THE QUEUE TO SUE - There are some falsehoods floating around that the people who have sued the city are NIMBIES who do not want development in their backyards and they do not want their views from the Hollywood Hills destroyed.
If people read the three lawsuits, they will see the falsity of such charges.
Setting aside the legalese, the core problem is corruption -- although that word does not appear in the lawsuits. Los Angeles in general and Hollywood in particular has been subjected to extensive corruption and incompetence over the last decade. The Hollywood Community Plan was another product of such corruption and incompetence.
The basic fraud of the Hollywood Plan is to state that Hollywood has been experiencing dramatic growth and we need to build for 250,000 people in 2030. That claim is completely false, but the City made it in order to deceive people into approving extremely lax zoning rules so that developers could build any project while excluding community in-put.
Had the Hollywood Plan told the truth that Hollywood has experienced a 20 year decline in population and there is no fact from which to assume that the downward trend will reverse it, then building for 250,000 residents would be a fool's goal.
Building poorly planned projects is a feature of Crony Capitalism nationwide. When one builds with public funds, the losses are socialized – while the profits are skimmed from the front end.
When the Hollywood Community Plan was drafted, one must remember that the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) existed and it was siphoning off hundreds of millions of incremental tax dollars each year and then underwriting these projects, none of which pay one cent in incremental property tax dollars. Thus, it did not matter if the Projects harmed Hollywood -- as long as the developers got paid and the City was on the hook for many of the loans.
Using US Census data, Hollywood's population will be only 190,000 or fewer people by 2030 -- That is 60,000 less people than the Hollywood Plan envisions for 2030. Had Eric Garcetti’s Hollywood Plan told the truth about how much the CRA projects had already harmed Hollywood, people would have seen the corruption and incompetence for themselves. Thus, the Plan lied – over and over and over again.
The danger of corruption cannot be understood unless one realizes the role that the CRA played. Because the CRA was diverting millions of incremental property tax dollars into its own coffers, the City was perpetually broke.
In 2009, 2010, 2011 the City would pretend that it had no funds and would declare the need to fire people and cut salaries, but all the while it had hundreds of millions of dollars in its CRA bank accounts --- and -- the City Council had the power to use these funds to keep the libraries and parks open, to keep the fire department at full force and to up-grade the fire department. (Saying the LAFD was deficient is not a criticism of the fire fighters; they were and are victims just like us -- only more so.)
Unexpectedly, the citizens fought back and abolished the corrupt CRA's (DoD 2-1-2012) and now more citizens are fighting back again by suing the City over the fraudulent Hollywood Community Plan.
The Hollywood Community Plan wanted to bring 60,000 more residents to Hollywood while degrading fire protection, while hamstringing paramedics, while leaving the LAPD under-sized with antiquated equipment, while traffic became worse. There was no plan how to handle the extra stress on our water mains or how to provide water for 60,000 more people except to tell Hollywoodians to stop watering their lawns.
The people in the Hollywood Hills and the people in the Hollywood Flats are fighting to make certain some toddler does not die after falling into a swimming pool, so that some 70 year old woman doesn't needlessly die of a heart attack, so that scores of people do not lose their homes to fires because there are not enough fire trucks or firemen. It may be dramatic, but it is true. We are fighting for our lives and the lives of our loved against the corruption which has turned City Hall into a Temple of Crimogenics.
That’s why there are three lawsuits against Garcetti’s Hollywood Plan.
(Richard Lee Abrams is an attorney in Los Angeles. He can be reached at: [email protected] ) –cw
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 61
Pub: July 31, 2012
