REMEMBERING SCOTT FOLSOM--Decades-long champion for public schools, Scott Folsom, died last week. Howard Blume wrote a beautiful obituary in the Los Angeles Times.  

I had the privilege of sitting down with Scott for the last time a couple of weeks ago. He was troubled not to have written his education homily the week before. He didn’t call it that, but it’s not far off. For years, district officials and parents religiously read Scott’s blog, 4LAkids, every Sunday. Board President Steve Zimmer and Superintendent Michelle King called Scott “the conscience of the district.” Steve said Scott had the ability to see when the emperor had no clothes. 

In this era when so many people have found ways to make money off of public education, Scott gave two decades of unpaid public service.  He was part watchdog, part caretaker. He criticized because he cared -- and he showed great care. His blog was a mix of notes from the many, many meetings he attended, chatter heard-around-the-water-cooler. Scott’s broad educational and cultural references were infused with his wit and intelligence. He had majored in political science in the 60s. If there were song lyrics that fit a situation, Scott included them. When we read Scott’s blog, we understood both LAUSD and the world better. And, with important exceptions, we usually forgave both. 

Scott had called me, hoping I could listen to his thoughts on the week’s education happenings and put them into a blog post. I was operating on hope, too, not only because of my deep admiration for him, but because of my awareness -- growing by the day -- that he was running out of time. He had decided to discontinue cancer treatments, saying he had chosen quality over quantity. But he quibbled about the quality part.

Scott gave this post its title. He had so much left to say and do, and we would all be better for his having said and done it. If I could help in any way, I was going to try. 

So I sat and talked with him for a couple of hours while the Republican National Convention played on the TV in his living room. 

Here is part of what he said between long pauses: 

The process to put these together does not make it easy to narrate or dictate or any of those kinds of “-tates.” 

I would love to be able to turn over a handful of my notes and have you make it whatever you will. The reality is I can never read my notes 24 hours later, and I don’t even know what I meant. I can read and toss ideas. My mind wanders completely. I love where it wanders. And now morphine makes all these new words. 

I guess I could do like Melania Trump and find something that’s pretty damn good and use it. I could probably get away with it longer than she did. 

But our campaign is education, and plagiarism is somewhere along with our sworn enemies. The Trump campaign, on the other hand, has storm-trooped -- not tiptoed -- through the tulips, and created its own reality. It’s born from reality TV -- and there is neither in either. 

I was listening to Melania’s speech. Public education! At least she mentioned public education!

This Trump escapade is such a colossal and monumental failure of ethics. Ethics in government, ethics in journalism. The fact that the Republicans let it go this far. The Democrats let it go this far.

All of us let it go THIS FAR. 

That the one little boy on the street corner didn’t point out that this particular emperor had no clothes.

Speaking of clothes, now for a subject that’s neither near nor dear, but very close to me.

I was reading somewhere -- I think it came out over the gender identification discussion. It was about the signs on the restroom doors. Somebody was commenting about how the color pink had not always been identified with girls. 

The haberdashery industry in the UK was all fixated with boys and girls, the ones the Dickens kids were aspiring to be. And so, in stories, if you were selling layettes, you sold pink ones to girls and blue ones to boys.

Amusing. Not the end of the world. 

But I’m coming from a different end of the market. 

I’m buying adult diapers. 

The female ones are pink. Why are we not surprised? 

But the male ones? I guess, my gender, in my day and age, blue doesn’t quite go with the GI Joe image. They’re green—Army Man green. 

[Long pause.] 

That was exhausting. 

It had taken Scott over a half hour to say that much. And he was drifting in and out. Then he said: 

I did a really bad job of downloading what went on in public education this week. There’s so much fun to be had, and not enough time, and way too much explanation about Gülen. You and I both know that all charter schools aren’t Gülen schools. But it’s our government money, meant to educate our children. 

[Pause.] 

The promise made to me before the bait and switch was ‘quality of life’. I don’t want to overdose on anything because I don’t want to miss anything. 

Scott had picked different people to take over what he’d be leaving behind. Rachel on the Bond Oversight Committee, Franny needling from the inside, me blogging. It says something that it takes three of us to do what Scott did, and those are the three I know about. I can’t speak for Rachel and Franny, but I can’t imagine I’ll live up to Scott’s example. The striving will make a difference though. So I will try.   

Late last week I heard Scott was nearing the end, and that he was worried. I called him the day before he died. I said, “Scott, you’ve done enough. We’ll take it from here.” 

“OK,” he said. “Don’t screw it up.”

Then, always thinking of others, Scott instructed, “Karen, take care of those who need our care.” 

So I will try.

(Karen Wolfe is a public school parent, the Executive Director of PS Connect and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.)

JUST THE FACTS--In politics there is always the rule of Strategy. Strategy gets your ideas moving forward and hopefully onto implementation. Elected officials and others in government services use Strategy on many programs and issues similar to what our military and law enforcement personnel use in the various programs designed to protect and serve our communities. Without Strategy, not much ever gets done. 

Not to be too critical of our elected officials but … I have been thinking about the kind of strategy that was going to be used to convince you to vote for more fees and taxes and bonds to handle problems that have been brewing for months and even years in the City and County of Los Angeles. 

Take for example the homeless situation in Los Angeles. We have all seen the negative impact on our neighborhoods and read about how it is going to be addressed. We know the police are not doing much of anything about it. Not because they want to see our communities run over by homeless, but because they have been following orders from police leaders who follow orders from the political leaders of our cities. We can all see it every day. 

The homeless population continues to grow. Many of our communities have become homeless camps. During a recent drive down Burbank Blvd in the Sepulveda Basin, I have found that the homeless are permanently camped in the wooded section of the area on the south side of Burbank Blvd. Some have erected large Army tents in the brush and even parked their cars in the camp. It is like going to Lake Arrowhead and camping in the woods. 

While our mayor declared the Homeless population in Los Angeles an Emergency a year or so ago, nothing much has been done to address or resolve the problem. Sure there have been some dollars directed toward the problem, but nothing of any significance when you look at the billions in the city’s current budget. 

While our Mayor and other Los Angeles City Elected Officials were on another council recess rubbing elbows with others in power at the Democratic National Convention others from the city council were overseas in foreign countries on a Sister City Mission. So, with no one watching the exploding homeless population chewing up more and more of our neighborhoods, nothing is being done. 

But wait. There is an answer. Remember ‘Strategy’. There is hope you that you will fall for the increase in taxes to address this out of control situation. Yes ladies and gentlemen, ignore the problem after you declare it an emergency and let the problem continue to grow so that the people who pay the taxes will get so fed up with the situation that they vote to support the new taxes. 

NEW Taxes in the Billions of dollars! 

Since the city has over an $8 Billion-plus General Fund this fiscal year, it is time to use existing money and finally address the problem that is not going away and only getting worse as the days pass. 

While the city has throwing a few thousand dollars to address the problem, little impact has been seen. The homeless are not washing away or going to other parts of the country. It is time for you the taxpayers to get off your collective asses and force your city officials to use existing funds to finally address the out of control homeless population in Los Angeles. 

We all hear about the great economy here in Los Angeles and California. If that is true, existing money is there to once and for all address the homeless crisis the is negatively impacting neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles. 

For the record, following the DNC our Mayor and his entourage traveled to Rio to view the 2016 Olympics since Los Angeles has put in a bid to host the 2024 Olympics in Los Angeles. This is great. It is 2016 and there are a lot of pressing issues on the plate before attention is generated to 2024.   

There is strength in numbers and we the taxpayers have the numbers to vote. There will be no less than four local tax and bond measures on the November Ballot. Transportation and homeless are the main ones gaining attention at this time. This will cost us BILLIONS over the coming years. Use your vote to tell city leaders NO NEW TAXES and No Bond Measures. We have existing measures that are still being paid off from years ago! 

As always, Zine is watching your pocketbook and holding people accountable.

(Dennis P. Zine is a 33-year member of the Los Angeles Police Department and former Vice-Chairman of the Elected Los Angeles City Charter Reform Commission, a 12-year member of the Los Angeles City Council and a current LAPD Reserve Officer who serves as a member of the Fugitive Warrant Detail assigned out of Gang and Narcotics Division. He writes Just the Facts for CityWatch. You can contact him at [email protected].)

-cw

CORRUPTION REPORT-Each week CityWatch has more articles that could be categorized as “Organized Crime is Ruining Las Angeles.” The technical name of the vehicle which the Mayor and City Council use in their destruction of Los Angeles is called “Accounting Control Fraud.” The biggest problem with Accounting Control Fraud is that the name puts everyone except certified public accountants to sleep. An alternate name is Criminal Accounting. 

Many readers will remember Enron whose wunderkind, CEO Ken Lay, was the toast of Dallas until he made toast of Enron through massive frauds. Los Angeles has its own wunderkind in Eric Garcetti. Garcetti’s mastery of Criminal Accounting is prodigious. 

The characteristic feature of Criminal Accounting is that the company or the city itself is the target of the fraud which is orchestrated by the executives. In a city, the insiders are the mayor and city council. Rather than using a Ponzi scheme to dupe individuals out of their money, the mayor and city council steal money from their own city and divert tax dollars to their buddies. 

A city like Los Angeles is no different from a company like Enron; it can be bilked into ruin by transferring the city’s wealth to a handful of thieves. 

Organized Crime in the DTLA Hotel Market --In 2013, the City commissioned PKR Consulting to study how to divert city revenues to a few friends of the Mayor and City Council. PKR Consulting (which is now CBRE Group) specializes in helping the hotel industry become more profitable. Habitually, the City retains consultants which cater to the desires of a particular industry in order to obtain “independent” studies identifying which private person(s) should receive huge gifts of public money. Here’s what the lobbyists for the hotel industry found. 

Hotels were doing exceedingly well in Los Angeles with the DTLA hotels showing an 80% occupancy rate. In an economy which is not dominated by organized crime, one expects ample investment money to flow into that portion of the economy which is doing very well. Since the DTLA hotels were doing fantastically well, no subsidies were necessary. Yet, PKR Consulting found that the City should give new hotels hundreds of millions of dollars in tax rebates. We hasten to add that providing a silly opinion is not a criminal act. 

When a city solicits foolishness and then relies on the silliness in order to divert tax dollars into the pockets of its cronies, the city itself is the criminal enterprise.   

The Legal Function of a City--People form governments in order to provide public services. I cannot construct the streets, nor can I build the water system, nor can I maintain the parks. The function of city government is not to make the friends of the mayor and city councilmembers wealthier by diverting tax dollars into their pockets. Yet, that has been happening for over a decade in Los Angeles and it is the reason that Los Angeles is rapidly becoming a “failed city.” 

Readers of CityWatch will remember the criminal appraisal fraud with the CRA project at 1601 N. Vine, i.e. Cesspool on Vine. In that case, the City obtained an appraisal of the property for $4 million, but the developer obtained an appraisal in the same month for $5.4 million. In recommending that the City pay his buddy an extra $1.4 million for the property, Garcetti withheld from the City Council the lower $4 million appraisal. Thus, nobody questioned the $5.4 million purchase price. 

Later, Garcetti arranged for the City to sell back the same piece of property to the developer for only $835,000. In addition to the $4,564,000 which the developer made on these exchanges, he did not have to make any mortgage payments on the property for the time during which the City “owned” 1601 N. Vine. Now that’s organized crime, LA style. 

Organized Crime Favors Its Own while Harming Everyone Else--When a hotel gets to keep between 40 to 100 percent of all the hotel taxes for 30 or 40 years, it has a great advantage over its competitors. Just look at a Trivago.com advertisement. Hotel rooms are booked on the basis of price and any hotel that doesn’t have to pay taxes has a competitive advantage over hotels that must pay the hotel tax. 

Is there anyone so naive as to think that these hundreds of millions of dollars in gifts by the mayor and city council do not result in money flowing into the political campaigns of the mayor and councilmembers? 

The economic malarkey fed to the City by the mayor and city council is astounding. The public thinks that it benefits them to give their tax dollars to billionaires because the billionaires’ businesses are doing fantastically well. The hotels have over 80% occupancy rate, and therefore, we need to give them hundreds of millions of tax dollars! 

With criminal accounting, the crooks devise a bunch of false and misleading studies to deceive people into thinking that the city is making sound investments when in reality the city treasury is being looted. The foregoing has illustrated a couple penny-ante scams showing City Hall’s use of Criminal Accounting. But it gets worse. 

The Sophisticated Organized Crime Syndicate that Rules LA --When Judge Goodman ruled in January 2014 that Garcetti’s Hollywood’s Community Plan 2012 Update had knowingly used fatally flawed data, Judge Goodman did not go farther to describe how the entire criminal enterprise operated. Judge Goodman stopped short because the lawsuit was a civil lawsuit, and thus, he had no power to advance into criminal matters. Nonetheless, his ruling did reveal the widespread criminality. 

When one intentionally makes materially false representations of fact on which the deceiver expects other people to rely, that is criminal fraud. 

The Subways are an Example of Criminal Fraud--But let’s look a little deeper into how this massive fraud works. The history of Metro subways shows how a multi-million dollar criminal scam becomes a multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise. Subways and trolleys are not inherently criminal, but in the hands of sophisticated fraudsters, any public agency can become a criminal enterprise. 

In the CityWatch article on July 28, 2016, “Expo Line Expansion Fails to Make Up for LA Transit Loss,” by Wendell Cox, we see how Organized Crime has manipulated Metro to divert money away from bus services (which actually benefit Angelenos) toward subways and fixed-rail transit which benefit developers. Mr. Cox’s article links to an extraordinarily important analysis by Thomas Rubin showing how Metro’s decisions have devastated bus service. When one understands how organized crime operates, one can see the rationale behind many of Metro’s current decisions. 

Here’s the essence of the complex criminal scam to divert tax dollars away from public services in order to benefit the friends of Garcetti and the City Council. Once a subway or fixed rail system has a station at a particular development project, that mass transit will never deviate one inch from that location to service another project. The purpose of LA’s subways and trolleys is not to provide better public transportation but to maximize the value of certain private projects over other real estate projects. 

When there is a subway station in the basement of a high rise, that project has a huge competitive advantage over all projects which do not have their own subway station. 

We are not saying that the mayor’s office and the city council are stupid; we are saying that they constitute a sophisticated Organized Crime Syndicate. LA is not dominated by criminals from outside City Hall. Los Angeles City Hall itself is The Crime Syndicate. The city operates in violation of Penal Code, § 86 which criminalizes all Vote Trading Agreements at any city council. Thus, by definition, Los Angeles City Council is an organized criminal enterprise. (The RICO statute does not apply to city councils.) 

The fact that law enforcement turns a blind eye does not mean that Los Angeles City Hall has not morphed into an Organized Crime Syndicate. The Duck Test reveals its criminality. Are the mayor and the city council looting the public treasury to benefit their friends? Yes. 

The Lynchpin of the Criminal Enterprise--City Hall’s criminal enterprise operates through a Vote Trading Agreement where each councilmember is required to support each other’s individual criminal scam. Although Penal Code § 86 criminalizes Vote Trading, law enforcement and judges all turn their blind eyes, while Organized Crime grows stronger each day.

(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.

GUEST WORDS-Anyone looking for a project that crystallizes the City of Los Angeles’ “Wild Wild West development process,” needn’t look any further than the Cumulus skyscraper at Jefferson/La Cienega. In late May, without anything that remotely approaches legal justification, and without a word of discussion, the City Council rubber-stamped a 30-story skyscraper with over 1,200 luxury housing units and 1,900,000 square feet of new development at an intersection that any commuter to/from LAX or Downtown Culver City knows is synonymous with the term “gridlock.” Crenshaw Subway Coalition, along with Friends of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, has jointly filed a lawsuit in Superior Court to stop the project. 

The 320-foot skyscraper proposed by San Francisco-based Carmel Partners would be the first skyscraper in South Los Angeles. It is almost three times taller than the next tallest building and four-times taller than the closest building within a 2-mile radius. In fact, the tallest building in the surrounding neighborhood is only 4 stories. Views from the Baldwin Hills and Blair Hills will undoubtedly be impacted. Traffic will be worsened. It is being built without a single unit dedicated to housing for households that are “low-income,” which the state defines as a family of four making $69,450 per year. And it is being built without a local hire requirement. 

The Cumulus skyscraper of luxury housing is clearly not for existing South LA residents. The project is a microcosm of how our city government is exacerbating, not solving, the country’s worst housing affordability crisis, and greasing the wheels of gentrification. It exposes a broken and corrupt process that threatens both working poor renters in Historic South Central and affluent Westside homeowners. 

WHY IT’S ILLEGAL & WILDLY OUT-OF-SCALE: GENERAL PLAN AMENDMENTS 

If you’re wondering how it is possible that the City Council approved a 320-foot skyscraper in an area where none currently exists – in an area where no one even discussed something of this size for the future, first you have to understand three terms: “zone change,” “height district change” and “General Plan amendment.” 

Every parcel in Los Angeles has a list of limited uses and a height. This is justified by the presence of a citywide General Plan, which is a blueprint for development predicated on hard data related to regional and community-specific needs and growth projections. The community plan (there are 37 in Los Angeles) is where the zoning designation establishing limits on each site is specified. 

To achieve approval of the 320-foot skyscraper, with 1,600,000 square feet dedicated to the luxury housing, the City Council granted Carmel Partners requests for an amendment to the zoning code in the City’s General Plan and change in the height district designation to unlimited. In Los Angeles, these General Plan Amendments, zone changes and height district changes get doled out to almost any mega-developer who requests one like mollies at a rave. 

To be clear General Plan amendments are allowed – but not the kind the City is granting. General Plan amendments are supposed to be community-wide, not site specific. To change the zoning at a project site to let the developer build without having to adhere to the restrictions imposed on the whole community/corridor is known as “spot zoning.” It constitutes a special favor that increases the land value and potential profits of a development project. If that sounds like it is not only unfair, but also illegal to you, that’s because it is. It is one of multiple claims in our lawsuit to stop the project.

Unfortunately, the city of Los Angeles is littered with new high-rise luxury housing projects that received General Plan amendments, and height district/zone changes. It is how most mega-projects that are wildly out-of-character and have/threaten to gentrify communities like The Reef in Historic South Central are even possible. 

THE DOMINO EFFECT: MORE SKYSCRAPERS AND OUT-OF-SCALE DEVELOPMENT 

There are undoubtedly regional impacts of this lone massive project. But by green-lighting the Cumulus skyscraper, our City has sent a signal to other potential developers that “anything goes” in the neighborhood. This is the domino effect of the project. It is practically guaranteed to lead to even more drastically out-of-scale developments in the community that violate zoning laws. One luxury high-rise that violates the height and density limits leads to another, then another, then another… 

Unfortunately, “the domino effect” is already on full display in other parts of our city. Like a kid who says that they should get to stay up late on a school night and eat dessert first because their sibling was allowed to, mega-developers are being relieved of height, density and zoning limits based on special favors being previously given to nearby projects. You read that right: the city actually uses previous approval of illegal projects to approve more illegal projects. This is the very definition of out-of-control lawlessness that threatens our community and harms our city, and the insanity is completely unjustifiable. 

THE CITY COUNCIL/MAYOR WANT US TO FORGET THAT THEY BROKE IT & CAN FIX IT 

Proponents of “spot zoning” argue that it is necessary to increase the city’s housing stock, because the city’s zoning code is outdated. For a variety of reasons, that argument has more holes in it than a pound of Swiss cheese. Firstly, even the low estimate is that L.A.’s existing zoning code would permit development to house 1 million more residents. That’s without General Plan amendments, height district or zoning changes. (Many suggest the figure is actually much higher: between 3-5 million.) Additionally, when one considers the density increases provided by state laws, it is apparent that almost every major commercial boulevard in Los Angeles could be lined with residential development that is a minimum of 5 or 6 stories tall. 

Furthermore, proponents apparently want us to ignore that the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor have deliberately chosen to not do city planning. Much smaller cities like Seattle (population: under 700,000; which is smaller than just South LA) have far more staff solely dedicated to planning than the entire city of Los Angeles (population: 4 million). The analysis of hard data, infrastructure capacity (parks, fire stations, transportation), affordable housing and senior housing needs, and the facilitation of community conversations about improving the quality of life of existing communities while growing responsibility, is being done in LA by a skeletal staff and at a snail’s pace. Our elected officials have consistently and deliberately underfunded the “city planning” in the City Planning Department. This underfunding has gone on not for years, but for decades. 

We are rightfully skeptical of Congressional Republicans who state that the oil industry must be allowed to police itself to prevent environmental catastrophes like Deepwater Horizon, because we know that for decades they’ve been cutting funding for oil rig safety inspection. A blind man can see that the real desire of Congressional Republicans is deregulation. Similarly, the real objective of the City’s elected officials should be clear: give mega-developers who feed their campaign war chests whatever they want, no matter what the zoning law requires. 

HOW CAN ONE JUSTIFY “SPOT ZONING” WHEN THE CODE IS BRAND NEW? 

If you are still unconvinced of the real objective of our City Council despite the approval of countless General Plan amendments for mega-developers, who spend millions of dollars in lobbying and shower City politicians with donations, the specifics regarding the Cumulus skyscraper approval process should eliminate all doubts. You see, the new zoning code for the community was before the City before Cumulus was proposed. 

In April 2013, the City Planning Commission reviewed the draft of the new West Adams-Baldwin Hills-Leimert Community Plan. The West Adams Community Plan specifies the height, density and allowable land uses of every parcel in the city from roughly Robertson to the west, Venice/Pico to the north, Arlington/Van Ness to the east and the borders of Inglewood/Culver City to the south/southwest. Among other updates, drastic increases in the allowable height and density and permission of mixed-use (a combination of office/retail with housing) were proposed around the new Jefferson/La Cienega Expo Line station. The argument is that mixed-use development and higher density housing should be encouraged around transit stations. 

But those proposed increases are not as great as what Carmel Partners proposed and the City Council approved. Not. Even. Close. 

The proposed height increase was 45 feet to 86 feet for mixed-use projects. Not 320 feet like Cumulus.

The proposed density increase, known as the floor-area ratio, was 1.5:1 to 3:1. Not 3.9:1 like Cumulus. 

At no point in the West Adams Community Plan update process did anyone from the public request, nor did the city planning department or any other governmental entity study, let alone recommend, anything that even remotely approaches 320 feet at the site. 

And it is telling that at no point in the numerous region-wide town hall presentations and public hearings regarding the community plan update, where the planning staff justified upzoning around the La Cienega/Jefferson because of the new light rail, did a city official announce to the audience: “Oh yea, there’s a skyscraper-a-coming.” 

And if you think that this is a case of the left-hand not knowing what the right-hand is doing, that somehow the Planning Department and Council just forgot about that whole community plan update process as they were fast-tracking this mega-development, consider that the City released the final (and now approved) version of the West Adams-Baldwin Hills-Leimert Community Plan on the very same day that the City Council approved the Cumulus skyscraper. 

“FORGET IT JAKE, IT’S CHINATOWN”? I THINK NOT 

The Cumulus skyscraper project stinks as bad as a pig farm in August. It is the poster child for a corrupt planning process that favors mega-developers who buy favors from City Council without any regard to the needs of our community and city. 

Carmel Partners bought the project site knowing that the height and density at the site was going practically double, and yet that wasn’t enough. The mega-developer wanted more, because they knew they could get more, and the City Council obliged. 

We in South LA, which has long been underserved by both the public and private sector, but are now receiving heightened attention because of public transit investment and a changing real estate market, must quickly rise up, become better educated and more engaged in the planning process. 

We need to reject those who claim that we have to accept these illegal General Plan Amendments and zone changes, which are being requested by those who seek to gentrify our communities for their own personal profits. 

We need to demand our elected officials just say no, because there is no justifiable legal basis for approving them. 

We need to loudly state from the moment they are proposed that they are illegal and violations of the zoning code, and be willing to sue to stop the projects, like residents in other parts of the city, to protect and enhance the community we have built. 

We should welcome new development, but unapologetically demand that it be built for us and in conformance with our community standards. To do otherwise is to co-sign our own displacement. 

(Damien Goodmon is the Executive Director of Crenshaw Subway Coalition, past Coordinator of the Citizens Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line, a renter in Leimert Park, and fourth-generation Angelino whose family has lived in South Central for over 100 years. He can be contacted at [email protected]) 

-cw

SKID ROW- Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti traveled to Rio de Janeiro for the opening ceremonies of the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics. 

Obviously, his primary reason for being there is to “wine and dine” the International Olympic Committee (IOC) because they’re the ones who will decide which city gets the 2024 Summer Olympics. LA is one of four contenders, pitted against Rome, Paris and Budapest, Hungary. (Hamburg, Germany was also selected as a contender, but withdrew its bid in November 2015.) 

Why is an event eight years in the future so important today? 

Los Angeles has a deadline of September 2016 to submit its final 2024 Olympic bid and the IOC will determine the winner in September 2017. The host city will then have seven years to build the necessary infrastructure for what the IOC hopes will be another “worldwide sports spectacle.” 

Spectacle? The only spectacle the world will see if they come to LA for the 2024 Summer Olympics is the spectacle of widespread homelessness. 

City Councilmember Jose Huizar, whose 14^th council district includes Skid Row – more commonly known as “the homeless capitol of America” -- is also in “hot water with the heat about to rise 1000 degrees.” Last year, he chaired the newly-formed LA City Council Homelessness and Poverty Committee, tasked with signing off on the Mayor’s “Comprehensive Homeless Strategic Plan” that was passed by the council in January 2016. 

Huizar publicly boasted of caring deeply about his homeless constituents in Skid Row. We now know that, at the time he touted the priority need to house them, he also finalized supportive efforts for a Beverly Hills developer to build “microlofts” in Skid Row buildings – structures that used to house and provide services for the homeless residents there. Hypocrisy in its finest display! It seems that Huizar initiated displacement of the very homeless men, women and children he so passionately vowed to house and provide services for. How dare he! 

The City’s comprehensive plan was signed off on in January and it’s now August. So where’s all this housing for homeless people promised by Huizar and Garcetti? 

Was their Comprehensive Homeless Plan nothing more than a smoke and mirrors marketing campaign to show to the IOC just to win an Olympic bid? 

And according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s (LAHSA) last two Homeless Counts, there has been an almost 20% increase in homelessness over the last three years alone. Yet there’s been no significant new construction for homelessness anywhere in the city; it takes a minimum of 18 months (but more like two to three years) to build new construction. So it’s virtually impossible for the City of LA to create enough housing and services to serve the over 26,000 homeless people struggling to survive here in the “City of Angels” before the 2024 Summer Olympics would be held here. 

As a homegrown Angeleno, I cringe to imagine the world descending onto our city for a Summer Olympic “spectacle,” only to be shocked by the number of homeless people on the streets. They will be dismayed by the tens of thousands of homeless folks that will gravitate toward the foreigners, asking for monetary aid (i.e. panhandling) along with whatever else they are able to obtain. And based on LAHSA’s current numbers and trends, homelessness in LA will continue to rise over the next seven years to a jaw-dropping number! 

Is this the Los Angeles we want the world to see firsthand? 

If not, the Mayor’s re-election campaign should be focused on a demand for action. 

The termed-out Huizar is not above ridicule in the court of public opinion as he continues to schmooze with big-money developers and the Downtown business sector in an effort to “Bring Back Broadway.” I’m sure voters will remember his lack of true leadership and blatant deceit regarding housing homeless people whenever – if ever -- he seeks another political job. 

With such an uphill battle in his bid for the 2024 Olympics, how do we even know Mayor Garcetti is really trying to win it? Or is he just using taxpayer dollars for an elaborate summer vacation in Rio? 

The pressure is rising against both of these politicians who call themselves “homeless advocates,” as well as all other City officials who’ve shown a collective incompetence toward “ending homelessness.” Remember when Garcetti took the oath of office and publicly promised to house all homeless vets by the end of 2015? Later had to admit failure in accomplishing such an unrealistic goal. And it’s summer now; August is the hottest month of the year for homeless folks stranded by the City of Los Angeles as they try to cope with triple-digit heat in deplorable conditions almost like they were left for dead. Our city leaders should feel an equivalent amount of heat -- whether it’s in 2016 or 2024. 

While people all over the world consider Rio one of their top-ten favorite vacation spots, eyes in LA are on Garcetti and Huizar right now. If they don’t do something significant and soon about homelessness, Rio may be seeing a lot more of both of them!

(General Jeff is a homelessness activist and leader in Downtown Los Angeles. Jeff’s views are his own.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL NEWS-For the past several weeks, rumors have been swirling throughout the Los Angeles Harbor Area that EmpowerLA was set to dismantle the Wilmington Neighborhood Council. The council has not been able to conduct meetings for much of 2016. 

EmpowerLA Director of Outreach and Communications, Stephen Box, put the rumors to rest. He said that EmpowerLA was, in fact, working to get the Wilmington council up and working again. 

For several months, the Wilmington Neighborhood Council has been failing to achieve a quorum at their meetings. (A quorum is the minimum number of members of an organization that must be present to conduct a valid meeting.) With no quorum there cannot be a meeting. “In a nutshell, [the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment] is not dismantling or decertifying,” Box said. “The department is going to facilitate the existing board in the process of filling vacant seats … so that the board can achieve quorum and conduct business.” 

According to the Wilmington Neighborhood Council’s bylaws the advisory board should be comprised of 24 people and thirteen people must be present to form a quorum at a board meeting. 

Wilmington Neighborhood Council Governing Structure--The governing structure of the board may be the core reason for this neighborhood council’s issues.

Of its 24 board seats, only three are elected on an at-large basis. The remaining 21 board seats are either filled by appointments or by selections through a complicated and ambiguous caucus system.

Six seats are reserved for residential organizations selected by a stakeholder caucus to represent quadrants of the community, but these are not defined. People, by definition, are not considered organizations. 

Wilmington’s bylaws state that the stakeholder selection should take place every two years. The board membership is structured to include: 

• Three business or industry representatives selected by stakeholder caucus.
• Two churches representatives selected by stakeholder caucus.
• Two education representatives selected by stakeholder caucus.
• One labor representative selected by stakeholder caucus.
• One nonprofit community or fraternal representative selected by stakeholder caucus.
• One recreational representative selected by stakeholder caucus.
• One parks advisory board representative selected by stakeholder caucus.
• One senior community (although a nominee need only be 16 years old to serve in this. capacity) representative selected by stakeholder caucus. 

Three seats are appointed: 

• The youth seat, which is nominated by stakeholder caucus and appointed by the board.
• The parliamentary seat, which is appointed by the board.
• And the seat representing the Port of Los Angeles and appointed by the Port of Los Angeles. 

Too much is left to be desired due to the complicated selection and appointment process. For a long time, the board seemed be comprised of homogenous, older people who have ties with the business community and the Port of Los Angeles. 

“You are not going to be outspoken because your hands are tied,” said Sylvia Arredondo, a former selected board member. “The neighborhood council is there sometimes to protect their own interests.” 

Former board member Anabelle Romero agrees. 

“Some of the members are really old,” Romero said. “People are invested in it for different reasons.”

But since 2012, there has been a gradual shift in the makeup of the board with younger, more active community members joining. 

Interestingly, the Wilmington Neighborhood Council’s bylaws state that “no single Stakeholder group shall hold a majority of Board seats unless extenuating circumstances exist and are approved by EmpowerLA.” 

There are currently 96 neighborhood councils and each one has its own strategies and bylaws. They either work or they don’t. 

The Problem--The most recent board election, which took place on June 11, yielded the three elected, at-large, board members. But none of the 18 caucus seats were filled, resulting in a loss of quorum. 

Sylvia Arredondo said she was only informed through an email from Wilmington Neighborhood Council Chairwoman Cecilia Moreno that due to the decision by EmpowerLA, she no longer was on the board. She said that part of the reason the selection process failed and resulted in a loss of quorum is a lack of outreach to the community. Volunteering is minimal in the board, communication is minimal and even the materials are limited to English-only in a largely Latino community. The result is low voter turnout in a community known for its involvement because community member do not see the neighborhood council as significant or serving to the community. 

“There is no true outreach and if there is, when you want to step up, it depends on who you are,” said Arredondo, explaining that often when a younger member wants to do outreach, another board member is sent along to make sure the message is delivered in accordance to the status quo. 

Arredondo said that Moreno’s letter stated that Moreno neither agreed nor supported EmpowerLA’s decision. 

“I honestly feel lost and confused,” Arredondo said. “It’s great that there is a shake up. There could be more transparency and outreach from DONE to let us know what is going on.” 

Box said EmpowerLA did send an email to board members and even offered assistance at the most recent meeting. 

In 2010, the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners established a policy to deal with such cases. It states that if vacant seats are greater than three-fourths of the board, the board and the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment must create and execute a selection process. 

A Solution--The three at-large board members and Department of Neighborhood Empowerment-EmpowerLA, is expected to conduct a town hall meeting to select board members to fill the vacant caucus seats. The department will work with the newly seated board to ensure quorum is maintained. Any stakeholder who is at least 16 years old is eligible to vote for candidates at the town hall meeting.

Calls and emails to Moreno were not answered as of press time Aug. 3. 

The town hall meeting is anticipated to take place in late August. The time, date and venue is yet be determined. 

(Zamná Ávila, is Assistant Editor at Random Lengths, where this piece was first posted.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.