PERSPECTIVE--State Senator Bob Hertzberg is a smart man; smart enough to know the power of language. According to his bio, as an undergraduate English major, he wrote a 400-page handbook titled A Commonsense Approach to English.

To paraphrase a quote attributed to the late US Senator Everett Dirksen: A deft turn of a definition here, and a subtle re-characterization there, the next thing you know, we are dealing with some serious money!

And that has been Hertzberg’s game plan since he returned to the legislature in December 2014.

He introduced SB 8, a bill cloaked by a seemingly harmless name – the Upward Mobility Act. The senator described it as a tool to “modernize” the state’s tax structure. He admitted it would be designed to yield another $10B in tax revenue.   

The bill died, but that did not stop Bob from reintroducing a replacement: SB 1445.  

As SB 8 proposed, this new bill would extend the application of sales tax to services, a direct hit to all segments of society – the middle class, most notably. As he did with SB 8, he is characterizing it as “modernization.”

The only thing being modernized is the state’s access to our wallets.

But the “serial hugger” is not stopping there.  He again whipped out his English to Taxation dictionary to conjure up SB 1298.

His objective is to do an end run around Prop 218’s requirement for voter approval of tax increases by redefining “sewer service” to include storm water projects. Perhaps “serial wordsmith” would serve as a better moniker for him. Please read the excellent editorial concerning 1298 in the Daily News. 

The bill has a worthwhile objective.  It is designed to encourage recovery of storm water. No one is arguing with the benefits it offers to our drought-stricken state.

But it is dangerous to override the benefits of government transparency and the legislative process.

Californians are being asked to pony up more cash to fund a growing list of expensive projects.  In Los Angeles alone, we are being asked to pass a permanent increase in the sales tax for the MTA. The city and county are considering spending over a billion dollars to provide housing to the homeless.  There is also the trainwreck of HSR absorbing funds that could be used to enhance the state’s water capacity.

Our state and local governments have no grasp of prioritization.  Capital budgeting is completely absent in the minds of Hertzberg, his colleagues in Sacramento and counterparts at the local level.

Taxpayers have a right to weigh in on what needs attention and the means of paying.  To do so requires presenting the big picture of competing needs. Let the people decide what is most important and authorize appropriate funding levels.

We do not have unlimited funds; we can only afford what can be sustained without breaking the bank.

Sneaking around the voters and playing word games, as Hertzberg has been doing, is disrespectful to all of us.

(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and serves as President of the Valley Village Homeowners Association. He blogs at Village to Village and contributes to CityWatch. The views presented are those of Mr. Hatfield and his alone and do not represent the opinions of Valley Village Homeowners Association or CityWatch. He can be reached at: [email protected].)

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MAKE A REPORT--There is no room for illegal and unethical behavior in politics – especially local politics. Yet, it looks like there is a continuing trend of campaign property being stolen over in LA County in the race for 4^th District Supervisor. This is a much watched contest that could change the direction of the LA County Board of Supervisors for years to come.  The race is between Steve Napolitano and Janice Hahn. 

We’re asking for your help identifying the person seen here in this video.

If you recognize this person or have information regarding this theft, send an email to [email protected].  

Napolitano staff and volunteers noticed that a large number of Napolitano for Supervisor campaign yard signs went missing after their opponent’s signs went up during the primary.  

This disturbing trend of thefts and vandalism appears to be continuing now into the general election. 

This past week, the staff and volunteers saw another big spike in the number of missing campaign signs, especially in the San Pedro area.  

But we now have a video that shows someone in the act of stealing a Napolitano campaign sign. 

I am hoping CityWatch readers will take a close look and let me know who this is.   DO YOU RECOGNIZE THIS PERSON? Send an email to [email protected].  

Please help identify whoever is in this video.  This is a very important election and taking down campaign signs shouldn’t be a part of it.

(This video and this story were provided by a San Pedro resident who has asked to remain anonymous.)

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NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL WATCH-Saturday morning July 30, Budget Day was indeed “on” at City Hall. Breakfast started at 7:30 a.m. as LA Neighborhood Council (NC) members co-mingled in the Art Deco style chambers. An hour later at the City Council chambers, a plenary session of speakers, namely City Officials and NC Budget Advocates shined the light on past and present city budget matters. In the second and final session NC Budget Representatives by regions elected new Budget Advocates for fiscal year 2016-17. 

Empower-LA Administrator for Budget Day Mike Fong said that about 200 people registered electronically. At the event, Jay Handal counted about 200 attendees. “I did a head count while standing there,” he said. 

Liz Amsden, BA Co-Chair, opened the ceremony with, “…we provide role models in our communities and for our leaders, and see positive outcomes. That’s why we’re here today to learn a little more to be able to give our neighbors a hand, not to make money but to develop and nurture human capital.” 

Then, BA Co-Chair Terrence Gomes reminded the NC members that the purpose of NCs is to be a conduit between our stakeholders and City Hall. Gomes said, “… for some of you in the valley, it’s a long way for your stakeholders to yell over here for us to hear, that’s why the neighborhood council system was started.” 

Four years ago, the Budget Advocates started interviewing departments and saw ways of saving money for the city. Gomes elaborated, “We saw what needed to be done and saw a vision for the city. We wrote the White Papers, to give guidance to the City.” 

General Manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), Grayce Liu, announced that this budget year her Department started with 26 employees to work with the 96 NCs. City has added 10 staffers with an additional four coming in from the Office of the City Clerk, she reported. On the field side, six new staffers will soon be hired and trained to attend NC meetings. Liu asked for a show of hands of first timers in the audience and 50% raised their hands. She welcomed them as she closed. 

In succession, City Council President Herb Wesson introduced himself as the chair of the committee that oversees the NC system. He said, “We have accomplished a lot with you as my partners and equal participants. We have increased the budget by $5,000 for each NC, so you can deliver the services that your NC areas need.” 

As a result of the partnership, Councilman Wesson assisted in putting in place a new policy: NC members can speak during public comment time at City Council and Committee Meetings for up to five minutes at the discretion of the presiding officer.

In addition, Wesson said that, as he visited NCs throughout the City, he met many members with concerns related to accounting issues, specifically, “not getting reimbursements in time or a lot of rules shifting and things of this nature.” In January, as a tentative solution, the accounting functions of DONE will be moved to the Office of the City Clerk. Wesson added, “It has expertise in making payments. I believe it will be better and if it doesn’t work we’ll change it again. Let’s don’t be afraid to fail. And if we do, we’ll fix it.” 

Next, City Controller Ron Galperin briefly discussed the LA City Controller homepage that links to four distinct panels: ControlPanel LA, Utility/Panel LA, GeoPanel LA, and EconomyPanel LA. Galperin said that these tools are to be used to make government spending decisions that are data driven and wise. 

“For example, the Economy Panel shows in what districts people are using the most public transportation; displays the income levels across the City per District; and includes which districts have the highest and lowest number of renters verses homeowners. Also a search is available for neighborhood council expenditures by NC name. “The more this tool is used, the more aspects you’ll find,” Galperin said. 

Then, Chief Administrator Officer (CAO) Miguel Santana provided a detailed overview on how the City of Los Angeles manages its budget. 

Santana said that the total budget for any department with a seal of the City is $25 million; this includes the LA Airport, LA Harbor, and LADWP. The total number of City employees is 48,000. 

Santana oversees the City’s $8.7 billion budget, including: 

• $5.5 Billion are discretionary, general funds with no restriction on how they can be spent
• $3.2 billion are nondiscretionary, special funds with specific purposes. 

Some of the City Reserve Accounts coming out of the General Fund include these percentages: 2.5% for an emergency reserve; 5% covers two reserves contingency and emergency; 1.6% is set aside for capital improvements to repair sidewalks, streets, facilities, etc. Included is a rainy day fund for an emergency crisis. In addition, the city has “a one-time use fund that we use for one-time things,” Santana said. This is the second year this money category has been used, as in, for capital improvements, he said. 

Most of the money from the Discretionary Fund (over 70%) goes for public safety to pay for Police and Fire Departments; 4.6% goes to libraries; 5.8% to recreation and parks; 8.5% for Street Services, Transportation, Engineering, Contract Administration, Capital Improvements, Building and Safety, and Planning; and, 3% for the City Attorney. 

“Most of our revenue comes from property taxes; this is the most stable of all of our funding sources, it is the stability of the city,” Santana said. “Most of our sales tax does not come to the city; it goes to state and county.” 

In prior years, the city “was banking overtime to police officers at time and a half” with collection at retirement. Santana said that the most responsible way to do it is to budget $90 million. “This is about the amount necessary to keep the public safety capacity at the existing level,” he said. 

“It’s in the City Charter that at the end of the year the budget is balanced,” Santana said. “This year it is balanced.” 

Budget Advocate Jay Handal has been working with homeless issues for 28 years. He opposes the $1 billion bond that will be on the ballot this November. It would provide funds to be spent over the next 10 years for the homeless. 

Handal said that the city finds money to build brand new animal shelters for stray animals, yet “we walk over the homeless on the streets who have to defecate on the streets because they have no place to live and no place to shower.” 

Presently there are 27, 000 homeless living on the streets of Los Angeles. “And that number will grow, not stay the same in the next 10 years,” Handal said. 

Living on the streets exacerbates illness and leads to the use of a variety of public systems that taxpayers fund. This is very inefficient and costly. It's the responsibility of the government and not the taxpayers to provide money to create permanent supportive housing for the homeless. 

Jay Handal (left) opposes the $1 billion bond because there are too many unanswered questions, such as: 

Where is the real plan written? 

How many supportive units will fit in the seven proposed properties? 

Over what period of time will these 10,000 units be built? 

How many units per year? When will construction begin? 

Who picks the developers? How would developers get their financing? 

Who picks the nonprofits to run this type of project? 

How much money will be used to persuade neighborhoods to accept these projects? 

How much money will be spent when people oppose the projects? 

Who will pick the community expediters to go out to negotiate for the construction of these buildings? 

How much money will go for litigation costs for CEQA and EIRS when environmental issues arise?

Does the Planning Department have the personnel for these activities? 

The next speaker was Councilman Paul Krekorian from CD 2 who is the Chair of the City Council Budget and Finance Committee. 

Krekorian recounted how a former Mayor of Los Angeles once wrote an editorial for the Wall Street Journal, predicting it was inevitable that Los Angeles would be bankrupt within three years. Krekorian said, “In 2010 the challenge that we were facing was monumental, we couldn’t figure out where the bottom was.” 

He specified that the City had projected a $1 billion deficit, with a general funds budget of 4.75 billion. “Since then, in the last two years, we’ve rebuilt our reserve funds by far more than we’ve ever had in history.” 

Krekorian said allowing Budget Advocates to have a seat at the table for budget discussions with general managers and the mayor’s budget office has created a collaborative effort contributing to the process of recovery. 

Krekorian noted that over the last three years, the City has appropriated $30 million a year for infrastructure costs, including the repair of city sidewalks to offer better mobility for our four million residents. He added, “We’ve cut unemployment in half. We hired 15,000 people in summer youth jobs this year so they can build a better future for themselves.” 

Councilman Krekorian thanked the NC members for being engaged and staying involved. He said, “Government is an ongoing process that never stops.”

(Connie Acosta writes about Los Angeles neighborhood councils for CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST WORDS--Hopefully, in the next week or two the Los Angeles City Council will take action to correct a technical defect in its current policy for permitting second dwelling units. This action is both critical and necessary for the city to comply with state housing laws, and to give relief to hundreds of homeowners whose permits have become vulnerable due to a court's ruling against the city. 

The City Council's action on this issue is the right thing to do for a city dealing with one of the worst housing situations in the nation, a situation that makes it nearly impossible for kids to live near their parents, or elderly parents near their children.

While this action will not solve the housing crisis by any means, it is an important step forward toward giving people options to use their current homes to accommodate growing families in a difficult housing market.

For some background, the story of how the Los Angeles's second unit policy became newsworthy in 2016 is not significantly different from many other hot-button urban planning and housing related issues: a NIMBY lawsuit originating in a wealthy neighborhood.

Since 2010, after working for a better part of a decade to catch up to state mandated standards, the city has been permitting second units without controversy. The permitting scheme applied, as guided by state standards, were extremely conservative in that they only allowed for second units that comply with all "height, setback, lot coverage, architectural review, site plan review, fees, charges and other zoning requirements generally applicable to… the zone."

They were also restricted in size to be less than 1,200 square feet. Given these restrictions, and the array of other complications involved in constructing anything sizable on a single family lot, only a modest 50 to 60 second units have been permitted annually over the last five years in a city of almost four million people.

The city's second unit policy was working, and it was helping to keep families together while providing new housing opportunities in otherwise fully built-out single-family residential zones.

Last year however, after a Cheviot Hills family attempted to build an 850-square-foot "granny flat" for their elderly grandfather, a litigious neighbor objected and made it clear that he would stop at nothing to kill this relatively small addition to their home. The neighbor, an experienced attorney himself, went ahead and hired additional lawyers and began to lay siege against the city and the family to stop the second unit.

In doing so, the neighbor was able to get a court to find that the city's latest second unit permitting policy, which has been in flux for more than three decades in response to state legislation, had a technical deficiency that made it invalid.

That court decision meant that not only was the Cheviot Hills family's second unit potentially permitted improperly, but so to were hundreds of others permitted before it and dozens since. Now, with an invalid second unit ordinance and a team of NIMBY lawyers demanding a quarter of a million dollars in attorney's fees, the city is doing the right thing to clear up the technical defect and re-adopt the second unit policy. Doing so will not only fix hundreds of permits that are currently hanging in the balance, but it will help quell the costly litigation on this issue once and for all.

To stop the city from fixing the situation, however, the same team of NIMBY lawyers has been spreading misinformation to community groups and homeowners in an attempt create controversy and debate.

In order to strike fear in homeowners groups, they continue to make baseless and unsupported claims that the city's second unit policy provides for unrestricted and "weak" regulations of second units, and that the city has an "existing ordinance" that should be preserved. These claims however, are completely detached from reality.

Firstly, as noted above, any second unit addition must comply with the basic requirements of the underlying zone. There is no unfettered right to build a second unit as opponents contend. Second, the opposition's call to preserve the existing restrictions in the municipal code is both absurd and dangerous. There is no question that the municipal code provisions on second units are not only antiquated, but also unquestionably in violation of state law as written. 

If the city seeks to preserve or "reinterpret" these antiquated standards, as certain groups have called for, not only will the city be subjected to more and more litigation by all those homeowners that have relied on city permits, but it will leave hundreds stranded with potentially unpermitted second units. It will also mean the continuation of the city's costly and never-ending struggle to comply with the state's second unit mandates. This is not a reasonable pathway forward for a city in a housing crisis, and the City should not attempt to avoid taking necessary legislative actions because of NIMBY pressure.

Accordingly, the city cannot kick this can down the road any longer, and must act now to correct its second unit policy. Not only will this action assure that the city's standards comply with state law, but it will help avoid future litigation expenses, while also protecting those people that have relied on the city's second unit permitting programs for the past decade.

(Daniel Freedman is a land use attorney and environmental advocate focused on regional planning issues and sustainable development. This article was posted most recently at Planetizen.) 

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CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Ventura County is the most glorious and verdant of California kingdoms.

Just ask its princes and princesses—those fortunate enough to be able to afford to live and vote there. Most of the time, the nearly 900,000 residents can pretend that they live in the country, even though they’re part of greater Los Angeles. Parks or open space or farmland is almost always within easy walking or biking distance. The Santa Clara River, the least developed of Southern California’s waterways, is being protected. The Kingdom of Ventura’s cities remain separate and distinct developments on the landscape—they haven’t sprawled and melted into each other, like cities do elsewhere in Southern California.

Their secret? “No other county in the United States has more effective protections against urban sprawl,” says the web site of SOAR, aka Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources, a family of growth-controlling ballot measures.

Those SOAR protections have been fixed in the laws of the county and its cities for two decades. SOAR permits development only within certain urban cores in the county and makes no allowances for population growth. And if a developer wants to change the boundaries or develop open space outside the areas where growth is permitted, that developer can’t buy off the county supervisors or a city council. SOAR requires any development in protected open space be approved by the voters.

Ventura voters like the results so much they are moving to make them all but permanent this November, when they vote on county and city measures that would extend SOAR protections through 2050.

In practice, this has made the Kingdom a mighty fortress. Those sprawling suburban housing developments that fill up the San Fernando Valley to the east and the Santa Clarita Valley to the north? They stop at the county’s edge. It’s almost as if Ventura County has built a wall against growth along its border—and made neighboring Los Angeles pay for it.

All of which makes SOAR worth celebrating. But there is a problem with those walls, and within the Kingdom. And that problem is not the wonderful things that growth restrictions have done. It’s what the princes and princesses of the Kingdom have failed to do. (Photo left:A group of SOAR volunteers in Ventura County)

Smart growth strategies like SOAR are not merely supposed to preserve open space. At their best, they are designed to promote smart growth—to drive more creative, dense, multi-family, and transit-oriented development in the urban cores where growth is still permitted. But the Kingdom has been far from welcoming to this type of development.

Yes, you can find smart, denser growth in the city of Ventura, particularly around its downtown. But infill development in Ventura County has lagged far behind what’s needed to serve the Kingdom’s growing population and its housing needs. The same citizens of the Kingdom who back SOAR also have opposed multifamily and denser developments (Thousand Oaks even passed a ballot measure limiting density), and resisted investments in public transit to connect their urban cores.

The results are as obvious as the choking traffic on the 101 Freeway and the astronomical housing prices. Ventura County is one of the 10 least affordable places to live in the United States. It’s been very difficult for middle-class people, much less lower-income people, to make their homes there, and that makes it hard for companies to locate there. Many service workers have to commute from outside the county.

“We need to understand that there is an uncertain capacity within our urban boundaries to accommodate job growth,” Bruce Stenslie, president of the Economic Development Collaborative of Ventura County, said during a public conference earlier this year on SOAR. “Which doesn’t mean that we should tear down the urban boundaries, it means we need to be a little more mature about questions concerning in-fill development and higher density.”

Of course such immaturity about growth—and high housing prices and inequality and traffic—is not limited to Ventura County. What’s frustrating is that after 20 years, the Kingdom doesn’t seem to have learned its lesson. The current proposed renewal of SOAR doesn’t include any new flexibility to account for population growth—and it’s not linked to any broader effort to do more infill development in the cores.

This represents at best a missed opportunity—and at worst an example of mass public selfishness.

Matthew Fienup, an economist with Cal Lutheran University’s Center for Economic Research and Forecasting (who likes to talk about how much he loves living across the street from orchards), points out that there are myriad ways to require more regular analysis and adjustments of the boundaries, and to put management of the boundaries in the hands of planners, instead of the hands of people with the money to put questions to voters. Fienup suggests that the county would be better off establishing tradable development rights that would protect the same amount of land while bringing some flexibility to the boundaries.

… it’s great if your community wants to protect open space from development, but then you don’t get to block denser development, housing, and transit in your already developed spaces.

But in its intransigence, Ventura is an example of the California disease—grab your piece of the Kingdom, and then keep out anyone who might come in after you. And few in Ventura seem to care that the county, like other urban coastal places in California, has seen such a decline in its number of children and young families that it might eventually resemble a well-off senior living community.

In California, local growth restrictions are only one small part of how the old block the young. State laws make housing development slow and costly. Prop 13 provisions keep their property taxes low, encouraging people to stay in their homes longer, which reduces the supply of homes on the market.

This local anti-growth bias is now a major statewide issue as California faces a crisis in housing affordability and availability—for anyone but the most affluent. To push back against anti-growth local communities, Gov. Brown is championing legislation that would exempt many urban housing developments from environmental or local government review.

Many localities have responded to this statewide push defiantly, via local ballot measures that block growth and housing, as the Voice of San Diego documented recently. The least responsible cities are going beyond growth boundaries to impose anti-density restrictions. The most reactionary of these ballot initiatives comes from Santa Monica, which was just connected to the LA rail system by LA county taxpayers. That rail connection should inspire denser, transit-oriented development. But anti-growth Santa Monicans want to derail all this by requiring a vote of the people on most developments taller than two stories.

The defense of those backing anti-growth measures is disingenuous: If you don’t like restrictions, you can go to the ballot. But that argument is an invitation for development to be determined by a showdown between NIMBY demagoguery and self-interested political money, as opposed to any rational long-range planning.

One lesson from Ventura County is that growth boundaries like SOAR shouldn’t be pursued in isolation. They need to be tied to rock-solid requirements for creating more housing, both for low-income and middle-income people. To put it another way, it’s great if your community wants to protect open space from development, but then you don’t get to block denser development, housing, and transit in your already developed spaces.

If Ventura County wants to wall off growth in its open areas until the end of time, fine. But it must be compelled to open gates in its walls big enough to bring much more progressive development into the Kingdom.

(Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square … where this piece was originally posted.)

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PLATKIN ON PLANNING-In Los Angeles there are now so many programs and proposals to deregulate zoning and environmental regulations, all hiding behind a “business friendly” cover story of promoting affordable housing, that it can make your head spin. The real story, though, promoting real estate speculation, is always kept deep in the shadows. 

Along with other CityWatch writers, I have frequently tried to shine a light on these programs, including rebuttals of their unsubstantiated claims that the deregulation of zoning and environmental laws magically produces affordable housing for an impending population boom. 

By now, City Watch readers have read about many of these sand castles, including Community Plan Update land use ordinances, Community Plan Implementation Ordinances (CPIO), SB 1818/Density bonuses, Value Capture policies, Transit Oriented Districts (TOD), re:code LA, Second Units, Home Sharing and Short-term rentals, Transit Neighborhood Plans, Small Lot Subdivisions, and Baseline Mansionization Ordinance loopholes. 

Furthermore, year-in and year-out, Governor Jerry Brown and the California State Legislature pitch similar proposals. If adopted, they would exempt an expanding range of local real estate projects from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and local discretionary reviews. These statewide proposals, too, are based on the same bogus claim: deregulation increases the supply of affordable housing. 

While all of these programs are different, the same threads run through them. They neglect to consider the following in their pursuit of a quick buck: 

Public Services and Infrastructure: The politicians, planners, and publicists pushing these programs never bring up the increased public services and public infrastructure that these new buildings and their occupants require. Even though this concern is clearly spelled out in LA’s legally adopted General Plan Framework’s policy 3.3, it is always ignored. Policy 3.3 should: 

Accommodate projected population and employment growth within the City and each community plan area and plan for the provision of adequate supporting transportation and utility infrastructure and public services. 

The increases in building mass, traffic, and population resulting from this laundry list of real estate schemes are totally disconnected from daily life in Los Angeles. Will the new buildings, cars, and people need more street capacity? More street parking? More sidewalks? More bicycle lanes? More schools? Parks? Playgrounds? Animal Shelters? Electricity? Water? Fire and police protection? Garbage collection? Libraries? Street cleaning and garbage collection? In the blinkered world of the deregulators, their fevered predictions of soaring population only head down one path: sparking a building boom by eviscerating zoning and environmental laws. They never lead to expanded public services and upgraded public infrastructure. 

By also separating out the consequences of building permits from the legally required General Plan, these many real estate hustles also lead to a cascade of other municipal failures. They not only divorce zoning from the General Plan, but also the City’s Capital Improvement (CIP), which is another essential (but ignored) General Plan implementation program. Likewise, another overlooked plan implementation program, the City’s budget, which folds in the staffing levels and work programs of all City departments, is severed from the willy-nilly granting of otherwise illegal building permits. 

Urban Design: The deregulators’ version of the “urban growth machine” also ignores the design implications of their real estate investments. Even though the City Council unanimously adopted the General Plan Framework Element, which has an entire chapter on Urban Form and Neighborhood Design, as well as appended design guidelines for residential, commercial, and industrial projects, the visual impact of these helter-skelter projects flies below the decision makers’ radar. In some cases there are even local design guidelines, such as Miracle Mile’s Community Design Overlay District, that deep-pocketed political muscle easily dispenses with, approving such hideous buildings as the Peterson Museum and currently-under-construction Museum of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (rendering photo above) 

Deemed consistent with the Miracle Mile Community Design Overlay District! 

Likewise, the City’s official planning documents all indicate that new projects must be consistent with the character and scale of existing neighborhoods. For example, this is standard language in all Community Plans. 

1-3.1 Promote architectural compatibility and landscaping for new Multiple Family residential development to protect the character and scale of existing residential neighborhoods. 

Great words, but they have absolutely no bearing on the luxury mega-projects supposedly offering affordable housing. Such high-rise structures are at least three times the height of surrounding buildings, like the upscale residential complexes proposed for 333 LaCienega, 8150 Sunset, and the Cumulus Project at the corner of Jefferson and Fairfax. 

As a result, LA’s residents not only have to endure such pervasive visual blight as bootlegged signs, billboards, super-graphics, overhead wires, and streets barren of trees, but also new, over-sized projects that clash with neighborhood character and scale. 

Monitoring: These out-of-character, out-of-scale, under-supported projects typically make pie-in-the-sky claims to obtain their official approvals. Promises of transit use, sustainability, and jobs flow like the first flush of wastewater into Santa Monica Bay after an early autumn deluge. But, there is no requirement that developers verify any of their wild-eyed claims. There are no consequences if they don’t pan out, even when they are the basis for City Council decisions, such as Statements of Overriding considerations to sideline Environmental Impact Reports. Likewise, no building permits or Certificates of Occupancy are ever revoked since no one at City Hall ever double-checks the developers’ crystal balls. 

Next Steps: The pell-mell efforts of real estate speculators to deregulate zoning and CEQA means the planning process and its implementation through zoning, environmental reviews, Capital Improvement Programs, and the City’s Budget are all being thrown under the bus. The resulting mishmash of unrestrained market-driven projects is fraught with dire consequences that surpass their plug ugliness. They endlessly degrade the physical environment and quality of life for LA’s residents, employees, and visitors. Despite their short-term profits quickly whisked away to offshore bank accounts in the Caribbean and Panama, LA’s persistent economic decline will speed up and possibly enter free fall. 

From my perspective, the only local solution in sight is the coalescence of many isolated movements separately opposing numerous local projects. At this point this means the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative and its sponsor, the Coalition for Preserve LA, and its supporters, such as United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles. 

(Dick Platkin reports on city planning issues for City Watch. He welcomes comments, criticisms, and corrections at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.