GUEST COMMENTARY--Beverly Hills has sent a clear message to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority about its proposed Purple Line subway extension route running under the city. Quite literally, “It’s our way or the highway.”

The extension, which could be completed by 2024 if a voters approve a 0.5 percent sales tax in November, will finally connect UCLA to Los Angeles’ burgeoning rail system. It’ll be a massive boon for commuters to the Westside who currently have to stew in traffic on the 10 Freeway or the Wilshire corridor.

There’s just one problem: The extension is supposed to run under the city of Beverly Hills, specifically under Beverly Hills High School, and concerns about the sub-school tunnel have given city leaders tunnel vision. In increasingly clear displays of obstructionism, they’ve spent the past five years trying to derail Metro’s plans.

But it’s time for Beverly Hills’ interests to step off the brakes of opposition to the subway. They’ve spent a lot of taxpayer money and made quite a fuss over the years, but they’ve accomplished little of actual substance.

Their latest loss in this sub opera came on Aug. 12, when U.S. District Court Judge George Wu handed down his decision on a lawsuit brought forward by both the city of Beverly Hills and the Beverly Hills Unified School District against the Federal Transit Authority. In an appeal from a 2014 decision in Metro’s favor, they wanted FTA’s approval of the route nullified and a complete redo of Metro’s environmental impact statement. This would have cost Metro millions and delayed the construction timeline. In his ruling, Wu upheld the FTA’s prior approval, which means that Metro can secure its federal grants and loans and award contracts without having to revise its entire impact statement or change its proposed construction schedule.

It’s a victory for Metro, but the drama is expected to continue because Wu also ruled that Metro needed to redo parts of its environmental impact report. While Metro officials say they’re eager to make the revisions, BHUSD attorney Jennifer Recine put out a statement following the ruling that this decision proved the FTA “violated federal environmental law,” and that BHUSD would have further legal claims once the presumably “superficial” revisions were made. 

If Beverly Hills’ endgame is to stop the subway from running under the high school, they should quit while they’re behind. This is becoming an increasingly futile, costly and embarrassing battle for Beverly Hills’ leaders.

The city’s scare campaign has flitted from issue to issue, sometimes taking bizarre turns. The Beverly Hills Courier claimed that the Islamic State group would use the still-unbuilt subway to bomb Beverly Hills High School. The school board enlisted high school students to bring a consultant’s ideas to life and produce an anti-Metro video. The local parent-teacher association put out their own over-the-top video, complete with conspiracy theories and imagery that would have made the guys behind Lyndon B. Johnson’s Daisy Girl attack ad blush. And to top it all off, the school district has astronomical legal fees from all these court battles and public relations firms, which the district has justified paying with school construction bond money.

It’s certainly an impressive exercise in community hysterics, but all it’s gotten them so far is some failed lawsuits and not much else.

As with most things bureaucratic, Metro’s reasoning is a bit more mundane. According to Zev Yaroslavksy, member of the Metro Board of Supervisors until 2014, noted Metro-booster and current UCLA professor, the decision to run the subway under the high school was made to avoid an earthquake fault along Santa Monica Boulevard. Beverly Hills has denied the existence of this fault.

The route itself came from a decision to construct a Purple Line station in the middle of Century City, where it would provide its riders better accessibility and help it compete for federal grants, all at the lowest cost per passenger-mile. Yaroslavksy says there’s no reason to deviate from the proposed plan and have a more costly and less useful subway over technicalities in a report.

It’s easy to dismiss all that as the sweet talk of a biased official, but Wu’s ruling supports Yaroslavksy’s claims. Subway opponents say that his statements regarding the environmental impact report mean that the FTA relied on “faulty science.” Page 11 of the ruling clarifies: “As to those errors, the Court did not find that the FTA had actually made substantive decisions (e.g., the selection of the location for the Century City subway station) that were demonstrably wrong. … Additionally there is no indication that the FTA would be unable to offer better and/or more complete reasoning for its challenged decisions herein.”

In other words, the court didn’t find evidence that Metro and the FTA made flawed decisions, nor did it find the report’s errors serious enough to vacate the FTA’s approval and force a complete redo of the environmental study.

Make no mistake, safety concerns should be of the utmost importance, and the ideal situation would be that Metro and Beverly Hills work out an agreement on how to best redo the impact statement. However, there’s little to suggest future reports or lawsuits will produce new evidence against the route, and this puts BHUSD in a weak position for future litigation. So while we can expect Beverly Hills’ interests to appeal the decision and continue throwing money at this issue, we may be witnessing their last gasps of serious opposition.

Which is just as well. UCLA and Westwood need a viable rail option to connect them with the rest of the city, and this Purple Line extension will prove a valuable addition for student commuters and anyone else looking for an easier way to get around.

(Chris Campbell’s column appears regularly at the Daily Bruin … where this perspective originated.)

-cw

ALPERN AT LARGE--I am what you would call a "hard-ass"--I work three jobs, do all sorts of unpaid civic endeavors, and live in a household where the wife and two kids work hard and stay very busy.  "Downtime" is probably something we should do more, so I am the LAST person who'd downplay the need to keep up with global competition--but the LAUSD school schedule is clearly harmful for the well-being of our students and their families.

SOMEONE's agenda is dominating the early-summer, get-back-to-school-in-August schedule, but it sure as hell ain't the students and their parents.  The summers are too quick, and the ability of children and their parents to be allowed a life is being smashed.

It's not hard to "get it" with respect to global competition, and the need to stay competitive with European and Asian students competing for fewer and fewer well-paying jobs.  

It's also not hard to "get it" when one learns that the first month of a teacher's school year is spent bringing kids back to speed after a long, three-month summer vacation...kids need to relax, to sleep in, and maybe even watch a bit of television, but their minds can't be allowed to vegetate.

My last CityWatch article addressed the lack of affordability in Los Angeles, and the inability of our City to do what's right to allow for true affordability for the average Angeleno.

But as more and more Angelenos have to work multiple jobs, and have longer shifts just to make ends meet, the need to spend time with family becomes greater than ever.  Kids need to go camping, visit our national parks, and enjoy the beach, the mountains, or even just a backyard barbecue.  Call it quality of life.

And that's not to say we should require summertime verification of reading lists and other "to-do" lists, or summertime workbooks.  I really do NOT give a rip about parents too lazy to make sure their children's brains don't vegetate in front of an iPad all summer long--summer can be fun, but life and learning doesn't end when the LAUSD goes on break.

And speaking of breaks, why is there such a long winter break (3 weeks, and perhaps 4 weeks if one counts the full week off for Thanksgiving) but only a single week for the spring?  There's probably a reason or three, but it's still ridiculously lopsided--and prevents a balanced work/play ratio for parents, students, and even the teachers.

I am a dermatologist by trade, and have many teachers in my Orange and Riverside County clinics--so in my various discussions on this topic I've learned that they virtually all have better and more student/family-focused schedules than the LAUSD.   

I am quite aware of, and overall do support, the advanced requirements and preparation for AP classes in high school--my son worked his tail off this summer for AP World History with six chapters of textbook reading, two books, and a host of maps to memorize--he stepped up, and both he and his class are hitting the ground running.   

I am proud of my son, and support this "hitting the ground running" with these sorts of endeavors.  I am also proud of my elementary school-aged daughter, who did some father/daughter workbook studying to stay focused and learn a few things. 

But we also learned things when we went on vacation to the East Coast, and had fun at Dollywood, and saw the awe-inspring changing of the guard at Arlington National Cemetery.  

We got rained on and drenched before seeing Luray Caverns in western Virginia. We got inspired at a Friendly's restaurant in Fredericksburg when we bumped into a local tour guide, who gave my son a Union Army bullet discarded in that hellish Civil War battle where the Union Army got slaughtered. 

So let's not shred the lives and happiness of hard-working students and their families.  We can be both competitive and humane...and we can also make damn sure the LAUSD School Board figures out who the hell their FIRST priority is:  the students and their parents! 

We can and should: 

1) Start the 2017-18 School Year after Labor Day, or the week before Labor Day.  Starting school in mid-August is both horrible for parents and their families, and requires horrible air conditioning bills that markedly increase the operational costs for the LAUSD.  Either way, it's horrible. 

2) Balance the winter and spring breaks.  Right now we've got about three weeks off in December and January … and one full week off (instead of just Thursday and Friday) for Thanksgiving. 

Meanwhile, we've got but one week off in the spring.  Two weeks in the winter, and two weeks in the spring makes sense (and don't worry--we can make sure the AP students are still working hard). 

Destroying summer for everyone doesn't make sense.  And the winter/spring imbalance strikes me as rather cruel and focused on either the benefits for administrators or for the teachers...but certainly not the parents and students.  There are clearly agendas that are being promoted, but they're not promoting the needs of the students and their families.

(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at  [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)

-cw

GELFAND’S WORLD--A couple of weeks ago, I argued that the city is creating strife and turmoil which doesn't have to exist. In brief, the system the city has created for the election of neighborhood council boards stifles what should be a real reform movement. It ensures that each neighborhood council is in jeopardy of being overrun by people who have no right to be involved. In effect, it creates internal conflict. 

My argument in a nut shell is that voters in neighborhood council elections should be limited to the people who live in the neighborhood council's own district. The timeliness of this argument stems from the fact that Jay Handal, the director for this year's elections, suggested that I take it up here in CityWatch. Perhaps Jay brought the topic up because he knows I have been pushing it for the past decade. 

The debate has gotten some traction. One reason is that Tony Butka responded to my column with a column beginning with the title Gelfand's idea is crazy. Perhaps that headline was in reply to my own column's headline which started, Here's a crazy idea. 

I now choose to reply to Tony, but first I'd like to explain that neither Tony nor I are sniping at each other. The CityWatch editor wrote those titles. That's the way newspapers and CityWatch function. (It's true that the author can suggest a title to the editor, but the editor can change it or rewrite it entirely. It's at the editor's discretion.) So I'm sorry to disappoint you, but this isn't a shaming contest in which a couple of CityWatch contributors cross swords. It's a serious discussion about the way the City Council has done its best -- intentionally or unintentionally -- to undermine what could otherwise be a major contribution to city life. 

Let me summarize the argument in one short paragraph. I think that Tony Butka and I both believe that neighborhood councils should have independence and autonomy. They should be able to speak truth to power. The argument comes down to strategy -- how do we best achieve autonomy? My argument is that we should be able to prevent special interests from being able to mess with our elections. Otherwise, we have a formula for turning the once-autonomous neighborhood council into something that is little more than a special interest group. 

To begin with, I'd like to suggest that those of you who didn't read Tony's column the first time around take a look at it. I especially like the description of the early period of neighborhood council formation and development. Tony talks about how Greg Nelson, the city's manager at the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), encouraged us to figure out our own paths and create whatever organization would work best for us. Greg's famous comment was one size doesn't fit all. Tony's column then goes on to explain how subsequent rule under a new mayor started to undo a lot of the earlier progress. 

I worked on a different neighborhood council in a different part of town, but my memory of the times is pretty similar to Tony's. Mayor Villaraigosa did a lot of damage through his newly appointed Acting General Manager at DONE. One year, she cancelled just about half of all the neighborhood council elections in Los Angeles. 

In order to get to the crux of our differences, I'd like to quote a couple of paragraphs from Tony's article. The first paragraph refers to my point that we ought to define voting membership in neighborhood councils. My argument is that right now, it isn't really defined. Pretty much anyone from anywhere can vote in your local neighborhood council under the current rules. The easiest way to fix this is to limit voting to people who reside in your neighborhood council's district. Tony argues: 

This is not a new idea, but I believe that the real problem isn’t redefining who can vote in NC elections. The real problem is going back to what Neighborhood Councils were supposed to be about before City Hall slowly and deliberately set out to neuter them. 

I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I would point out that what neighborhood councils were supposed to be about has never come to fruition. It's hard to go back to what never was. In addition, it is possible to argue (as Tony does) that redefining the definition of Stakeholder doesn't solve every problem. I'll certainly agree to that, but if you read my previous column, you will see that I suggest that it will solve most of the electoral problems we've been facing over the past 14 years. There have been a lot of problems, arguments, and grievance letters that didn't have to be. 

I'll skip a lot of the intervening discussion, and cut to what I think are the defining paragraphs: 

Let each and every Council go its own way. This includes governance, bylaws and meetings -- anything that furthers their ability to act as a check and balance on our serious train wreck of LA City Council governance. 

I say let’s go back to when the Neighborhood Councils, not the City Council, represented the Wild Wild West and did what they could to meet their Charter mandated goal -- “To promote more citizen participation in government and make government more responsive to local needs...” 

As for elections, let self-affirmation roll. Who cares? If a special interest group can organize enough votes to control a Neighborhood Council, so be it. Good for them. It makes the rest of us get off the dime and go organize. Heck, any way you slice it, doing elections by vote beats the heck out of elections by developers’ dollars. City Hall-style. 

OK Tony, I don't entirely disagree. I'm fine with going back to our founding days when the neighborhood councils were the wild wild West. But first let's consider what that really means. 

So allow me to tell you a story about a council that was the wild wild West 

My council was one of the first to be certified, back in December of 2001. We took seriously our responsibility of representing the interests of our district, and that brought us into a head-on clash with one of the weightier operators in California. We took on the Port of Los Angeles. 

We were opposed to unrestrained expansion of the port into residential areas and unrestrained growth in port activity. There were several reasons, but the main one was air pollution. The effect of all the diesel trucks and all the diesel powered ships was equivalent to having tens of thousands of diesel trucks running full time, right next door. Our council held public discussions and passed resolutions that represented the feelings of a substantial fraction of the people living in our district. 

In other words, our council was that wild wild west that Tony Butka talks about. We organized ourselves in our own way and to our own liking, and then we took on a giant opponent. 

And at a subsequent election, our council got taken over by a group who relied on the votes of outsiders to win a board majority. They didn't like the fact that we had passed resolutions that were intended to oppose port-related air pollution through the mechanism of port expansion. 

It was a strange election. It was frustrating to see people from outside the area and even outside L.A. County sign in to vote. But they did. And the responsible residents lost control of our neighborhood council's activities. 

Eventually the rightful representatives took back the council board, but it took another year, another election, and a lot of time and effort that could have been put to better use. 

But this goes to another point that Tony makes. He says, not unreasonably, Let each and every council go its own way. That sounds good in practice, but if the members of the council are not defined, how can this be meaningful? Residents of the Hollywood area neighborhood councils have strong feelings about commercial development. but if developers can bring in hundreds of outside voters to control those councils, then how can the concept of the neighborhood council have any meaning? 

Still, I don't think Tony Butka and I are all that separated in our thought. We both feel frustration over the way the City Council and city administrators have stifled what could and should be a robust political movement dedicated to governmental reform. May I suggest to Tony and to City Watch readers that the best way to create that robust spirit of rebellion is to have councils which are immune from being overrun by special interest groups. 

They aren't at this point. 

I think that everyone would agree that limiting neighborhood council stakeholder status to district residents has the virtue that we know who we are, and we don't have to spend half our time trying to make deals with those who represent ulterior interests. 

I will certainly concede that enlarging the stakeholder definition might bring in more people and create a perception of broader participation. But I would like the proponents of broader participation to admit that with each broadening, the political strength of the core constituency is weakened. It was true in 2004 -- my neighborhood council could not simultaneously represent the interests of Coastal San Pedro residents and the interests of the Port of Los Angeles. It had to be one or the other. 

There is one other point to bring up. The Port had existed for a long time before neighborhood councils came into being. The same holds true for the studios, the aerospace industry, the land developers, and so on. They already had political influence. One reason for the introduction of our neighborhood council system was to provide a counterweight to all that commercial power. It doesn't make sense to create a countervailing power -- the peoples' lobby -- and then to dilute it by giving the Port, the studios, and the land developers free rein to undermine our influence. 

Finally, I would like to respond to a member of our local neighborhood council governing board, who challenged my comments on the basis of the recent governing board election where I ran and lost. It's true that my slate played by the current rules, which allow you to recruit people effectively without regard to where they live. The answer is simple and obvious: We have to play by the rules as they exist, not as we'd like to see them. I would add that I might have lost by even more had we run under electoral rules limiting voting to residents (or just maybe, I might have done better). The point is not my own won-lost record, but that my neighborhood council has less believability to the public and to the city's elected officials in terms of who it actually represents.

●●

Short Takes--I flipped on the television set on Sunday and ran across the basketball finals at the Olympics. I immediately turned on my computer to find out how it had finished. Silly me. It turned out that this wasn't another of NBC's replays of USA gold medal events, but an actual live broadcast of a game that had not yet been completed. There has been a lot of discussion about NBC doing the Olympics the way ABC did Monday Night Football back in the old days. You know, the broadcast has to find a story line and then flog that story endlessly. Watching the biographical sketches was almost like watching tv commercials after a while. This is no way to appeal to an audience that has an ever-shorter attention span and the electronic gizmos to satisfy it.

●●

A few thoughtful pundits are explaining why Donald Trump's tax returns are of interest to the voters. The big question is whether Trump is beholden to foreign interests. The possibility of Russian money having a hold on Trump is hugely important if true, but other owed money is also important. Note that we're looking at close to two-thirds of a billion dollars in owed debt.

●●

What happened to parking ticket reform? We had a movement going for a while. We need to come back to that discussion. It will make more sense as part of a discussion of a broader initiative to reform local government. I intend to get to that discussion.

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

-cw

POLITICAL TONGUE IN CHEEK--Congratulations to LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker for winning this year’s “Strange Political Bedfellows Prize,” in recognition by us of their “shared policy of putting the interests of billionaire hedge fund manager Wesley Edens above the interests of working class families and the rest of the public.”  

It’s an impressive win, given that Solis and Walker have been ideological arch enemies since at least 2012, when Solis, as U.S. Labor Secretary, supported the effort to recall Governor Walker for stripping away the collective bargaining rights of state employees. (Walker survived the recall attempt.) 

Scott Walker’s boosting of Wesley Edens at the expense of taxpayers is old news; without Walker, Edens could have never extracted $250 million from Wisconsin taxpayers to subsidize a new arena for the Edens-owned Milwaukee Bucks. (Mr. Edens’ business partner Jon Hammes was Mr. Walker’s national finance co-chairman during the Governor’s failed bid for the Presidency.) 

As for Hilda Solis, she has provided Mr. Edens the greatest gift of all. More than a month ago, on July 15, Mr. Edens was exposed on the front page of the New York Times  for having pulled a bait-and-switch of unprecedented scale on the LA County Board of Supervisors (as well on the elected officials of New York City, Ventura County, and San Dimas, California.)  

Like a wealthy kid getting into college by having someone take the SATs for him, Edens secured LA County golf course concessions worth tens of millions of dollars by having a qualified company (Fortress Investment Group LLC) go through the County vetting process for an unqualified company (Newcastle Investment Corp), with the result being that Newcastle, unbeknownst to the County, ended up with the contracts. A company called the American Golf Corporation carries out the work for Newcastle. 

In response to all this fraud, Supervisor Solis, the Board’s Chair and “ranking advocate” for working class families, has done nothing to stick up for Angelenos – and has, in fact, done nothing but bend over backwards to look away from the crime. Why? 

Far from being a victimless crime, the fraud has turned LA County into a place where only by lying can parents tell their children that working hard and playing by the rules can lead to success. It has driven working class and family-owned golf operators (as well as golf-pros who teach lessons to make ends meet) out of business. It is a fraud that has cost this “park-poor” County to lose revenues (through predatory pricing which has decimated revenue the County used to receive from non-Edens-controlled County golf courses.) It has turned recreational spaces owned by the public into monetized “gym-like” membership clubs with punitive cancellation policies.  

It is a fraud whose scale dwarfs the offenses for which the 13 companies on the County’s list of debarred contractors were banned. And the malfeasance continues -- including punitive actions by OSHA and by the Air Pollution Board (to whom American Golf pleaded financial hardship.) 

And yet Mr. Edens has still not apologized to the County, choosing instead to deny facts that are self-evident. Not a single document presented to any of the municipalities involved with the fraud included the name of the company actually acquiring the contracts, and yet Mr. Edens, rather than conceding the point, gave the New York Times a print-out of a single email containing the company’s name, with the claim that the email was sent to an LA County employee. The County refutes that claim, saying they never received the message. 

Is this a guy we can trust? Is this a guy we want with his hand in County cash registers? 

Where is Hilda Solis in all this? As the Board of Supervisors Chair (and former Secretary of Labor), she owes it to working class families and the rest of the public to defend Los Angeles. It’s not an enviable challenge, but it’s a fight that she is uniquely qualified for. 

In the next two weeks, as Labor Day approaches, the names of great labor and civil rights leaders will inevitably be invoked. And so here’s a question for Supervisor Solis: Would any one of those leaders respond to this situation by doing nothing?    

(Eric Preven is a CityWatch contributor and a Studio City based writer-producer and public advocate for better transparency in local government. He was a candidate in the 2015 election for Los Angeles City Council, 2nd District. Joshua Preven is a CityWatch contributor and a teacher who lives in Los Angeles.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams. 

CORRUPTION WATCH-The word “crime” is one of those terms which we use all the time without taking the time to think about it too deeply. According to Merriam-Webster, crime means: (1) a gross violation of law, (2) a grave offense especially against morality, (3) something reprehensible, foolish, or disgraceful. 

The Los Angeles City Council’s behavior satisfies all definitions of a crime. It operates in violation of Penal Code 86 which forbids vote trading among members of a city council. Its actions are morality offensive especially when it comes to the theft of billions of tax dollars and the destruction of poor people’s homes. Finally, its behavior is reprehensible, foolish and disgraceful. 

Yet, these words fail to convey the great harm which the ‘criminal’ Los Angeles City Council has brought upon us. 

Let’s take a deeper look at how a city council which is a criminal enterprise destroys a great city – one injustice at a time. 

Case in point is one tiny section of Valley Village, a place so small and so out of the way, that the vast majority of Angelenos do not even know that it exists. Zooming in closer, we see a most remarkable intersection at Hermitage and Weddington – or, at least, what is left of it. On the southeast corner once sat a modest home (demolition photo above) where Marilyn Monroe lived during the end of WW II. 

Rather than allowing the modest structure be moved, Mayor Eric Garcetti and Councilman Paul Krekorian wanted the home destroyed. So a couple days before a Cultural Heritage Commission hearing, Marilyn’s home was demolished (just as Garcetti demolished the facade of the Spaghetti Factory in Hollywood in defiance of a court order.)

From a neighborhood standpoint, the properties on the westside of Hermitage across from Marilyn’s home were significant in their own right. Directly opposite from Marilyn’s home was a beautiful Spanish-style apartment and to the north of Weddington was one of Valley Village’s most unique properties. 

Because Valley Village was a mixture of these unique low density places in an area where mega-apartments were encroaching, the Valley Village Specific Plan was enacted in order to preserve the character.  

The fascinating aspect of these Valley Village properties at 5621 to 5303 Hermitage is that they had an extra measure of protection from being destroyed. Weddington Avenue runs ½ block westward between the beautiful Spanish style apartment home at 5621 Hermitage and unique grouping of cottages at 5303 Hermitage. 

With the state owned street separating the two parcels, neither parcel was large enough to attract attention of developers who increasingly want to construct larger projects. In a city run by criminals, however, laws are impotent. Councilmember Krekorian and Mayor Garcetti see nothing wrong with giving the street to the developer so that Urban Box will have an extra-large area on which to construct its project – after destroying all the rent-controlled units and throwing the elderly and disabled on the streets. 

Criminals, however, do not care who owns property. It can be you, it can be me, or it can even be the State of California. When a criminal syndicate operates with the force of law, they take whatever they need. And, everyone else better shut up or else. 

This Is the Evil of Criminality 

In Los Angeles, greed rules and decency is in exile. If a developer wants to destroy your home, no law will stop him. Los Angeles City Council is a criminal enterprise where every unlawful demolition, where every unlawful gift of public property, where every corrupt commission decision always receives unanimous approval. 

We need to be very clear about this: in Los Angeles, the law counts for nothing, for zero, por nada. The criminal vote trading pact requires that each councilmember give unanimous approval without any regard to lies, deception, physical intimidation, vandalism or theft of public funds. There is no crime significant enough for a councilmember to refuse to go along. The criminal regime at City Hall is strict: not even allowing a single protest vote against the destruction of Marilyn Monroe’s home. 

Yet, the District Attorney finds nothing nefarious is afoot when all projects unanimously receive “Yes” votes. The odds of flipping a coin 100 times and getting 100 heads is 1/1.2676506 × 1030. Okay, so you don’t even know how to name that number because it is so large. We are talking about 15 coins being simultaneously flipped and getting all heads. Oh yeah, we’re supposed to believe that number, whatever it may be, is not the product of a vote trading agreement.

The Rise of the Garcetti Goons 

After some goons tried to intimidate an attorney who had come to the property at 5303 Hermitage prior to the August 11, 2016 South Valley Area Planning Commission meeting, the attorney complained to the Commission. He wrote to Councilmember Krekorian and to Mayor Garcetti that the intimidation had to stop. Neither of them bothered to reply. 

Silence in the face of an accusation is an adopted admission. There is a rule of law that says when someone is accused of bad behavior and they say nothing, their silence is a sign that the charge is true. 

Dear Councilmember Krekorian and Mayor Garcetti: 

The intimation and threats in connection with your desire to demolish the rent controlled units at 5303 Hermitage in Valley Village must cease and desist immediately. Brandishing firearms, tampering with the gas lines and having thugs try to intimidate the tenant’s attorney has brought the City’s “war” on poor people’s homes to a new low. As I told the South Valley Area Planning Commission yesterday, this criminal behavior has to stop. Furthermore, no police officer should ever tell a person who has been assaulted with a fire arm that he will arrest her if she calls 911 for protection. We expect this criminal behavior to cease and desist forthwith.-- Richard MacNaughton, Attorney at Law, State Bar 77258.  

When the city council becomes a criminal enterprise, we all live in a lawless society. And when white collar criminality at City Council becomes physical intimidation, it threatens of intolerable violence at the home owner level. 

Let’s remember that this Valley Village instance is not the first situation involving Garcetti, development and criminals. Garcetti’s fundraiser, Juri Ripinsky, spent two years incarcerated in Federal prison at Leavenworth for real estate and bank fraud. Yet, Garcetti got unanimous approval from the City Council for Ripinsky to have the lucrative Paseo Project at the old Sears site in Hollywood. Two years at Leavenworth and he gets a multi-million dollar real estate project! 

Just like the poor people who are desperately trying to save Valley Village, all Angelenos face a criminal enterprise. When criminals with absolute immunity want something, they just take it. And, people wonder why employers and the middle class are leaving Los Angeles.

(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.

DEEGAN ON LA-What does it take to access the corridors of power in City Hall, establish a by-name relationship with key departments, be recognized on sight by your councilmember and staff, and possibly even share an elevator ride with the Mayor and buttonhole him about your community’s issues? 

It takes two things: knowledge and position. So get yourself elected to your Neighborhood Council and then get yourself trained because one feeds into the other in our citywide NC system of 96 Neighborhood Councils. With over 1,800 board members representing neighborhoods across the city, the NCs are city-chartered grass roots organizations that have been empowered for a decade. They help connect residents to the world of city planning as well as other processes. 

Los Angeles City Charter Section 900 defines the purpose of Neighborhood Councils as: “To promote more citizen participation in government and make government more responsive to local needs.” 

Cindy Cleghorn, Chair of the Neighborhood Council Congress 2016, points out that “about half of Los Angeles’ Neighborhood Council board members were elected to a Neighborhood Council for the first time in the most recent cycle of neighborhood council elections that were completed earlier in the summer, and that brings a new class of board members into the system that will need to learn how to navigate the civic ecosystem.” 

Describing the Congress, Cleghorn says, “The Congress is a once a year opportunity for Neighborhood Councils across the City to come together at City Hall for a day of education and communication for the entire NC System. It is an opportunity to speak one on one with our city's elected officials, department officials and each other. Also, to take advantage of a wealth of specialty workshops created by and for Neighborhood Council leaders. This year’s Congress seeks to advance the Neighborhood Councils’ advisory power needed for the enhancement and/or preservation of our communities.” 

Several hundred “newbies” and NC veterans are expected at City Hall on Saturday, September 24, for the 2016 Congress of Neighborhoods. Presented by the Neighborhood Councils of Los Angeles and the city’s Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), this year’s theme -- “Neighborhoods First: Your Voice, Our City” -- examines how local focus can create citywide impact. 

The Congress is an all-day free education featuring a range of sessions that will teach participants about their roles and responsibilities as board members, and introduce them to some of the intricacies of working the system, now that they are freshly-minted political and civic insiders. 

Registration at www.NCCongressLA.com went live on August 22. Over 700 Neighborhood Council leaders from across the City are expected to attend the annual event. 

What will they learn? The menu of choices is tantalizing, with over 40 workshops and discussion panels held during four 75-minute sessions. Participants will be able to choose from topics in the areas of:

• Leadership skills
• Planning and land use class series
• Managing your City funds
• Writing & sharing Community Impact Statements
• Homelessness
• Purposeful aging
• Code enforcement
• Outreach, social media and PR 

Ethics training (which is required of all Neighborhood Council members) will also be available. Classroom space fills up fast, so early registration is encouraged. 

Each year, leading City officials like the Mayor, City Councilmembers, the City Controller, and the City Attorney have spoken at the opening and closing sessions of the Congress. Headline speakers are still being confirmed, but so far, City Council President Herb J. Wesson, Jr, and City Councilmembers Paul Krekorian (CD 2), Bob Blumenfield (CD 3), David Ryu (CD4), Paul Koretz (CD 5), and Marqueece Harris-Dawson (CD 8) are scheduled to appear. 

It’s a fact, known through observing the success of many previous Congress events, that participants come away smarter and more informed about their board positions and the role of NCs. Also indisputable, is that their new knowledge directly impacts how much better they are able to work for the communities they serve. For many, attending a Congress is just the beginning of a political curriculum that helps prepare them for service to community and city – and could possibly be a stepping stone in their own political careers. Who would want to miss that? 

The Congress runs from 7:45 am - 4:30 pm, on Saturday September 24, at City Hall. It includes four workshops, breakfast, lunch, and opening and closing sessions. Attendees may come and go as their schedules permit. 

Here's an outline of the day: 

7:45 am – Breakfast 

8:30 am – Welcome 

9:25 am - Session 1 workshops 

10:50 am - Session 2 workshops 

noon – Lunch 

1:20 pm - Session 3 workshops 

2:45 pm - Session 4 workshops 

4:05 pm - Closing session 

Everything is free if you RSVP, including admission to over 40 workshops, exhibit tables, catered meals and parking! Sign up at www.NCCongressLA.com. This is about the only time you’ll ever get a free lunch at City Hall. 

Attend the Congress, and go home empowered!

(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.