EDUCATION POLITICS--Some of America’s most powerful corporate plutocrats want to take over the Los Angeles school system but Steve Zimmer (photo above, center), a former teacher and feisty school board member, is in their way. So they’ve hired Nick Melvoin to get rid of him. No, he’s not a hired assassin like the kind on “The Sopranos.” He’s a lawyer who the billionaires picked to defeat Zimmer.

The so-called “Independent” campaign for Melvoin — funded by big oil, big tobacco, Walmart, Enron, and other out-of-town corporations and billionaires — has included astonishingly ugly, deceptive, and false attack ads against Zimmer.

This morning (Friday) the Los Angeles Times reported that “Outside spending for Melvoin (and against Zimmer) has surpassed $4.65 million.” Why? Because he doesn’t agree with the corporatization of our public schools. Some of their donations have gone directly to Melvoin’s campaign, but much of it has been funneled through a corporate front group called the California Charter School Association.

To try to hoodwink voters, the billionaires invented another front group with the same initials as the well-respected Parent Teacher Association, but they are very different organizations. They called it the “Parent Teacher Alliance.” Pretty clever, huh? But this is not the real PTA, which does not get involved with elections. In fact, the real PTA has demanded that this special interest PAC change their name and called the billionaires’ campaign Zimmer “misleading,” “deceptive practices,” and “false advertising.”

These out-of-town billionaire-funded groups can pay for everything from phone-banks, to mailers, to television ads. Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez described the billionaires’ campaign to defeat Zimmer, which includes sending mails filled with outrageous lies about Zimmer, as “gutter politics.”

As a result, the race for the District 4 seat — which stretches from the Westside to the West San Fernando Valley — is ground zero in the battle over the corporate take-over of public education. The outcome of next Tuesday’s (May 16) election has national implications in terms of the billionaires’ battle to reconstruct public education in the corporate mold.

The contest between Melvoin and Zimmer is simple. Who should run our schools? Who knows what’s best for students? Out-of-town billionaires or parents, teachers, and community residents?

Before examining just who these corporate carpetbaggers are, let’s look at who Steve Zimmer is, what he’s accomplished, and what he stands for.

Zimmer grew up in a working class community and attended public schools. His father was a printer and his mother was a school teacher. After college, he became a teacher, beginning with Teach for America in 1992.

He spent 17 years as a teacher and counselor at Marshall High School. When he taught English as a second language, he used an experiential approach that related to his students’ daily lives. He created Marshall’s Public Service Program to make public service intrinsic to the student experience. He founded Marshall’s Multilingual Teacher Career Academy, which was an early model for LAUSD’s Career Ladder Teacher Academy.

To help address the concerns of at-risk youth, he founded the Comprehensive Student Support Center to provide health care services for students and their families. He helped create the Elysian Valley Community Services Center, a community owned-and-operated agency that provides after-school, recreational and enrichment programs, a library, and free Internet access.

He was elected to the school board in 2009 and re-elected in 2013 despite the onslaught of billionaire bucks against him.

What are some of Zimmer’s most important accomplishments on the school board?

• Improving student success. Zimmer’s leadership helped increase local graduation rates into their highest level ever. LAUSD schools achieved across-the-board improvements in state testing and all measurable forms of student achievement.
• Balanced budgets. As school board president, Zimmer helped bring LAUSD’s budget into balance while simultaneously increasing funding to the classrooms. Zimmer helped lead the fight to get Congress to pass the Education Jobs Bill passed, which provided LAUSD with $300 million. He has fought for increased federal Special Education funding. He championed Proposition 30 and its extension, Proposition 55, which added more school funding for LAUSD. His stewardship has paid off. LAUSD has been awarded the highest credit rating of AAA.
• More schools, more opportunities.As a result of Zimmer’s leadership and in response to parent interest, LAUSD has added many more magnet schools, STEM programs and dual immersion language programs.
• Restoring arts education. Zimmer worked to restore arts programs not just in some schools but in all schools. He believes access to arts education needs to be a right for all students in every community. It is an essential component to a well-rounded education. Since he’s been in office, arts funding has increased by $18 million dollars and the Arts Equity Index that he championed, now ensures resources where they are needed the most.
• Protecting vulnerable students.As a school board member, Zimmer has been the leading advocate for vulnerable students. He authored the school board resolution in support of the Dream Act, federal legislation that would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented students who do well in school and attend college. He authored the resolution ensuring schools are safe zones where students and families faced immigration enforcement actions can find safety and seek assistance and information. He helped create Student Recovery Day, a twice-yearly event that takes scores of district staff into students’ homes to support students who have dropped out. Hundreds of students have returned to class after being sought out and connected with the support services they need. He has ensured that the school district supports the needs of students living in poverty, students facing trauma, special education students, undocumented students, LGBT students, English Learners, standard English learners and foster children.
• Healthy food. Zimmer’s commitment to making sure students eat healthy meals is unparalleled. His Good Food Purchasing resolution has been a model around the country for making sure student lunches have met the highest nutritional, environmental and animal welfare standards.

As a member of the Board, and his last two years as President, Zimmer led the school district through difficult times, weathering a recession, dealing with tragedies, and transitions in leadership. He used his skills to resolve challenges by working collaboratively.

Zimmer has received numerous awards for his work with children and families, including the LA’s Commission of Children, Youth and their Families “Angel Over Los Angeles” award, El Centro Del Pueblo’s “Carino” award and the LACER Foundation’s “Jackie Goldberg Public Service Award.”

Nick Melvoin is the candidate completely sponsored by the 1 percent. His extreme lack of experience clearly doesn’t bother them. Melvoin is so devoted to the corporate agenda for our schools that he claims a “hostile takeover” is needed.

Who are some of the billionaires and corporate lobby groups that want to defeat Steve Zimmer and elect Nick Melvoin?

• Members of the Walton family(Alice Walton (photo left), Jim Walton, and Carrie Walton Penner) ― heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune from Arkansas ― have contributed $2.2 million to the PAC attacking Zimmer in the last two years. Alice Walton (net worth: $36.9 billion) lives in Texas and is one of the biggest funders behind Melvoin’s campaign. She and other members of her family also donated to the Super PAC that worked to elect Donald Trump, donated to Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions, and to the Alliance for School Choice, an organization that Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos helped to lead.
• Oil and Enron executives from Texas and Oklahoma have contributed more than $1 million to the same committee.
• JOBSPAC — a PAC “largely funded by oil and tobacco companies,” according to the Los Angeles Times– contributed $35,000 to the same committee funding the attacks on Zimmer.
• Doris Fisher, co-founder of The Gap who has a net worth of $2.7 billion, has given $4.1 million to the California Charter School Association’s political action committee in 2015 and 2016. She lives in San Francisco.
• John Arnoldmade a fortune at Enron before the company collapsed, leaving its employees and stockholders in the lurch. Then he made another fortune as a hedge fund manager. His net worth is $2.9 billion. He and his wife Laura donated $1 million last year to CCSA’s political committee and $4400 directly to Melvoin. They live in Houston, Texas.
• Jeff Yass,who lives in the Philadelphia suburbs, has given the maximum allowed contribution to Melvoin. He runs the Susquahanna group, a hedge fund. He has close ties to Betsy DeVos’ efforts to privatize public school. Yass donated $2.3 million to a Super PAC supporting Rand Paul’s presidential candidacy.
• Frank Baxterand his wife Kathrine donated $100,000 to CCSA’s political committee in the past two years and $3,300 directly to Melvoin. Frank Baxter is former CEO of the global investment bank Jefferies and Company that specialized in “junk” bonds. He is a major Republican fundraiser and was appointed ambassador to Uruguay by George W. Bush. He is one of at least five donors to Melvoin’s campaign who sit on the board of charter schools. He is also a big financial backer of Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Cong. Devin Nunes of California, and Cong. Steve King of Iowa (a Tea Party favorite).

What do these corporate moguls and billionaires want and what has Zimmer done to make them so upset?

They want to turn public schools into educational Wal-marts run on the same corporate model. They want to expand charter schools that compete with each other and with public schools in an educational “market place.” (LA already has more charter schools than any other district in the country). They want to evaluate teachers and students like they evaluate new products — in this case, using the bottom-line of standardized test scores. Most teachers will tell you that over-emphasis on standardized testing turns the classroom into an assembly line, where teachers are pressured to “teach to the test,” and students are taught, robot-like, to define success as answering multiple-choice tests.

Not surprisingly, the billionaires want school employees — teachers — to do what they’re told, without having much of a voice in how their workplace functions or what is taught in the classroom. Rather than treat teachers like professionals, they view them as the out-sourced hired help.

Congresswoman Karen Bass, LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, and Senator Bernie Sanders are among the many elected officials who have endorsed Steve Zimmer

The corporate big-wigs are part of an effort that they and the media misleadingly call “school reform.” What they’re really after is not “reform” (improving our schools for the sake of students) but “privatization” (business control of public education). They think public schools should be run like corporations, with teachers as compliant workers, students as products, and the school budget as a source of profitable contracts and subsidies for textbook companies, consultants, and others engaged in the big business of education.

Like most reasonable educators and education analysts, Zimmer has questioned the efficacy of charter schools as a panacea. When the billionaires unveiled their secret plan to put half of LAUSD students into charter schools within eight years, Zimmer led the opposition. Zimmer isn’t against all charter schools but he doesn’t want the board to rubber-stamp every charter proposal. He wants LAUSD to carefully review each charter proposal to see if its backers have a track record of success and inclusion. And he wants LAUSD to hold charters accountable. This kind of reasonable approach doesn’t sit well with the billionaires behind their front group, the California Charter School Association.

Zimmer has also questioned the over-reliance on high-stakes standardized testing as the primary tool for assessing student and teacher performance. Testing has its place but it can also become an excuse to avoid more useful and holistic ways to evaluate students and teachers — and to avoid the “teach to the test” obsession that hampers learning and creative teaching. Zimmer has called for — and helped negotiate the deal for — some portion of teacher evaluations to include test scores. But that’s not what the billionaires want.

As a former LAUSD teacher with 17 years in the classroom, Zimmer respects teachers as professionals. He understands the jobs and frustrations of teaching. He wants LAUSD to create schools that are truly partnerships between teachers, parents, students and the district. He is often allied with United Teachers Los Angeles, but he is nobody’s lapdog. He has always been an independent voice and has disagreed with UTLA on some significant matters.

In fact, four years ago, Times’ columnist Lopez wrote that Zimmer “... has tried to bridge differences among the warring parties, winning supporters and making enemies on both sides in the process.”

But the billionaires don’t want a bridge-builder. They want a compliant rubber stamp, and that’s what they’ve found in Nick Melvoin, the advocate for a “hostile takeover.”

Zimmer is endorsed by many LAUSD parents and community activists as well as Mayor Eric Garcetti, Senator Bernie Sanders, Congressmembers Karen Bass, Judy Chu and Maxine Waters, City Attorney Mike Feuer and the Councilmembers serving the neighborhoods in his 4th School Board District. At the state level, State Superintendent Tom Torlakson, Secretary of State Alex Padilla, State Controller Betty Yee, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon, and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon have all endorsed Zimmer. At the County level, he’s backed by Supervisors Hilda Solis and Sheila Kuehl along with former Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

In his endorsement of Zimmer, Mayor Garcetti said: “The campaign against Steve has turned vicious, and I feel compelled to reach out on behalf of a champion for all our kids. I’ve worked closely with Steve Zimmer for more than 15 years. I’ve watched him make change in the lives of kids and in the fabric of our communities. Under Steve’s leadership, Los Angeles Unified schools have shown impressive progress. Steve’s collaborative, ‘all kids, all families’ approach is what we need on the School Board.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest school system in the country with over 700,000 students. So gaining control of its board — and its budget — is a good “investment” for the billionaires who want to reshape education in this country.

Melvoin’s campaign and backers have outspent Zimmer by a huge margin. Their battle has turned into a remarkable David vs. Goliath contest. But let’s recall who won that Biblical battle. Goliath had the big weapons but the feisty David had the slingshot. That’s how Zimmer beat another hand-picked billionaire-backed candidate four years ago, with a grassroots campaign that relied on parents, teachers, and neighborhood residents, and he’s hoping to do it again next Tuesday.

(Peter Dreier is professor of politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.)

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BELL’S VIEW--The other day a video posted on Facebook drew my attention. In it, a motorcycle moves in slow motion toward the middle of an intersection and a certain crash with a left-turning car. I could see where this was heading, but I couldn’t look away. I have no real desire to watch a motorcyclist pinwheel through the air and crash to the pavement (he survived, thanks to his helmet), but I watched anyway.

So many events I have seen I wish I hadn’t. I’ll never get the video of the Tamir Rice shooting out of my head. And I don’t suppose I should. Maybe this destruction of our illusions – the illusion that we can prolong our innocence through looking away – is the price we have to pay to bring any real change to the world. We live in in-between times, where one person’s truth is another’s lie. How can that be possible? I’ve never completely bought the old chestnut that there are two sides to every story. Tamir Rice was a thirteen-year-old boy playing in the park. I don’t care what the grand jury said. 

Another slow-motion wreck sucking my attention these days is the continuing saga of the Joe Bray-Ali (photo above) campaign to unseat incumbent City Councilman Gil Cedillo – the 70’s B-movie villain currently ignoring his constituents in Council District 1. As anyone following the story knows, Bray-Ali either had his character assassinated or his true identity revealed last week when LAist broke the story of Bray-Ali’s former career as an Internet troll. The story prompted Bray-Ali to publicly attempt to recreate John Hurt’s chestbuster scene from the first Alien movie. He apologized, but he didn’t do it. He’s only human, but he’s not that guy. He made mistakes, but he was only trying to do the right thing.

Flailing, he revealed a few other juicy indiscretions (tax evasion, marital infidelity, and tagging, in that order) and promised to explain it all later as he blithely reassumed his campaign persona. Meanwhile, the old Joe came out swinging on a few Facebook threads, where he just couldn’t seem to help himself. In one, he trotted out a list of some of the crazy misdeeds (bigamy anyone?) of our current City Councilmembers, including Mike Bonin’s long-past meth habit.  How, one commenter asked, is Bonin’s triumph over addiction comparable to your Mr. Hyde impression on Voat?  

How indeed? One truth has emerged: Bray-Ali’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington shtick is not exactly the real thing. He’s brash, he’s bold, he’s – either – racist, sexist, and transphobic, or some kind of satirical anthropologist employing the awesome power of the n-word to move us all toward positive social change. 

The question remains whether Bray-Ali’s move-along, nothing-to-see-here approach can sweep him into the Council chambers on May 16th. A few prominent Bray-Ali supporters have jumped ship, while others have either drunk the kool-aide or just admitted they don’t care. I sympathize fully with the impulse to support the lesser of two evils. City Hall needs a shakeup. The question District1 voters have to ask themselves is: how much is too much?

Bray-Ali’s explanations have been satisfying only to the rubberneckers and the kool-aide drinkers. The pen, they say, is mightier than the sword, but, at this point, Bray-Ali needs to get hold of something sharp and cut out t he rotten bits. Words just aren’t going to do it this time. As a proponent of the power of language, I’ve never felt so adrift. Debate has evolved away from a means of challenging ideas and into a method of silencing our opponents. Shame, humiliation, degradation, and name-calling – all dressed up as free speech – work only to drive speech into hiding, oblivion, or meaninglessness. Joe Bray-Ali has seen this process from both sides – from give and take – and now he’s in the fight of his life with the beast we’ve all been feeding since the turn of the millennium.

On May 16th, the voters in District 1 have a choice – but the choice is all Joe’s at this point. He needs to find a way to the other side of the wall he’s built for himself. And he needs to do it fast.

(David Bell is a writer, attorney, former president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and writes for CityWatch.)

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CAPITAL & MAIN REPORT--If you’re bidding to build the border wall, the City of Los Angeles may soon want to know about it. In the latest effort by blue cities to resist President Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, a Los Angeles City Council member announced Thursday that he will introduce a motion requiring city contractors to disclose whether they’re bidding or working on Donald Trump’s border wall – or risk stiff fines and penalties. The motion is the first of its kind, but follows a trend of major cities exercising their authority to oppose the wall.

Los Angeles is home to more than 1.5 million immigrants. Voters in the county voted more than three to one for Hillary Clinton; the president’s policies remain unpopular here, and the school district and City Council have already taken other measures against the administration.

“City residents deserve to know how the City’s public funds are being spent, and whether they are supporting individuals or entities involved in the construction or operation of the Border Wall,” reads a draft of the motion, which Councilmember Gil Cedillo’s office says will be introduced Friday.

The move is being supported by a broad coalition of religious and immigrant-rights groups as well as unions, whose members include construction workers. “Every construction worker I know takes great pride in showing their children the things they built,” says Rusty Hicks, who leads the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “None of them want to point with pride to something as horrible as a wall between two countries.”

If firms are forced to disclose any bids on the wall, advocates will then have an opportunity to put pressure on these companies — something that many businesses might rather avoid.

The city’s approach is novel, and it’s informed by the work of the Partnership for Working Families (PWF), a national network of advocacy organizations that develop city-based policy campaigns. In March, PWF sent a letter to major contractors urging them not to bid on the border wall; few companies responded. PWF has also been working with officials in individual cities to figure out how to identify contractors that are planning to bid on the wall and have existing city contracts. In Los Angeles, it’s been working closely with the LA Alliance for a New Economy, or LAANE, to get a motion off the ground.

New York City’s public advocate unveiled a plan to block border wall contractors from getting city contracts. Berkeley’s city council voted unanimously to approve a resolution that both denounces the wall and seeks to divest from any companies that are working on the project. It was the first to do so.

But Berkeley’s plan may face a legal challenge. John Yoo, a former Bush administration official who now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley Law School, told Fox Business that the resolution “may violate the Dormant Commerce Clause, which prevents cities from discriminating against outside companies, and there’s no legal exception for political disagreements.” Any ordinance that blocks corporations working on the border wall from operating in certain cities may also violate federal preemption statutes, which stipulate that when local and federal laws are in conflict, the federal standard applies.

The proposed Los Angeles ordinance seeks to circumvent these restrictions by requiring city contractors to disclose their participation in the wall rather than penalizing them. That doesn’t mean corporations bidding to work on the border wall wouldn’t file suit or otherwise protest should L.A. move forward with the ordinance. Tom Janssen, who directs external affairs for Nebraska-based Kiewit, a corporation that’s registered as an interested party to build the border wall, says the company doesn’t publicly discuss its projects. He withheld further comment pending release of the motion’s full language.

Enforcing the ordinance may also present a challenge. A wide spectrum of contractors do business with the City of Los Angeles, and keeping track of their involvement with the border wall could prove challenging. When the city council passed an anti-apartheid ordinance 30 years ago restricting contracts with companies that did business in South Africa, more than 900 ordinance exemptions were racked up in just three years. But PWF’s Jackie Cornejo, who has been coordinating efforts for various border wall ban and disclosure proposals, is confident the city’s Bureau of Contract Administration will ensure accountability. “It’s worked to keep policies like the city’s living wage in place,” she says.

Councilmember Cedillo has high hopes that the proposed ordinance will soon become law. “We will work with the City Attorney’s office to make it a reality,” says Cedillo, “and start talking with colleagues on the City Council to build consensus.”

(Aura Bogado posts at Capital and Main … where this report originated.)

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DODGER BLUES-When Los Angeles Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley opened Dodger Stadium on April 10, 1962, his ticket price structure was simple, straightforward, and inexpensive: $3.50 for box seats, $2.50 for reserved seats, and $1.50 for general admission and the outfield pavilions. That was for every home game, regardless of opponent -- whether it was the hated San Francisco Giants, with whom the Dodgers were engaged in an epic pennant race that year, or the hapless expansion Houston Colt .45s. 

These prices remained the same until 1976. As late as 1997, the last full year Walter’s son Peter O’Malley owned the team before selling it to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Group, a box seat cost $12, and you could sit in the pavilions for $6. 

In case you’re wondering, $3.50 in 1962 is the equivalent of $28 today. Good luck trying to buy a box seat at Dodger Stadium in 2017 for 28 bucks. If you want to see the Dodgers play the Giants this season from that seat location, you could be paying as much as $600 for the privilege. Present-day Dodger Stadium’s slogan might well be: “Welcome, fans. Bring money.” 

But it was not always this way. The O’Malleys’ low ticket price strategy was part of a larger business plan, centered on getting as many repeat customers into their ballpark as possible. Like Disneyland, the theme park showplace that Dodgers executives visited and studied, Dodger Stadium would feature affordable prices that would attract families, and especially women and children. Once they were through the turnstiles and “in the building,” these families would spend money on concessions --lots and lots of Dodger Dogs -- as well as all manner of Dodger logo branded souvenirs to be worn, waved, and displayed. 

Most important of all was the atmosphere inside the stadium. Beautiful views of downtown and the mountains. Organ music. Friendly and efficient park employees. Cleanliness. Safety. Fan greetings on the scoreboards. Promotions. Autograph and picture days. Not to mention Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Maury Wills, Steve Garvey, Fernando Valenzuela, Orel Hershiser, and eight National League pennants in the stadium’s first quarter century of operation. 

Dodger Stadium was privately owned, which meant the O’Malleys bore all risks but reaped all rewards -- which also let them play the long game. If say, a six-year-old could visit the stadium with his family and have an experience that would make him want to come back again, the seeds would be planted for a lifetime of patronage and profit. “Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man,” runs the famous Jesuit aphorism, and under O’Malley ownership from 1962 to 1997, the Dodger Stadium experience epitomized it. 

This business model also served to make the stadium one of Los Angeles’ most inclusive and diverse public venues, since its affordable ticket prices drew fans from across racial, ethnic, and class lines. Club box and dugout level seating, which were class-exclusionary, represented only 3 to 4 percent of available ticketing options at Dodger Stadium in the 1960s. So if any institution in Los Angeles could be termed “democratic,” in the sense of offering the greatest good for the greatest number, it was Dodger Stadium during that time. 

No one would call Dodger Stadium democratic today. It is not designed for repeat visitors, unless they are hedge fund managers or employees fortunate enough to get their hands on the company season tickets. The team, owned by Guggenheim, a financial services consortium, has gone upscale. It has spent more on players and stadium renovations, while also charging fans much more for tickets and parking. If you’re planning to come as a family, make sure your monthly rent or mortgage payment is covered first. Even a family of four that bought the cheapest tickets in the ballpark, along with four hot dogs and four drinks, would spend $134. The same family would spend approximately $120 for the same combination at a movie theater, where parking is often free. 

The Dodger Stadium that tied a transient, race-and-class stratified city together is gone. Now, the chances that the fan in the seat next to you will be from the same social class and racial background are higher than ever. 

In a 21st-century Los Angeles rife with income stagnation, racial separation, and social alienation, we need Dodger Stadium to return to its roots. The emphasis, as it was when the O’Malleys owned the team, needs to be on families and on children. Let kids under 14 in for half price. And give families a special discount. The money lost on the front end would be a fraction of what lifelong Dodger fans would spend over the years at their favorite stadium. A democratized Dodger Stadium would not solve all of the city’s problems, but every small, good thing counts in a time like this. 

(Jerald Podair is a professor of history at Lawrence University and author of the recently published, City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles (Princeton University Press). This piece originally appeared at Zocalo Public Square.

Primary Editor: Joe Mathews. Secondary Editor: Sarah Rothbard.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

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PILGRIMS’ PROGRESS?-The Hollywood sign has taken on significant cultural, economic (tourism) and even mythical properties. People from around the world want their selfies with the sign in the background. I find this quite curious. In my sixty years as a Los Angeles native the sign has always been there, and it was not a big deal. It was there like the mountains, and the ocean, and palm trees. The sign was there, but it didn’t hold the mystique it does today.

As a young man exploring the Los Angeles region and taking trip to Hollywood, friends and I never thought of hiking up a canyon to get close to the sign. We would hike canyons like Topanga, Malibu, Corral Peak or Tuna. But hike to the Hollywood sign?

The sign was always there in the background. In the 1960s through the 1980s it was too many times hidden behind a blanket of smog, lessening its significance even more.

The sign did and does hold social connotations. In my youth Hollywood was going through transformations from the so-called Golden Age to a more cynical age of excess that included drink, drugs and sex parties. It was not a magnet of attraction.

Over the years the sign went into disrepair, symbolizing the disrepair and sloughing of the Hollywood image. Its most famous moments came when letters began to crumble and its name was changed by vandals. This act was a further blurring of the essence of the sign.

But now the sign is made anew and pilgrims worldwide, along with some locals, hike to the sign. Maybe some of these locals are new transplants who find a uniqueness to the sign which for us natives is just another part of growing up and living in Los Angeles, similar to the Coliseum, Dodger Stadium, freeways and Pink’s Hotdogs. They are there, it is part of the city. Yes, I see the sign, so what?

Now, with its newfound mystique, the arrival of these pilgrims overwhelmed the area. Locals living near the sign were invaded by throngs who left trash, blocked the streets with their cars, defecated and what not. That is not neighborly behavior, so they objected, understandably.

A horse stable was losing business because the pilgrims were restricting traffic.

Due to the crush of too many visitors, their disturbances and the waste and litter they left behind, the main trail for pilgrims to the sign is now gated close. They’ve been moved further away and the sign is no longer being venerated as it was. The city fathers need to find a solution to allow the pilgrims back to the sign.

The solution could be a gondola. Why a gondola?

A gondola could be shut down for safety during heavy winds, which seem to be more prevalent these days. Part of the scientific predictions concerning the consequences of global warming is more wind, so we can expect more wind storms of greater intensity.

High above the bone-dry brush, how far would ashes from a cigarette or vapor pipe fly from inside a gondola car? And once they fall to the ground how quickly would they set the land ablaze?

I’ve been to Disneyland when its gondola has broken down leaving cars stranded between stations. But Disneyland is flat, with a predictable landscape and a reliable service team always on standby.

These canyon areas do not have predictable terrain. Good luck trying to get a large ladder truck up a canyon to rescue stranded gondoliers if they are within a few feet of the road. If the stranded gondola is over open terrain away from a road, perhaps over a ravine or the cliff side of the canyon, how would they be reached? How tall would a ladder need to be to get to a gondola from the bottom of a ravine? And how quickly could rescue and repair teams get to the passengers?

Perhaps the less glamorous choice of a bus or rail would work. Why is there not now a daily service of multiple buses to take visitors up to the sign? They could start from the flatlands of Hollywood and this would save the sign’s neighbors from the crush of parked cars along the canyon. There could be a bus station with restrooms to help the keep the hillside clean. This might drive traffic to local restaurants and shops, increasing business.

These buses could be smaller in size like the DASH buses to save space on the narrow roads. There could be an environmentally sensitive, architecturally respectful bus station at the top to further aid the pilgrims.

Charging a nice fee would partially offset the costs of the buses. Have them run on clean burning natural gas, or go electric and then use these buses as prototypes to jump start a conversion of city buses to electric. 

Or go with a train. Griffith Park has the wonderfully idiosyncratic Travel Town which is an outdoor museum of sorts featuring old train locomotives, cars, and a fantastic small gauge open car train. The tracks are narrow, and they carry joyous kids and adults in a loop around the trains. Use natural gas engines or battery electric motors since electric tracks and overhead power lines could pose a danger.

The steepness of the grade of the ascent may be too great for a train, and rail beds may have to be built away from the existing road to make sure there is enough room for emergency vehicles. But it would be fun to ride a slow ascent on a little train up the canyon through the chaparral, taking in the sights and views on the way to the sign.
       
The train would be so much fun that I, a native Los Angeleno who is able to walk from my house and down the block about fifty yards to glimpse the Hollywood sign, would venture a train ride to take the pilgrimage up to see the sign myself.

(Matthew Hetz is a Los Angeles native. He is a transit rider and advocate, a composer, music instructor, and member and president and executive director of the Culver City Symphony Orchestra.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

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EASTSIDER-Long before there was a Measure HHH, there was a lot of discussion at LANCC and other community meetings about what kind of shelter we could provide to our homeless population -- something to tide them over until supportive services could kick in and find longer term solutions for their complex issues. 

At the time, here was a lot of talk about sub-$30,000 “tiny homes.” Of course, almost all discussion about this concept disappeared the day after Measure HHH -- the $1.2 billion bond measure -- passed last year. 

We’ll get back to what went wrong with Measure HHH later, but for now let’s take a look at serious, inexpensive housing. Notice I did not say “affordable.” There are at least three, and probably many more, actual examples of these tiny inexpensive, quickly built and installed homes. 

From right around here in Los Angeles, a group of USC students came up with a $25,000 stackable housing pod of about 92 sq. ft. They are big enough to provide a bed, bathroom, desk and storage, and to give shelter from the elements. You can read more about the project here. 

From San Francisco, an outfit called Panoramic Interests, has come up with a business model involving larger, 160 sq. ft. “micro-apartments.” These modular housing units are also stackable, like the USC project. Currently built and shipped from China, they are designed to be leased for about $1000/year per unit. This is a whole lot cheaper than most alternatives, and there is some talk of building the units locally. For more, about their vision, look here.  

These are only two examples of numerous kinds of groovy ideas for this type of inexpensive shelters, as you can see from this article on a popular travel blog. 

So Why is the City Unable to Perform? 

All pretty words aside, the truth is there’s no money to be made (or spent) when it comes to cheap housing. No sir. Money comes from controlling what and where something is going to be built; and to pad the profit, it should be “affordable housing,” not just a place to provide shelter from the elements for the homeless. 

So one of the first things the Council did when they got the bond money was to take Controller Ron Galperin’s database of about 9000 city owned properties and trim it down into twelve parcels. 

As I wrote in an earlier CityWatch article, as soon as the bond passed, City Hall did a bait and switch to now provide “affordable housing:” 

“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.” 

Even worse, as fellow CityWatch columnists Eric & Joshua Preven noted, the first meeting of the 7 member Citizens Oversight Committee (all appointed by the Mayor), was in fact a secret meeting which had a “technical glitch” and the audio recording of the meeting didn’t work. Great start to the openness and transparency promised when they begged for $1.2 billion in bonds.

In their follow-up article, they showed that the City has no intention of telling us what they are going to do with the money. 

Then we had a devastating piece by Patrick Range McDonald, showing how the Mayor and Council made nice until they were able to defeat Measure S. Then came the real deal that they had hidden: 

“The City Administrative Officer recommended, and the City Council approved, an AHOS program that now offered ‘affordable multifamily housing,’ ‘mixed-income housing,’ ‘affordable homeownership,’ ‘innovative methods of housing,’ and, finally, “permanent supportive housing” for the homeless.”  

And on May Day (May 1), the Prevens gave us a column with the heading Red Flag Warning, a nice summary of the bait and switch. The answer to the question of how many actual new units of housing for the homeless have been built is around zero. With some 9 projects in the pipeline (mostly refurbishments) for some $10 million.

Finally, in a pathetic attempt to redirect our limited attention, the City Council proudly urged that the City declare a year-round shelter crisis. The motion was made by none other than Jose Huizar (CD 14), who can’t even get anything done in Boyle Heights, and that master of saying one thing and doing something else, Mike Bonin (CD 11). 

The Takeaway 

Let’s go back to what we were told in the run up to passage of Proposition HHH. The advertised promise was for some 10,000 units of affordable permanent-supportive housing over 10 years, to the tune of $1.2 billion in bonds. 

What we’ve got is a new bureaucracy called HCID, run by a new general manager (Ray Cervantes), looking for staff and talking about $75 million in bonds to fund something like 440 units of supporting housing, with a total of 615 units. Maybe. And with no timeline. 

HCID, for the acronym challenged, stands for “Housing & Community Investment Department.” That very description should make us shudder, as we add another bureaucracy to the City that can’t balance a budget. On the other hand, they have a really spiffy website.  

This is a far cry from the promised 10,000 units of housing for the homeless and support services, and the Prevens indicate that the real number to date is around zero. If the City took a look at the pod/tiny houses mentioned at the beginning of this article, the process now would be very different. For about $30 million ($30,000 per unit) you could build 1000 units of homeless housing. And under the USC model, it could all be built here, providing jobs for local folks. 

Furthermore, at the moment the City is only looking at nine projects, using their tortured system, and there has been huge community pushback on many of their proposed sites. If you broadened the parameters and looked at all the 9000 parcels identified by Controller Galperin, I refuse to believe that the City couldn’t find places to put these mini-homes. 

Not only that, just look at the amount of money the City has blown in court battles over the police department seizing homeless people’s belongings and the costs of storing their stuff. I’m guessing millions, as referenced in a recent Curbed Los Angeles piece. With the pods, storage is already there. 

All I can say is, thank god for CityWatch and its intrepid band of investigative columnists! 

And the next time City Hall wants us to pay for a special purpose tax, listen to Jack Humphreville. Vote NO.

(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

-cw