LOS ANGELES

CORRUPTION WATCH-While everyone talks about Measure S in terms of planning, the reality is that Measure S is less about development and planning and writing EIRs than it is about something else: Measure S is about stopping corruption at LA City Hall. 

How Corruption Runs LA City Hall 

The Los Angeles Times has run a few recent articles about corruption at Los Angeles City Hall. This corruption works very simply. 

(1) A developer buys a piece of land on which he wants to build a large project. 

(2) The developer pays money to the Mayor and the councilmember where the project will be located. 

(3) The Mayor and city councilman override all the laws that say the Project is illegal. 

(4) Later, the Mayor and city council usually give the developer millions of tax dollars which can be 10 to 20 times greater than the bribes. 

As the LA Times wrote, developer Samuel Leung gave Garcetti’s “charity,” $60,000 and Garcetti lessened the number of votes necessary for Leung’s project to be approved. Leung also gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the councilmembers. The zoning obstacles disappeared. 

As the LA Times wrote, developer Rick Caruso gave Garcetti’s “charity,” $125,000 and his project got the desired approvals. 

The CIM Group’s project at 5929 Sunset shows the later stages of the corruption dance. The City then gives the developer millions of dollars. As CityWatch  showed, Garcetti gave $17.4 million to a project which violated a court order. 

The many ways to pay bribes exceed the scope of this article. Years ago the bribes seemed smaller. Developers would get employees and relatives to make campaign contributions to the mayors and councilmembers and then the contributors would be paid back by the developer. Try to prove that Larry Bond’s gift to his sister was not a birthday present as opposed to repaying her for her donation to Tom LaBonge? 

Some councilmembers had consulting jobs in foreign countries which they would visit every so often. We know about Swiss banking laws, but few people know that Luxembourg is the money laundering capital of Europe. Many councilmembers and superior court judges are very friendly with Luxembourgers living in Los Angeles. 

A favor today can be paid back via “Citizens United” and no one gets to see who is paying the money. The Citizens United case serves one purpose – to facilitate political corruption. 

How the City Repays the Bribes 

The corruption does have an evil beauty about it. Many developers not only get their illegal projects unanimously approved (which is worth hundreds of millions to them,) but the City then gives them tens of millions of tax dollars. The private Grand Avenue Project in DTLA is getting $197 million from the City. In fact, the corruption is so well known, that China (who is also putting up $290 million,) refers to the Grand Ave project as a “government” project and therefore it cannot fail. 

How Measure S Stops Corruption 

No matter what means a developer uses to buy the Mayor or a city councilmember, there is only one way the Mayor and city council can confer benefits on the developer: Spot Zone his property. If Rick Caruso’s property is not Spot Zoned to what he needs, his project remains illegal. It doesn’t matter how much money he forks over to Garcetti, Koretz or any other councilmember in order to receive unanimous approval. Without the Spot Zoning, his project remains illegal. 

Because Measure S makes Spot Zoning illegal, there will be no reason for any developer to pay Garcetti one cent in bribes. Measure S prevents Garcetti and the councilmembers from doing jack for the developer. 

Gail Goldberg Tried to Stop Spot Zoning 

The corruption behind Spot Zoning is not new. In 2006, former Director of Planning Gail Goldberg tried to stop it. She told then Councilmember Eric Garcetti that allowing developers to set the zoning they wanted was bringing disaster to Los Angeles. Gail Goldberg is out of her job as Planning Director, but Spot Zoning is alive and well. 

Spot Zoning has wreaked havoc on LA because there is no planning. Garcetti and the LA City Council seem to have no regard for our Quality of Life. All that matters is how much loot they can pull in from developers. As a result, Los Angeles has fallen to the very bottom of the list of livable urban areas. The middle class is fleeing and employers are following them to other places in the country with less corruption. Even Chicago, the Windy City, has less corruption and is attracting new businesses. 

Any Candidate Who Opposes Measure S Supports Bribery 

Garcetti opposes Measure S because he supports bribery. And each councilmember who opposes Measure S also supports bribery. How do we know this? Measure S only stops projects based on Spot Zoning, and Spot Zoning rests on bribery. 

This is why the Garcetti Lie Machine is operating overtime to deceive people into believing that Measure S stops all construction. Garcetti does not want voters to understand that Measure S only stops projects based on the bribery for Spot Zoning. 

The Courts Have Found Garcetti Uses Lies and Myths to Subvert the Law 

In January 2014, Judge Allan Goodman found that Eric Garcetti’s Hollywood Community Plan Update was based on Lies and Myths which subverted the law. Speaking in moderate legalese terms, Judge Goodman used the words “fatally flawed data” and “wishful thinking.” In everyday language, that means Lies and Myths. Judge Goodman used the actual word “subvert” when he ruled that Garcetti’s Lies and Myths subverted the law (CEQA - the environmental protection statute.) 

City Hall is desperate to prevent the voters from passing Measure S because it would kill the bribery at Los Angeles City Hall at a time when Garcetti needs to gather up as much cash as possible to run for CA Governor or U.S. Senator. Not only will passage of Measure S cut off the endless bribery, it will harm Garcetti politically. As long as his extortion-bribery racket runs, he is the hero who shovels billions of dollars to his buddies. But if Measure S passes, Garcetti will become political poison. 

A Yes Vote on S stops City Hall Corruption!

(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. He is not connected with the Yes on Measure S campaign.)  Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

MALL CULTURE REVISITED-When regional shopping centers first appeared in the mid 1950s, they were considered by most Americans to be the wave of the future. As a radical new type of commercial land use, the shiny new malls with their up-to-date modernist architecture, free parking and good access roads were a refreshing contrast to the increasingly tired looking and deteriorating downtowns and main street business districts, which had little or no new construction during the Great Depression, World War II and the initial postwar years. The malls were immediately popular with consumers. They provided the convenience of having retail stores placed together in one location along an automobile free, internal mall “anchored” by at least two major department stores at either ends of the mall. And there was plenty of free parking. 

However, as the decades went by it became increasingly evident that there were undesirable side effects accompanying the widespread development of regional malls:

CBD Deterioration 

Most evident was the stagnation and deterioration of downtowns and main street business districts as customers and then retailers abandoned them for the new regional malls. When developers proposed the malls, most elected officials and planning officials saw them as progress, as forces for economic growth and additions to the local tax base. It occurred to very few officials that, because retail demand is fixed and based on demographics such as population, income levels and the purchasing patterns of different ethnic and racial groups, consumer demand that would be met by the regional malls would come from reduced retail sales in the existing downtowns and main street business districts. So increases in property tax and sales tax revenues from the new malls were at least partly offset by reductions in or a stagnation of property tax and sales tax revenues from the downtowns and the main street business districts. The only way to avoid business district stagnation and deterioration would be for the mall to be located in a city with a growing population and/or with increasing per capita incomes.   

As the downtowns and main streets deteriorated, local governments enacted programs to revitalize them. This resulted in the expenditure of tax dollars to subsidize redevelopment projects, dollars that could have been spent on other basic government services, such as maintaining streets, water mains, sewers and other infrastructure and providing more parks and open space. The only exception to this pattern of business district deterioration are the business districts in elite, upscale communities that have the purchasing power to both support their local business districts and patronize nearby regional malls.

The sharp contrast of shiny new malls and deteriorating business districts could have been avoided with better planning, by adopting a strategy for the location and form of retail development in a city. 

Industrial Land Removed 

Some regional malls, such as the Northridge Fashion Square and Topanga Plaza, are located on land zoned industrial, which otherwise would have been developed with light industrial and other similar uses that would add to a city’s economic base. Industrial zoned land was likely used for those malls because it was less expensive per square foot than commercially zoned land. And the Century City Mall is located on land that was formerly part of a movie studio and the city’s economic base. 

Incoherent Urban Form 

A more subtle, undesirable effect is the erosion of a coherent urban form. Prior to the end of World War II, cities in the United States had prominent downtowns and a series of pedestrian oriented, main street business districts and commercial intersections to serve the individual communities and neighborhoods that make up a city. Each community and neighborhood had a business district that was the center of a community or a neighborhood and was a major part of their identities.   

But, as the regional malls and other shopping centers overlayed this pattern, it became harder to identify community centers. Is the center of Sherman Oaks along a half mile of Ventura Boulevard or is it in the nearby Sherman Oaks Fashion Square mall? Is the center of North Hollywood along a quarter mile section of Lankershim Boulevard or is it in the ValleyPlaza/Laurel Plaza shopping centers near the intersection of Victory and Laurel Canyon Boulevards? Is the center of the Wilshire District in the Miracle Mile along Wilshire Boulevard or is it at the Beverly Center, Beverly Connection, and the Grove shopping centers seven blocks to the north?   

The following shopping centers are properly located within a larger, existing business district: the Seventh Street Marketplace, Hollywood/Highland, Century City, Westside Pavilion, Santa Monica Place, Crenshaw Mall, Promenade Mall, Sherman Oaks Galleria and the Panorama City Mall. The following malls are not located within an existing business district and draw retail sales away from other nearby businesses: The Beverly Center, the Grove, Westfield Mall in Culver City, Fallbrook Square, Topanga Plaza (on the outer edge of Warner Center), Sherman Oaks Fashion Square and Valley Plaza/Laurel Plaza.

Random Locations 

The regional malls are often randomly located, wherever a developer can find large tract of land zoned either commercial or industrial, which also permits commercial development. They were also not evenly distributed throughout Los Angeles. For example, the Promenade, Topanga Plaza and Fallbrook Square shopping centers are clustered together in Woodland Hills on the west side of the San Fernando Valley. Meanwhile, there are no regional malls to the east in Reseda.   

Location by Income Levels 

The regional malls, of course, are not evenly located with regards to income levels in a city. Rather, they are placed in the affluent and middle income sections of a city where there is substantial retail demand. It is no surprise then that there are no malls in poor communities. An example of this is the west side of the Los Angeles. Six regional malls serve it, while less affluent central Los Angeles has only three; the Seventh Street Marketplace downtown, Hollywood/Highland and the Crenshaw Mall. 

And none of the three can really be considered inner city shopping malls because the Seventh Street Marketplace gets a substantial portion of its sales from more affluent customers working downtown and Hollywood/Highland derives some of its sales from tourists and is near the west side of Los Angeles and Hancock Park. Finally, Crenshaw Plaza is near Baldwin Hills, with its higher incomes. 

Incomplete Centers 

While the regional malls are designated “regional centers” on the City of Los Angeles’ community plans, most lack the wide range of commercial and non-commercial uses found in traditional downtowns, such as office buildings, hotels, institutional uses and government buildings. At best, they are only half of a center, lacking the rich mix and diversity of uses in a traditional downtown. This has contributed to the monotony and dullness of suburban communities, where most of the malls are located. If one has seen one suburban regional shopping center, one has seen them all. 

No Pedestrian Orientation 

A clear defect of almost all of the shopping malls is their lack of a pedestrian orientation to the surrounding streets, such as The Grove which faces inward to a lively private pedestrian street. Nearly all of LA’s shopping centers face inward to their interior malls. Most are surrounded by a sea of surface parking and the urban malls have either blank walls or parking structures facing the surrounding streets. 

While the retail buildings in the Grove Shopping Center in the Wilshire district have picturesque architecture, the center has the typical pattern with blank walls facing Third Street and a massive parking structure looming over and facing the adjacent Pan Pacific Park. Rather than just facing inward, stores in a shopping center should also face the street in order to “activate” the street, to make it interesting for pedestrians to encourage pedestrian activity. The new urbanist movement in planning and architecture, which favors downtowns and traditional, pedestrian oriented main street business districts, has been critical of shopping centers due to their lack of orientation to the surrounding streets. 

Traffic 

A final undesirable impact is traffic. Because most shoppers arrive in their cars, regional shopping centers are major traffic draws, creating localized congestion and the need for street widenings as part of their construction. Connecting the malls to Los Angeles’ expanding rail transit system would reduce the amount of traffic congestion. However, less than half of the existing malls will eventually be served by the rail transit lines. They are the Seventh Street Marketplace downtown, Hollywood/Highland, Century City Shopping Center, Santa Monica Place, Crenshaw Mall, the Panorama City Mall and the Promenade Mall in Warner Center. 

The malls that will not have rail transit connections are the Beverly Center, the Grove and Fallbrook Square, Topanga Plaza, Northridge Fashion Square, Sherman Oaks Fashion Square and Valley Plaza/Laurel Plaza in the San Fernando Valley. The Sherman Oaks Galleria, the Westside Pavilion and the Westfield Plaza in Culver City may or may not have a transit connection depending on the route of the subway line between Van Nuys and Westwood that will eventually be built under the Santa Monica Mountains and later extended south to LAX.

Planning Non-Policies 

Despite their major impacts, there are no policies and regulations concerning the location and design of regional shopping centers in LA’s General Plan and in the zoning regulations of the City of Los Angeles. For these planning documents, regional malls do not exist. If a regional shopping center meets all the requirements of the commercial or industrial zoning for a site, then they are deemed to be ministerial projects that need only a building permit for approval. If they do require zone changes, zone variances or conditional use permits, then the final decision on whether to approve a new shopping center is not made by the Planning Department staff or by the Planning Commission. 

Instead the councilmember representing the area in which the mall is to be located makes the decision. These politicians and their deputies usually have no background in city planning, and they will almost always approve new malls within their district due to the promise of more jobs and property and sales tax revenues. The new malls get approved regardless of whether they fit in with surrounding development, whether they have a pedestrian orientation and despite their economic impacts on nearby business districts.

For many decades, market forces rather than sound planning principles have mostly determined the patterns of land use, density and height in Los Angeles. The development community, rather than the Planning Department staff, has done most of the planning in Los Angeles and in most other cities, with most elected officials ratifying decisions made by the developers. 

If approved, Proposition S on the March, 2017 ballot will curb the spot upzones and General Plan amendments which have been used to approve some of the regional malls and expansions of existing malls. 

Policies Needed 

Rather than prohibit regional shopping centers as a land use, policies and regulations on the design and location of new or expanded regional malls are needed in order to improve the quality of the built environment in Los Angeles and avoid their harmful impacts. If the City Council were to finally enact policies and regulations for regional shopping centers, they should have these provisions: 

1. Regional shopping centers should be located within existing business districts, to strengthen      them, rather than draw retail business away from them. The only exceptions to this policy should be for planned communities built on vacant lands that to not have an existing business district and poor communities not served by any existing regional malls. 

In order for a regional mall to be approved, an economic impact study should be prepared with a study verifying that there is unmet retail demand that the mall would satisfy and that the mall would not have an adverse economic impact on existing business districts within a three mile radius.  

2. Regional shopping centers should not be located on tracts of land zoned and planned for industrial development, in order to preserve the City’s economic base and because vacancy rates for industrial buildings are lower than those for commercial land uses. 

Regional shopping centers should be designed so that there are stores facing existing commercial streets next to the mall in order so those streets will have a pedestrian orientation. 

3. So that they are in scale with their surroundings, the height of urban malls should not substantially exceed the height of surrounding commercial buildings. 

4. The exteriors of the regional centers should have detailing, articulation and façade variations so they are not dull looking, modernist boxes. 

5. Parking structures serving urban malls should have exterior facades matching the main buildings they serve, so that the structure does not look like a parking structure and the parked cars are not visible from the outside. An example of a parking structure not having exterior facades and appearing very functional is the structure for The Grove. 

6. Bright digital signs should not be permitted on the exterior facades of shopping centers. 

7. Overhead utilities along the streets surrounding a new shopping center should be placed  underground. 

8. Trees and landscaping within the shopping center should be coordinated and compatible with trees and landscaping along surrounding streets. 

Because the regional malls are under unified ownership and thus are easier to manage, they are more likely to be redeveloped and expanded every 20 to 30 years. Policies and regulations are also needed to address existing malls proposed for expansion. Those policies should be:

1. Stand-alone malls that are not located within an existing business district should not be permitted to expand.   

2. Stand-alone malls should be encouraged to redevelop with non-commercial uses or mixed use town centers when they reach the end of their economic lives. Such non-commercial uses should be residential or industrial. 

Endangered Malls 

With the era of regional shopping centers now over 60 years old, the malls that competed so successfully with the downtowns and the main street business districts are now themselves facing competition from big box retail stores, factory outlet centers, E-commerce, and other newer malls. With more retail sales now occurring online, there is less need for retail space in the United States. 

Even with unified ownership and management, there are some malls in Los Angeles and other cities in the United States that have declined and lost customers and tenants. Increasingly, “dead” malls are being redeveloped with mixed use, pedestrian oriented town centers favored by new urbanism. In addition, declines in income levels in sections of some cities also mean that the regional malls serving them have had to be redeveloped, with upscale department stores being replaced with discount stores, as with the Panorama City Shopping Center. 

With the changes in the retail environment that the regional malls are facing, the continued success of regional shopping centers in the United States is uncertain and regional malls may increasingly be the wave of the past.

(John Issakson is a planning activist living in Los Angeles.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

WHAT THE RESISTANCE LOOK’S LIKE-- More than 120 companies have joined a legal brief rebuking President Donald Trump and his executive order barring refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries from entering the country, Reuters reports. Among those companies are some of America’s biggest players  --

 California’s Apple, Google, and Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX -- who argued in an amicus curiae brief that the Trump administration’s ban “inflicts significant harm on American business.” 

According to Reuters, the brief continued: 

Highly skilled immigrants will be more interested in working abroad, in places where they and their colleagues can travel freely and with assurance that their immigration status will not suddenly be revoked. Multinational companies will have strong incentives … to base operations outside the United States or to move or hire employees and make investments abroad. 

So much for Trump’s technology summit last December. The tech sector wants reform, and it’s willing to flex its muscle to get it. 

And those tech executives aren’t wrong. Restrictions on worker visas like the H1-B program would deprive American tech companies of essential talent. While computer-related jobs are the largest source of new wages in the country (per Code.org), American colleges barely graduate enough skilled workers to tackle the more than 50,000 computing jobs currently open; about 70 percent of tech jobs may go unfilled in 2020, according to the Department of Labor. 

Beyond tech workers, Trump’s travel order has prohibited hundreds of brilliant scientists and academics and nearly 16,000 university students from re-entering the country. Seven founders and CEOs of the tech sector’s most successful companies are the children of immigrants; Trump’s executive order could create a brain drain that the ever-innovative Silicon Valley obviously doesn’t need. 

It would not be churlish to regard tech companies’ benevolence with suspicion. The brief includes Uber, whose CEO Travis Kalanick was a member of Trump’s business advisory council until last week, and his ride-sharing app hemorrhaged users after breaking a New York Taxi Workers Alliance work stoppage at the city’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in protest of Trump’s travel ban. It’s worth noting that Lyft, which enjoyed a corresponding boost in users as a result, is also a signatory -- and a beneficiary of Trump adviser Peter Thiel’s timely investment.  

Tech companies are, at their core, capitalistic enterprises: If business interests happen to overlap with human interests, that’s a happy coincidence that can help a company’s bottom line. This fact is very clear to liberal critics of major corporations, but it’s often lost when the political agenda coincides with left-wing justice. That was certainly the case when corporations boycotted North Carolina businesses last year as a response to the state’s anti-LGBT “religious freedom” legislation. As I asked then: Is it hypocritical for liberals to rail against money-in-politics measures like Citizens United and corporate lobbyists while lauding tech conglomerates for effectively strong-arming elected officials with their economic clout? 

In the case of the Trump order, the will of a corporation isn’t just the will of an executive board with fiduciary responsibilities -- it’s actually the will of people too. That’s according to reporting in the New York Times on Monday that detailed how organizers and activists like the group Tech Solidarity are pushing back on corporate management from within, holding executives accountable for their dealings with the Trump administration and, occasionally, staging internal protests of their own companies. “I want pressure from below to counterbalance the pressure management is already feeling from above,” organizer Maciej Ceglowski told the Times. “We have to make sure we’re pushing at least as hard as Trump is.” 

In the aftermath of the Women’s March on Washington, Jamelle Bouie made a curious observation: Protests actually do work, if only by force of sheer annoyance. This notion that a little complaint, no matter how small, can mushroom into a massive moment on social media has transformed corporate crisis communications in recent years, and these recent events only serve to reiterate how a focused jeremiad of dissent can change the course of those old, impenetrable institutions. 

Conservatives have been using corporate power for years to raise money and reinforce ideological battle lines. And while tech companies and their figurehead billionaires have a history of aiding liberal causes, the mobilization of corporate power from the worker up could be a game-changer. Should the tech industry’s response to Trump’s travel ban solider on as a genuine movement, corporate activism may become a new province of resistance in the Trump age.

(Jared Keller, Writer for Hire, is contributing editor at Pacific Standard where this piece first appeared.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

STAND FOR SOMETHING--It’s hard to believe just two weeks ago, three-quarters of a million women, men and children gathered in LA’s Pershing Square to raise our collective voices to send a bold message to the incoming administration. Worldwide, estimates place the number who marched at just under 5 million. The mission and vision of the marches in DC, LA, cities and towns all over the planet, were to “stand in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families – recognizing our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country.” (Photo above: Eleanor Roosevelt. ‘Pussy Hat’ provided by a marcher.)

Many who marched are new to activism, frightened by the rhetoric on the campaign trail and by President Trump’s Twitter rampages. Now that this ground swell of activism and empowerment has been released, what next?

All over Los Angeles – as well as in cities, suburbs, and towns throughout the country and the world – newly minted and experienced activists are planning and participating in “Next Up Huddles,” part of the “10 Actions for the First 100 Days” campaign that was launched at the Women’s March. These groups gather in private homes, at neighborhood bars and restaurants, in parks with the goal of mobilizing millions to “win back the country and the world we want.”

According to the website, groups will “visualize what a more equitable, just, safer, and freer world could look like four years from now— and work backwards to figure out what to do to get there. Huddles are meant to be positive, inclusive, action-oriented and grounded in the tradition of nonviolent resistance.”

Resistance is most effective when organized with specific actions, which is the intent of the Next Up Huddles, gathering Angelenos throughout the city, from downtown to the Westside, from Long Beach to the Valley.

In addition to in-person gatherings, many women throughout Los Angeles have been tapping into social media and texting to spread action lists along with contact information for Senators Feinstein and Harris, as well as congressional representatives to voice opinions about cabinet confirmations and executive orders.

Before November 8, I wrote my column about the election as a referendum for women. As the electoral map unrolled on election evening, many of us were disappointed. In the end, perhaps we have a different type of referendum – showing that women can gather together to make a difference.

To find a Next Up Huddle near you, visit WomensMarch.com.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.)

-cw

THERE’S MORE TO IMMIGRATION THAN LAWS-In late 2012, I got a call from a church member. “Seth, Harry’s picking his daughter up from school? Is Sanctuary over?” he asked me. It wasn’t, and Harry -- an undocumented Indonesian immigrant we were sheltering in our church -- wasn’t supposed to be out and about. 

In conversations with the media and our neighbors we had claimed, over and over, that the men we were protecting stayed put inside the walls of the church. It didn’t look good, my parishioner reminded me, for Harry to be walking around our tiny borough of Highland Park, New Jersey, the kind of place where the townsfolk know one another and can spot an outsider on sight. I knew he was right, but I also knew that from Harry’s point of view, picking up his daughter must have outweighed safety that day. I’d rather have bad optics than kill Harry’s soul, I told the church member. 

We had been experiencing many of these uncomfortable moments. For 11 months -- from the beginning of March in 2012, until mid-February in 2013 -- my congregation, the Reformed Church of Highland Park, offered sanctuary to nine Indonesians at risk of deportation. We offered it to keep families together and to keep the government from ruining lives and community, and because of our faith commitment to siding with the oppressed. 

But we learned that while our sanctuary offered freedom from persecution and deportation, it was also a kind of jail. We were locking up free people -- hindering the movement of men who had previously had at least the degree of “freedom” required to make a living, to cover the rent, pay for food, and otherwise contribute to their families’ well-being. They had the freedom to embrace -- and be embraced -- by their wives, to soothe their children, to be comforted by the feeling of family and community. Our friends might have been safe, but they were trapped, dependent on us for pretty much all of their material and emotional needs. Sanctuary turned out to be a perfect storm for depression and despair. 

The refugees’ stories were tragic. Indonesians of Chinese descent, including many Christians, had first fled to the U.S. during the 1990s, targeted as scapegoats during the collapse of the Suharto regime. Saul, who was the first Indonesian refugee we sheltered, told us that his brother-in-law, a priest, was attacked in his own pulpit. Militants cut off his head and then torched his church. Saul’s story was not an anomaly. More than 1,000 churches in Jakarta and beyond were burned to the ground. 

Many people fled, and thousands entered the U.S. on tourist visas. At least 3,000 came to New Jersey, where they got factory jobs. It was the late ‘90s, companies needed low-wage workers, and nobody was asking for work permits. The refugees overstayed their visas, with few consequences. Most opted not to file for asylum, in some cases for fear of government reprisal, or for lack of the language skills perceived to be necessary to make a successful case. But also, some later told me, Indonesians were surrounded by many other undocumented workers from many other lands. It seemed to be the American norm. 

After 9/11, things changed, and by 2006, deportations were in full swing. The first people targeted were often the upstanding ones who had tried to work together with immigration authorities. One night in May of that year, in a town near mine, 35 Indonesian men were rounded up in a predawn raid. None were criminals. Almost all were fathers, with undocumented wives and some combination of older Indonesian and younger American children. We watched in horror as the men were all deported within a month. That was when our church vowed not to let the government abuse immigrant families anymore. 

At first we took things slow, engaging in what I call “sanctuary behavior,” all within the law. After the raid, we invited the families of those who were taken -- and who had fled their homes for fear that they, too, would be deported -- to camp out at the church until they found new housing. We collaborated with immigration advocacy groups and supported pro-immigrant legislation. We visited detention centers, and held vigils. We forged a special relationship with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Newark that lasted for 11 months and brought temporary protection to many people. 

It was only after that relationship broke down and agents started again coming -- this time for Saul and others -- that we began to wonder if it was time to take more drastic action. Our church board prayerfully and methodically considered the implications of going against the government. Ultimately we decided that the only way to help these men that would be truly useful, that might provide some protection from deportation, would be to lock them in the church. 

Saul came first. In a few weeks, the others followed. By April we had transformed almost every Sunday School room into a bedroom, setting up futons that could be folded up during the day, so classes could still take place. At first, the sanctuary-seekers bathed in a kiddie pool; after a month, we installed two showers. We set aside a special section of the church kitchen for “sanctuary tenants.” Area churches brought food. One congregation donated a badminton net, which was put to frequent and appreciative use. 

Our close-knit community rallied to the Indonesians’ aid. We worked to lift the men’s spirits, with games and hymn sings, and hosted dinners for their families on the weekend. Doctors provided free medical clinics. We kept watch for undercover ICE agents, who patrolled in unmarked cars, scouting for “fugitive refugees.” When a town manager expressed concerns about the church not being zoned for housing, we assembled a cadre of volunteers to stand sentry and conduct a daily “fire walk” to ensure everyone’s safety. 

Sanctuary is beautiful, but messy. The narrative is written through real human lives. Those sheltered must have a voice, and the possibility to rewrite the narrative in ways that protect their hearts, minds and souls. 

There were interviews: with CNN, with the New York Daily News, and with The New York Times. People were noticing what we were doing. It was exhilarating, for the Indonesians and for us. The media attention, the ICE sightings, the local support (and anger): all of it felt like important elements in the fight for justice. 

But before long, the reality of what we were doing set in. Our guests were trapped, mere steps down the road from where their children played Little League and went to school -- because of ICE, which would pick them up if they left, and because of us. I was putting myself and the church on the line, and they loved and respected us for it. They felt obligated to abide by sanctuary at its strictest definition, but, over time, the accumulated emotional weight of being shut off from free life was too much to take. People like Harry (photos above) began to slip out to see their families. 

Sanctuary proved psychologically draining for us, too. The hardest part was that there was no obvious end in sight. I felt very guilty about this, and struggled with extreme fatigue (I was also trying to keep up with my church responsibilities). When the men started to leave the premises, I had to unlearn sanctuary a bit. This could only work, I began to realize, if these men could escape from time to time to their true sanctuaries -- their homes and wives and children. I had to learn to accept a possible accusation of fraud, as I publicly staked my reputation and the reputation of my congregation on the sanctity of physical sanctuary while privately knowing that those in my care were buckling under the rigidity of the claim. 

As time dragged on we found ourselves not only supporting the men but also providing major rental assistance to their families, who were on the verge of losing their housing. One church couple renewed their vows to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary and raised $5,000 to help with rent. That got us through a particularly difficult month. In all, we put at least $15,000 toward rental assistance. 

I struggled to take things one day at a time. To be honest, it was way too scary to look into the horizon and not be sure how this would all end. In the end, I finally got through to Gary Mead, the head of Enforcement and Removal Operations for ICE, in Washington. He heard us out and instructed the ERO director in Newark to offer Stays of Removal to the refugees in our church. Our dilemma ended. 

Now, nearly four years later, the Indonesians’ families are intact -- a relief and a blessing -- and life has returned to “normal.” Still, none have been granted citizenship. They would have benefited from Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, which never happened, or from other immigration reform efforts. I see them regularly. Some worship here. Some just stop by, to remember the blessings, and trials, of living here. 

In recent months, with talk of renewed deportations, increasing numbers of congregations, colleges, and municipalities have said they want to extend sanctuary to their undocumented neighbors. I hope they do—whether that means providing physical sanctuary or engaging in creative, combative, and sustained “sanctuary behavior” such as protesting, advocating with officials, or vigils of support. I hope that as communities make this choice they’ll remember that sanctuary is beautiful, but messy. The narrative is written through real human lives. Those sheltered must have a voice, and the possibility to rewrite the narrative in ways that protect their hearts, minds, and souls. 

And also, would-be sanctuary providers: Relish the moments of hope and possibility. Sanctuary can feel like jail sometimes, for those inside and for those offering protection. Thank God, for us, in the end, it felt like Shalom.

(Reverend Seth Kaper-Dale is pastor of the Reformed Church of Highland Park in Highland Park, New Jersey. He is running for governor of New Jersey on the Green Party ticket. This essay is part of a Zócalo Inquiry, Do Sanctuaries Really Bring Peace?  Photos courtesy of Reformed Church of Highland Park. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

HE DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH-President Trump gave his informed testimony this week that people were registered to vote and had voted in multiple states in this last election. It seems for once he knew what he was talking about.

As it turns out, members of Trump’s own family, Tiffany Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner are both registered to vote in two different states. The difference is that, unlike most of the rest of us, they are rich enough to jet set from state to state on Election Day, to vote in more than one state at once.

In fact, he is surrounded by such double registering fraudsters, including Steve Bannon, his radical alt right top adviser, Sean Spicer, his press secretary, and Steve Mnuchin, his mortgage document forger nominee for treasury secretary.

His big expert on voting fraud, Gregg Phillips -- who was Trump's source when he retweeted the lie that three million people had voted illegally -- is registered to vote in three, count them, three separate states.

So when Kellyanne Conway asked rhetorically what everyone is afraid of from an investigation of voting fraud, the most fearful would seem to be Trump himself.

In the meantime, the abuses of power continue to escalate. Sally Q. Yates was required to promise, by no less than Trump's now nominee for U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, she would be independent, as a condition of being approved for the position in the Justice Department. After approval, Acting Attorney General Yates was summarily canned for refusing to defend Trump's unconstitutional ban on Muslim immigrants.

It didn't work for Nixon, when he executed his Saturday Night Massacre, but then of course he had not already stacked the judiciary with pliable quislings.

This dramatically raises the stakes on all judicial appointments going forward, especially the Supreme Court nominees. The Democrats have already vowed to filibuster anyone Trump nominates, justifiably presuming it will be someone from the far right.

We will thoughtfully hold our fire until the nomination is announced. There will be plenty of time for strong opposition, and we will no doubt oppose.

In particular we will require that whoever is nominated must forcefully and unequivocally repudiate both torture and the blanket discrimination against people based solely on their country of origin. We have no doubt that Trump is in the market for torture and prejudice-happy judges, who will do his authoritarian will. We may be seeing just the beginning of more decisions as bad as the Dred Scott case.

Let us remember that in Nazi Germany there were many judges without the basic integrity to resist Hitler's mounting crimes against humanity, who, to their eternal shame, went along with the will of the dictator. This was sold to them as a Christian theocracy too, you know.

It will not happen here because we held our tongues. 

In the meantime, please continue to protest the extreme ignorance of Trump's so-called extreme vetting.

(Michael N. Cohen is a former board member of the Reseda Neighborhood Council, founding member of the LADWP Neighborhood Council Oversight Committee, founding member of LA Clean Sweep and occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

RIGHT WING POWER GRAB--President Donald Trump reportedly did not realize he was promoting chief strategist Steve Bannon to the National Security Council (NSC) Principals Committee when he signed the executive order dropping intelligence and defense officials from the top government panel and elevating the former Breitbart News chair in their place.

The New York Times reported over the weekend that Trump had not been fully briefed on his own executive order, which became "a greater source of frustration to the president" than the protests and legal actions over his travel ban blocking immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries.

Reporters Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman depicted an administration that's just barely keeping a lid on its internal crises, turf wars, and lack of preparation—and a scheming chief strategist that's successfully taken advantage of it all.

They wrote:

[White House chief of staff Reince] Priebus told Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon that the administration needs to rethink its policy and communications operation in the wake of embarrassing revelations that key details of the orders were withheld from agencies, White House staff, and Republican congressional leaders like Speaker Paul D. Ryan.

Mr. Priebus has also created a 10-point checklist for the release of any new initiatives that includes signoff from the communications department and the White House staff secretary, Robert Porter, according to several aides familiar with the process.

Mr. Priebus bristles at the perception that he occupies a diminished perch in the West Wing pecking order compared with previous chiefs. But for the moment, Mr. Bannon remains the president's dominant adviser, despite Mr. Trump's anger that he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed giving his chief strategist a seat on the National Security Council, a greater source of frustration to the president than the fallout from the travel ban.

Trump seemingly clarified on Twitter that he calls his own shots, "largely based on an accumulation of data, and everyone knows it." He also accused the Times of writing "total fiction" about him.

The executive order promoted Bannon, a white nationalist with no foreign policy or government experience, to a regular seat at some of the most sensitive meetings at the highest levels of government, along with other NSC meetings. Meanwhile, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—who need to be confirmed by the Senate—were directed to only attend meetings when discussions pertain to their "responsibilities and expertise."

The memo led to speculation that the right-wing power grab in the executive branch could be setting the stage for a coup d'état.

(Nadia Prupis writes for Common Dreams  … where this report was first posted.)

-cw

APLERN AT LARGE--In my last CityWatch article, I emphasized what the Measure S supporters are FOR.  A few key questions are in order for those opposing Measure S, particularly because those of us supporting the measure are virtually all volunteers, and virtually all opposing Measure S are getting PAID. 

PAID as in "Primarily Associated In Development", and who are getting either direct or indirect support from developers, either through their salary/job or the promise of new jobs if we continue our out-of-control development policies--er, I mean practices, because we HAVE no coherent policies with respect to Planning, despite it being illegal to not follow our City Charter and Bylaws. 

A few questions are in order for those who oppose Measure S--particularly for the benefit of Angelenos on the fence on this measure, and particularly aimed at those who recognize why the measure is being pushed but fear any "unintended consequences": 

1) How will you address the concerns and needs of those who have--either enthusiastically or with the resigned determination that we now have no choice to save our City--supported Measure S? 

2) Why is the recent "reform in financing City Hall campaigns" and "getting developer money out of politics" something we didn't see before Measure S, and are these talking points from City Hall to be believed at this time, and under these circumstances? 

3) Have more affordable housing and sustainable development been occurring under Mayor Garcetti and the City Council, or have these problems been sharply worsening under their "leadership"? 

4) If Measure S limits OVER-development, but allows legal development that could virtually double our supply of homes and apartments within five years, HOW does Measure S prevent sustainable development and affordable housing? 

5) Do our current development practices at Planning really favoring the average Angeleno, or just the wealthy and connected...and why are so many homeowners groups and affordable housing/homeless advocacy groups supporting Measure S? 

6) Are their enough parks and open space being created by our current development practices in Los Angeles? 

7) What's wrong with City staff, and not "hired guns" paid and influenced by contractors, performing legally-mandated EIR's to ensure their accuracy and impartiality? 

8) If we're to allow decreased parking for developers on certain products, how are we to protect these developments' neighbors from being impacted by cars parked on/next to their private properties, and how we will demand and ensure alternative legal and financial mitigations to secure the transportation/mobility/infrastructure of our City? 

9) How much of these projects are being approved for the financial betterment and welfare of overdevelopers, and why are City residents and neighborhood councils routinely ignored if not demeaned by our City Planning Department? 

10) How DO we prevent spot-zoning, and how DO we expedite the updating of our City Charter and Community Plans? 

Measure S remains supported by a growing number of volunteers and grassroots/non-profit groups who want an accountable and sustainable and environmentally-friendly City, and remains opposed by those getting PAID (Primarily Associated In Development). 

And those who oppose Measure S?  What are they FOR?  Do they want laws to even exist in City Planning and associated with our Community Plans? 

Beyond the platitudes by those opposing Measure S, what are THEIR ideas to ensure the rule of environmental law and rights of individuals living in the City of Los Angeles?   

And is continuing down our current path something we're OK with? 

Vote YES on Measure S on March 7th--a happier, healthier, and more representative City is closer than you think!

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

-cw

EDUCATION POLITICS-On March 7, 2017, Los Angeles will play a duplicate round of last November’s presidential election, and we’ll have the opportunity to trump last year’s presidential fiasco. 

Since January 20, the billionaires have displayed a dummy hand of hubris, lies and slander. That is, the same hand playing out right now in D.C., is being played right here in LA by multi-millionaire, former-mayor Dick Riordan. It’s the choice of the monied-1%, the champions a dystopian DeVos-flavored future devoid of truly accountable or equitable public education. 

In contrast, our path of Resistance steps neatly across the millions of dollars employed to hobble Steve Zimmer’s people-responsive, and people-powered policies. You vote to resist deep-pocketed, super-wealthy, 1%-politics when you vote in March for LAUSD School Board District 4’s incumbent, Steve Zimmer. 

These are some issues to consider when reviewing the leaflets and innumerable forums and conversations littering the landscape: 

1) A school’s “chartering” agency is tasked with its oversight. That means assuring its policies and operations are truly accountable to the public; that means assuring all the public is served, and not just some of it. 

At the same time there is inherent tension between any special interest and its regulators, even not-for-profit Charters. 

So what will a school-regulatory system look like when it is governed by electeds who are financed by Charter partisans such as the CA Charter Schools Association and private equity education-sector investors? 

Two of Steve Zimmer’s challengers are beholden financially to precisely such groups and individuals vested in the special-interests of Charter Schools. 

But Steve Zimmer is not. 

So who will be free of bias to regulate these schools in the best interests of all our public school children? 

2) A school board is concerned with ideology; its superintendent and staff with operations and realizing policy. 

LAUSD’s expensive escapades with technology-driven chicanery were coaxed by LAUSD staff, approved and overseen by its board. It’s an intimate tango to be sure, but the original sin lies in the folly of its architect and engineers, not the signal operators. 

The financial underwriters of the creative team choreographing LAUSD iPad ignominy were Eli Broad and his allied billionaires. John Deasy was their impresario, hand-picked to lead LAUSD. And it was the leadership of Mónica Garcia that orchestrated board approval and oversight of Deasy’s debacle; Eli Broad’s billions supported both Deasy and Garcia. 

Deasy is long-gone but his operations remain under legal scrutiny. Garcia is displaced as board president yet her role as promoter of Deasy’s technology-agenda is unchallenged and her mantle as Broad’s acolyte uncensored. 

Fast-forward to March’s school board election where three candidates benefit directly from Broad and his allies’ wherewithal. Two would tar Zimmer falsely with exclusive blame for the iPads via mailers from Independent Expenditure Committees of the 1%, while the third – Garcia – actually was the scheme’s chief champion. Taxpayer accountability should swamp all three. 

3) Broad’s wealthy billionaire-class underwrites and motivates a central stalking-horse of “Education ®eform”: to disintegrate that core of the teaching profession, its professional teachers. 

As financiers of the defeated Vergara v California, the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of five statues “protecting” classroom teachers, Education-®eforming industry titans seek to circumvent this judgment through elections. By supporting a plaintiff’s witness for LAUSD school board, a defendant would be transformed to plaintiff; the LAUSD itself would accuse its very own constituent teachers. 

This trojan-horse strategy could inflict widespread collateral damage on business-labor relations, tilting the advantage toward those billionaires whose special interests are advanced in supporting their candidate’s role-reversal. 

Obligated by financial support and legal testimony, such a board member’s fealty would be inherently compromised. These candidates are unqualified, in the paradigm of Rick Perry who would shutter the department he is appointed to run, or Steve Mnuchin who would abolish all populist protections governing his department of Treasury. 

Consider how these three issues support the billionaires’ latter-day agenda for a privatized America.

Resisting the will of the 1% means transcribing the will of the 99% onto ballots. 

Listen carefully to the underlying agenda of transformative candidates: reconstitution is not necessarily constructive or progressive. 

Vote for Steve Zimmer and Resist Trumpism.

(Sara Roos is a politically active resident of Mar Vista, a biostatistician, the parent of two teenaged LAUSD students and a CityWatch contributor, who blogs at redqueeninla.com) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

BACKTALK—(Editor’s Note: This is a response to Jack Humphreville’s CityWatch article ‘La Kretz Innovation Center: A Pay to Play Pet Project’).  I am the Co-Founder and CEO of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), the primary tenant of the La Kretz Innovation Campus (LKIC).   I can’t speak to the primary thesis of your article on the LKIC – that somehow the LKIC campus is some kind of quid pro quo for Mr. La Kretz’s Hollywood development – but I can speak to some of your points regarding the Campus.

1) The La Kretz Innovation Campus is not a “pet” project of Mayor Garcetti nor Councilmember Huizar.   The project was envisioned by Mayor Villaraigosa in 2008 and the campus was purchased in 2010.  LACI was born in 2011 and is part of a comprehensive plan to build a green economy for the City of Los Angeles.  To describe it as a pet project denigrates the thinking, hard work and commitment of dozens of people who have devoted themselves to helping Los Angeles become a green technology leader.

2) The LADWP was not “forced” to invest in this project as the Department has been a leading proponent of the work we do at LACI and the Campus that supports our work.  You may not be familiar with the requirements of AB32, which makes State utilities seek new sources of sustainable energy for generation, but LACI/LKIC is one of many initiatives that the Department is undertaking to meet these challenging requirements.

3) You note a City Council motion by Councilmenber Huizar to periodically report on the progress of LKIC.  For perspective, we continuously provide metrics to various departments of the City that monitor the progress of LACI and (now) the LKIC campus.  A few key highlights: 

1. LACI has generated over $270million dollars in long-term economic value for the City of Los Angeles including more than 1200 direct and indirect jobs.
2. LACI has helped 100 clean technology start-ups locate and prosper in the Los Angeles area.  Our companies have attracted more than $115 million in investment capital and filed over 200 patents.

4) You point out that LADWP has invested about $20M (it’s actually closer to $18M) and that its real estate investment should be closely evaluated.  I think this misses the point of LKIC – it’s not a real estate play but an economic development initiative – whose mission is to help develop family supporting jobs for the citizens of Los Angeles.  Yet, if one were to evaluate LKIC strictly from a real estate perspective, one would find that LADWP has leveraged its investment by more than 2:1; that it now owns a large piece of property in the fastest growing part of Los Angeles; and that it could sell this property tomorrow for a very sizeable profit.

Taking a step back, I would like to editorialize a bit myself on the importance of making the City of Los Angeles a cleantech innovation center, thus building a huge green economy for the City of Los Angeles and the role that LACI/LKIC play in this effort.

As background, the clean technology business sector has been the fastest growing sector on the face of the earth for the past five years, growing more than 25% annually.  Most experts predict continued growth for decades to come.  Frankly, we want to grab more than our fair share of this new business growth for Los Angeles’ citizens, thus providing long term job creation.   Not only are these higher paying jobs, but research shows that 1 out of 4 cleantech jobs are manufacturing jobs vs. 1 out of 9 in non-cleantech.  Building a huge green economy for LA will rebuild Los Angeles’ industrial base in tomorrow’s fastest growing industry.   In my way of thinking, this isn’t an optional extra pet project but a critically important long term initiative for Los Angeles.

Creating companies that have innovative clean technologies and helping them get to market is the most important component of expanding this embryonic market.  Cities that create an environment that nurtures these companies will reap long term rewards.  Think Silicon Valley.  Think San Diego’s biotech hub.   Think Boston’s Route 128 technology corridor. And this is exactly what the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator does at its La Kretz Innovation Campus.  We help create innovative start-ups.

 How do we do that?  Well yes, we provide under-market priced real estate to our Portfolio Companies because these companies can’t afford market rates in Los Angeles. (they will simply go elsewhere if they can’t afford to do business here).  But, the heart of our efforts to help these companies is to provide them with seasoned, experienced coaching by successful entrepreneurs and -- once they’re ready – we introduce them to people/companies that might help them.  For example, right across the hall from where these companies are seated is the LADWP energy and water efficiency test and certification R&D labs.  This accelerates the growth of our Los Angeles-based start-ups by providing easy access to a leading utility’s R&D lab.  Nowhere else in the country – and perhaps the world – is there such close cooperation between innovators and utility engineers than at LKIC.

I have given close to six years of my life to this project because I believe it represents the future for Los Angeles.  I urge you and your readers to not only support this effort, but to encourage the City of Los Angeles to double-down on its investment.  It will pay off in ways unimaginable.

 (Fred Walti is the founder and chairman of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator.)

-cw

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Mr. Mayor, other than reelection, you have a tough assignment, and it is much more than finding unusual photo ops. You are the mayor of the second largest city in the United States, and one of our planet’s creative capitals. Los Angeles’ population is approaching 4,000,000 people, and 2,000,000 work in Los Angeles. City Hall has a work force of 50,000 employees and an annual budget of at least $9 billion. It covers over 550 square miles, and has the largest and most congested street system in the United States. (Photo above: Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.) 

This is why the public – knowing your fine education, extensive political connections, and obvious hopes for higher office – wants you to lead. They don’t want a Mayor who just echoes the talking points of financial backers from the real estate sector, as you did last week at an anti-Measure S press conference.  

This is when you became the lead mouthpiece for some of the major real estate players that the Los Angeles Times exposed as engaging in soft-corruption.  According to the Times, these companies engage in City Hall pay-to-play to obtain spot-zones and spot-General Plan Amendments for their unplanned mega-projects. 

As I review your comments, it boils down to a basic claim. A deregulated private market can do a better job in addressing such pressing issues as homelessness and high rents than preparing, adopting, implementing, following, and updating a carefully prepared and monitored General Plan. 

Mr. Mayor, when you return from you photo-ops, just look at that Los Angeles that will be maintained if your advocacy against Measure S prevails. All the dire things you predict with a Measure S victory are already widespread in today’s Los Angeles. Your case that conditions will get better by maintaining the status quo is just not credible. The evidence is right in front of us. We only need to look at nearby cities with current General Plans that they adhere to, like Pasadena and Santa Monica. Without the spot-zone changes and spot-plan amendments stopped by Measure S, these cities demonstrate that good planning can address a housing crisis, a well-maintained infrastructure, and robust economic activity. They have no need to give away the store in exchange for handouts from developers. 

Now, let’s get into the specifics of the Chicken Little sky-is-falling claims about Measure S. 

1) No, Mr. Mayor, Measure S does not stop housing construction. 

Nearly all housing, including apartments, in Los Angeles is built by-right. It does not require a spot-zone change or spot-General Plan Amendment from the ever-obliging City Council. The projects requiring these special City Council ordinances, like the Caruso project on LaCienega, are a small percentage of residential construction projects. 

The underlying problem is that because of economic inequality, few people can afford the rents of these new apartments, especially the luxury ones that Measure S opponents, like you, so venerate. There is also no evidence that a glut of luxury units, which is already happening in Downtown Los Angeles, cause landlords of less expensive apartments to lower their rents to make them affordable for the rest of the public.

This is because the "free" market will never build more than a minuscule amount of affordable housing through programs to privatize affordable housing, like SB 1818 (density bonus). The real way to expand the supply of affordable housing is for the public sector to build affordable housing, and that requires government programs, such as Measure HHH, an approach consistent with Measure S.

2) No Mr. Mayor, Los Angeles is not on verge of a population boom and must therefore open the floodgates to unplanned luxury apartment construction. 

The General Plan Framework, and the City's population prediction was 500,000 people too high. At present, LA has 3.9 million people, and it is only growing by about 10-20,000 people per year. It is doubtful LA will even reach the 2010 figure by 2050. 

The Framework and the prior AB 283 project also concluded that LA could reach a population of 8 million residents based on existing zoning. This clearly means that LA’s existing zones and plans do not present any barriers to (legal) housing construction.

3) No. Mr. Mayor, Los Angeles does not have a shortage of lots whose plan designations and zones permit apartment construction. 

If or when LA reaches the Framework’s demographic forecast, the city will have more than enough existing zoning to accommodate that population. Los Angeles has no need for the spot-zones and spot-plans you champion. For example, every commercially zoned parcel in Los Angeles already allows R-4 apartment houses. This means that all of LA's long commercial corridors, such as Vermont, Van Nuys, Pico, and Washington, could accommodate three story apartment buildings, including optional ground floor retail. They would not require any zone changes or plan amendments. And with SB 1818 incentives, these new buildings could incorporate four or five stories of apartments.

4) No Mr. Mayor, Measure S does not stop high density housing at subway stations. 

For example, on Wilshire Boulevard, where METRO is constructing the Purple Line Extension, existing plans and zones allow unlimited height. If, for example, the Caruso project were built one-half mile to the north, at LaCienega and Wilshire, it would not need to all those planning entitlements you support. It would also be adjacent to a future subway station. Furthermore, building luxury housing near subway or light rail stations does NOT create affordable housing. There is no supply and demand linkage between these totally disconnected parts of the housing market.

5) No Mr. Mayor Los Angeles does not have high rents because of its existing zoning. 

Rents are high because of four other reasons:

-  LA’s rent stabilization ordinance is weak, and it needs to be amended to stop vacancy decontrol and automatic annual rent increases. 

-  Congress eliminated nearly all Federal affordable housing programs, beginning in the 1970s.

- The California State Legislature dissolved the Community Redevelopment Agency, which spent 20 percent of its budget on affordable housing.

- In Los Angeles the real estate developers who fund City Hall campaigns do not want to build by-right affordable housing and market housing where it is permitted because they make fatter profits through luxury high rise buildings. Their business model, not zoning, is the barrier. 

6) No Mr. Mayor, the purpose of updating LA’s General Plan is not to facilitate the wishes of real estate investors. 

The reason we need to update the General Plan is to address climate change, determine where there is adequate infrastructure and services for existing and future development, where geology and hydrology affect the built environment, and where there is the greatest demand for housing, jobs, infrastructure improvement, and public services. 

7) No Mr. Mayor, Measure S does not prevent the City of Los Angeles from using City-owned property for affordable housing. 

This program has been on the books since the 1980s, initiated by your predecessor, Mayor Tom Bradley. The City Council then hired consultants to identify thousands of city-owned properties, but in the intervening 30 years only the air rights over several parking lots have been used for affordable housing. 

Now, coming out of a Rip Van Winkle sleep, your administration has resurrected this Bradley-era program, selecting 11 out of 9000 separate parcels that may or may not be stopped by Measure S. The thousands of parcels that would NOT be blocked by Measure S have been kept out of view, and there are no details on what is actually proposed for the 12 sites since, so far, there is only a Request for Proposals (RFP). 

If this results in serious proposals, and if they are for 100 percent affordable housing, and only need a zone change, Measure S would not make any difference. 

Meanwhile, stop scraping the bottom on the barrel to find a few hypothetical conflicts with Measure S. It is high time for you to direct your staff to identify which of the remaining 8,993 City-owned parcels are already suitable for by-right affordable housing construction. 

LA’s Cycle of Decline 

Mr. Mayor, the approach to governance revealed by your public opposition to Measure S draws Los Angeles into cycle of further decline. In LA, with all it complexity and energy, City Hall is now just governing by the seat of its pants, lurching one way or another depending on which real estate honcho walks through the mahogany doors. A diametrically different approach, one based on the careful planning and monitoring mandated by Measure S, is the leadership Los Angeles now needs.

(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].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

@THE GUSS REPORT-LA City Council got a sliver of local media attention last week when it stated its objection to President Trump’s nomination of Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), even though it regularly prevents members of the public from speaking on issues not under its purview. Regardless, Pruitt was approved 11-0 in the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee and his nomination now moves to the full Senate. 

So the Councilmembers threw caution to the wind at their subsequent meeting on Friday with an agenda item that objected to all of Trump’s other nominees. Kinda. Sorta. Well, not really. 

What they ended up doing is not thinking things through, and it could cost LA big-time, including the Olympics. 

For instance, the Councilmembers objected to Trump nominee Rex Tillerson to head the State Department. But it must have been lost on them that Tillerson is no longer a nominee, but the actual Secretary of State, sworn-in and presently overseas on his first trip. Details, details. 

Wait, wait, it gets better … 

I pointed out to City Council president Herb Wesson that for a city seeking the Olympics and in desperate need of infrastructure for it, it is not a good idea to oppose Elaine Chao as Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Transportation -- especially since she, too, was already approved, sworn-in and on the job. And one more thing: she is married to Mitch McConnell, the all-powerful U.S. Senate majority leader; not a good guy to piss-off. 

Aside from that, the blurb on City Council’s agenda condemning Chao erroneously reads that Chao’s appointment as Secretary of Transportation would, among other things, negatively impact “the rights of employees” and “a fair minimum wage.”

Huh? Since when does the Department of Transportation handle what the Department of Labor and Congress do?

Whoever wrote these blurbs for City Council may have tried to do their homework, but got it completely wrong.

Chao was the 24^th Secretary of Labor for President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009, the longest tenure in that role since WWII. And she was the Director of the Peace Corp. And she was the President and CEO of United Way. And she has a Harvard MBA. And she was the first Asian female ever to serve in a presidential cabinet. She came to the United States at age 8 from Taipei, Taiwan, not speaking a word of English and grew to personify the American Dream. 

Yep, Elaine Chao is thoroughly unqualified for a presidential cabinet position, according to the Los Angeles City Council. 

Later, Wesson sheepishly directed his colleagues to strike their objection to Chao. They did -- after I pointed out that she was already approved by the U.S. Senate 93-6. 

The Councilmembers also oppose Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, citing (among other inane notions) not that he lacks experience in this field, but that he would bring a negative impact on….religious tolerance? Carson, it so happens, was approved in the first round of screening by none other than the Democrats’ leaders of the left Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, among others. 

When it came to Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, who is actually still a nominee, City Council cited in its objection to her possible negative influence on “the economy of the American people.” 

Say what? 

If LA City Councilmembers think that the Secretary of Education influences the nation’s economic policy, perhaps DeVos should dismantle the public education system….at least those schools attended by these Councilmembers….and with good cause. 

Seriously, who wrote this stuff…former Councilmember Tom LaBonge? (Thank you, Ron Kaye, former Editor of the LA Daily News for forever memorializing this clip.) 

Councilmember Paul Koretz admitted an oversight on the list: his colleagues should also disapprove of Steve Mnuchin, the nominee for the Department of Treasury. 

It was hardly their only omission.

Does the LA City Council not object to conservative federal appellate judge Neil Gorsuch as Trump’s nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court? He is Columbia- , Oxford- and Harvard Law-educated and, at age 49, could serve 35 to 40 years on the bench, and have immense impact on the lives of all Americans. Given the blanket nature of City Council’s hit list, our 15 lawmakers either implicitly approve of Gorsuch by not having his name on it … or their lack of awareness of his name in the headlines is pretty half-baked. Or it was fully-baked, as Benjamin Braddock said in The Graduate.

Watch and see if City Council scrambles in the next week or so to voice its objection to Gorsuch now that I have pointed it out here. 

They also forgot to add objections, assuming they have them, to already-approved General James Mattis of the Defense Department, Mike Pompeo of the CIA, General Mike Flynn of the NSA, and so on and so forth. If they do not do this, it means that they either implicitly approve of these Trump appointments, given their public decrying of Trump’s other nominees, or their opinions on them are a day late and a dollar short. 

When all was said and done, the Councilmembers voted unanimously against all of them…except Chao, of whom they did not explicitly approve. You could hear a pin drop in the room. It was a bunch of ceremonial nothingness, and equal to the amount of thought they put into it. 

In an ironic twist, City Council’s opinion on these appointments will be considered by the White House with the same degree of disregard that City Council pays to the public at its own meetings.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatch, Huffington Post, KFI AM-640 and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

MIRACLE MILE--I’m sure if Mayor Eric Garcetti were asked to vote for more homelessness in Los Angeles he would answer resoundingly: NO! I’m equally sure that were each member of the Los Angeles City Council asked the same question we’d hear the same resounding answer: NO. Some might even say HELL NO! 

So, that leaves many of us in the Miracle Mile thoroughly puzzled by Councilmember David Ryu’s answer to us when he was asked to save the 500 rent stabilized (RSO) apartments the City Planning Commission ripped out of the Miracle Mile Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ). Ryu has been a consistent advocate for rent controlled housing, yet he seems genuinely convinced that one or more of his colleagues will vote to sink the entire HPOZ if he steps up and demands that the Council save the rent stabilized apartments in the heart of the Miracle Mile. 

Perhaps Ryu is worried that the Mayor will veto an HPOZ that preserves those rent stabilized apartments, which stand in the path Garcetti and his allies have carved out for supersized, transit-close development. If Ryu successfully convinces Council to restore the original HPOZ plan drafted by the Planning Department and approved by the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission, Garcetti will be foiled. The Mayor’s appointed Planning Commission eliminated those 500 RSO units from the HPOZ, so that gives us a clue as to what the Mayor might do—but maybe not. What we do know is that approximately 1000 renters will face imminent eviction if their apartments lose HPOZ protection. 

Statistically that could mean that 7 of those individuals will end up homeless. And there could be more if Council President Herb Wesson follows through with his unwarranted and unscientific poll – taking in only the views of owners, not renters – that could result in another 300 rent stabilized units being sliced from the CD 10 portion of the Miracle Mile HPOZ. 

The tenants of these RSO units are our brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and friends. They are valued members of our community and they cannot be cast into the streets because of the “significant investment that we’re making in Wilshire Boulevard,” as Planning Commission President David Ambroz recently said. Fellow Commissioner Dana M. Perlman echoed Ambroz: All those historic, small-scale, rent controlled apartments in the Miracle Mile between 8^th Street and Wilshire had to go because the multibillion dollar investment in the Purple Line subway extension requires a future of high-rise, high-density, luxury apartments. 

Preserving the neighborhood, and saving the homes of countless residents, Perlman dismissed as short-sighted. “We’re doing it for today and we’re not planning for the future, and part of our responsibility, of course, is to look to the future,” Perlman said. A future, that is, without affordable housing within walking distance of the subway being built specifically to address the needs of the transit-dependent – which is to say, people who do not live in luxury apartments and do not drive luxury cars! 

Thus far, the city’s carte blanche for developers in the Miracle Mile has eliminated 100 rent stabilized apartments, constructed 1,800 market-rate luxury units, and built just 2 low-income dwellings. This is the reality which Ryu now seems willing to embrace and extend, and with it, the guarantee that some residents will end up living on the streets. Meanwhile many others will be pushed further away from the very transit corridor they were living in because they’ll be permanently priced out of the new housing being built. That’s a morally bankrupt tradeoff, plain and simple. 

So it goes. Planning Commissioner Robert Ahn (now running for U.S. Congress), made the objective all too clear when he applauded the removal of Olympic Boulevard from the HPOZ. He inadvertently let the cat out of the bag when he said “I think we need to maintain flexibility on a major street like Olympic Boulevard for the future planning purposes.” Is no street safe from the gilded grasp of the Mayor’s developer buddies? 

Will there be a vote in favor of more homelessness? If the answer is NO, then it can only come if Councilman Ryu refuses to support the CPC gutting decision and demands all the removed properties be reinstated. And then he’ll have to show his mettle in City Council. He will need 9 other members to stand with him to override the CPC. 

Councilman Ryu supports saving RSO units. He has proven that on several occasions. We need to support and encourage him to take a stand against the CPC and the Mayor. This is his Council District and he was elected to protect our neighborhoods. 

No excuses will be entertained. A vote to sustain the CPC decision is a vote for homelessness. A vote to restore the RSO units is a vote against homelessness. Let’s make sure all our elected officials say NO to homelessness! Reinstate the Miracle Mile HPOZ! Save historic, affordable, rent-controlled housing!

(James O’Sullivan is President of the Miracle Mile Residential Association and co-founder of Fix the City … a non-profit, citizen association whose stated goal is its name … to Fix the City. He is an occasional contributor to CityWatch.)

-cw

@THE GUSS REPORT-Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin finally woke up from the slumber he has been in during his first term in office regarding alleged LAFD fire inspector fraud, a subject about which he and Mayor Eric Garcetti have long since known, but failed to remedy. Or even address.

It was here on CityWatch where the alleged fraud was first exposed in 2016, followed by stories in the LA Weekly by Hillel Aron and then on KCBS by David Goldstein. The LA Times has yet to correct its fallacious story on Deputy Fire Chief and fraud whistleblower John Vidovich. 

While there is proof that Galperin’s office is finally poking around the edges of the story, you wouldn’t know it by speaking with anyone there.

Deborah Hong, Galperin’s Assistant Deputy of Communications, a week ago denied knowledge of an investigation. Then, late last week, she said “our office’s policy is to neither confirm nor deny whether we are investigating.”  

But when asked why that rule didn’t apply to Galperin’s abundance of public appearances on radio and television during his investigation of the $40 million that disappeared within two LADWP non-profits, Hong said that she wasn’t with Galperin at the time and didn’t know the answer. 

Instead, she referred me to Ted Rohrlich, Galperin’s Deputy Controller, Policy and Internal Affairs.

Rohrlich, too, sidestepped the issue of LAFD fraud, the LADWP, LA Animal Services and other cases where the rule didn’t apply.

The other questions which Galperin’s office refused to address are as follows: 

1. Why is the Controller’s office investigating the LAFD now, even though there is documentation that they have long since known about the fraud allegations? 

2. Did Galperin’s delay have anything to do with the $350,000 that the firefighter’s national union donated to local incumbents up for re-election? 

3. Did the delay have anything to do with LAFD firefighter trainees being allowed – for the first time – to vote in union leadership elections? 

And…

4. Does Galperin acknowledge that his failure to proactively pursue a fraud investigation, and make referrals of any wrongdoers to District Attorney Jackie Lacey for prosecution, resulted in the racial discrimination lawsuit filed last week in which several of the plaintiffs were fire inspectors implicated by Vidovich? 

According to FireLawBlog.com: 

“The suit was filed yesterday in Los Angeles County Superior Court by Battalion Chief Jerome Boyd, Captain Gary Carpenter, Captain Andre Johnson, Captain David Riles, Inspector Aaron Walker and Inspector Glenn Martinez. The complaint describes Chief Boyd, Captain Carpenter, Captain Johnson, David Riles, and Inspector Walker as African American and Inspector Martinez as Hispanic.” 

Martinez and Walker are two of the inspectors identified as fraudsters by Vidovich, who is a co-defendant in the lawsuit along with LAFD Chief Ralph Terrazas, Assistant Chief Kwame Cooper and the City of Los Angeles, which is sure to cost the taxpayers a fortune to defend. 

In what may be the ultimate irony, the lawsuit alleges that the LAFD is an “all-white boys club.” Terrazas is Latino and Cooper is black. 

Instead of a good, proactive performance as City Controller, Galperin now has the City of Los Angeles playing defense. 

An even bigger breach of civic duty might have been committed by the LA Times, which does not appear to have reported on the discrimination lawsuit or Galperin’s investigation at all, based on a cursory search of its website.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatch, Huffington Post, KFI AM-640 and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

SPORTS POLITICS--To put it mildly, the National Football League needs the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers’ Inglewood stadium, scheduled to open in 2019, to deliver — and deliver big.

It had better, because a seemingly worst-case scenario has unfolded since the league a year ago voted to allow the St. Louis Rams to spurn public funding in St. Louis and relocate to Los Angeles.

EASTSIDER-The Developer vs. NELA Open Space fight is one we Angelenos understand all too well. What makes this dispute different is that there is a rational developer, and based on the respective positions of the two sides, there should be a solution that works for all. Since that hasn’t happened, the question is “why the heck not?” For the scene, the struggle, and possible solutions, read on. 

Background 

For those of you who don’t know, Glassell Park is that series of hills near downtown LA, bordered by the Glendale Freeway on the west, and the 5 Freeway on the south. Recently overwhelmed by a wave of gentrification, suddenly a small home in these hills is going for something like $600,000 - $800,000 and beyond. 

Aside from proximity to downtown, one of the main attractions of what was a sleepy little community is the presence of 4 or 5 (depending on how you count) of the last open space canyons in the City, preserving native species from critters to trees in a natural habitat. 

Over the last 15 years or so, these canyons have been ground zero for hotly contested disputes between developers, who see a great commercial opportunity, and a variety of community based groups, such as the Glassell Park Improvement Association (a homeowners group), the Glassell Park Neighborhood Council, the Mt. Washington Homeowners Association, and a coalition of open space groups under the umbrella of Nelagreenspace.  

To no one’s surprise, the amount of this open space has diminished to the point that we are essentially left with two large open spaces -- Walnut Canyon and Moss Canyon (Barryknoll is already in the midst of development.) 

The Shifting Sands of Northeast LA Politics 

Over these same fifteen years, there have been three Council Districts involved with Glassell Park -- CD1, CD13, and CD14. During that time, the political elite of the City have seen fit to gerrymander the area covered by each of these three districts so that there is little political continuity, a fact which I believe has led to the tenuous interest of the current crop of Councilmembers in actually giving a damn about the folks who live here. Two of our three Councilmembers (Huizar and Cedillo) are on the PLUM Committee. 

For example, our very own Mayor, Eric the Bold, used to have a good chunk of the community in CD13, but that has now diminished to a teeny area mostly around San Fernando Road and Fletcher Square. The District is now run by his former staff person, Mitch O’Farrell.

CD14, which used to encompass most of Glassell Park when Antonio Villaraigosa was the Councilmember, got shrunk to a pittance after his successor, Jose Huizar, decided he could make more money selling off Boyle Heights and Downtown LA. 

And finally, CD1, which was run by that paragon of planning, Ed Reyes, got radically expanded in the last redistricting exercise, and is now under the tutelage of Gilbert Cedillo. His district now includes the bulk of these canyons. 

I think the redistricting shuffle is a pretty good variation of three card monte, and gives you a clue as to exactly how rotten the state of politics currently is on Northeast LA. 

That said, accompanying the gerrymandering there has been an equal upheaval in how the politicians view Glassell Park. Back in the day, our Three Amigos (Reyes, Huizar, and Garcetti) were dead against building in the hills. They passed a bunch of legally questionable Interim Control Ordinances, Community Design Overlays, Q Conditions and many more bogus “planning tools,” all of which had the effect of stopping virtually all building of single family homes in the hills.   

The open space people were ecstatic, but some of us noticed that the real thrust of the Council actions were aimed against the right of individual people like you and me to be able to build our own home on a lot in the hills. They didn’t touch their big time campaign contribution base of large developers. The land was being warehoused. 

Of note, the bulk of the people wanting to build were multicultural families who had owned these lots for some time, and simply wanted to build their family a home. In other words, people with no real money and therefore no political power. 

Then came the housing crash in 2007-2008, and god took care of the hillsides for a while. Instead of open space, we all concentrated on figuring out how to cope with a 40% drop in the value of our homes, not to mention staying employed to pay the bills. 

The Adobe at Glassell Park 

Now the worm has turned, and housing near downtown is hot! Silverlake properties are largely unattainable, unless you are running an Airbnb party house, and anything around Echo Park has popped up like pot grown in a hothouse. We in Glassell Park (and to some extent, Cypress Park) have gotten discovered as the next great thing. 

In the midst of all this, along came the developers of The Adobe at Glassell Park, a four-acre piece of the 30-acre Walnut Canyon. Unfortunately for those who want to preserve the canyon, Adobe has the legal ability to build 32 single family homes on their four acres. This is because that land was zoned and 32 lots were approved way back when. 

With virtually no inventory in Glassell Park and a housing comeback, in 2014 the developers got serious about moving forward with their plan. It’s Unusual for developers, but these folks actually did engage the community and have a number of community meetings. Furthermore (gasp), they were and continue to be open to selling their property as open space, for a park or such, and reaffirmed this willingness last Saturday at the Glassell Park Community Center. 

On the other hand, this is a capitalist country (even before Trump), and the developers are interested in making a decent profit out of the deal. Duh. 

Saturday’s Meeting at the Glassell Park Community Center 

On January 28, a community meeting was held at our community center, a space leased by Council District One. The event (and thank you very much) was cosponsored by the Glassell Park Improvement Association and the Glassell Park Neighborhood Council. 

As usual, the crowd was huge, and the rhetoric was as toxic as the bike lane meetings were in Highland Park/Cypress Park/Glasell Park. Toxic indeed. While it is clear that the community will do everything in its power to stop the development and preserve Walnut Canyon, it is equally clear that the owners have a right to build, and the most the community can hope to do is delay the project, not stop it. 

I think it is that frustration which has led to the vehemence in attempting to block the project, a frustration over our community’s lack of political power to preserve the canyons. 

Of course an unmentioned fact is that most of the groups in our area supported the loser in the last race for CD1: Ed Reyes’ Chief of Staff Jose Gardea. In an almost $2 million dollar campaign, Gil Cedillo won by 52% to 48%. And wouldn’t you know it, the Mt. Washington crowd was prominent in the Gardea camp, many of whom had some pretty incendiary things to say about Mr. Cedillo. I won’t say that elections have consequences, but I haven’t seen a lot of kiss and make up since the election. Sigh. 

The Takeaway 

The real problem is that public institutions have failed in step up to actually do something to preserve what little open space there is left in Glassell Park. For example, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and its OberGrupenFuhrer ‘Ranger Joe’ Edmiston, has been too busy posturing to come up with the money from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to buy the land. 

It also turns out that the spiffy new Measure “A” Parks money which was just passed by the voters won’t really be available until sometime in 2019. After all the hype it turns out that even then the funds will be up for grabs by various denizens of the Supervisorial District. So good luck to our local open space folks. 

That leaves the City of Los Angeles. It seems to me that this is a grand opportunity for Council District 1 to see about some fresh ideas on how to keep Walnut Canyon as open space. God knows the rest of LA is turning into a concrete jungle, a place where the only open spaces are the potholes.

There is precedent for the City stepping up for open space. After all, a few years ago Jose Huizar proudly bought Elephant Hill for over $9 million bucks and hailed it as a great victory. 

The value of a pristine canyon or two is inestimable to all the citizens of Los Angeles, particularly those people squashed into outrageously priced condos in the downtown area. Maybe Huizar could help out, since he runs the PLUM Committee. He, after all, was the one who gerrymandered his way out of Northeast LA in favor of downtown, and I think his constituents just might like to take a ride and see a tree, or a critter, in a canyon. 

(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

REFORMING LA FOR THE PEOPLE-While I can't reasonably speak for all of those who advocate for Measure S, I can reasonably say the following: neighborhood/volunteer/community advocates have been stymied by a Downtown/Mayor/City Council/Planning elite for decades. This elite has thwarted attempts by neighborhood councils and grassroots groups to create affordable, sustainable, environmentally-favorable, and economically-beneficial living conditions in the City of Los Angeles. 

Common sense, right? And this same elite is coming out against Measure S. Most of their allies are comprised of the same ilk that has benefited financially while causing the majority of Angelenos to suffer a decrease in quality of life or to flee the City altogether, often after years of fighting against this elite. 

Despite the lies and distortions, most of this unholy alliance of builders and developers are the same people who flout the laws themselves or pay off Downtown to flout the laws. They benefit financially while they do this and -- as would be expected -- have overseen a worsening of the environment, economy and quality of life in LA as a result of their actions. 

So the same folks who have fought for grassroots voices and for neighborhood councils are fighting for Measure S. Perhaps it's sad we have come to this, but has the City Council elite (those who oppose Measure S) bothered to police itself over the last few decades? 

The answer is No. So this is what Measure S is FOR, as per Ballotpedia:  

1) FOR TWO YEARS, WE WILL STOP MEGADEVELOPMENTS, ALLOW DEVELOPMENTS THAT DON'T NEED HUGE VARIANCES, AND UPDATE OUR GENERAL PLAN/COMMUNITY PLAN/ZONING LAWS.  WE WILL HAVE THE CITY OBEY ITS OWN LAWS, AND THEY WILL BE UPDATED WITH LEGAL/COMMUNITY INPUT. 

2) THERE WILL BE A PERMANENT PROHIBITION AGAINST "SPOT-ZONING", WHICH IS WHEN THE CITY VIOLATES THE LAWS FOR A GIVEN PROJECT, BUT THE ABILITY TO PERFORM LEGAL/COMMUNITY-SUPPORTED VARIANCES WILL BE MAINTAINED. 

3) THE CITY GENERAL/COMMUNITY/AIRPORT DISTRICT PLANS WILL HAVE A LEGAL REQUIREMENT TO HAVE A PUBLIC REVIEW EVERY FIVE YEARS. 

4) ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT REPORTS (EIR'S) WOULD HAVE TO BE PERFORMED BY CITY STAFF, AND NOT BY INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS PAID BY (AND BEHOLDEN TO) THE DEVELOPERS.  IN OTHER WORDS, THESE EIR'S WOULD BE UNBIASED. 

5) NO MORE THAN ONE-THIRD OF A REDUCTION OF ON-SITE PARKING REQUIREMENTS COULD OCCUR FOR A GIVEN DEVELOPMENT. 

So now you have read the basics -- the essence of Measure S. It's a shame that we have to pursue Measure S at this time, but after decades of being lied to, of being "owned" by developers and their allies who want to make big bucks and harm the daylights out of the rest of us, we have no choice. 

Measure S supporters are your neighbors, the affordable housing advocates, and the volunteers who want parks and a livable City where children and seniors and families can thrive and enjoy life. They want big projects to remain Downtown where they belong, and for there to be smaller projects in the suburban portion of the City, with accessible jobs as well. 

It's what we're FOR. And those who oppose Measure S? What are THEY for? 

Vote "YES" on Measure S on March 7, 2017. 

A happier, reformed Los Angeles may be coming a lot sooner than you think!

(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties.  He is also a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at   [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.) Photo: LA Times. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ELECTION POST-MORTEM-If you have found yourself profoundly depressed since the election of Donald Trump, you should have been at Occidental College on Wednesday night -- it would have given you hope. The Reverend Dr. William Barber II not only laid out in painful detail what put Trump in the White House, but also took the time in the clearest of terms possible to lay out the steps we the people can do about it now. It involves coming together and asserting our majority status in this democracy. 

Barber’s thesis is that endemic racism is not only alive and well, but is literally the only force powerful enough to get poor White voters in 95 of the poorest counties in the United States and elsewhere in the South to vote against their own economic self-interest. 

These poor voters should wonder why some of those pushing Trump or prior Republican candidates make as much as $97,000 an hour while they fight a $15 an hour minimum wage. The "gift" of racism is that it is able to deflect the blame of poor White exploitation by the obscenely rich to the usual Black, Latino, Muslim, and Jewish suspects, which continues to succeed in the 21st century by offering equally poor and downtrodden working class Whites the consolation prize of feeling at least nominally superior. 

What this left us with in the latest election -- and many of the ones proceeding it -- is the voting reality that this profoundly poor racist motived the voter core of 13 Southern states to give conservative Republicans and now Trump an almost insurmountable 171 Electoral College leg-up. Republicans then only need to accumulate another 99 electoral votes out of the remaining 37 states. 

But in North Carolina, Barber didn't stop at just pointing out the racist fear motivated model that has kept putting conservatives and now Trump in power. His Moral Mondays and other programs coordinated with litigation networked across racial and state lines to engage a multi-racial and ethnic have-not majority that has finally given constitutional "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" a substantive new reality as reflected in the election of a new Democratic governor and other elected officials. 

This has been accomplished, while waging a successful judicial confrontation and a reversal of what had been the systematic gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  

What I found to be a vindication of Dr. Barber's approach to all exploited people is something he mentioned briefly in passing. In the state of West Virginia where Trump won, Dr. Barber has now been asked to speak before predominantly White audiences ow that these folks have come to realize that the racially tainted Obamacare is actually the Affordable Care Act, and that is what Trump is in the process of taking away from them. 

The significance of race in the election of Donald Trump was clearly illustrated when Dr. Barber said, "There would have been no Trump without Obama first having been president for eight years" as a catalyst to White fear expressed in racism. But by the end of the evening it was also clear to the packed audience that if we organize now across racial and ethnic lines, then 95 million Americans will not sit out the next election as they did this one. And a 77,000 vote margin will never again be allowed to put a Trump into office. 

North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP | P.O. Box 335,Durham NC 27702 | 919‑682‑4700 | Fax 919‑682‑4711 | [email protected]

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

DEEGAN ON LA-Will David Ryu’s inaction, as alleged by renters, help evict 500 Miracle Mile affordable housing renters to make room for high end developers? What had been thought of as “secured borders” may now be plums ripe for the picking for developers who are aggressively moving into Miracle Mile. They want to transform up to 500 affordable housing units currently protected by the Rent Stabilization Ordinance into massive, high-end apartment and condo complexes. 

To accomplish this, they would evict workforce renters and tear down historic structures -- a blow to the community and a blow to the City’s efforts to increase the number of affordable housing units. 

This is leading to questions as to whether or not Councilmember David Ryu (CD4) has become a conduit for City Hall’s development plan for the Miracle Mile – a plan that would see it explode with high-end luxury housing taking the place of affordable housing. The upgrading of Museum Row and the installation of the Purple Line Extension subway are driving wedges between the status quo and the future. David Ryu is caught in the crossfire. 

The area between 8th Street and Wilshire Boulevard is primarily vulnerable, but properties fronting on Olympic Boulevard, as well as on the west side of Orange Grove Avenue south of 8th Street, will also be impacted. 

Concerned renters and building owners in the affected area of the Miracle Mile are upset with what they see as Ryu’s lack of continued backing, if not his reversal, of the original boundaries of the historic preservation plan contained in the Miracle Mile Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ) currently winding its way through City Hall hearings. It’s headed for a decisive vote by the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management committee (PLUM) on February 14. 

Fears of a St. Valentine’s Day Massacre by Ryu and PLUM Committee will hopefully be mitigated by a meeting with affected renters in the Miracle Mile on Monday, February 6. Ryu has been invited there so they can explain what they consider to be his abandonment of the original borders of the Miracle Mile HPOZ: namely, the strip between 8th and Wilshire, a strip along Olympic, and a strip west of Orange Grove to Fairfax – all of which have been hollowed out of the HPOZ and would be made available to developers, they say, with Ryu’s tacit approval. 

At press time, Ryu’s office was unable to confirm that he would attend the renters’ meeting, but the clock is ticking. One week after the meeting the PLUM committee is scheduled to hear and discuss the issue that has suddenly caught fire: how and why did the original boundaries change? 

On December 8, 2016, the City Planning Commission endorsed the Miracle Mile Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ), but, at the last minute, the Commission rewrote the HPOZ boundaries that had been approved by the City’s Cultural Heritage Commission, recommended by the Planning Department, and endorsed by Ryu. But these boundaries excluded properties fronting on Olympic Boulevard, properties north of 8th Street, as well as properties on the west side of Orange Grove Avenue south of 8th Street. 

These carve-outs of areas offering affordable housing, if allowed to stand, will become a developer’s playground. 

In March, the Interim Control Ordinance now protecting the Miracle Mile, will expire and without a fully approved HPOZ covering the original territory, the land grab by developers will be on. 

Until recently, the renters believed that Ryu was on their side, but in their passionate letter to him requesting a meeting, a copy of which was obtained by CityWatch, the community challenged him, saying: 

“We relied upon your promise to protect our neighborhood and your vow to ensure that multifamily residents – especially so many rent stabilized apartment dwellers – from rampant development. Why did you allow your staff to remain silent when the Planning Commission redrew the boundaries, in effect, issuing eviction notices to those of us living in more than 500 historic rent stabilized units? Unless you take decisive action to undo the newly proscribed boundaries unjustifiably drawn and adopted by the Planning Commission, our neighborhood will be left unprotected.” 

Ryu has scrambled under community pressure before and may be able to calm down the community with a public pledge to reinstate the original HPOZ borders. He will need to reinforce that by appearing at PLUM and publicly announcing his views since this is the key issue in dispute. 

This will not entirely solve his problem: Ryu would then need to explain himself to the developers and his City Hall colleagues. Or, he may just keep it a secret as to why he will not do what the community believes he originally promised them he would do. 

(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

WISHFUL THINKING ABOUNDS-Thank you Kellyanne Conway. Now we have a name for the phenomenon, Alternative Facts. We needed a simple term to encompass the lies, deceit, misinformation, disinformation, “fair and balanced untruths,” the fake news, the fatally flawed data, and the wishful thinking that have been plaguing us for years. 

When his eminence President Donald Trump tweets about fake news, he too may have a point. The Left loves fake news. The media loves fake news. The Los Angeles Times has perfected Fake News by Omission. That’s why I stuck the LA Times with the motto: “All the News the Elite Wants You to See.” The media can fake the news by using misleading headlines and by omitting crucial facts. The most notorious example is, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.” As we now know, Michael Brown was not standing with his hands up surrendering when shot. 

President Trump’s greatest contribution to our understanding of Alternative Facts is his ability to “perchance” Tweet From the Hip. I imagine some of his advisers have pasted signs on the walls of the West Wing urging, “THINK before your TWEET.” If that is so, the signs have been ineffective. While Trump presents a clear and present danger to the Union, we should realize that he did not invent the use of Alternative Facts. We are all in this current nightmare because Alternative Facts have become as American as apple pie. 

Propaganda vs. Love of Truth 

Many decades ago in the build-up to World War II, Alternative Facts ran rampant in the world. Europe had the Nazi Party, but American had its Lindberghs and the American Bund Movement.  America also had a couple of Jewish kids, Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, high school students from Cleveland, who created Superman in 1933. Interestingly, Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, was a nerdy guy who worked for a newspaper, The Daily Planet – a rather universal sounding name. 

Although Superman’s powers were allegedly involved with leaping tall buildings in single bound, etc., in reality his greatest super power was his belief in “Truth, Justice and the American Way.” 

Somewhere after WW II, our belief in “Truth Justice and the American Way” waned somewhat. Instead, Alternative Facts came into favor with doctors telling Americans that smoking cigarettes was good for their health and the government warning us that smoking a single reefer would make you commit suicide. 

Yet, we Americans had our limits in those yesteryears, as was shown on June 9, 1954, when chief counsel for the United States Army Joseph Welsh brought the McCarthy Era to an end by asking the Republican Senator from Wisconsin, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” In the 1950's, Truth, Justice and the American Way was not yet a dead. 

Are Truth, Justice and the American Way, a Thing of the Past? 

With Donald Trump’s cleansing of Jews and Genocide from the Holocaust Remembrance Day, with his claims that Mexicans are rapists and drug lords, and with the banning of Muslims from certain nations while expressly exempting Christians from the ban, Americans are drowning in a tsunami of Alt-Rightism that is emanating from the White House. There is a constant barrage of Alternative Facts about millions of illegals voting for Hillary Clinton, along with Trump’s cropped photo of his inauguration he showed to David Muir on ABC. It clouds our minds to the reality that Trump did not make America safe for Alternative Facts. That happened long ago. 

We have become aware of Alternative Facts not because Trump has brought us something new. We are only shocked by the brazen absurdities of his Alternative Facts. Thus, we all need to stop and look at ourselves; we must remember Pogo who pointed out that we have found the enemy and he is us. Let me tweak that -- we have found the enemy and the enemy is our acceptance of Alternative Facts. 

Alternative Facts Govern Los Angeles 

In January 2014, Judge Alan Goodman warned Angelenos that the City intentionally used Alternative Facts to mislead the public and subvert the law. Judge Goodman’s exact words were, “fatally flawed facts,” “wishful thinking.” The judge said, “…material [facts] are necessary to informed decision-making and informed public participation.” As a result of then Councilmember Eric Garcetti’s habitual use of Alternative Facts, Judge Goodman rejected the Hollywood Community Plan. 

In its aftermath, Mayor Garcetti has repeatedly said how important community plans are for the city. Yet, more than three years have passed and there is no new draft of the Hollywood Community Plan. In April 2016, Mayor Garcetti released a foreshadowing of that Community Plan. It was intentionally based on fatally flawed data claiming that Hollywood’s population had grown from 198,288 people in 2010 to 206,000 people in 2016. He cited something called the SCAG 2012 RPT as the source for this “fact.” That SCAG document had absolutely no – nada, zilch -- population data for Hollywood. Lies, deceit, fake news, Alternative Facts are falsehoods are that are found everywhere, too numerous to mention. 

Does Garcetti’s perennial use of Alternative Facts matter? He has used them to divert over $2.5 billion to his developer buddies and he is proposing several mega-projects in Hollywood based on his lies about Hollywood’s population. 

What did the 15-member Los Angeles City Council do when they were asked to approve the Hollywood Community Plan based on lies? During a council hearing on June 19, 2012, one councilmember asked whether City Planning could redo the Plan with accurate data. Senior Planner Kevin Keller basically said, “Yes, that is possible.” Whereupon Garcetti insisted that his Hollywood Community Plan, which everyone knew was based on falsified data, be approved. The LA City Council then unanimously approved it. 

Alternative Facts that the entire City Council knew were false, ended up carrying the day. The Los Angeles City Council is often faced with projects based on Alternative Facts and each and every project is unanimously approved. 

While Mayor Garcetti and Donald Trump are habitual users of Alternative Facts, does this pollute America? Or is using them something akin to a used car salesman’s saying, “This car was used only by a little old lady who only drove it to church on Sunday.” 

The New Yorker ran an article in its January 30, 2017 issue called “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich” in which Evan Osnos noted: 

“Even financiers who supported Trump for President, hoping that he would cut taxes and regulations, have been unnerved at the ways his insurgent campaign seems to have hastened a collapse of respect for established institutions. Dugger said, "The media is under attack now. They wonder, is the court system next? Do we go from 'fake news' to 'fake evidence'? For people whose existence depends on enforceable contracts, this is life or death." 

The New Yorker, Mr. Osnos, and financiers are woefully behind the curve. Back in 1992, the California Supreme Court ruled that the court must enforce decisions where errors of fact and law are apparent on the face of the award and where they cause substantial injustice. See Moncharsh v. Heily & Blase, (1992) 3 Cal. 4th 1, 27-28. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Kennard noted, “the majority's holding requires our trial courts not only to tolerate substantial injustice, but to become its active agent.” Yes, the California Supreme Court requires its lower courts to treat known Alternative Facts as true! 

The California Supreme Court ruled that some things are more important than Truth, Justice and the American Way, and winning is one of those things. The threat facing America does not come from Donald Trump, from Breitbart, from the corrupt Los Angeles City Council, or from judges who find facts and fiction to be fungible commodities. The threat comes from our acceptance of those lies, deceit, fake news, dishonest judges, dishonest media, lying Presidents, and prevaricators calling themselves Members of Congress while knowing that they are bold faced liars. 

After the world economic crash in 2008, the nation accepted the Alternative Fact that certain Wall Street executives took unwise risks. That’s a “liar, liar, pants on fire” type of Alternative Fact. The economy crashed due to intentional multi-trillion dollar frauds perpetrated by Wall Street executives, none of whom went the prison. Why? Because we believed the in the Alternative Realty that criminality was mere carelessness. 

Our nation seems to run on Alternative Facts. The use of perjury to convict people is so common that in January 2015, the federal courts said that the California courts had an “epidemic of misconduct” after a prosecutor took the stand and committed perjury in order to convict a defendant. Did U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, who was then California’s Attorney General, do anything about that perjury? No. She just took the credit for another successful prosecution.

As bad as Donald Trump may be, we the American people have created the swamp where Alternative Facts create Alternative Realities. The difference among Trump’s lying Alternative Facts, the court’s lying facts, the media’s lying facts, and Eric Garcetti’s lying Alternative Facts is basically nothing. A lie is a lie is a lie. The fault rests not in the stars nor even in the politicos but in ourselves for pretending that falsehoods are part of Truth, Justice and the American Way.

(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.

MY TURN-This doesn't happen often! Remember college days when you ran to watch "Days of Our Lives" on TV, anxious to find out what disaster befell which member of the cast? Each morning I reach for the news to see what happened. It’s like living in an alternate universe and I keep hoping that, with time, I will be able to look at the "happenings" more dispassionately. 

When last I wrote at the end of the year, I was leaving on my annual R&R break, giving me a chance to travel – my second favorite thing…after writing for CityWatch, of course. Getting away is a good way to clear the head and think about the upcoming year. People who don't take a work break are doing themselves harm. No one is indispensable. 

I went to see longtime friends in Australia and New Zealand. I would suggest adding both countries to your travel "bucket" list. And it was the perfect time to be gone from all the political noise. Both countries have beautiful scenery, great food and wine, warm friendly people, stable governments and a lot of interest in the political changes taking place in the United States. 

In fact, I've not experienced this much curiosity about our country in many a year. They both have an arsenal of cartoonists and journalists who are having a great time at our expense. 

My first stop was a lake house north of Sydney that didn't have CNN or Fox News. The first couple of days withdrawing from news was like quitting smoking. But I adjusted and managed to clear my head by reading books and having huge political discussions with four generations under one roof. The patriarch of this family was a big Trump supporter but most of the rest were definitely not. The "Aussies" have always been strong allies of the U.S. but seem disconcerted about what is happening with our 45th President.

That was somewhat surprising because Australia tends to lean more conservative than its neighbor New Zealand, a country that was the birth of Greenpeace and remains very environmentally conscious. During my visit to New Zealand, I stayed with friends living in a forest overlooking a bay. There, they had both CNN and Fox News so my viewing habits returned quickly. 

I became accustomed to people asking me if I was from "Trump Land" -- and this was before the inauguration. Some of my fellow American travelers told people they were from Canada so they would avoid the usual comments and questions! 

I’ve been home for a short time now, and would say the atmosphere is certainly promoting increased sales in tranquilizers – especially for those who lost the election. Let's hope this will be a lesson learned for 2018: there is no such thing as a "sure thing" and staying involved is vital to a working democracy. 

So many words have been written about the national state of affairs. Unfortunately, much of the harsh rhetoric has extended to personal insults on social media. One of my long-term activist friends called me to say that she can't even look at her Facebook account. Many relationships have broken apart due to this Presidential election. 

One can criticize a policy but should not insult the person. President Trump was not my candidate but he won the election. No one else has called the voting into question. We need to respect the office and the people who voted for him. I am well aware that this courtesy was often not extended to ex-president Obama, but he set a great example by showing dignity and class.   

I have been paying attention to our local elections and have been bombarded by phone calls and flyers. If it was ever important before, it’s now of paramount importance. Never again will local government have as much influence on our lives as it will for the next four years. 

And no, I don't think CalExit is an option. I am an American by choice. I love this country and, like a marriage, it’s for better or for worse! 

Will we lose Federal funding? Maybe. But I believe we send more money to the Federal government than they remit to us. What are the contingency plans? There are many candidate meetings where constituents have the opportunity to ask the tough questions. The race for City Council seats is rather mild with only District 7 without an incumbent. This is the seat vacated by the infamous Felipe Fuentes where there are now 19 candidates. 

Does the Mayor’s recommendation mean an automatic winners? The majority of candidates are civic activists competing against a couple of professionals. One has to decide if political experience counts more or less than new ideas and a fresh outlook. It is really tough to raise money without strong backing. 

District 3 has Councilman Bob Blumenfield running unopposed as are Mike Feuer for City Attorney and Ron Galperin for Controller.

More and more I tend to think that in local elections like LA City Council, each candidate that qualifies should have the same amount of money to spend. How they use it will be a good indicator of how creative and financially responsible they are. 

We lose good people who would make great public servants because of unequal funding. Several candidates have stated they will not accept money from Real Estate Developers. They should also refuse union money. Both have vested interests in who is elected and have a disproportionate influence on the outcomes. 

I am sure that if every LA resident was asked to pay a small "fee"(since tax is a dirty word) to finance our local elections, the majority would do so if it would keep special interest money from gaining an unfair advantage. 

Not all "special interests" are evil. But instead of raising money for elections they could hold Town Halls and community meetings. This would give them a better opportunity to educate the electorate about their issues than sending dozens of flyers that often "stretch" the truth. 

We are a nation of survivors and if we do our part we will make sure that the next four years will not be the end of the world. 

As always, comments welcome.

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