BACK TALK - After reading Mr. Humphreville’s article, I was astonished by the sheer lack of objectivity and apparent bias.
You fail to give the full account of Fire Station 83’s return to community service, skewing public opinion from the facts and thereby doing a disservice to the community; and moreover, (in my opinion) insulting journalism and journalists everywhere. Please allow me to clear the record for you, and residents of Encino:
First, you fail to provide pertinent background. Fire Station 83 has been abandoned for years. Not only has it been abandoned, but it has also been a reoccurring problem for the entire community. It has been vandalized, burglarized and is frequented by transients looking for somewhere to stay. Police and city services are often dispatched to the location to clean graffiti and eject trespassers. Therefore the fire station has become a continual eye sore, a waste of resources and perhaps most importantly a health and safety hazard. Until the recent lease negotiations, no person, no entity and no business has proposed anything to ameliorate the issue. It was abandoned for years and without the recent developments it likely would have continued to be abandoned for years to come.
Second, you mischaracterize the actions of the planning and land use committee chair. Did you even attempt to discover the truth? Because if you did, you would find that her letter to the city council was written in her individual capacity. Not only was it written individually, she made it clear from her letter that she was writing in her individual capacity. As such, she has done nothing illegal, wrong or even unethical. It wasn’t only until months after that the Encino Neighborhood Council discussed the City’s proposed actions that it was apparent that a majority of the ENC was against the proposed lease, and then only objecting to the process not the use. Therefor, her personal statements are not inaccurate. Yet you continue to explain the situation as if Ms. Dardarian intentionally acted against the ENC in her professional capacity. Should you have exercised a shred of diligence and journalistic responsibility by actually reading the letter, those facts would have been abundantly apparent.
With regards to the political advocacy of the Armenian Community, you forget to mention the political significance of the time and how it relates to said activism. Eric Garcetti was running for mayor. Therefore, you can look at a number organizations, ethnic groups, corporations and associations and find that they also contributed to Eric Garcetti at the same time. If you havn’t discovered yet, fundraisers are quite common when candidates who have a long record of public service run for public office. In fact almost 20 million dollars was raised for the mayoral elections. So the hundred thousand dollars, if that, is a drop in the bucket from a community with numbers upwards of 200,000 within Los Angeles. Moreover, not all Armenians live in Encino. So the insinuation that political contributions from the aggregate Armenian Community, wherever situated, to get a land deal in Encino is weak at best. The Armenian Community has done nothing wrong. It has acted as it has done since mayoral races from the time of Tom Bradley-actively participated in our City’s election campaigns. As have other ethnicities. It’s a part of our political system. Your right in one thing, that Councilman Koretz must have played a key part as the fire station lies in his district, however for your underlying and underhanded thesis to have merit, then Koretz would have been the beneficiary of the fundraisers you place so much emphasis on. But that simply wanst the case. Finally, bribery, extortion and “quid pro-quo” are serous accusations and if recklessly used are libelous and harmful to community values. Please exercise a degree of responsibility and refrain from publishing articles that imply such serious crimes in reliance on mere speculation and reckless conjecture.
Your article also seeks to illustrate faulty economics behind the decision. Your analysis is one sided yet again. You fail to appreciate the fact that what is going to be built is a community center. A center open for all of Encino. As such there’s a certain benefit to the community that can’t be quantified with dollars and cents. You purport to write in the best interest of the community however you can’t even realize that an old, dangerous, dilapidated and abandoned building transformed to serve the community may actually be beneficial. I would agree with you analysis if the lease was to build a commercial strip mall, or another mega apartment complex. But this space is going to be remodeled as a community center. The promoters aren’t looking to make any profit. In fact the promoters will be spending large sums just get the property restored to a safe and productive condition. As such, I posit that the City and the community are getting the better end of the bargain. The city continues to own the land and the building will be rehabilitated with private non-profit funds at no cost to the taxpayers. These issues are large factors that aren’t given consideration in your article.
For the above reasons, your one sided column in the name of “investigatory journalism” is simply yellow journalism and serves no public value and shouldn’t be given consideration. In closing, I urge you to exercise a greater degree of professional responsibility before putting your name on something so obviosly biased. Alternatively, if you cannot resist the urge of publishing such poorly researched articles, publish them as an op-ed.
(Mr. Shant H. Hagopian does not identify himself.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 57
Pub: July 16, 2013
