LOS ANGELES

The Box DONE Come--Less than 24 hours before the most recent special meeting of the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council on May 16, the Los Angeles Department of Neighborhood Empowerment disempowered this council by issuing a letter announcing “exhaustive efforts” and taking control over the published agenda. (See report.) 

COMMENTARY--The City of LA’s elected officials do not like State Senator Tony Mendoza’s efforts to bring much-needed reform to the governance structure of LACMTA (the LA County Metropolitan Transit Authority). Not only do LA’s elected officials reject Mendoza’s latest bill SB 268, they do it with a vehemence which suggests they doth protest too much.  

NEIGHBORHOOD POLITICS--Last week at the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners meeting, a startling new policy was allowed in the new Hermon Neighborhood Council Bylaws. 

TRUMP, KUSHNER AND LA’S VERY OWN CIM---The Watchtower in Brooklyn Heights is one of the most noticeable edifices in New York. It’s a complex of buildings on a bluff above the East River, with a sign on top that flashes the time and temperature. It used to be the world headquarters of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

MEMORIAL DAY MOMENT--We just had another epic effort by an army of Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Sea Scouts, Cub Scouts, Brownies, Daisies, and a host of other youth groups () to commemorate and honor those who served and even gave their lives so that we could debate, argue, work for and give it our all for Freedom and the American Dream. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--Los Angeles has a new, 97th neighborhood council by the name of Hermon. Hermon is the name of a small area (one-half square mile according to my trusted source Wikipedia) in northeast Los Angeles. The new council asked to secede from the Arroyo Seco Neighborhood Council, and has now been granted full certification by the City of Los Angeles. This creates one problem which ought ultimately to provoke a crisis within the city's neighborhood council system. 

NATIONAL PARK POLITICS--I’m writing this from Yellowstone National Park (photo above). Established in 1872, this was our first National Park. The world’s first, in fact.

In an interesting window into how politics worked then (and now, arguably), Congress agreed to preserve this land only after being assured that it was entirely “worthless.” 

EDUCATION POLITICS--Supporters of charter schools, homeschooling and other forms of school “choice” are so used to fighting in the trenches against the state’s muscular teachers’ unions that they often forget how much progress they’ve made in the last decade or so. Recent events have shown the degree of progress, even if they still face an uphill – and increasingly costly – battle. 

PERSPECTIVE--If your financial adviser suggested that you invest in an arbitrage arrangement but offered no information concerning the risks, would you?

EASTSIDER-Ever since Anne Stausboll suddenly announced her retirement effective August 2016, I have wondered what’s going on with CalPERS. She was seemingly at the peak of her powers running the pension giant, and there was no particular event that precipitated her leaving. Now we have a new CEO, Marcie Frost, as of October 2016, fresh from Washington State’s Department of Retirement Systems (DRS.) 

CORRUPTION WATCH-The appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate the Russian meddling in our elections shows that American institutions are on life-support. 

PREVEN REPORT--“Our kids have to perform in front of audiences,” said then Harvard-Westlake School VP John Amato in 2013, referring to that school’s proposed multistory, 750-space parking garage and accompanying roof-top athletic field and 163-foot pedestrian bridge over Coldwater Canyon Boulevard, "so we have to have parking for visitors, and we want to have all our parking in one location.” 

RANTZ & RAVEZ--After nearly three weeks of budget meetings with Department Heads, Councilmembers, the Budget and Finance Committee, various city staff, the City Administrative Officer, the Chief Legislative Analyst, and a host of other city hall personnel and members of the public, the final city budget for next fiscal year has been approved and presented to the people of Los Angeles. What can we expect to see as we move into the next fiscal year starting July 1 with this $9.2 Billion Budget? Just think what you could do with $9.2 billion if you ran the City of Los Angeles.

GUEST COMMENTARY--What would you think if you were repeatedly rejected for promotion in favor of a less qualified and less experienced candidate? What conclusion might you arrive at if these "nationwide" searches always seemed to result in locals with ties to the current leadership being selected? How would you react if you saw a deterioration of morale of your fellow employees and how the unprepared outside hires were jeopardizing the mission?

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Yes, traffic congestion in Los Angeles is bad and getting worse. In fact, Los Angeles has the worst traffic congestion of any US city. A recent study from the Washington State based Inryx institute concluded that Angelinos are, on average, stuck in traffic 104 hours per year, and that Los Angeles has the planet’s worst traffic congestion. 

So, LA’s power brokers can boast that at least in one category Los Angeles is now a true global city. Of course, I don’t doubt there are those perpetual cynics who want to rain on this wonderful parade, and argue that Los Angeles – despite Beijing and Mexico City -- should instead claim world recognition for its poor air quality. They do have a case, too, since the only US cities with worse air than Los Angeles are Bakersfield and Fresno. 

Given LA’s notorious traffic congestion and poor air quality, we should not be surprised at the long list of fake solutions to the city’s gridlock. While these phony fixes allow contractors to build freeways and investors to pursue lucrative but short-sighted real estate deals, we get nothing but hems and haws about what could truly reduce traffic congestion: spending serious money, such as Measure M and much more, on alternative transportation modes, especially transit, biking, and walking. 

The major fake solutions? 

Freeway widening: The $1.6 billion spent on widening the still gridlocked I-405 could have been devoted to re-engineering many miles of local boulevards to lure drivers and passengers out of their cars and into alternative transportation modes. What is now happening through the My Figueroa project between downtown Los Angeles and USC could have appeared throughout much of Los Angeles. At $5,000,000 per mile, 320 miles of major Los Angeles area arteries could have had a new, well maintained tree canopy, grade separated bike lanes, enhanced street lighting, legal ADA curb cuts, and repaired and widened sidewalks. If combined with improved bus service built on rider comfort, lower fares, and more frequent service, this array of carrots would have achieved far more than resuscitating a dinosaur, adding two more lanes to the still busiest freeway in the entire United States. 

Encourage high-density residential buildings in neighborhoods “near” mass transit hubs, stations, and corridors. 

This approach to link transportation and land use planning is usually called Transit Oriented Districts, although both Los Angele City Planning and METRO defer to the alternative term Transit Oriented Communities. In theory, these areas should be substantially improved through My Figueroa-type public improvements for walking, bicycling, and access to public transit. 

But, as made clear by both agencies, their joint version of Transit Oriented Communities is really Transit Oriented Development. Their actual program is not major local public improvements for alternative transportation modes, but broad incentives to private investors for the construction of new market rate apartment buildings. In an amazing developer-friendly approach City Planning’s proposed guidelines have some startling features: 

1) The incentive areas will radiate out in a half-mile radius from major bus stops, Bus Rapid Transit stops, Metrolink Rail stops, and Metro Rail stops. As a result, except for the San Fernando Valley, most of Los Angeles will become a vast TOC incentive area.

2) In these incentive areas, residential projects with more than five units can increase the number of rental units between 50 to 80 percent, while the building’s mass (FAR) can reach a ratio between 2.5 to 4.0.

3) Other incentives include reductions in required parking, yards and setbacks, open space, lot coverage, lot width, density, height, and transitional height. 

In effect, this ordinance will completely undercut the existing zoning code’s residential requirements in much of Los Angeles, as well as some of re:code LA. It will also sidestep the City’s current efforts to update LA’s General Plan in several dangerous ways: 

1) There is no monitoring program to assess the effectiveness of these incentivized residential projects. Are the new affordable units actually there? Are they reducing homelessness and overcrowding? Were their occupants subjects to an income verification review? Do any of the residents in these new buildings regularly use transit? We have no way to answer these basic questions because there will be no monitoring to determine the TOC ordinance’s effectiveness, and there will be no on-site inspections of the supposed affordable units. None of this is new, of course, since the lack of monitoring or on-site affordable housing inspections is already standard practice in LA. The only difference is that will now be much more speculative real estate to sweep under the carpet. 

2) If these new residential projects actually increase local populations, there is no concern over the additional public services and infrastructure required to service these residents, even though this approach should be the essence of Transit Oriented Districts. Improved bicycle infrastructure and sidewalks? Tree canopies? Undergrounding utility wires? Park ‘n ride and Kiss ‘n Ride for mass transit stations? Street and parking capacity? Electricity, water, and telecommunications? Schools, parks, and libraries? Emergency services, especially to deal with special events, floods, fires, and earthquakes? Their status will continue to be, to quote Donald Rumsfeld, unknown unknowns. 

Stop high-density buildings so Los Angeles will not become another New York City. 

The grass roots campaigns against bad planning in Los Angeles are clearly moving in the right direction. But in some cases they have seen a few trees, but missed the forest with anti-density slogans like Not Yet New York and Manhattanwood. These well-intention community activists see the high-rise buildings of New York City, especially Manhattan, but forget that its high density is far more than high-rise buildings. New York City also has one of the planet’s best mass transit systems, as well as a dense network of public amenities. These include wide, well-maintained sidewalks, with ADA curb cuts and a tree canopy. It includes a vast network of small neighborhood parks and playgrounds, as well as local schools, libraries, and fire stations. Furthermore, in NYC, there are hardly any overhead utility lines or the visual pollution of super-graphics and billboards, except in Times Square. 

In other words, in NYC density refers to both private and public spheres, while LA’s density hawks, as well some as their opponents, only imagine that density refers to private real estate projects, not the entire built environment. 

Reduce the amount of required parking, while increasing its cost. 

This is a great bargain for real estate developers because it reduces their construction costs, without paying for any public improvements to make non-car alternatives more appealing. This stick only forces habituated car drivers to spend more time driving in circles looking for a place to park. The real solution is the carrot of changing the built environment – most of which is public space – to make alternatives to driving cars appealing in their own right. 

As for the real solutions, they are either ignored or left poorly funded so they cannot be put to the test. 

There is no evidence that building more market rate apartments within a half-mile of bus stops and mass transit stations increases ridership or reduces homelessness. So far, it is just an empty claim that also turns the relationship between mass transit and land use on its head. The purpose of housing should be put a roof over people’s heads, not fill up busses and subway cars. This is why the Los Angeles proponents of “Transit Oriented Communities” never bother to verify their claims that affluent tenants will switch to transit if it is “close” to their condo or apartment. As a result neither of their twin goals will be met: reducing traffic congestion and reducing homelessness and overcrowding. 

The real purpose of most of these fake solutions to traffic congestion is to put a fig leaf over real estate speculation, and this is why it is not the serious planning that could result from a systematic update of LA’s legally required General Plan. If City Hall really wanted an authentic connection between housing and transit, they would only build affordable housing near transit, and they would extensively upgrade neighborhoods on transit corridors to make alternatives to cars more appealing. As written above, this means wider, smoother sidewalks, ADA curb cuts, pedestrian safety improved streetlights, tree canopies, undergrounding utility lines, playgrounds, safe bike lanes. Certainly not cheap, but at least not a waste of money, like freeway widening. 

The idea of making the entire built environment supportive of transit, walking, and bicycling is hardly a new insight. What would be new, however, is forcing our elected official to look at the TOC folly they are about to unleash. While it might result in more market rate apartments, it will not reduce traffic congestion and freeway gridlock in Los Angeles. 

Remember you read it here. This fake solution will make LA’s traffic situation worse, not better.

(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles city planner who reports on local planning issues for City Watch. Please send any comments or corrections to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

-cw

ROOS BLUES--It never was very clear why someone who attended private primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools, and then attended law school on a scholarship intended for the disadvantaged – it never made a lot of sense why he would ally forces with an advocate for a school system that is independent of the district on whose board he ran for a seat – none of this made a lot of sense until reading that all along he considers this entity of which he is an incipient board member, to be “an abstract concept”. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--We just had one of the most important elections that no one paid much attention to, and which moved the LAUSD towards reform...and moved Angeleno parents and their children towards self-sufficiency. So here's a Nota Bene for you Millennials and post-Millennials (and even pre-Millennials!):  learn to take care of yourselves!

BELL VIEW--Yesterday morning LAPD took a homeless man from the front seat of my neighbor's car. My neighbor noticed him as he loaded his kid's into their car seats. The man was asleep, oblivious, he did not stir. My neighbor waited for LAPD on his front lawn, with a baseball bat in his hand. Just in case. 

RIDERS HAVE RIGHTS TOO-Ridership on Metro Buses is declining rapidly and in large percentages. Metro is in a tailspin. To reverse this decline, the mindset of Metro and the cities the buses pass through must change. Some of the changes must be directed to the routes, how often the buses run, how early and how late. Thinking must also shift to what occurs outside the bus when riders are approaching or leaving a bus stop, how well placed the stop is, how comfortable the stop is for the rider, and the experiences riders have when boarding and exiting a bus.  

POLITICS--California Democrats on Friday kicked off their three-day convention with a "raucous start" in Sacramento, where a wave of single-payer advocates demanded the party work towards a system that makes healthcare a human right. 

The gathering comes amid growing momentum nationwide for a single-payer, or Medicare-for-All, healthcare system, and as the Republican's widely scorned American Healthcare Act (AHCA) is days away from receiving its potentially problematic Congressional Budget Office (CBO) assessment.

In a evening rally and march that went from the capitol to the Sacramento Convention Center, a crowd of nurses and other healthcare activists urged support for SB562—the advancing Healthy California Act—which would create a universal health system for Californians, and could "send a message" and "be a catalyst for the nation."

Here’s the CalBuzz version of what happened. 

Of the fight for single payer, RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, which organized the action, thinks California Democrats "cannot be in denial anymore that this is a movement that can primary them."

DeMoro, who is also executive director of National Nurses United (NNU), took to Twitter to capture speeches at the rally and images of the sign-carrying marchers:

Their message, however, was not warmly received by California Democratic Party chairman John Burton.

In fact, he "had nothing but F-bombs and sarcasm for the protesters who disrupted the welcome reception of the California Democratic Convention Friday, calling for universal healthcare and chanting 'Hey hey, ho ho, corporate Dems have got to go,'" Bay Area News Group reported.

Video captured and posted to Twitter by Politico reporter David Siders shows Burton telling them to "shut the fuck up or go outside."

"Parade all you want, but unless we put it on the ballot or elect new Democrats you can walk up and down the street and people still aren't going to have decent healthcare. So let's get with it," the LA Times reports Burton as also saying.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, who this year beat the NNU-backed Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) for the post, also spoke at the podium. He tried to inject some levity into the situation, comparing it to Thanksgiving dinner with extended family. He appealed to party members to seek unity, saying: "Donald Trump has to go. And that is why we must work together as Democrats."

The Sacramento Bee writes that "the throng advocating for a statewide publicly funded, universal health care system snaked down a staircase behind Perez, shouting down his calls for unity."

As for the outcome of the convention, Politico reports that it will "reverberate" nationwide:

With President Donald Trump in a tailspin and the Republican House majority appearing increasingly vulnerable, what happens here at the California Democratic Party state convention this weekend will reverberate across the map.

Featuring as many as seven vulnerable GOP-controlled House seats, this solidly blue state is key to flipping the House in 2018. But when more than 3,000 activists in the nation's largest Democratic Party gather this weekend in Sacramento to forge opposition strategy and choose new party leadership, the state party's internal squabbles will also be closely watched.

Iowans were also hoping to underscore the importance of a universal healthcare system over the weekend, with rallies in seven cities.

"It just shows how important it is for us to be putting out an alternate vision for what our future should be rather than just saying no all the time," said Chris Schwartz, a community organizer with Americans for Democratic Action Iowa.

(Andrea Germanos writes for Common Dreams … where this report was first posted.)

-cw

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--We have reached the high holy days of California’s budget season, as our governor and legislative leaders decide which programs will gain new life, and which will be sacrificed. And so our state government’s ministers have begun their ritual sermons on the dangers of overspending. (Photo: California’s Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest.)

They are preaching nonsense. California’s real problem is underspending.

Go ahead and dismiss my claim as blasphemy. After so many years of budget crises and big deficits, Californians have adopted a budget theology grounded in self-flagellation, even though our recent budgets contain small surpluses. You can probably recite the catechism yourself: We’re still sinners who spend too much on state services! Far more than we take in! So save us, Non-Denominational Higher Power, from our profligate selves! Punish us with budget cuts or spending limits or a rainy day fund!

I’m sorry, but what our spending religion really needs is reformation.

And that requires genuine revelation. Our state’s tendency to produce big deficits is not caused by big spending. We have had big deficits because our state budget is based on volatile formulas that tend to expand deficits in unpredictable ways. In fact, California has long been on par with other states in expenditures per capita and in spending as a percentage of state GDP. Still, we cling to our budget religion and, fearing overspending, we take the cheaper path—which often costs the state more money in the long run.

The problems of underspending are most obvious when it comes to pension obligations. California governments and employees have long spent too little money on contributions to pension funds, which are underfunded. So, to try to catch up to our pension obligations, California taxpayers are having to make much bigger contributions now. And those catch-up contributions are leading to even more underspending on critical services, as money that should go to schools or health care or infrastructure is used to cover pensions.

The costliness of underspending is also the story behind rising public higher education costs in California. Over generations, the state has cut back its relative contribution to the University of California and California State University systems. This underspending has been made up for in part with ever-higher tuition fees for students. And, despite what you may read, the latest UC scandal is also about underspending; a state audit’s central allegation is that UC’s office of the president accumulated more than $100 million in funds that it wasn’t spending.

That scandal reveals a hypocrisy in our budget religion; overspending may be the stated enemy, but underspending gets you into far more trouble. The state parks department kept a secret reserve of unspent funds that became a major scandal in 2012. In California’s prisons, underspending led to an intervention by the federal courts, which ordered the state to spend more on its unconstitutionally overcrowded prisons and reduce its prison population.

Our state’s leaders understand the problem with underspending, but they haven’t been successful at explaining the problem, credibly, to the public. It also hasn’t helped that when state officials do need to spend big, they haven’t been very good at it.

Underspending also explains problems with our basic services. Studies have found that the state spends tens of billions less on schools than would be necessary to provide all Californians with an adequate education. And that underspending has real costs: California is not producing enough college graduates and skilled workers.

The state has made bold promises on child care and early childhood education that it hasn’t adequately funded, leaving citizens to pay for the rest. Child care now costs more than college tuition here. And housing costs more than just about anything, in part because we’ve spent so little on housing that we have a massive shortage, which forces Californians to pay housing prices more than twice the national average.

That the state has failed for generations to spend enough to build and maintain infrastructure is obvious in the degraded condition of roads, bridges, and waterways. The state’s failure to create strong enough spillways at Oroville Dam is forcing California to make hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of repairs and upgrades before the next rainy season.

Our state’s leaders understand the problem with underspending, but they haven’t been successful at explaining the problem, credibly, to the public. It also hasn’t helped that when state officials do need to spend big, they haven’t been very good at it. Examples include the new Bay Bridge, with its delays, cost overruns, and questions about the integrity of its steel rods, and the high-speed rail project, where spending and construction has been so slow that many people think the project will die.

In recent budgets, Gov. Jerry Brown and the legislature have sought to counter the state’s tendency to underspend now and pay later. They’ve made a great show of efforts to pay down debt. In his current budget proposal, Brown suggests making a large advance contribution to pensions now, in order to reduce liabilities later.

But that payment, unfortunately, is achieved in a questionable manner: by borrowing billions from a state special fund. As Stanford lecturer and former Schwarzenegger advisor David Crane wrote recently, since pension contributions get invested, that payment amounts to a “leveraged bet” on a stock market that Governor Brown himself has warned is overdue for a correction.

Brown has grown popular as a proselytizer of the credo that California can be managed on the cheap. That’s appealing dogma for a state whose people struggle with a very high cost of living.

But the realities of our state should remind us that successfully running California on the cheap is a fantasy that has curdled into a costly article of faith. And we parishioners are being stuck with the tab.

(Joe Mathews is Connecting California Columnist and Editor at Zócalo Public Square … where this column first appeared. Mathews is a Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (UC Press, 2010)

-cw