ELECTION REFLECTIONS-I promised myself I was not going to write about the presidential election -- and then Donald Trump won. That result has been characterized as the most stunning in American political history. Truman beating Dewey in 1948 was surprising. There’s no word strong enough to describe this outcome. 

One wonders what the great columnist of his time, H. L. Mencken, would have to say. Among other things, he wrote, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” He’s also credited with claiming you can never underestimate the intelligence of the American people. 

It’s beyond belief how wrong the pollsters and pundits were. In an era ruled by algorithms, the whiz kids blew it big time. The operator of one (until now) fairly accurate site that aggregated polls admitted that everyone in his field got it wrong from the very beginning. He also pointed out that in this election nothing (Trump’s outrageous statements, poor debate performance, lack of support from his own party) mattered. Nor did Clinton’s status as perhaps the most qualified candidate in history or the potential for making history as America’s first female president. 

The question for historians is whether this election was the last gasp of the white, male power structure or herald of a new era of “America first” and walls -- physical and economic. I grew up among the people in the upper Midwest and understand why they would choose to accept Trump’s sales pitch to “Make America Great Again.”

In my youth in a mid-sized city dominated by manufacturing, it was a given that anyone with the ability to get a high school diploma could go into a factory for the next 40 years and retire with a secure pension. Along the way, there would be a family and a house and nice cars. Much of that good middle-class life was due to the unions to which these workers belonged. 

The jobs left for the southern states, where they don’t have unions, and then overseas, where they don’t have labor laws. The decline of the neighborhood where I grew up was dramatic. Houses were abandoned as factories closed. Eventually they were demolished and the street seems to slowly be returning to the state of nature it was in 150 years ago. Jobs left. Businesses left. Families left. 

But, not all of them. Those who weathered the economic storms of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and the other states of the Rust Belt voted for Trump as their last, best hope to bring back the past. He won’t, of course.

Building walls, turning our backs on America’s history of opening its doors to immigrants, and engaging in economic warfare with our trading partners isn’t going to alter reality. Nor is wrecking the social safety net, spending billions more on the military, and giving the biggest tax cuts ever to millionaires and billionaires. 

That reality doesn’t matter. In 2008, half the electorate voted for Obama’s “hope and change.” Eight years later, the other half voted for Trump’s.

(Doug Epperhart is a publisher, a long-time neighborhood council activist and former Board of Neighborhood Commissioners commissioner. He is a contributor to CityWatch and can be reached at: [email protected]) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CORRUPTION WATCH-As the Sol Price School of Public Policy noted a few years ago, Los Angeles has ceased to be a growth city and the little population increase will be from the number of births exceeding deaths and number of people who leave. The City is also experiencing a net exodus of more people leaving LA than are coming to Los Angeles. The City has lost more employers than any other urban area and the most affluent portion of the middle class, the professionals and business service workers, have ranked Los Angeles as #60 on the list of desirable places to live. Foreign investment from Russia is shrinking since Putin clamped down on money leaving the country, and China and Brazil are similarly experiencing an economic slow-downs. As a result, less foreign money is looking for Los Angeles real estate in order to launder the money which they have liberated from their homelands. 

The worse news for Los Angeles is that Family Millennials are like prior generations. When they age out of the “dorm style” of living, they want detached single family homes with yards and fruit trees. Overwhelmingly, they are done with the high rise in Transit Oriented Districts [TODs], especially in cities with atrocious school systems like LAUSD which ranks near the bottom of the industrialized world. Since the peak millennial birth year was 25 years ago, they are increasingly entering into the family-rearing phase of their generation, while there are substantially fewer young Millennials in Los Angeles. 

Los Angeles, however, has followed a housing pattern where we have fewer single family homes just as the number of Family Millennials is increasing, but the city insists on constructing more dorm room style high rises. On paper, these small units look financially beneficial to the developer – until he finds out that he cannot rent the apartments or sell the condos. Garcetti’s perennial subsidizing of his developer buddies with billions of tax dollars has resulted in a glut of these higher end, highly dense apartments and condos. 

As a result, Los Angeles has hit upon a brilliant plan. They will tear down the homes of poor people in order to manufacture a homeless crisis and then tell people that they can rid their neighborhoods of the homeless by passing a $1.2 billion bond measure to construct homes for the homeless. (For some reason, homeowners do not understand that a bond is actually a tax on their property – they are not getting a free ride on someone else’s back.) 

But where do we put the homes for the homeless? Under JJJ developers can be given the $1.2 billion to sprinkle affordable units among their luxury units. In this way, the money homeowners will be paying to help the homeless will go to subsidize the dense projects that are making Los Angeles unliveable. 

The money from Measure M promises to construct subways and fixed rail systems. Thus, when it is pointed out that we cannot increase the number of bedrooms in the Valley, they respond that people from the Valley can take the subway beneath Sepulveda Pass to the Westside office towers in the Century City-Westwood-Santa Monica triangle. 

Since Valley people have to live within ½ mile of a subway station before they will use it, the Valley will be filled with extra-high density apartment complexes near the subway stations. However, the Family Millennials are abandoning DTLA and Hollywood due to traffic and residential congestion. So why would they move to the Valley to replicate the same unpleasant conditions, only in a place that is hotter, with considerable longer commute time? 

As mentioned in previous articles, NYC runs an $8 billion annual deficit for its subways and fixed-rail lines over and above the cost to construct them. Thus, Measure M promises to increase the City’s annual operating deficit by billions of dollars per year. If we try Washington D.C.’s ploy and do not maintain the subways, then we too will end up having to close the system until repairs are made. Meanwhile, the pension costs due to the additional public employees hired by Metro will make today’s pension woes look like the good old days. 

So, what is likely to happen as the City continues to deteriorate due to our increasing density which drives away the middle class tax base? It is likely that when many homeowners see the handwriting on the wall, they will realize that it is smart to sell their Los Angeles home for $900,000 and purchase a better one in Texas for only $325,000. There is also Tennessee, and Colorado, Utah, and Arizona and much of the South where the living favors the middle class family. 

How long will Angelenos hold on to their high priced homes in a declining market while knowing the costs in the Austin-Antonio corridor, for example, will be only be increasing. We know where the good jobs will be: the places where the middle class can find the best quality of life. Los Angeles ranks in the bottom 10 of areas which offer the best quality of life for the middle class [Chapman University, 2015, Building Cities for People). That is the reason Los Angeles has become an exodus city. 

How Long Will Lies and Myths Deceive Angelenos? 

The capacity of Angelenos to believe what they are told rather than what they can see is prodigious. Angelenos have known for decades that spending billions on subways and fixed rail transit has coincided with longer commute times and not “15% less freeway time” which Garcetti promised in this deceptive and misleading TV ads. 

Judge Goodman and Judge Chalfant told Angelenos in 2014 and 2015 that the city uses false data to justify its decisions. Judge Goodman called this “fatally flawed data” and “wishful thinking,” i.e. Lies and Myths. The Mayor has no shame in his Lies and Myths. The April 2016 Notice of Preparation for the new Hollywood Community Plan said that Hollywood’s population was 206,000 people in 2015, based on SCAG data. SCAG data, however, placed the population at only 204,700 people and that high figure was at odds with a proven annual loss of 12,000 people between 2000 and 2010. Then in November 2016, Garcetti announced that the Hollywood 2015 population was estimated at 210,511 people. Really? Hollywood’s population increased by 4,500 people between April and November 2016? Angelenos are excessively gullible. 

Trying to make sense of data which is actually “Lies and Myths” is a fool’s chore. Until Garcetti can lock Angelenos behind the city gates at night to prevent them from leaving, the exodus will accelerate. Tuesday’s election successes of Measures JJJ, HHH and M have hastened the day when the middle class exodus from LA may rival Cecil B. DeMille’s exodus of Jews from Pharaoh’s Egypt.

(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.

ALPERN AT LARGE--The people have spoken, but some of us might not like to hear what the people spoke to, and what their decision was.  Four years ago, and eight years ago, the people also spoke. And I was one of them.  Simply put, the "hope and change" of eight years ago will have to be channeled in a new direction, because this nation lacks too much hope, and has endured the wrong type of change. 

EASTSIDER-Hats off to my friends in the labor movement, particularly AFSCME and SEIU -- they managed to block DWP Reform Measure RRR, even though most everything else passed in the LA City Special Municipal Election. Life should get interesting, now that RRR is gone. As a result, the LA City Council and the Mayor own the DWP, no change, and nowhere to hide. 

I think this is big news, especially when you look at the line up for the LA City primary election arriving around the corner on March 7, 2017. The Mayor, the City Controller, the City Attorney, as well as a majority of the City Council Districts: 1,3,5,7,9,11,13, and 15. Too bad it doesn’t look like Mayor Eric Garcetti has any serious competition. 

And in Other DWP News. 

Last Saturday, November 5, there was an information packed meeting of the DWP Committee held at DWP Headquarters. The issues covered were somewhere between opaque and mind-numbing, but you have to remember that these innocent sounding initiatives are going to determine what our rates are going to be and how we get there from here. So it’s time for us to start paying attention to two different “I have no idea what they mean” concepts: Equity Metrics and the Integrated Resources Plan. 

The other discussion item, questionable leases of office space for the DWP in City owned properties, we can figure out all too well. 

Equity Metrics. 

This initiative is a fancy way of saying that the DWP will be setting up a big database to track how all the neighborhoods are currently treated by DWP and how they can or should all be treated equally. Or not. 

Board of DWP Commissioners Vice-President William W. Funderburk, Jr. gave the presentation and answered questions. I will have to admit to being remiss in never paying much attention to the DWP Board, since they are all appointed by the Mayor and dare not bite the hand that feeds them. So this was all new to me. And useful. 

Mr. Funderburk is an interesting guy in that he is both an engineer and an environmental lawyer. He was even on a Neighborhood Council (Greater Wilshire), and as you can imagine with this background, his appointment letter (CF 13-1074) indicates that there are numerous opportunities for him to have a statutory conflict of interest in matters before the Commissioners. 

For right now, the Equity Metrics Initiative consists largely of a power point presentation, although it seems that the blanks are going to be filled in quite soon. Here’s what the language in DWP’s press release describing the Initiative talks about -- performance metrics over “reliable delivery of water and power service, equal access to energy efficiency, conservation and assistance programs, small business economic development for competition in LADWP contracts of goods and services, and equal access to LADWP employment opportunities.” 

We’ll see how it all plays out. On its face, this is one of those soft and fuzzy concepts that imply equal treatment of all ratepayers. My personal observation is that, given enough data, you can prove darn near anything you want to and we all know who appoints the DWP Board of Commissioners. 

Like, who has the least reliable power in town? Pacific Palisades. And that means? 

Stay tuned, because the politics of this one are going to be fascinating. 

Figueroa Street Plaza’s DWP Lease.

And speaking of the DWP Board of Commissioners, here is fuel for my concerns over how things really work. According to my pal Jack Humphreville, this deal has stunk from the beginning and he has written a number of fairly incendiary articles on the self dealing, double dealing of our Mayor and City Council, as they use the DWP to shift LA City costs onto the DWP ratepayers. 

Jack’s latest article is a doozy, with the spiffy headline, “DWP Fig Plaza Deal: DWP Board Caves, Mayor Goes Back to Basics, Ratepayers Screwed ... Again.” The title says it all, and chronicles the 4-1 vote of the Commissioners to ok a 10-year, $41 million deal for office space at Figueroa Plaza, which just happens to be owned by -- you guessed it -- the City of Los Angeles.

I only hope that Commissioner Christina Noonan has made enough money as a real estate professional that she doesn’t need the gig. If history is a guide, our notoriously thin-skinned Mayor Eric Garcetti does tend to micro-manage how “his” appointees vote. And the Equity Metrics and Integrated Resources Plan involve literally billions of dollars. 

Integrated Resources Plan.

Speaking of opaque, how many of us have a clue what the Integrated Resources Plan actually is? That is, aside from our own DWP guru, Tony Wilkinson, Chair of the DWP MOU Committee. 

So ok. An Integrated Resources Plan is really a fancy way of saying how DWP plans to handle long term power management, and get from its current mix of non-renewable and renewable energy resources to some public policy driven goal within the next 20 years. Whew! 

While the plan may sound innocuous or mushy to you and me, it is a very big deal and has far reaching impacts on how much ratepayers will be paying to achieve these goals. 

Speaking of Tony Wilkinson, he has a very nice article at EmpowerLA, about all of these matters, and you can find it here.  

Essentially, the plan is a constantly moving target, and gets revised every two years. The current 2015 Plan has us going from 20% renewable energy to 50% renewable energy by the year 2030 -- mostly by eliminating coal and substituting renewable such as solar, wind and geothermal. As we speak, the Department is in the process of developing its 2017 Plan with even more ambitious goals. You can find the DWP website on the IRP here. 

While the title of IRP seems innocuous, the downside of all these grandiose plans is that they are expensive! Coal and nuclear may be “dirty,” but they are 24/7 reliable and relatively cheap. Further, most of the renewables like wind and solar can’t provide power on a 24/7 basis, which is what we need. And the reason that these 20-year plans are important is that the Department has to expend billions and billions of dollars on capital projects in order to get there from here. 

Those projects take decades to implement, and simply can’t be changed at will to suit the whim of elected officials. I mention this because our sound bite City Council has grandly “requested” that the DWP look into what investments they would have to make in order to get to 100% Renewable energy. Really. They fail to realize that their political posturing doesn’t simply happen by a stroke of the pen. Remember this next March. 

Just as a mini-example of what we’re talking about, the Ratepayers Advocate has recently released an analysis of the DWP’s proposal for a rooftop utility-built and owned solar Pilot Program. 

While this is a relatively minor project, it reveals oodles about the renewable energy game. Reading between the lines, this project would probably cost something like two to four times what it would cost to simply go out and purchase solar. Multiply this by a 20-year plan. 

The Takeaway. 

My point is simply this -- feel good green energy plans can break the bank in a heartbeat if we are not very, very careful. All of these technical initiatives make sense from a planning standpoint, but the devil is in the details, and politicians are absolute masters at twisting data to support whatever half-baked scheme they are interested in at the moment. Witness the recent 4-1 giveaway over Figueroa Street office space.

(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.)

MY TURN-I woke up in the middle of the night and thought I was having a bad dream. It took me a few seconds to realize that Donald Trump had been elected the next President of the United States.

So, I pulled the covers over my head and decided to stay in bed for the next four years. 

That lasted till about 8:00 a.m. when I gingerly checked my cell phone, not knowing what other news I was going to receive. My youngest granddaughter, who just turned eleven, had sent me a text (that is how we communicate with this generation) which said, "How are you doing? I am in shock because he has not only been so mean to so many girls that he has already hurt this country. Let's talk more after school?” 

Before I got the chance to call she sent another text later saying, “He is not only rude to women but took away a chance from someone else who actually cares about this country. Best of luck America!" 

I will explain to her that he didn't take away the chance from Hillary Clinton ... the American people voted to have him as our next President. Later on, I received a text from my eldest granddaughter who is a freshman at University in Arizona. It said, "Hi Gram! A bit scared for our country honestly!!! How are you feeling?” 

As the resident politico in the family I am the source of all political information. (At least I have managed to make them believe it.) I was delighted they asked me how I was feeling! This situation occurred all over the country. Many parents and grandparents were in the difficult position of trying to calm fears. 

Wednesday morning I went to my class on Current Events. I find it helpful to see how other people think about issues of the day. If there were any Trump supporters in the room, they were very quiet.   The hundred or more sitting there reminded me of attending a wake without the refreshments. 

I learned that the President and Vice President can't be sued while in office. That means Trump's two trials scheduled for November and December can't be continued. If they are, they will have to wait four years...or maybe eight.

I also learned that if the Republicans and Trump keep their promise about seeking a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton, President Obama can issue a certain kind of pardon before he leaves office. It doesn't mean she has to admit guilt. It will stop those congressional witch hunters from continuing their thirty-year battle with the former Secretary. 

After watching the analysis practically all day, I'm not going to talk about the mechanics of the election. You all must be saturated by it as well. I would like to discuss some of the ramifications of the "First 100 days of the Donald Trump Presidency," especially the international trade part.

We cannot manufacture products for all of our needs. That is the reason we have a global economy. As an example, making a men’s white shirt in the United States would probably cost $40. This means the people making the shirts couldn't afford to buy them. By the time the apparel manufacturer buys American textiles and trim, equipment, and pays a decent wage and benefits, it becomes too expensive. 

That is why thousands of men’s shirts are available for $12.99. We are able to buy something in our budget and we have enabled people in another country to be able to buy necessities. 

How many of you buy clothes because of where they are made? Other than certain items which can be almost completely automated or hand made for the couture fashion labels, we need to manufacture our clothing in another country. 

On the other hand, the United States is a huge exporter of all kinds of products. We are the largest or almost largest agricultural exporters in the world. Our exports provide millions of jobs for Americans. Here’s just a few statistics on our Import/export trade in 2015: 

Overall imports to the U.S. in 2015:     2.307 Trillion Dollars 

Overall exports from the U.S. 2015:     1.504 Trillion Dollars 

U.S. exports to Mexico in 2015:            236.4 Billion dollars or 15.7% of all our exports 

Mexican Exports to U.S 2015:               297.5 Billion dollars or 12.9% of all our imports 

U.S. Exports to China 2015:                  116.2 Billion or 7.7% of total exports 

Chinese Exports to U.S 2015:                02.7 Billion dollars or 21.8 of U.S total imports 

This is apart from the billions of dollars invested in American Real Estate and Manufactured Products from both countries. 

There is no way that Trump can bring the manufacturing industries back to the rust belt. We have to make the things we do best at a price both American consumers and those in other countries can afford. 

We benefitted from the products made in the Industrial Revolution, but progressed to other industries. We developed some of the finest technology in the world. Manufacturing jobs now and in the future will be so automated that they will need one or two people as opposed to fifty. Why do we no longer manufacture "buggy whips"? Maybe because horse and buggies are not our main mode of transportation. Then again, they may be quicker on the 405 in the morning. 

Last night, as the election returns were coming in, my daughter was at an international meeting of CEO's and top executives taking place in Shanghai. There were around fifty different countries represented, all in the trade exposition industry. They were, as she said, "freaking out.” Since the U.S. election was not a big priority on Chinese TV, I was texting the results as they came in. These fifty countries were afraid of trade wars. 

The only comments from Chinese TV were that Trump was an unknown but they didn't expect any affect on their money, the yuan. 

It is rather ironic that so many other countries are so much more knowledgeable and interested in the United States than we are in the outside world. 

Maybe he can accomplish some good things with a Republican Congress. Infrastructure has been on the table but inactive for the last four years. 

We are waiting nervously, along with the rest of the world, to see what he does. 

As always, comments welcome.

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

BILLBOARD WATCH-The slow-moving but relentless push for more digital billboards on LA’s commercial streets got a boost last week with the unveiling of a detailed plan for allowing the now-prohibited signs. Presented to the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) committee, the plan would require billboard companies to make payments to the city and remove a certain number of existing billboards in exchange for the right to put up new signs of the highly lucrative digital variety. 

The committee directed city agencies to develop a legal framework to implement the digital billboard plan, even though the City Planning Commission (CPC) last year approved a new citywide sign ordinance that restricts the brightly-lit signs with rapidly changing ads to sign districts in a limited number of high-intensity commercial areas. That action would put those signs off-limits in more than 80 per cent of the city’s commercial zones. 

With certain exceptions, new billboards and alterations to existing billboards have been banned in LA since 2002 and digital billboards have been explicitly prohibited since 2009. However, state law allows cities to enter into relocation agreements with billboard companies, which means that a billboard can be moved from one location to another without running afoul of billboard bans such as LA’s. 

This law, intended to relieve cities from the burden of paying large amounts in compensation if a billboard has to be removed from private property for a street widening or other public works project, has been advocated by billboard giant Clear Channel as a mechanism for not only putting up new digital billboards, but turning on many of the 99 digital billboards that went dark by court order three years ago. 

In the CLA’s plan, the relocation agreements would allow new digital billboards to be put up or the existing digital billboards to be turned on in locations of the companies’ choice without hearings and approvals by zoning officials or local planning commissions. As long as the companies agree to make a specified annual payment to the city, take down a certain number of existing billboards, and meet restrictions regarding location and illumination, permits for the new or re-activated digital billboards would be issued “by right.” 

This, of course, directly contradicts what billboard company representatives and pro-digital billboard politicians have said for several years, which is that communities should be able to choose whether or not they want the signs on their commercial streets. If people in North Hollywood or East LA see the billboards as bringing benefits to their community, the argument went, they should have them; if people in Silverlake or Westwood see them as a detriment, they should be able to say no. 

Be that as it may, here are the details of the CLA’s plan: A billboard company wishing to put up a new digital billboard could choose to remove existing billboards at a ratio ranging from 2:1 to 9:1, based on square footage of sign face. A standard full-sized billboard is 672 sq. ft., so two of those or some other number of signs adding up to 1,300-plus square feet would have to be removed. If a billboard company chose the 2:1 ratio, it would have to pay the city an annual fee of $250,000, but if it took down existing billboards at higher ratios the required fee would incrementally decrease, up to the 9:1 ratio, which would not trigger any fee payment. 

The plan also recommends that companies putting up new digital billboards provide “community benefits” to offset the negative impacts of the new signage. These include streetscape improvements, public art programs, and funding for transit-related services, among others. 

There are some proposed restrictions on where the new digital billboards could be put -- for example, in public parks, along designated scenic highways, in historic preservation zones, and areas zoned neighborhood or limited commercial. The plan also proposes a limit on the light cast by the billboards, although the method of measurement is widely regarded as an inaccurate reflection of the brightness of the signs that employ thousands of LED lights, and many cities, including LA, have begun using a newer, more accurate method that measures the light at its source. 

After listening to these details, along with a related report by the City Administrative Officer (CAO) and comment from members of the public, PLUM committee chairman Jose Huizar closed the discussion by directing the city agencies, with the assistance of the city planning department and City Attorney’s office, to return with additional details needed to implement the plan, which would require ultimate approval by the full City Council. 

Despite the fact that the issue has drawn heated public debate, and the plan represents the first detailed step in the direction of allowing new digital members on most commercial streets, not a single member of the committee other than Huizar had any comment or question for the city officials presenting the reports. 

Before moving on to other items on the committee’s agenda, Huizar also got in a swipe at the City Planning Commission, which he has accused in the past of overstepping its bounds by making changes to the sign ordinance sent to it by the committee. Those changes mean that the City Council will need a supermajority, or 10 votes, to overrule the commission’s approval of an ordinance that restricts new digital signs to sign districts. 

Huizar also raised an issue that has been alluded to but not explicitly discussed by committee members in the past, which is the idea that the less affluent City Council districts have borne the brunt of billboard blight in the past, and are therefore particularly deserving of the relief promised by the takedown provisions of the CLA’s digital billboard plan. 

The councilman, whose district encompasses most of downtown and the majority Latino communities of East LA and Boyle Heights, pointed to statistics in the CAO report showing that his district ranks first among the city’s 15 council districts in number of billboards. The district, along with two South LA districts, have 36% of the total billboards in the city, Huizar said. And while the City Planning Commission’s restriction of new digital billboards to sign districts also includes a requirement that any new signs be offset by the takedown of existing billboards, Huizar said that this would not result in a significant reduction of billboards in those districts. 

But are Huizar’s East LA district and the two predominately Latino and African American districts in South LA he cited really disproportionately blighted by billboards? According to city records, Huizar’s district has 772 billboard faces, which is the highest of any of the 15 council districts. Council districts 8 and 9, represented by council members Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Curren Price, respectively, who also happen to be members of the PLUM committee, each have 719 billboard faces, ranking them second to Huizar’s district. 

However, if those districts are ranked by total square footage of billboard faces, Huizar’s district ranks 7^th, and the other two 11^th and 13^th. In fact, the district ranked first on this scale, councilman Paul Koretz’s predominately Westside district, has 279,000 sq. ft., compared to 165,000 sq. ft. in Huizar’s district and only 97,000 sq. ft. in Price’s district. Which means that Koretz’s more affluent district has fewer billboard structures than those other districts, but the billboards have significantly larger faces and therefore display larger, more prominent advertisements. Thus, the argument over which districts are disproportionately blighted by billboards turns on the question of what is the major source of the blight, the billboard’s structure or the advertising displayed on the face. 

The council districts ranked 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th in terms of square footage of billboard space each have more than 200,000 sq. ft. Along with Kortez’s district, those districts represented by Mike Bonin, David Ryu, and Mitch O’Farrell also happen to be the ones in which Clear Channel and Outfront Media put up all but a handful of 101 digital billboards beginning in 2007 and ending with a moratorium at the end of 2008. Those districts not only had more full-sized billboards to convert to digital but are among the most affluent in the city and therefore more attractive to advertisers paying premium rates for the 8-second spots on the signs. 

It’s therefore no mystery why Koretz, Bonin, and Ryu have publicly announced their opposition to allowing digital billboards anywhere outside sign districts, as per the City Planning Commission action. Councilman Paul Krekorian has also publicly opposed plans to allow new digital billboards outside sign districts on private property, although none of the 101 signs went up in his San Fernando Valley district. O’Farrell hasn’t taken as definite a stand as his four colleagues, but has told constituents that he was happy with the planning commission’s action. 

If the plan presented this week to allow digital billboards beyond those limited sign districts is eventually approved, Clear Channel could turn on most of the 84 billboards it put up in 2007-2008. Likewise, Outfront Media. And the city’s third major billboard company, Lamar Advertising, which owns some 3,000 small billboards in mostly lower-income neighborhoods, could erect new digital billboards on commercial thoroughfares in areas with the more affluent consumers valued by advertisers. 

For example, the plan would allow Clear Channel to turn on a now-dark digital billboard on Santa Monica Blvd. in West LA in exchange for removing two or three old, rundown billboards in Council District 8 in south LA and paying the city an annual fee of $250,000. That might seem a great deal for Harris-Dawson, who represents that district and has complained of billboard blight there, but what of people in the residential neighborhood adjacent to that Santa Monica Blvd. billboard who repeatedly complained of constantly changing light cast into their homes and brilliantly lit ads for products and services looming beyond their roofs in the night sky. 

A fourth member of the PLUM committee, Gil Cedillo, whose district west and north of downtown includes some of the city’s poorest areas, could also benefit from the removal of old, blighted billboards, especially since Clear Channel and company are not likely to look at most of the district as fertile ground for new digital billboards. The fifth member, Mitchell Englander, represents a much more affluent district in the northwest San Fernando Valley, but the predominately residential district has by far the fewest number of billboards in the city and probably wouldn’t be a major target for companies wanting to put up new digital signs. 

As mentioned above, the plan would require votes from 10 of the 15 city council members since it conflicts with the ordinance approved by the planning commission. If council members Bonin, Koretz, Ryu, and Krekorian maintain their current stands, and are joined by O’Farrell, they could block that action since one council seat is currently vacant. However, that vacancy will be filled in the upcoming city election and a new council member will be seated on July 1 of next year. 

There are some other hurdles as well. A Clear Channel representative has written a letter to the committee criticizing the takedown ratios as too high, and arguing that instead of a set annual fee the companies and city should negotiate a fee for each relocation agreement. Regency Advertising and Summit Media, two of the city’s small billboard companies, have also argued for lower takedown ratios and fees on the grounds that the proposed plan would shut them out of the process.

And City Attorney Mike Feuer, who unsuccessfully sponsored a statewide moratorium on digital billboards when he was a state assembly member, has not weighed in on the possible legal ramifications of the billboard relocation scheme. Feuer has already poured cold water on one of the PLUM committee’s earlier proposals, which was to grant “amnesty” to all unpermitted and non-compliant billboards in the city. 

To read the CLA and CAO reports in the city’s council files, click here.

(Dennis Hathaway is the president of the Ban Billboard Blight Coalition and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.