only the zoning process but also the very ethos of the city, she said.  

“There’s never going to be a situation where some can just open up their plans and say ‘alright, I’m gonna set up shop and build right here’ — despite what development opponents may fear.” 

(Cathaleen Chen is a national web reporter for The Real Deal, where this piece was first posted.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GOOD FOR LA, GOOD FOR THE WORLD--Mayor Eric Garcetti Wednesday reaffirmed Los Angeles’ commitment to tackling the climate crisis by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and making an unprecedented effort to boost the use of electric vehicles.(Photo above left: Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti at C40 Mayor’s Summit.)

In an address to the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, Mayor Garcetti committed LA to being among the first cities to explore and pursue every possible strategy for doing its part to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C — the scientifically accepted threshold for a dangerous level of planetary warming — as laid out in the Paris Climate Agreement. Mayor Garcetti has also instructed his Chief Sustainability Officer to analyze existing GHG reduction targets in the Los Angeles Sustainable City pLAn — including 80% GHG reductions by 2050 — and identify additional strategies to achieve a target that scientists view as critical to stemming climate change impacts that include sea level rise, extreme heat, and drought.

“Every city, every community, every individual has the power to fight climate change,” said Mayor Garcetti. “We do not need to wait for any one person or government to show us the way. Acting together as cities, we can set an example for our neighbors, spur clean energy innovation, clean up our air, and speed up the inevitable transition to a low-carbon, opportunity-rich future for us all.”

The Mayor also unveiled plans for Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle to leverage city vehicle fleets to demonstrate substantial demand for electric vehicle (EV) purchases from major auto manufacturers — potentially leading to orders for more than 30,000 EVs. Los Angeles is already home to the country’s largest municipal EV fleet, and has the most aggressive procurement policy of any city in the United States — requiring 50% of all annual sedan fleet purchases to be fully electric.

Mayor Garcetti and 39 other U.S. mayors in the Mayors National Climate Action Agenda (MNCAA) have signed an open letter to President-elect Donald Trump to declare continued action and collaboration toward fully implementing the Paris Climate Agreement. 

“Simply put, we can all agree that fires, flooding, and financial losses are bad for our country, that we need to protect our communities’ most vulnerable residents who suffer the most from the impacts of climate change, and that we all need healthier air to breathe and a stronger economy —  rural and urban, Republican and Democrat  —  and in terms of our domestic quality of life and our standing abroad,” the MNCAA mayors wrote.

C40 is a network of the world’s largest cities committed to close collaboration and knowledge-sharing to drive meaningful, measurable action on climate change. At this year’s 2016 C40 Mayors Summit, city representatives and sustainability leaders are gathering in Mexico City to advance urban solutions to climate change.

(This article was provided CityWatch by the office of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.)

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WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE?--On November 17, the Planning Department announced its latest proposal to change the City’s second dwelling unit (SDU) ordinance. Ostensibly proposing revisions merely to comply with recent state law mandates, the Department has failed to tell City decision-makers and the public that its proposed changes go far beyond what is needed to meet those mandates. The Department’s proposal would fundamentally alter Los Angeles’ existing ordinance, defying the City Council’s recent directive that the Department not propose further changes without first following a “comprehensive, open, transparent process.” 

The Department’s November 17 proposal once again reflects its drive to encourage more SDU development – and its insubordinate approach to the City Council. Apparently fixated on allowing oversized and poorly located second units (so-called “granny flats” or accessory dwelling units) in single family residentially zoned neighborhoods throughout the City, the Department again seeks to impose its policy objectives in defiance of a unanimous City Council. 

The Planning Department’s First Attempt: An Administrative Decree Rejected by the Superior Court. 

This short recap puts this latest Planning Department effort in perspective: In 2010, the Planning Department issued an administrative decree that the State’s “default” standards would apply citywide, rather than the City’s SDU ordinance. The State standards permitted large, family-sized (up to 1,200 square feet) units on virtually any residential lot in the city. By contrast, the City’s SDU ordinance established standards to protect neighborhoods from the negative impacts of inappropriate second unit development. These standards include a 640 square foot maximum for detached SDUs, prohibitions on SDUs in Hillside areas, on substandard streets and in equine-keeping districts, and a minimum lot size requirement to prevent overcrowding. 

In February of this year, the Superior Court ruled that the Department’s 2010 decree unlawfully ignored the City’s adopted SDU ordinance. 

During the five-year period before the Court’s ruling, nearly half of all issued SDU permits unlawfully exceeded the City’s 640 square foot maximum dimension allowed for “granny flats,” instead often reaching 1,200 square feet, the size of many primary residences. 

The Planning Department’s Second Attempt: The Repeal of the City’s SDU Ordinance Thwarted by the City Council. 

Following the Superior Court decision, the Department proposed in May that the City Council should fully repeal its protective second unit ordinance so the State’s lenient “default” standards would automatically apply. Notwithstanding that the Department clearly had other options available, the Department vigorously advocated repeal as the “only feasible” alternative and as legally necessary, and it placed the proposed repeal on a “fast track” allowing little public input. 

Fortunately, Neighborhood Councils and community groups learned about and strongly opposed the Planning Department’s ill-advised repeal proposal and showed that the repeal was not legally necessary. Most importantly, they showed that the influx of large second units would severely detract from the quality and character of many single-family neighborhoods. 

On August 31, 2016, after a long closed session, the City Council unanimously rejected the Department’s repeal proposal. Instead, it adopted a motion – known as Motion 19A – proposed by Councilmembers Ryu, Koretz, Martinez, Blumenfield and Krekorian and seconded by Council President Wesson and PLUM Chair Huizar. It ordered the Planning Department to initiate proposed revisions to the current SDU standards only after “conducting a comprehensive, open, transparent review.” The Council also directed the Department to provide decision-makers with customized options that “tak[e] into account the unique characteristics of each geographic area of the city.”   

The adoption of Motion 19A was a victory for the hundreds of Neighborhood Council members and community groups who stood up to oppose the Planning Department’s irresponsible attempt to repeal our SDU regulations and default to the State’s permissive standards. The opponents of the repeal effort breathed a great sigh of relief that Motion 19A clearly expressed the Council’s unanimous direction to the Planning Department to retain the existing SDU protections and to recommend any changes only after the Planning Department conducted “a comprehensive, open, transparent” process.   

Sadly, the activists’ sense of satisfaction with the adoption of Motion 19A did not last long. A month later, the Planning Department was presented with another opportunity to propose amendments to the City’s SDU ordinance. Rather than follow the Council’s clear direction to keep the existing standards in place, the Department could not resist the chance to amend the City’s ordinance to encourage more and bigger SDUs.   

The Planning Department’s Third Attempt: AB 2299 Opens the Door and the Department Pounces. 

On September 27, the Governor signed AB 2299, which has two main features. First, the bill requires any City whose SDU ordinance includes discretionary permit approval procedures (e.g., Los Angeles) to amend its ordinance to delete those provisions. Second, to further encourage SDUs, AB 2299 requires that all local SDU ordinances include certain mandatory provisions to remove barriers to SDU development involving requirements for second unit parking, setbacks and passageways. To ensure that these requirements are not ignored, AB 2299 penalizes cities that do not act diligently. If the ordinance is not amended by December 31, the city’s second unit ordinance will temporarily become “null and void” and the State’s “default” standards will apply until the city adopts a complying ordinance. The Legislature intended for cities to have sufficient time to make these straightforward changes by December 31 in order to avoid “null and void” status. 

Now, in light of the City Council’s unanimous rejection of the Department’s repeal proposal and its explicit directions in Motion 19A, you might expect the Department to do as instructed and respond with a simple amendment following AB 2299’s straightforward requirements. But the Department’s drive to promote more and bigger SDUs in our neighborhoods simply will not allow it to follow the City Council’s direction. 

To make matters worse, the Department waited until November 17 to unveil its profound changes, and it then scheduled a December 15 hearing for the Planning Commission to consider them. This schedule, of course, makes it effectively impossible for the Council to consider and act on the proposed ordinance by year end, thereby ensuring that the Department’s much favored “default” standards will again apply citywide until the City Council acts. 

The Department’s last minute draft ordinance does not simply include the minimal revisions mandated by AB 2299 revisions: it proposes major non-mandated changes in Los Angeles’ second unit standards with no transparency, no public outreach and involvement, no explanation or discussion of the rationale for the proposed changes, and no alternatives customized for the City’s diverse neighborhoods and Council Districts. As it did in May, the Department supports its latest proposed changes with highly misleading explanations. 

The Department’s Proposal Greatly Reduces the Protected “Hillside Area.” 

For example, the Department published a Background/FAQ with its proposed ordinance (available on its website) that asserts that the proposed ordinance would still continue LA’s current adopted standard that second unit construction will “not be allowed in Hillside areas.” Actually, the Department’s proposal would dramatically change the definition of “Hillside area” from the broad area designated by LAMC section 91.7003 in the existing ordinance to the far smaller area defined by the Baseline Hillside Ordinance (BHO), LAMC section 12.03. About one-third of the presently protected Hillside areas – over 50,000 lots – would now be made available for SDU development by the Department’s proposal. 

The Background/FAQ not only fails to disclose the dramatically smaller “Hillside area” in which the prohibition on second units would apply, it provides no rationale for doing so. Researching the BHO shows that the Council chose to apply is comprehensive development restrictions only to Hillside lots with “strong” to “extreme” slopes. But why should the very different neighborhood protections against the negative impacts of second unit development currently in effect in Hillside areas like Cheviot Hills be removed simply because that neighborhood’s slopes are somewhat less that “strong” to “extreme.” 

The Department’s Proposal Allows SDUs on Narrow Substandard Streets despite Limited On-Street Parking. 

From the time the City’s SDU standards were first adopted, they have precluded second unit development on lots fronting narrow substandard public streets – “where the width of the adjacent street is below current standards.” But again, without any discussion or explanation in the Report, the Department would eliminate this protection entirely. 

Eliminating the prohibition on substandard streets is even more egregious given the new AB 2299 mandate that off-street parking can no longer be required if a second unit would be located within half a mile of public transportation (e.g., a mere bus stop). Eliminating the substandard street prohibition becomes obviously much more important: parking for new second units near public transit must now be accommodated entirely on the adjacent public streets – including, under the Department’s unexplained new proposal, extremely narrow substandard streets. 

The Department’s Proposal Allows SDUs in Equine-keeping Districts. 

SDUs have also been prohibited in districts zoned to promote horse-keeping. Communities in the west San Fernando Valley and in Sun Valley have fought passionately for decades to protect their right to keep horses and to prevent overdevelopment that conflicts with their rural lifestyle. 

Inexplicably, the Department’s proposed ordinance eliminates the prohibition on SDUs in these specially zoned districts – thereby creating new opportunities for developers to replace stables with SDUs and threaten the ongoing viability of these horse-keeping communities. 

The Department’s Proposal Opens up SDU Development on Small Lots. 

Presently, the City’s adopted standards limit SDUs to lots that are at least 50% larger in area than the minimum required by the applicable zone, thereby precluding SDU development on lots less than 7,500 square feet. The Department’s proposed ordinance would now allow second units on lots as small as 5,000 square feet, enabling the small lots to be redeveloped effectively as duplexes with minimal parking. 

The Department’s Proposal Encourages Large SDUs. 

When the Department in May unsuccessfully proposed that the Council entirely repeal the existing second unit standards, one of the most controversial changes related to the difference in the maximum size of detached second units allowed by the very lenient “default” standards (1,200 SF) versus the much smaller size permitted by Los Angeles’ existing ordinance (640 SF). The difference, of course, is that the State’s 1,200 square foot standard encourages SDUs as large as many primary residences, while the City’s 640 square foot standard is intended to allow a studio-sized unit for a family member (i.e., the “granny flat” is for granny). 

Although not as radical as its repeal proposal, the Department again does away with the 640 SF maximum SDU size, now proposing that second units could be up to 50% of the area of the primary residence with at least 640 SF and at most 1,200 SF. The Department’s Background/FAQ report provides no data about how many primary residences of different sizes would now qualify for additional square footage in their second units. However, it is easy to see the potential for developers to add on to the primary house if necessary in order to allow for a 1,200 SF second unit. 

This type push for larger SDUs will also lead to more two-story SDUs, particularly on smaller lots. The Baseline Mansionization Ordinance would not stop a 1,000 SF second unit with a 2,000 SF primary residence if the lot were at least 6,000 square feet.  

The Department’s Proposal Permits Mobile Homes for SDUs. 

The Department’s proposal even goes so far to specify that “manufactured housing” (i.e., a mobile home) is included in the new definition of an SDU. Not only does the proposed ordinance create the opportunity for duplexes in single-family zoned neighborhoods, but the second dwelling can be a mobile home!           

The Department’s Proposal Encourages Renting SDUs. 

The Department’s proposal for the first time would guarantee that a lot owner can rent out a second unit. This, of course, makes explicit the potential for a developer to rent the primary residence and the second unit. It also fails to consider imposing important rental restrictions that many cities require -- such as not allowing second units to be rented at all unless the primary residence is occupied by the owner. The proposal also ignores the potential short-term rental impacts, even though homeowners can utilize second units much more conveniently for STRs than they can use space within their primary residence.           

The Planning Department Has Thrown Down the Gauntlet. 

The Planning Department’s November 17 proposal utterly disregards the Council’s clear direction that the Planning Department must “conduct a comprehensive, open, transparent review and process . . . while taking into account the unique characteristics of each geographic area of the city” before proposing any substantive changes to the City’s SDU standards.           

Far from the demanded “open, transparent review,” the Department has developed its latest proposed major changes without any public outreach or participation, without any meaningful explanation of the new policies and without putting up for discussion any customized alternatives for the City’s diverse neighborhoods and Council Districts. 

In so doing, the Planning Department has exploited AB 2299’s December 31 nullification provision in an attempt to force the City Council to accept its proposed ordinance with only limited public discussion or debate. By waiting until the last possible moment and making it extremely difficult for the City Council to act before its December 16 recess, the Planning Department would limit the City Council’s options –this time in direct contravention of the City Council’s directions in Motion 19A. 

In effect, the Planning Department is telling the City Council, “You have two choices: Either adopt our proposed ordinance with the many unnecessary substantive changes that we favor or the City’s SDU ordinance will be “null and void” and the State’s permissive default standards (e.g., 1,200 SF SDUs throughout the City) will control until we pass another ordinance.” 

Aside from the policy ramifications, the Planning Department’s maneuvering presents an institutional challenge to the Council members: Will they allow the Planning Department to dictate their options? Are they willing to let the Planning Department circumscribe how the Council will legislate on an issue of great importance to the quality of life in the City’s residential neighborhoods? Or will they once again reject the Department’s efforts and protect their role as legislators?     

Of course, the Planning Department’s actions are not only a direct challenge to the legislative authority of the City Council -- the elected body charged by the Charter to set policy and enact ordinances -- but as an affront to the seven Council members who proposed Motion 19A, Council President Wesson and Council members Huizar, Ryu, Martinez, Koretz, Krekorian and Blumenfield, as well as the other Council members who unanimously approved it. 

Of course, the Council members need not accept the Department’s proposed ordinance. They can easily keep the existing second unit standards in place, while making the minimal changes required by AB 2299. With some careful scheduling, the Council could adopt the proper ordinance at its last session on December 16 or, if necessary, on its first day back in session in January. The Department can then pursue -- in accordance with the Council’s Motion 19A -- the “comprehensive, open and transparent review” for any further changes it may propose. 

Next Stop: The City Planning Commission Hearing. 

The Planning Department’s proposed ordinance will be heard by the Planning Commission on December 15, 2016 at 8:30 am in the Council Chamber in Van Nuys City Hall, 14410 Sylvan Street. Written public comments may be submitted electronically to [email protected] no later than 48 hours before the Commission meeting. Written comments submitted at the Commission hearing must not exceed 2 pages and 20 hard copies must be filed. 

(Carlyle Hall is an environmental and land use lawyer in Los Angeles who founded the Center for Law in the Public Interest and litigated the well-known AB 283 litigation, in which the Superior Court ordered the City to rezone about one third of the properties within its territorial boundaries (an area the size of Chicago) to bring them into consistency with its 35 community plans. He also co-founded LA Neighbors in Action, which has recently been litigating with the City over its second dwelling unit policies and practices.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-By now we have all read news articles that President-elect Donald Trump is a climate change denier, and that his administration will turn back the meager progress made by the Obama Administration’s on climate issues. Meager. This story from the National Geographic is typical:

Trump has long questioned whether climate change is real, and he has dismissed claims that it poses a major threat. In public statements and in his campaign platform, the New York real estate developer and reality TV star has extolled a resurgent U.S. fossil fuel industry, at the expense of existing policies combating climate change. He has also said that he will cut U.S. payments to United Nations climate change programs. The President-elect’s stance on climate change runs counter to physical evidence, near-universal scientific consensus, and analyses by military experts and the U.S. Department of Defense. What’s more, Trump has hinted that he might cut the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as roll back the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan and associated policies, including participation in the Paris Agreement. 

My point, though, is not to repeat this news, but to emphasize that much of the heavy lifting to mitigate and adapt to climate change – including in Los Angeles -- is the responsibility of local officials. Since the Federal Government has done so little on this issue and will do even less under Donald Trump, we must now turn to the vast array of local climate-related programs that can be pursued by households, non-profits, and most importantly by City Hall. 

Households: While changes in personal behavior amount to a small amount of the climate picture, we need to ramp them up to spur political change in local government. These personal actions include, but are hardly limited to planting drought tolerant gardens and trees in lie of grass, installing rooftop solar, insulating attics, operating fans instead of 24/7 air conditioning, walking and bicycling, joining a community garden, adopting a no or low meat diet, turning down thermostats, using clothes lines, unplugging appliances, getting rid of old fridges, and even taking shorter showers. 

Non-Profits: Because well-intentioned life style changes have minimal cumulative impacts in reducing Green House Gases, the next arena of political action is local non-profit organizations engaged in collective actions to mitigate climate change. Having taught a class on this topic, these are my top ten, but there are dozens of similar groups eager for your help: 

1. CicLAvia 
2. Heal the Bay 
3. LA Walks 
4. Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition ]
5. Los Angeles Guerilla Gardening 
6. Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance 
7. Move LA 
8. Northeast Trees 
9. Transit Coalition 
10. Tree People  

City Hall: While the contributions of individuals and non-profit organizations are always welcome, they cannot replace local governments’ responses to climate change. The good news is that local governments across the entire planet are stepping up to these tasks. The other good news is that we know, in exact deal, what local governments can do. More specifically, when LA’s current mayor, Eric Garcetti, was elected, UCLA’s Institute for the Environment and Sustainability issued an 82-page report, Vision 2021: A Model Environmental Sustainability Agenda for Los Angeles’s Next Mayor and City Council. This report precisely identified exactly what LA’s Mayor and City Council should undertake to mitigate and adapt to climate change in Los Angeles. 

The bad news is that in Los Angeles, despite devastating information about local climate change impacts in the 21^st Century, City Hall is only taking baby steps. To counteract this foot-dragging and expected hostile actions from the Trump administration, they must decisively and dramatically change. While I encourage everyone, including our officials, to carefully study the UCLA reports, these are a few of my take-aways from t11 broad policy and program categories. 

• Planning: Local government needs to systematically plan for climate change. At present, the Garcetti administration prepared its own Climate Action “pLAn” to unknowingly replace a similar shelf Climate Action “Plan” from the Villaraigosa Administration. But these are only executive documents, not plans in any formal sense because they have not been subject to public hearings, staff reports, debates, and legal adoption. They are not connected to the General Plan and have no connection to its policies, programs, and monitoring for land use, housing, transportation, open space, conservation, public safety, infrastructure, public services, and air quality. These are all General Plan elements, and City Planning intends to update them all. Furthermore, if/when Los Angeles voters adopt the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative in March 2017, the city’s laws, not just professional planning practice, will mandate the total update of the General Plan. 

• Priorities: Local government needs to get its priorities straight, and they should not include major public investments that promote automobile driving, whether through freeway expansion or the City Council’s discretionary approvals for auto-centric buildings. Perhaps the most striking example of poor priorities is CalTrans and Metro’s $1.6 billion investment to widen the I-405 Freeway between I-10 and the 101. Despite the additional lanes, just as critics predicted, this highway is still gridlocked. Furthermore, just think of what else could have been done with that enormous pile of money. It costs approximately $5 million per mile to re-pave streets, repair and widen sidewalks, plant trees, upgrade street lights, construct ADA curb cuts, install bicycle infrastructure, and build bus pads and lanes. These 300 plus miles of enhanced corridors could have fixed all LA’s major east-west corridors, such as Sherman Way, Burbank, Melrose, Olympic, Washington, and Slauson. If this had happened, the reductions in the generation of Green House Gases would have vastly exceeded the increased driving resulting from the over-priced 405 widening boondoggle. 

• CEQA: The California Environmental Quality Act should be strictly followed since it forecasts increased Green House Gases levels to City officials. The Mayor and the City Council should not ignore these findings by consistently and unanimously approving the most environmentally damaging alternatives with their unverified claims of increased transit use. 

• Building Permits: The same environmental approach should apply to projects that the Department of Building and Safety ministerially approves. McMansions, for example, are massive energy hogs that should be stopped in their tracks. Nevertheless, on Tuesday of this week, the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee (PLUM) reinserted toxic loopholes into amendments that were supposed to finally cleanup the useless Baseline and Hillside Mansionization ordinances. 

• Urban Forest: Of all the infrastructure improvements that City government can make, the urban forest should be at the top of the list. Trees are nature’s own antidotes to high Green House Gas levels, and they also allow rain to percolate into the soil, while creating a tree canopy that shades pedestrian activity.  

The question facing Los Angeles’ elected and appointed officials is quite simple. Will they stick to business as usual, which means a few more climate baby steps, largely changes at the Department of Water and Power over electricity generation. Or will they quickly and dramatically move on the 11 climate categories recommended in the UCLA report? Putting in bluntly, will they finally kick their addiction to real estate speculation and devote themselves to the city’s, the region’s, and planet’s future?

(Dick Platkin is a former LA City Planner who reports on local planning issues for CityWatch. He also has taught classes on sustainable city planning at USC’s Price School of Social Policy. He welcomes questions and comments at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

STREETSBLOG LA-On November 30, 2016, the Los Angeles City Council approved the final touches to get its $1.4 billion sidewalk repair program going. This unprecedented LA city investment in sidewalk repair is due to the class action lawsuit Willits v. City of Los Angeles, concerning making the public right-of-way accessible to people with disabilities.  The $1.4 billion will be spent over ten years beginning this current fiscal year. 

The city program is essentially the fix-and-release model, outlined in 2015 and approved by joint committees last March. Under fix-and-release, the city will do extensive repair of broken sidewalks, then turn over sidewalk maintenance responsibility to property owners. LA’s fix-and-release program has drawbacks --including concerns over equity and street tree health -- but today’s approval nonetheless gets needed sidewalk repair construction underway. 

Wednesday’s council action included approving several interlocked items (more detailed summaries are available on the meeting agenda  

• Adopt ordinance to return sidewalk repair to property owners, and related programs (council file 14-0163-S10)  

• Set up Sidewalk Repair Incentive and Cost-Sharing Rebate Program (council file 14-0163-S3)  

• Designate specific departments to be responsible for various aspects of sidewalk repair (council file 14-0163-S11)  

• Direct Bureau of Street Services Urban Forestry Division to report on tree removal and replacement (council file 15-0467-S6)  

• Direct Bureau of Street Services to report on hiring additional tree pruning crews (council file 15-0467-S3)  

The city sidewalk repair program will go by the name Safe Sidewalks LA. The city has set up a new sidewalk program website, available starting tomorrow. Anyone can use the website to report LA sidewalks that need repairs. Anyone with a mobility disability can request free sidewalk repairs or new curb ramps. Property owners can also take part in a rebate program to incentivize early sidewalk repairs. Under the rebate program, owners can receive $2,000 for repairs at a residential lot or $4,000 at a commercial lot.

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

MY TURN-In this Rollercoaster world where we live, and each day brings a new revelation, it seems like an oxymoron to celebrate Thanksgiving let alone Tuesday, November 29 as the "International Day of Giving." But life goes on! 

Many Los Angeles organizations prepared Thanksgiving Dinner for those less fortunate. Some were sponsored, like the Midnight Mission servicing the Downtown location. One that particularly intrigued me was the annual Westside Community Dinner. 

They have over three decades of tradition serving the community a wonderful, free sit-down Thanksgiving dinner. They also provide free haircuts, blankets, clothing, hygiene kits, medical, optical, dental services, vaccination, a resource fair and a children's carnival. 

The Celebration was open to everyone -- no reservations necessary. They fed over 3000 people, both visitors and volunteers. Five hundred turkeys were cooked! It was an eclectic collection of groups and individuals -- students, singles, low-income families, seniors and homeless -- brought together to celebrate Thanksgiving. No one asked who they supported for President and although there may have been political discussions, nothing got out of hand. 

Each year the dinner has received more support. It was held on the grounds of the Westside Veterans Center, whose service personnel gave the attending Veterans information and referrals. The Mayor’s office also provided personnel to pass out information on services provided by the City. 

No videos or press are allowed and no one organization blows its own horn. Publicity for the dinner was handled by all of the Westside organizations and businesses. Everything was donated, mostly products and food, with some cash donations to purchase needed items. It truly is a community affair. 

Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Coalition (LANCC) President Terrence Gomes has been volunteering at this event since he was a young student. He remarked that one of his teachers turned him on to the importance of volunteering. "Chief Chef and civic activist Jay Handel was pleased that so many chefs from throughout the City donated their time and talent to help cook. 

This is the America I know and love. I have no desire to secede from the United States. Those who are talking about the West Coast doing a "Westexit" are frankly not to be taken seriously. 

It is comforting to be able to write about Americans doing good things together for causes they believe in. 

Aside from Black Friday and Cyber Monday having strong sales, we will also be celebrating on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving (in the U.S.) International Day of Giving. #GivingTuesday kicks off the charitable season when many focus on their holiday and end-of-year giving. Since its inaugural year in 2012, #GivingTuesday has become a movement that celebrates and supports giving and philanthropy with events throughout the year and a growing catalog of resources. 

#GivingTuesday was founded by New York’s 92nd Street Y, in partnership with the United Nations Foundation. Together, with a team of influencers and founding partners, they launched a global movement that has engaged over 30,000 organizations worldwide. 

It was created by the team at the recently renamed Belfer Center for Innovation and Social Impact at the 92 Y -- a cultural center in New York City since 1894 that has brought people together around the values of service and giving back. #GivingTuesday connects diverse groups of individuals, communities and organizations around the world for one common purpose: to celebrate and encourage giving. A team of influencers and founding partners joined forces, collaborating across sectors, offering expertise and working tirelessly to launch #GivingTuesday and have continued to shape, grow and strengthen the movement. 

92Y is a world-class cultural and community center where people from all over the world connect through culture, arts, entertainment and conversation. For over 140 years, it has harnessed the power of arts and ideas to enrich, enlighten and change lives, and the power of community to repair the world. 

As a proudly Jewish organization, 92Y enthusiastically welcomes and reaches out to people of all ages, races, faiths and backgrounds while embracing Jewish values like learning and self-improvement, the importance of family, the joy of life, and giving back to our wonderfully diverse and growing community, both locally and around the world. 

These "giving" examples are from both coasts but I know, without a doubt, that similar types of activities are taking place in every other State. This is what makes me optimistic that as Americans we will do the right thing. There will always be people who need to feel superior; there will always be those who have the victim mentality and need someone to blame for their mistakes; there will always be people who think their God is the only one and their beliefs are the only true dictates of human behavior. Fortunately, they are a small minority! 

Do we have problems in this country? Certainly! Can we solve them? Of course! The very characteristic that fringe elements want to eradicate is what makes us great: our diversity, productivity and creativity. Each of us brings something to the table. 

Not everyone can donate money to a favorite cause, but each one of us can give something of ourselves to make the world a better place. So maybe "pay it forward" is a good idea for this Tuesday. As always, comments are welcome.

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

THE ABRAMS REPORT-The nation is in a transitional muddle. Green Party Candidate Jill Stein believes that it is appropriate to count the votes. Putative President-elect Trump tweets that, “The people have spoken,” but apparently he is too impatient to take the time to find out what the people actually said. One drawback of tweeting in haste is that, “Yes, the People have spoken and by two million votes, they said that Hillary should be President.” Had Trump been more judicious, he might have issued a statement saying that the “Electoral College has spoken” -- but then, that too is not true since the time for them to cast their votes has not come. 

Assuming putative President-elect Trump ends up being the President, we are still in a muddle. In contrast to his campaign rhetoric, Trump’s policies, since he’s been briefed, appear to be in a quandary. We are no longer going to throw out 11 or 12 million illegals. The sanctuary cities object creating ethnic hostilities, having their economies destroyed and hamstringing their police departments by making them check everyone’s passport or green card. And the Wall? What Wall? Hillary thrown in prison? Oh, she’s too nice a lady. Who will be Secretary of the Treasury? Trump’s secret to defeat ISIS appears to be to ask the Generals who, a few weeks ago, “knew nothing.” 

While the “answers” are in disarray, we Americans are clueless about the government’s role in the one thing that upsets us more than anything else: the economy. 

The economy is particularly vital to people who are starting a family. As long as one is single, renting a loft or sharing an overly expensive apartment can be exciting. But when one wants to settle down, priorities change. Does the government bear any responsibility to plan for the future and for an economy that can support family life? 

Rather than answer that philosophical question, let’s look at the practical situation in which a city government ignores the desires of its new middle class and instead allows its policies to be dictated by an ever smaller clique of billionaires. 

Government at all levels impacts the economy. This has been true since the dawn of civilization. In 1776, Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations for this very purpose; and in 1936, John Maynard Keynes wrote his The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money [General Theory] for the same purpose. Both addressed the role of the government in setting the parameters of the economy so as to benefit the nation and its citizens. Yet the average voter never holds the feet of politicians to the fire when the government’s policies devastate the economy. 

On a local level, Los Angeles’ feudal city council which has divided the city into 15 fiefdoms ruled by overlords with absolute power, has turned LA from a destination city into an exodus city from which Family Millennials are fleeing. 

A major force driving Family Millennials away from Los Angeles has been the City’s anti-home ownership policy which has made owning a home in Los Angeles prohibitively expensive. 

On November 26, 2016, Wendell Cox wrote in NewGeography.com, “Progressive politicians, dominant in California, talk incessantly about housing affordability, but blindly pursue policies that will make things even worse. It should not be surprising that the housing-cost adjusted poverty rate in California is the worst in union, underperforming even Mississippi. It should also not be surprising that Californians of every age group, including Millennials, are leaving state in larger numbers than they are being attracted.” 

Under both former Mayor Villaraigosa and current Mayor Garcetti, over 21,000 rent-controlled units have been demolished, something that not only increases the number of homeless but increases the cost of the average apartment. The increased demand for housing in the category of “just above the rent-control level” from those who do not become homeless ends up increasing the housing prices. Also, increasing the minimum wage, while generally a good idea, can cause inflation when there is a shortage of a major commodity such as rental units. 

Particularly harmful to Los Angeles are the increasing number of mixed-use projects in what we call TODs (Transit Oriented Districts). TODs are areas near subways, light rail and bus lines where developers are allowed to aggrandize population density on the patently false belief that people who live in TODs do not need to own cars. 

A host of ills follow in the wake of TODs: 

(1) TODs make land values higher which increases the costs of units built there; 

(2) TODs’ construction costs are significantly higher as building standards are stricter as buildings are taller; 

(3) The City allows developers not to construct off-street parking; 

(4) Residents in TODs then overflow into surrounding neighborhoods seeking places to park; 

(5) Because few people who live in TODs use the mass transit, traffic congestion near the TODs becomes much worse; 

(6) As the city adds more offices to DTLA, Hollywood and elsewhere in The Basin, the commute times from the Valley are becoming unacceptable; 

(7) While population density in TODs increases, the occupancy rate is often too low to make developers happy, so the city gives them infusions of cash; 

(8) The billions of tax dollars which have gone to the developers since 2001 starved all the other infrastructure needs so that LA’s infrastructure has crumbled; 

Garcetti’s mania to pursue “Smart Growth,” despite proof that it is driving away Los Angeles’ new middle class, shows no let-up. Billions more dollars are flowing into TODs, augmented by the $1.2 billion from Measure HHH. 

The feudal nature of Los Angeles’ government deprives the citizens of any forum for challenging the City’s demise. Councilmembers who represent the Valley may not object to the excessive concentration of office towers in the Basin even though the added traffic congestion “over the hill” will make life much worse for their constituents. 

As detached single family homes become rarer, they become much more expensive. The threat from Granny Flats deters potential home buyers everywhere. No one wants to make the largest investment of their entire lives in a family home when in five to ten years, the R-1 streets will possibly be transformed into rental alleys. Granny Flats potentially turn every R-1 neighborhood into areas where each lot can have two houses with no backyard – just rental units. 

The potential for a developer to buy an R-1 home and then construct a second house on the lot in order to rent out both the houses forces up the sale price of the home beyond what a family can afford. The commercial value of lots where Granny Flats can be built is much greater than the value of a living space with a back yard, fruit trees and gardens. 

No one has pointed to any social, economic, or political force which will reverse the exodus of Family Millennials from Los Angeles. As the cost of housing escalates due to the Garcetti Administration’s catering to the pocketbooks of the developers, more employers will leave Los Angeles. Employers know that they ultimately bear the costs that the Garcetti Administration is forcing upon the average citizen. Employers foresee that their employees will not pay three times the price for a home in a deteriorating Los Angeles over what it would cost them a home in Austin, Texas, where all the measures of the good life are far better. 

People forget that it was not only the great weather that attracted people to Los Angeles starting in the 1890's, but it was also the vast expanse of single family homes. The war on the detached home mandated by “Smart Planning” has killed the American Dream for LA. A more descriptive word than “killed” would be “murdered.” The American Dream of owning a single family home with a yard in a decent school district has been deliberately murdered in cold blood – and the slaughter continues. 

Government policy affects people’s lives. In a feudal society where the serfs have been locked out of governance and have no power to influence policy, a mass exodus is the wisest choice. The same forces that existed in all the lands from which our forefathers fled are now operating in Los Angeles. 

When a tiny cadre of the ultra-wealthy seize control of the government, people look for a better life elsewhere.

(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.

PERSPECTIVE-The outcome of the presidential election was a surprise to me as much as it was to anyone. What is not a surprise is the reaction to it. 

There have been some extreme events and outbursts, including rioting by some Clinton supporters and some nasty displays of neo-Nazism by the loosely organized Alt-right group. Fortunately, these reactions are not acceptable to the population as a whole. Most of us are moving forward and dealing with change in a rational manner. The checks and balances embedded in the Constitution will prevent significant, or even sudden, permanent changes to our government. 

However, one proposed remedy to Trump’s victory resurrects an issue this nation has faced before…secession from the United States. 

As a practical matter, according to an opinion piece in the Washington Post, it is virtually impossible, short of an apocalyptic disaster which throws our nation into dysfunctional chaos. Although there are many who believe we have been dysfunctional for a long time, I have news for you – the national government has not only survived, it has expanded its influence.

The Post article states: “Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution specifies how a state can gain admission to the United States. There is no stipulation, though, for the reverse. Even if Obama wanted to let Texas go — a thought that probably appealed to him for at least a second — there’s no mechanism for him to do so. There’s no mechanism for Congress to simply say, ‘Sure, off you go.’ Once you’re in, you’re in. The United States was born an expansionist enterprise, and the idea of contraction, it seems, never really came up.” 

To those proposing a Cal-exit, don’t waste your time, or those of the state’s voters, with a referendum to seek secession.  

Having said that, the topic is worthy of an interesting hypothetical discussion. 

Did the Civil War really resolve whether secession is constitutional? I touched on this subject in an article I wrote for Citywatch in connection with the Civil War Sesquicentennial. 

As I pointed out, the seven states that seceded prior to Lincoln’s inauguration could have gotten away with it had Fort Sumter had not been fired upon by Confederate batteries. Absent the catalyst the attack provided, the nation had no stomach for war, much less a civil war. Had Lincoln raised troops to forcibly end secession, it is likely the entire Upper South would have joined the Lower South, including the critical border states of Kentucky and Maryland. Washington would have been isolated; Lincoln’s administration would have been dead on arrival. 

A southern-leaning Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger Taney, a slaveholder himself, may have ruled in favor of the break. 

What the Civil War did make certain was the illegality of forceful secession. 

Does that mean peaceful or passive secession is permissible? 

As mentioned earlier, there is no process for separation via legislation. There is nothing in the Constitution to guide Congress; nothing even stipulating a voting margin for such an action. Any request by a state to secede would simply die. 

But let’s just say it did occur. 

Just like divorce, there would be a property settlement...and would that be costly to California! Do you think the rest of the states would transfer control of Yosemite and other national parks for a song? How about military installations and other federal government real estate? 

The financial obligations California would incur for buying out its share of the unfunded liability of Social Security and Medicare of its citizens would be worse. 

California claims to receive less monies from the federal government than it sends. That is so much BS. The benefits to the state from physical protection and security provided by the federal government is incalculable. In terms of economic trade, California’s primary trading partners are part of the Pacific Rim. Without the leverage of the federal government behind us, we would be at a disadvantage in negotiations with China and Japan, whose economies dwarf those of the Golden State.

Then there are details of establishing a monetary unit and a central bank. 

How about supporting embassies throughout the world? 

The nation of California would be bankrupt from the get-go. 

One other thing. There are regions within California which will not go along with the plan. Much of California’s agriculture and water is attributable to the Central Valley and Sierra Nevada, respectively. Those regions would balk at the plan. They would form their own state, or possibly request to join Nevada. Sacramento would find itself isolated from the rest of its subjects. California would be totally dependent on a foreign government for food, water and energy. 

The secession movement is laughable until you realize its proponents really believe it is plausible. For their sake, I sure hope they do not receive Nigerian e-mail solicitations. 

But just the talk of secession further alienates California from the rest of the nation. 

One of our top attractions is Wine Country. We do not want to be labeled Whine Country.

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

LATINO PERSPECTIVE-Most Latinos in California were shocked earlier this month with the election of Donald Trump as President. But here in Southern California there is cause for celebration because diversity in the political arena is alive and kicking with the election to the United States Congress of three Latinos. 

These three Democrats, Lou Correa, Nanette Barragán, and Salud Carbajal were elected to represent parts of Orange County, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara. This is very important coming from the most diverse state in the country. We now have the largest Congressional Hispanic Caucus in history with 31 members. 

Correa will replace Latina Rep. Loretta Sanchez who is a Democrat from Orange County in the 46th Congressional District after defeating another Democrat, the mayor of Garden Grove, Bao Nguyen. Sanchez lost her bid to be the next U.S. Senator from California. But what I think is important to notice is that Carbajal and Barragán are replacing white members of Congress.  

Lou Correa has been serving Orange Country since 1998. Over his 16 year career, Lou has represented the 69th Assembly District in the California State Assembly, served as Supervisor in Orange County’s 1st Supervisor District, and represented the 34th Senate District in the California State Senate. 

Lou Correa introduced himself to voters as the only homegrown candidate. As the son of working class parents, Lou saw first hand what it took to escape poverty and have a shot at the middle class. He ran for office in 1998 to fight for the same working families he grew up with, and ensure their children would have the same opportunity to succeed that he had. Lou has a track record of getting the job done and has developed a reputation with countless public officials as a dedicated civil servant interested in solving real problems, not playing partisan games. 

Nanette Barragán, the youngest of eleven children raised by immigrants from Mexico, Nanette Diaz Barragán beat the odds and put herself through UCLA undergrad and USC Law School. She knows what families need and the power of a good education. In Congress, she will fight to get more funds for our schools and better paying jobs for our communities. As a councilwoman, Barragán balanced fiscal common sense with the right priorities. She balanced budgets, fixed streets, helped expand afterschool programs and hired new police officers without raising taxes. 

Salud Carbaja, a Santa Barbara County Supervisor, won an expensive race against Republican Justin Fareed to replace longtime Democratic Rep. Lois Capps in the Central Coast’s 24th Congressional District, which also includes San Luis Obispo County. Salud earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara and his master’s degree in Organizational Management from the Fielding University. He served eight years in the United States Marine Corps Reserve, including active duty service during the 1991 Gulf War. 

In 2004, Salud was elected to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. During his tenure, he has demonstrated a commitment to protecting our environment, promoting sustainability, strengthening our schools, and enhancing the health and safety of our community. 

Drawing upon his own childhood experiences growing up in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood, Salud shares a passion for improving the lives of at-risk youth. He found innovative ways to strengthen our schools by creating a job skills and mentorship program for at-risk youth and providing summer programming for our kids. Salud is married to his wife, Gina, and has two children, Natasha and Michael. 

Salud Carbajal and Lou Correa also have links in Spanish on their websites. 

After the election, CHC Chairwoman Rep. Linda T. Sánchez, Democrat from Whittier, said that the caucus would request a meeting with Trump in the coming weeks to “make sure he better understands the challenges our community faces and does not act on his extreme rhetoric.” 

The Latino caucus will work hard to protect our Latino communities, you can be sure of that.

(Fred Mariscal came to Los Angeles from Mexico City in 1992 to study at the University of Southern California and has been in LA ever since. He is a community leader and was a candidate for Los Angeles City Council in District 4. Fred writes Latino Perspective for CityWatch and can be reached at: [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

PARK LABREA NEWS REPORT--As the Miracle Mile Residential Association (MMRA) approached the finish line in a years-long effort to establish stricter protections from the invasion of McMansions, a different group of residents mobilized to try to hit the brakes.

Box-shaped homes like the one on the left dwarf existing structures in the Miracle Mile. Residents in the neighborhood agree that McMansion development needs to stop, but they don’t agree on the right tool to get it done.

The Los Angeles Planning Commission on Dec. 8 will consider the proposed historic preservation overlay zone (HPOZ) that will protect the Miracle Mile from developers who want to replace existing residences that were built between 1921-1953 with larger, box-shaped homes. “Mansionization” – the influx of the larger homes – started years ago, and the MMRA said it will destroy the character of their neighborhood if it continues. In September, the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission (CHC) concluded that the Miracle Mile neighborhood maintains its cultural significance to the city of Los Angeles. But other property owners have joined together to oppose the restrictions that come with an HPOZ.

“I first heard about the ‘No on HPOZ’ people literally five minutes before it was going to be decided on,” said Councilman David Ryu, 4th District, at an MMRA meeting earlier this month where dozens of residents waved red “No on HPOZ” signs.

“Even though you came in the last minute, I wanted to make sure [you were] heard.”

Opponents to the HPOZ argued that the preservation plan – which includes guidelines and review procedures for 1,350 properties – is too strict, and will stall the neighborhood’s growth and ability to attract new families. At the meeting, attendees waving red signs said they were worried that the proposed HPOZ will require residents to get approval from the HPOZ board or the city’s planning department to change any exterior component of their homes, and that it can be costly and time-consuming to obtain the permits.

The “No on HPOZ” group said they are in favor of stopping “McMansions,” but suggested the Miracle Mile instead rely on the city’s baseline mansionization ordinance (BMO), which they hope will be adopted in January. Jay Schoenfeldt, one of the leaders of “No on HPOZ” group, said they are against the preservation plan in its current form and asked Ryu to consider other options “aside from taking away property owner rights that can prevent mansionization.”

Ryu explained that the HPOZ measure was not created or intended to be “used as a tool to prevent mansionization,” and it has become an unintended cure for the phenomenon. But the process for the BMO is often delayed, and preservationists worry it could be too “watered down” to prevent mansionization by the time it is adopted. Further, the existing interim control ordinance that protects the Miracle Mile now expires in March.

Jim O’Sullivan, president of the MMRA, said the conflict arose from misinformation and misconceptions about the proposed HPOZ. Ryu blamed misconceptions on the language in the proposed preservation plan, and said the city’s planning department “really created a mess.”

“I have to admit, the planning department really screwed up with the report,” Ryu said. “They should have done a much better job because a lot of the things they told us, they didn’t really turn out that way. So we’re fixing it.”

Ryu’s office met with MMRA leaders and the “No on HPOZ” group after the annual meeting to clarify language that the MMRA agreed was “somewhat obtuse.” The MMRA explained that the intent of the HPOZ was to devise a plan that was unrestrictive and flexible.

“Both sides agreed that the language in the preservation plan, as written, was too ambiguous and could be interpreted to be more restrictive than desired,” the MMRA reported in its newsletter. “This resulted in a collegial and successful discussion of how to simplify and revise language in the plan to accurately reflect the will of the community.”

In addition, the groups clarified specific details. For example, the preservation plan will not regulate paint color. The exteriors of all properties in their present condition will be “grandfathered” once the HPOZ is adopted, and there will be no regulations on any property’s interior, or any planned additions that cannot be seen from the street. There also will not be landscaping regulations “as long as at least 60 percent of the front yard is planted with some sort of greenery.” Second story additions will also be allowed with certain setbacks.

On Wednesday, O’Sullivan said they were waiting for final clarification from the planning department. He said he is hopeful but cautious after the meetings with Ryu’s staff and the “No on HPOZ” group. The MMRA’s newsletter last week declared that the group does not expect any further obstacles in adopting the revised HPOZ Preservation Plan.

But Schoenfeldt said “that’s not exactly accurate.” On Wednesday, he said they did clarify a lot of the issues during their meeting, but that other issues were disregarded, such as boundaries of the HPOZ that fall outside of the MMRA’s jurisdiction. He said that’s a major concern because those homeowners might not have been informed or consulted. At the MMRA meeting, residents from Council District 10 asked that their homes be taken out of the Miracle Mile HPOZ. Schoenfeldt described the preservation plan as “overwhelmingly restrictive” with 255 design guidelines, of which they said 40 percent need further review.

“We felt this really needed a second meeting,” Schoenfeld said, adding that agreements made to revise the HPOZ language were not approved by planning staff, and the scale of the rewrite will be “daunting.”

The Miracle Mile HPOZ covers approximately 1,347 properties bordered by Wilshire Boulevard to the north, San Vicente Boulevard to the south, La Brea Avenue to the east and Fairfax Avenue to the west. The CHC found that most properties reflect styles associated with the designated period of architecture.

The Planning Commission will consider the HPOZ on Dec. 8 at Los Angeles City Hall, 200 N. Spring Street, in Room 340. The meeting time has not yet been determined.

(Gregory Cornfield is managing editor at the La Brea News where this report was first posted.)

-cw

VOX POP--Developer Michael Hakim shelled out more than $1.2 million in campaign contributions, lobbyist fees and payments to City Hall trust funds until finally his controversial Koreatown skyscraper was approved by the LA City Council and Mayor Eric Garcetti. It didn’t matter that nearby residents and even LA’s City Planning Commission opposed the mega-project.

As a life-long Beverly Hills resident, Hakim detested overdevelopment in his posh, leafy city — in 2009, as a Beverly Hills City Council candidate, he made it one of his top campaign issues. Then he wanted to build a 27-story luxury housing skyscraper in a low-slung, working-class section of Koreatown on South Catalina Street.

Hakim apparently forgot his campaign platform from 2009, when he ran unsuccessfully for Beverly Hills City Council. “For years,” he wrote in an election guide, “people of our city have endured traffic gridlock and parking nightmares. This must change!” He strongly urged for better public transit and “controlling overdevelopment.” 

In Los Angeles, Hakim’s Koreatown skyscraper went against all zoning protections, and residents realized it would destroy the character of the community — and possibly force them out of their neighborhood due to gentrification.

Since nobody is allowed to build skyscrapers on South Catalina Street just south of Eighth Street, a few doors away from a school, the City Planning Commission rejected Hakim’s plan. The LA Times quoted planning commissioner Maria Cadildo as calling it “wildly inappropriate.”

But Hakim paid $41,400 for a lobbyist to woo LA Planning Department officials so he could demolish what exists there now: three apartments providing housing to 14 families. He also needed special spot-zoning favors from the City Council: a “General Plan amendment” and “height district” change.

If the developer got those things, with the swipe of a pen from City Hall, his land would skyrocket in value and he would become millions of dollars richer.

Hakim spread other money around. He gave a $1,000 campaign contribution to L.A. Mayor James Hahn in 2005; $2,200 to LA City Council Member Herb Wesson between 2006 and 2014; and $700 to  Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who was running for and won the Council District 8 race in 2014. That’s $3,900, according L.A. City Ethics Commission filings.

But the really huge money poured in recently, aimed at Mayor Eric Garcetti and Herb Wesson. 

In April 2015, Hakim agreed to contribute $1 million to the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund and place $250,000 into Herb Wesson’s Council District 10 “Community Benefits Trust Fund.” Sounds like a lot, right? Not really. It’s only enough to build two or three affordable housing units, which each cost $450,000 and up. And don’t forget, Hakim will destroy 14 inexpensive housing units.

Garrcetti liked the looks of that $1 million. He overrode his own Planning Commission and pushed through approval of Hakim’s “General Plan amendment” and zoning changes. Garrett is eager to bring a skyscraper to a congested residential neighborhood that is among the most dense in the Western United States.

Garcetti, the L.A. Times noted, “rejected a decision by a panel of his own appointees.” 

Neighborhoods activists are still fighting against the Koreatown skyscraper.

The wildly inappropriate mega-project is just one glaring example of why we need the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, which has been placed on the March 2017 ballot.

LA’s rigged, unfair and broken development approval process is controlled by developers, who then get special favors from City Hall politicians — and ordinary people suffer the consequences of gridlock traffic, ruined neighborhoods and the displacement of longtime residents.

We must return power back to the communities.

(Patrick Range McDonald writes for 2PreserveLA.  Check it out. See if you don’t agree it will help end buying favors at City Hall.)

-cw

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW--The feverish pace of development in LA has reared its head in the rash of high-density apartment buildings that will be sprouting west of the 405, along Santa Monica Boulevard and Ohio Avenue in West LA, with multiple sites cleared from Barry to Westgate. The city planning department appears to be tapping into Assembly Bill 744 in the hush-hush granting of building permits in the neighborhood. Signed by Governor Brown in October 2015, AB 744, which goes into effect in January, allows developers seeking a density bonus to reduce the minimum parking requirements by half when building affordable housing near qualifying transit. 

Anyone who has attempted to find a parking spot on the Westside knows parking is at a premium, even with permit-only parking for residents. Now, multiply the number of residents (and probably cars.) Nevertheless, residents and property owners near the development sites are only notified when they live or own property within a hundred-foot radius. Yes, one-hundred feet. 

Robert W. Logue of West LA says, “Sometimes, no notice is required so there are no hearings and nobody in the neighborhood even knows this feverish building activity is going on.” Logue suspects the push to approve projects seems to be “done in coordination with elements pushing for new transit lines” and may be “afforded special treatment because of the hopeful development of nearby rapid transit.” The absence of half the number of parking spaces in the new buildings might encourage residents to forgo owning a car in favor of public transportation but that’s a pretty strong “might.” 

“At a hearing I attended in connection with a building proposed for construction at 12444 Venice Blvd (Rendering above), part of the objective of the density combined with few parking spots would force an outcry in support of immediate implementation of rail transit,” says Logue. “At this hearing I was only afforded 120 seconds to state my views about the project.  There were no audio or video recordings made at the meeting nor any reports about it that will be made available to the public.” Logue adds that for most of these projects, the financing sources seem “cloaked in mystery.” 

Pushing through a large scale addition of high-density apartment projects without adequate public transit to increase the need (and acceptance) of public transit on LA’s Westside is a chicken/egg proposition or perhaps, there will be substantial growth in Uber and Lyft. 

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.)

-cw

GUEST WORDS-(Editor’s Note: This column was posted in CityWatch 10 years ago … in 2006. We post this Flashback to remind you how little LA politics have changed. It is yet another ‘book cooking’ column about the misuse of your money. Question to you: what will it take and how long will you hide before you’re upset enough to do something?) 

Hard as it may be to believe, it was just six months ago that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa celebrated his managerial triumph by getting the long troubled L.A. Housing Authority (HACLA) back in the good graces of the federal government.
The mayor boasted that HACLA "has reached an important milestone in its efforts to reform ... and successfully met federally mandated reforms covering the City's Section 8 voucher program, putting the department back in good- standing and ending federal oversight of the program." 

"For the first time in years, this agency is solvent, functional and in a strong position to deliver much-needed help to low-income families in LA." 

Oops, maybe Antonio spoke a little too soon.

A new report from federal housing authorities -- that has gotten no visibility in the press -- says he spoke way too soon ... to the tune of a $27 million problem, nearly $28 million actually.

"The Authority's accounting records showed that it improperly advanced and expended more than $27 million in restricted funds to cover its operating losses for its other programs," reported Regional Inspector General Joan Hobbs in the Housing and Urban Development Report dated Aug. 21.

"The authority contended there was no misappropriation of funds, but rather the way the accounting system presented its financial transactions; however, we were unable to validate its contention."

The focus of the audit was to see if the city was still screwing recipients of Section 8 vouchers that let them live in decent units at a price they could afford but it expanded when suspicions arose that the highly-paid HACLA head Rudy Montiel  (more than $300,000) was juggling the money without regard to federal  rules or regulations.

No surprise there, the city of L.A. doesn't believe in obeying the law.

It's not entirely clear from the audit what exactly Montiel was hiding or why he was moving the money from account to account other than to conceal losses in specific areas, but HACLA's history suggests it has a lot to do with mismanagement of Section 8 housing vouchers.

From what I can see I'm willing to bet Montiel -- who's gotten a lot of favorable media treatment -- was cooking the books to make it look like the Section 8 funding problem was fixed when he, like just about everybody else at City Hall, was doing the mayor's bidding.

And in the housing area that means carrying out the mayor's insane policy of densifying the city to "address the affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles" -- a crisis manufactured by the philosophical commitment to providing new housing to any poor person who wants to live here.

Well, at least some of the people who want to live here. Because the long-standing accusation is HACLA is that it's selective about who it helps and who it doesn't.

Even as HACLA was being brought under control by federal authorities for its abuses, a coalition of public interest law firms and civil rights groups last year filed a class-action lawsuit charging it broke the law when it effectively raised the rent for more than 20,000 poor residents.

So much for the myth Antonio and his pals really are helping the poor.

HACLA disputed the finding that it lacked "prudent oversight" of its federal funds, violated any rules or misappropriated any money. The agency blamed "accounting problems," but it's telling that after getting its protestations of innocence in the record, the agency obeyed HUD's directives and reimbursed the money -- $27,801,379 of it.

Now ask yourself, what would you do if you were one of those 15 City Council members, especially those who claim they care so deeply about the poor?

Wouldn't you be mad as hell? Wouldn't you be calling Montiel on the carpet and holding public hearings and making sure this was the last time HACLA cheated the poor?

Of course, you would. But you can't because the City Hall game is fixed and the public doesn't stand a chance.

It's not like the council has shown much interest in all the troubles HACLA has had over many years.

Have they looked into why the agency is spending $7 million a year or so on outside lawyers, something that has caused so much concern when it involves bumbling City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo?

Was anybody worried when Montiel last year fired his own whistleblowing chief investigator, Abel Ruiz, after he alleged that people inside the agency interfered with his efforts to get to the bottom of an $800,000 bid-rigging scheme.

The firing followed disclosure in the Times that a housing authority manager, Victor Taracena, had awarded construction and design contracts to family members and to three firms with ties to present and former City Council members in the 14th District, the seat now held by Jose Huizar.

You don't need to ask whatever came of all that -- I told you the game is fixed.

(Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Daily News and the activist behind the Save LA Project. Read more Ron Kaye at www.ronkayela.com ) 

CityWatch

Vol 6 Issue 74

Pub: Sept 12, 2008

DEEGAN ON LA-If a tourist-filled “chop-top” open-air tour bus were to be crunched like an accordion if hit from behind or if it recklessly crashed into something ahead, it could become a death trap. The “crunch” could be caused by the vehicle’s structural integrity being compromised once the roof has been cut off. 

In our “post-truth” world, where the appeal to emotion outweigh the facts, the scramble for inside info about celebrities seems to outweigh reality as tourists rush to board these often unregulated, open-air vans to fulfill their dreams of rubbing shoulders with fame. 

It’s a wonder these possibly unsafe vehicles are allowed to operate. 

There are lots of chop-top buses cruising through the Hollywood hills, filled with tourists who may not realize the risk they are taking when they respond to celebrity tour barkers promising “behind the scenes” insight into Hollywood royalty supposedly living on their routes. 

A scary public safety point about chop-tops was made toward the end of a two-hour “Tour Bus Town Hall” that was held in Hollywood a few nights ago with a panel of fifteen officials, moderated by Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council President Anastasia Mann. Present were community members, state and local political figures, and law enforcement officials who gathered to air many issues concerning the tour buses that use the Hollywood Hills by-ways to entertain tourists with fantasies about stars who often don’t even live there. This group searched for solutions to problems caused by the proliferation of chop-top tour buses -- multiple traffic violations, illegal parking, misinformation about celebrity homes, sneaking onto side streets, endangering the lives of tourists, and the many buses and driver/guides who operate unsafe vehicles that may not even be registered or insured. 

Councilmember David Ryu (CD4), representing the Hollywood Hills, kicked off the forum, saying, “We are working with our state representatives to identify solutions.” Some of those state officials were represented on the panel, including the California Highway Patrol, the Consumer Protection and Enforcement Division of the California Public Utilities Commission, and the office of State Assembly Member Adrin Nazarian (46^th District.) Local representation included CD4 David Ryu and his deputies, Catherine Landers and Nicholas Greif, officers from the LAPD (including the Hollywood Commanding Officer,) the presidents of various neighborhood councils and homeowner associations, and tour operators. 

Several dozen members of the hillside community spoke forcefully about the intrusion of these buses into their neighborhoods. Numerous practical ideas were presented, although it was stressed that the state Public Utilities Commission has the final word on licensing tour buses; local government and police need to work through the PUC and state legislature to effect change.

Regulating public safety has to take priority over many of the other complaints voiced by the community. The possible lack of structural integrity of these passenger vans with their tops chopped off in order to give an open-air experience and a better view to the riders, poses potential dangers that must be the first priority for authorities. 

Some relevant solutions were offered, including one successfully used by a homeowners association that was able to get the Department of Transportation to use “weight” for controlling access to their neighborhood streets. Sheila Irani, President of Lake Hollywood Estates Homeowners Association (adjacent to the Hollywood Sign) explained, “The HOA adopted weight control signs and worked with LADOT to post them at all street entrances leading to the Vista. After that, we worked with CD4 and LAPD to create a task force that ticketed overweight vehicles in July 2014 and since then the tour vans coming to our area were reduced from 40 a day to one or two.” 

Another suggestion that received positive response from the CHP officers was to post “designated routes” for the tour buses to keep them off side streets. “Our office is looking into these suggestions (designated routes and weight limits),” responded Ryu. 

Tourism has a bottom line: $2.5 billion in state and local taxes were driven by tourism employment in 2015, according to Ernest Wooden Jr, President of the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board, the official tourism marketing organization for the City of Los Angeles. Wooden adds, “LA Tourism's focus is on ensuring that visitors to our city have a memorable and authentic Los Angeles experience.” 

Given the problems associated with top-chop tour buses, it’s time to add “safe” to the list of what LA is promising our tourists because, in the end, death has no replacement value price tag.

(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.

GELFAND’S WORLD--What would massive resistance look like? (Massive resistance ended the Vietnam war—photo above.) 

In regard to the expected reactionary onslaught, Erik Loomis writes the following in the blog Lawyers, Guns & Money: 

"All we really have in the end is massive resistance. That is where we are heading–acquiescence or resistance. You and I will all need to make our choices about whether we will stand up against oppression in ways that a lot of our ancestors did not stand up to Jim Crow, to Chinese Exclusion, to the Japanese internment camps, etc." 

This is his conclusion after considering what Donald Trump has already done since the election. He summarizes the bad news: 

"I don’t actually have confidence that we will have a functional democracy by 2020. It’s entirely possible that historians, assuming they exist in a century, will see 2016 as the end of a period of American history where rights generally expanded. That’s because Trump, Giuliani, Sessions, Gingrich, Flynn, etc., etc., and most importantly huge chunks of the Republican base, simply do not respect the fundamental tenets of democracy and they are seeking to roll back two generations of social progress. Despite what I might have believed a mere few weeks ago, they are in fact reasonably likely to succeed. 

Some of the proposed rollbacks include the end of Medicare as we know it, the reversal of the Roe v. Wade principle, and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Voter suppression will be part of the recipe. Those are just a few of the likely outrages on the domestic side. On the international side, we have almost no idea what will happen. 

The outrages will most likely be presented in legal form -- as bills before congress and as judicial appointments. What then, constitutes massive resistance? 

There are two potential paths. The first, requiring only a small number of people, is that a few Republican senators may quietly decide that they don't want Trump's power to be left unchecked. Their best approach is to leave the senatorial rules in effect, particularly the one that requires 60 senators to break a filibuster. It's the rule the Republicans used so effectively in thwarting Obama when the Democrats held a senatorial majority. It would only take three Republican votes in the senate to maintain the current rules. 

If that should happen, then it's up to the Democrats in the senate to resist and obstruct at every possible point. They should go hard on the more objectionable cabinet appointments. Even the appointments that eventually go through should be subjected to aggressive and prolonged questioning at the committee level. 

Democratic opposition is particularly important in terms of a Supreme Court nominee. If the Democrats can delay a Trump appointment permanently, that would be righteous payback and it would be protective of our system. 

It would be up to the rest of us millions and millions of people to back up the Democratic senators. We would march in the streets when necessary, and flood our senators and congressmen with mail and telephone calls. 

But if the Republicans stick together and go for a change in the senate's rules, then the deluge is upon us. It will be up to the American people to figure out what we mean by massive resistance. What would it consist of, and how can we make it effective? 

The first order of business is to decide that we are serious. To borrow a phrase from an old movie, it's called commitment. It will take tens of millions of people, acting in concert, to make the point properly. 

Here's a for instance. The first time that Paul Ryan or one of his lackeys proposes to phase out Medicare, we need to act aggressively. That means visiting the office of every congressman, writing letters (in our own handwriting), and marching in the streets. It also means raising funds in advance, so Democrats can send out mailings to the people who will be most affected. 

Imagine a television ad which shows somebody on Medicare saying, "It was great to finally get free of the health insurance companies. Now the politicians want to put me back in their clutches." 

Given the views of the congressional Republicans, we are going to have a lot to dislike. It's long since time that the saner among us form their own version of the Tea Party, but one that upholds traditional liberal values.

It's about time that the more powerful unions got on board. The dockworkers can close down shipping. They've done it before in limited jurisdictions, but suppose they were willing to carry out actions on both coasts and on the Gulf. The same argument goes for railroad workers and airline pilots. It's what should have happened (but didn't) when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. 

One other idea, albeit a long shot. We badly need a national union of white collar workers, part time workers, and temps. It's been attempted on a limited level by graduate students and college athletes, but it never got very far due to governmental interference and a general lack of will on the part of the workers. There are at least 80 million Americans who fear and resent the Trump victory, and it's time that they unified to represent the interests of the worker bees. (Curiously, the idea that Democrats should have spoken out for blue collar workers in order to win the Michigan and Wisconsin votes has been out there since the day after the election.) It shouldn't take long before the working class realizes that Trump isn't really their guy. We should take the old country tune "Take this job and shove it" and make it into a political movement that isn't on the side of the Republican Party. 

I might add that the title of the Loomis column is a takeoff on the famous quote from H.L. Mencken, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." It's a bit cynical for my taste, but the result of the Trump election is consistent with Mencken's point of view. Loomis continues: 

"And I am disappointed in myself for not seeing this more clearly before the election. Democrats and liberals were holding on strictly to the presidency as a buffer between us and the apocalypse. Between gerrymandering, voter suppression, and a bloody ineffective DNC strategy to operate on the state level, Republicans had already grabbed most of the levers of government. And while Trump is uniquely bad in some ways, in many others, he really isn’t that much worse than your bog-standard mainstream Republican governing class such as Scott Walker, Rick Scott, Paul LePage, Rick Snyder, or, of course, Mike Pence." 

We should make use of the judicial system where possible, in particular fighting for voting rights and against gerrymanders. It won't solve everything, but it is part of the overall approach. 

We also need to create a new language of opposition. The fact that Donald Trump is treacherous, lazy, and greedy is becoming increasingly obvious, but we need to build the arguments against him using the right words and phrases. Based on Trump's most recent statement that he actually won the popular vote if you subtract out millions of illegal votes, I think that the term crybaby would be a start. 

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

-cw

GELFAND’S WORLD--If the big earthquake hits, do you know where you would go to get food, water, or medical attention? Most of us don't. At a more proactive level, have you stocked the equipment, food, and water that you might need to survive? This is where the sense of urgency comes in. 

We have been discussing these issues at the Neighborhood Council Emergency Preparedness Alliance (NCEPA) for the better part of a year. We've heard from many experts in the field, and we have some conclusions to present for your consideration. 

We find that most Angelenos are not yet sufficiently prepared to deal effectively with a real disaster scenario. We find that the government agencies that form the set of first responders -- the LAPD, LAFD, and LASD along with the emergency command structure -- are well trained and well prepared. What's been missing in the equation is the rest of us. For some reason, our government hasn't done a good job of creating a process in which the first responders will seamlessly interface with the remaining 3,900,000 inhabitants of Los Angeles. 

We think that there is a way forward and that there is room for optimism. 

We've been developing some ideas that involve using our already-in-place community organizations. We intend to deliver a workable plan to our 96 neighborhood councils, this in the hope that each will be the point of crystallization for effective local response preparation. We expect the neighborhood councils to recruit their neighborhood watch organizations and other local groups to provide the focal points for training and organizing. 

In theory, this should not be very difficult. What we've found is that training programs already exist. Systems for organizing an area as small as a single block (or even an apartment building) have been worked out. The 5-Steps program is one such approach that shows some promise. What has not been worked out is how to motivate the thousands of small areas in our city of four million people so that they will get started. 

Here's a bit of good news. What we've learned is that your own effort on the individual level need not be all that extreme. There is a training program called CERT that the LAFD developed starting in 1985. It requires 17 hours and teaches you the basics of evaluating injuries in yourself and your family, and teaches you about evaluating your immediate area for human injuries and structural damage. CERT training will make it possible for you to respond to a disaster in coordination with others, on an organized basis. 

Hold that thought and consider this sobering consideration: In the event of a big earthquake, the authorities are more likely to provide immediate help to areas that have a working disaster response organization. That's because, in the first few hours, the LAPD and LAFD won't have time to evaluate every damaged structure in the search for the injured. But if you have a local response group, it will have evaluated the area, learned what injuries exist, and communicated this information to the professionals. 

Why will help go preferentially to areas with organization? You have to consider the challenge that will be facing the professional first responders in a situation which involves damage to tens of thousands of structures and injuries to hundreds or perhaps thousands of people. Simply put, the fire department and the police will be busy. They won't have time to poke through all the damaged structures right away. But if your response group has reported specific injuries to the appropriate listening post, the helpers will at least know where to go. 

Here's what the CERT website says about your vulnerability: 

It is important to know, if a major disaster occurs, the LAFD, paramedics, police…WILL NOT COME! They will be deployed FIRST to major incidents such as collapsed buildings. That is why you constantly hear…You MUST be prepared to take care of yourself. In the CERT course they say…“The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number of People.” When you are trained, you are far more equipped to deal with your circumstances without needing aid from outside sources. 

That's pretty blunt. But if the people of Los Angeles begin to take emergency preparedness seriously, we can become the solution to the problem. 

Here is a preliminary summary of the overall NCEPA plan. We will visit the 96 neighborhood councils and discuss what they need to do in order to get their inhabitants organized at the micro level. We will provide training materials and specific instructions. We will leave the geographical analysis to the locals. We figure that each neighborhood council has knowledge of the specific neighborhoods, organizations, and neighborhood watch programs within their boundaries. It will be up to the locals to figure out how to subdivide their own responsibilities, and it will be up to NCEPA and the city government to provide teachers, instruction manuals, and lists of items that individuals and neighborhood councils should stockpile. 

One issue came up in our most recent discussion. Right now, the CERT program is administered by the LAFD and recruits trainers from within its own ranks. We believe that it would be possible to develop CERT trainers who are not fire fighters. This would help to fill the gap in the needed number of trainers. If only five percent of the population of Los Angeles were to have CERT training, that would amount to about two-hundred thousand people. The current system of trainers and classes is orders of magnitude short of that capability. This is essentially a political problem, in that the city is fully capable of developing the required number of trainers and classes should it so choose. 

NCEPA will have one additional request to make. The idea of making nearly 4 million people a part of disaster preparedness is an ambitious idea. We will expect the city to think about budgetary requirements. If the city were to set aside a mere one-tenth of one percent of the annual budget for the emergency preparedness process, that would amount to something like five million dollars. This would be more than enough to create dozens of new CERT trainers, to print training materials, and to send city employees to local meetings. 

Here is one way to imagine a scenario in which we succeed. Think of a block consisting of single family homes, and imagine that there are two CERT trained people living on that block. The two trained people will talk to each other, and out of that process, they will become motivated to bring the block's families together. The whole block will become aware of what they need to do to prepare, and how they can deal with an unexpected disaster. 

There are obviously other possible scenarios for successful disaster preparedness on a citywide basis. It is our job to consider the possible scenarios, find the best ones, and to work with the city's professionals to make them happen. 

Addendum: Most of the ideas and findings expressed here come from the participants in the numerous NCEPA meetings. We have Mary Garcia to thank for pointing out that we need to communicate the urgency of preparedness to our city.

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

-cw

THANKSGIVING SPECIAL-Late on a Thursday night in Woodland Hills, California, the recessed lights of the Maserati Auto Gallery spotlight a gaggle of sleek, luxury automobiles; like carbon fiber and plexiglass statues standing in relief, their muscled torsos gleaming, they show off their voluptuous curves, bold coloring, and clean, sharp lines. Masterpieces of human ingenuity, these works of art demand to be ogled, gazed at and above all else … to be seen. 

In the foreground like in a soothing mural of a city at sleep there's a man, but he's not made of paint. Seemingly oblivious to the world -- just as the world is to him -- the man is sprawled on a bus stop bench. He lies so close to the Maseratis that their cool light refracts off of the storefront glass, illuminating the remaining white of his soiled, tattered shoes.  

Across the street, rummaging through a trash can in front of Whole Foods, is a middle-aged woman; she's got straight shoulder-length grey hair, a weathered noble face, and at least three layers of clothing on despite the lingering mugginess leftover from the day's heat. 

Stoically, this woman forages, inspecting her finds quizzically but also in an experienced and depressingly practiced way. Periodically, she will sigh deeply, and sometimes she will add a plastic bottle or soda can to her burgeoning collection; already piled high, it threatens to topple down from her overly-full shopping cart.  

Visible under the woman's recyclables is a cornucopia of blankets, clothes, foodstuffs, a battered (but maybe not broken) clock radio, an umbrella, a few books, and a magazine -- last week's New Yorker. The New Yorker lies on the cart's bottom rung next to a framed photo of a smiling young woman; it's a spitting, albeit much younger, image of the grey-haired woman now picking through the detritus of the rich, just to survive. 

The beaming woman in the picture wears graduation garb and she holds a diploma high above her head like the Statute of Liberty holds her torch. If you look closely you’ll see that the glass of the picture frame is cracked. 

Seeping from doorways and neighborhood storefronts of still-open restaurants and bars comes contented laughter; the sound is shrill and jarring as it whistles down the boulevard, swirling past the man who is sleeping (or maybe not sleeping) with the Maseratis. Occasionally, an unintelligible shard of conversation -- happy, animated voices -- punctuates the din of the night air, before dispersing, slowly disappearing. 

Soon young men and women the same age as the smiling girl in the picture frame, their dress immaculate -- with hair, makeup, and expensive outfits still impossibly fresh and unwrinkled despite the lateness of the hour -- will emerge from the various establishments. They’ll spill out onto the sidewalk like a ragtag collection of wayward sheep. Shepherdless but feeling satisfied, with sloppy stumbles now and again, they successfully make their way to their own Maseratis or Maserati-like cars. Revving well-maintained foreign motors, some lighting cigarettes for the road, they head for home. 

Barely taking noticing of this departure, the woman in front of Whole Foods digs deeper -- she's reached the bottom of the barrel now. And across the street, the man on the bench rolls to his other side and pulls the drawstring on his hoody tight; he's already home.

(Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. Follow him on Twitter @SteveCooperEsq) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

-cw

MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS OBLIVIOUS--In high school, we all read with horror of the broken promises of the U.S. government to the Native people. Today, the marvels of technology afford us the opportunity to observe first hand the continuance of this ignoble tradition. Turns out the breaking of treaties is not just for the history books. It’s happening right now. 

As I write this article, I am witnessing first hand via Facebook Live Native children and elders, water protectors and their allies from around the world being pummeled by Dakota Access Pipeline Security company mercenari es, Morton County police officers, and National Guard soldiers deploying concussion grenades, mace, tear gas, chemical, rubber bullets and water cannons in temperatures below freezing. 

The fight is on in Standing Rock North Dakota - where citizen journalists are struggling to maintain a live feed of events in spite of jamming by drones. The mainstream media appears to be completely void of interest. 

The attacks are brutal. These first people are not militia. They are unarmed men, women and children. 

As I watch the assault of the U.S. government, local law enforcement and company thugs on the most poverty stricken people in the country as they continue to insist on their sovereign right to protect their water and their sacred burial sites, I can see on my computer screen that a fella named Richard B. Spencer is calling for ethnic cleansing and throwing down the Nazi salute at a sizeable meeting in Washington D.C. 

The rain pours down hard tonight in Los Angeles. We’ll need it if we’re going to have enough water to survive. 

The level of impunity regarding the contamination of our most precious resource is astounding. From the lead contaminated waters of Flint to the Enbridge cover up exposed by John Bolenbaugh, it is clear that our water supply is of paramount importance at this time. As Donald Trump continues to appoint those who promise to continue to imperil life on earth, it is more urgent than ever to act. 

This Thanksgiving, I am thinking of the courageous people in Standing Rock North Dakota who are fighting for the right of all of us to have the clean water we need to survive. 

Please take a moment to call the numbers below and voice your concern. We’re in this boat together. Let’s make sure we stay afloat. 

NEED TO KNOW: 

• Here’s a video of the father Sophia Wilansky, a 21-year old girl who is about to lose her arm due to the police attack: 

• Another video distributed by Mark Raffalo on Facebook of Saturday night’s attacks: 

• LIVE FROM STANDING ROCK - CALL THESE NUMBERS AND TAKE A STAND!• ND Office of the Governor: 701-328-2200• Morton County Sheriff's Department: 701-328-8118 & 701-667-3330• ND National Guard: 701-333-2000• ND Governor's office 701.328.2200;• Army Corp of Engineers 202.761.8700;• Amnesty International 212.807.8400

(Jennifer Caldwell is a an actress and an active member of SAG-AFTRA, serving on several committees. She is a published author of short stories and news articles and is a featured contributor to CityWatch. Her column at www.RecessionCafe.wordpress.com is dishing up good deals, recipes and food for thought. Jennifer can be reached at [email protected].  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jennifercald - Twitter: @checkingthegate ... And her website: jenniferhcaldwell.com) Photo credit: Stephanie Keith/Reuters

  -cw