LOS ANGELES

PRESERVATION POLITICS-Well, now that you’ve read about the Lytton Savings building at Crescent Heights and Sunset -- and its placement on the City’s “historical register” -- maybe you’d be surprised to find that there’s another “1960s Lytton Savings” worthy of saving. It’s an orphan of a building in Van Nuys at 6569 Van Nuys Blvd. and it has an equal but different story to tell. 

A tale of two buildings, a tale of two different cities: a trendy Los Angeles versus its distant relative, the San Fernando Valley. It’s a tale of community disinterest, proof that even the professionals will “sell out” buildings in the suburbs over a building on Sunset Blvd. It’s a tale revealing that “preservation is a dirty word north of Mulholland Drive.” 

Photos of both the Crescent Heights “Lytton Savings” and the Van Nuys “Lytton Savings” show a great similarity, a love of modern architecture by Bart Lytton, one of those l960s savings and loan tycoons who pyramided the building of the suburbs into a chain of S&Ls. He had a stylebook but he wasn’t building those Home Savings structures that look like mausoleums (I’m surprised no one ever put their ashes into a safe deposit box at Home.) Lytton, a benefactor of the County Museum of Art, used clean modern lines and had a “stylebook” for his banks, but over past 50 years, they’ve disappeared. Maybe you can find one more but, to my knowledge, only the “honored” Crescent Heights and the “soon to be trashed” Van Nuys buildings remain. 

As a member of the Van Nuys Neighborhood Council, I grew up in Van Nuys admiring the Lytton Savings building. There were only two well designed buildings in Van Nuys: the Paul Revere Williams Bank of America, and next door, the Lytton Savings building with its 40 foot high atrium, skylights, a floating staircase and the loan department suspended on a balcony under the atrium. Yes, like the friends of the Crescent Heights bank, I had my $12 there 50 years ago; I’ve also had a love affair with the building ever since. 

But as a Van Nuys Neighborhood Council member, I’ve never seen the Crescent Heights Lytton Savings and that’s where a bureaucratic story begins. 

When I tried to discuss nominating the Van Nuys Lytton building for “landmark status,” I found that, like the Crescent Heights building, it is subject to demolition -- immediately. 

PROPOSITION M seems to be bringing a land rush to tired Van Nuys Blvd. where most storefronts date from the l920s. Talk about a light rail on Van Nuys Blvd means that everything is in play. And because the Lytton building had parking, four stories with 200 units can be built there. There’s such a land rush now with 400 units at the corner of Kittridge and Van Nuys -- that very same corner. 

As a member of the Van Nuys NC Plum Committee, I tried to talk up the building, but was “blackballed” from the committee. “Thank you for your interest in preservation. (You’re now off the committee.”) 

The fine art of the building isn’t worthy of discussion, but there is talk about the struggling Salvadoran market, La Tapatulcheca (photo above), now occupying it, and that the illegal vendors the market encourages bring the “wrong look” to Van Nuys. Instead, there are wild hopes of gentrification and a “SPROUTS” that will never sprout here. If you think that’s funny, you should feel what I felt when I pursued the matter. The “Lytton Savings” in Van Nuys is on the City of Los Angeles’ “SURVEY LA” list -- an architectural study project of all the City’s buildings of architectural value, including “orphans” like this one that are worthy of “saving.” 

So, ask the City Attorney, “Doesn’t the Neighborhood Council have to at least get a presentation about why the building is on the Survey LA list?” No answer. 

Ask Ken Bernstein, City Historical Preservation Officer, “Won’t you defend your SURVEY LA list of buildings of interest or concern?” No answer.   

Ask LA Conservancy for their help and you hardly get encouragement because the Crescent Heights “fight” seems more interesting. Perhaps “saving two of a kind” is just so difficult to explain that they won’t even “come over the hill” to defend my advocacy -- or SURVEY LA -- or even tell me about their Crescent Heights battle. 

I wish the Crescent Heights people well. I think their building is worthy of preservation, as I do the Van Nuys building. It’s the rare situation where “preserving two of a kind” over one of a kind makes sense. I’d welcome synergy between the groups. 

But the success (such as it is) in Crescent Heights troubles me. I’ve been given a view of City politics suggesting that there is a different threshold for honest discussion of preservation in the City. One cynically sees some sense that the Crescent Heights battle is as much about those Hollywood-Beverly Hills types riding down Sunset Blvd. in a top down convertible, either celebrating the Gehry building to come or the Lytton Savings to be “saved.” 

But if you try, as I did, to get the City’s million dollar “SURVEY LA” discussion of the building inserted into the Van Nuys NC record, you’ll find that you can’t. The City acts as if their own “SURVEY LA” guidance is a “secret” -- a bureaucratic secret for their own convenience. It’s their secret and they’ll decide when and if they want to use it. 

And as for discussion in the Valley on preservation issues -- those who built out the Valley with single family homes in the l950s will build out the Valley now with four story apartments. (Even my single family home sanctuary is being surrounded by those 4 story apartments.) When you can’t get your neighborhood council to respect you enough to make the preservation presentation, you’re not in a good place.

(John Hendry is a neighborhood council activist who lives in the San Fernando Valley.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

VOX POP--LA City Hall’s shady, underhanded ways have become a serious hot-button issue in the city’s March 2017 elections — and now City Council District 5 candidate Jesse Creed has jumped into the fray.

“As reported by the LA Times, ” Creed wrote in an email to supporters, “special interest lobbyists were at the center of a corrupt and illegal campaign finance scheme, collecting over $600,000 in illegal contributions for City Hall politicians. Do you think the politicians care about the people when the lobbyists are the financiers of their campaigns? Please. The people get hosed.”

Since early 2016, the Coalition to Preserve LA, the grassroots movement sponsoring the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, now known as Measure S, has been leading the charge against City Hall’s unfair, dishonest methods, which favor greedy developers over ordinary Angelenos.

With the City Council and mayoral elections coming up in March, numerous candidates running against City Hall incumbents are now sounding alarm that it’s time for much-needed change. Jesse Creed (photo left) is one of them. 

Creed is running against Council District 5 member Paul Koretz, who serves Hollywood, Bel Air, Fairfax, Century City and Westwood, among other neighborhoods. In a recent email to supporters, the challenger wrote:

Lobbyists are responsible for a culture of special interest dependency and corruption in City Hall, resulting in politicians who ignore the needs of the people. Meanwhile, problems like our broken streets and sidewalks, illegal dumping, and flagrant violations of building codes go unfixed.

We owe it to the people of LA to break this culture of special interest dependency. The people of LA help fund our city elections with a matching funds system that gives candidates up to $100,000 in taxpayer funds. We owe it to the taxpayers of LA to run an ethical campaign.

Coalition to Preserve LA has noted for months that developers spend millions on politically connected lobbyists, who then woo City Hall politicians and bureaucrats for special spot-zoning favors that negatively impact the rest of us through ruined neighborhoods, gridlock traffic and displacement of longtime residents.

It’s why community leaders across LA are asking Angelenos to vote “Yes on S” in March. 

For his own campaign in Council District 5, Creed vowed to not take developer or lobbyist money.

Join the Coalition to Preserve L.A. by clicking here right now to donate any amount you wish, and follow and cheer our efforts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For more information, you can also send us an email at [email protected].

DEEGAN ON LA-Frank Gehry has two options -- some may say a Hobson’s choice – now that the LA City Council has unanimously approved Historic-Cultural Monument status for Kurt Meyer’s Lytton Savings Bank building located on the property Gehry wants to transform into a complex of skyscrapers at the western gateway to the Sunset Strip. 

He can drop his objections and work his 8150 Sunset project around the Lytton Savings Bank building, or he can help developers Townscape Partners move it offsite to a new location. It’s not as if he doesn’t already have enough problems at 8150 Sunset: this project is faced with three, possibly four, pending lawsuits. He’s also contending with a vocal community that doesn’t really want the project there in the first place. 

Anything can happen. We are suddenly experiencing a through-the-looking glass political environment coupled with lots of aggressive political activism when it comes to the lava-hot issue of land use and development. Many Los Angeles communities, HOA’s, Neighborhood Councils, and NIMBYs are pushing back hard against development and these local uprisings have been one of the big political stories of 2016. Next March, in the Mayoral and City Council elections, candidates will have to face many voters who are sick and tired of unregulated over-development. They may just be inclined to support a show-stopper like the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative that would recast how zoning variances are handled -- if it is voted into reality on the March ballot. 

Getting Historic-Cultural Monument status for Lytton has been a risky but so far successful process showcasing which politicos have been brave and which have not. A couple of guys (Steven Luftman and Keith Nakata, both neighborhood council board members and land use committee members) identified the Lytton Savings Bank as something worth saving and launched a campaign for Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM) status for it. The road ruptured when City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management committee (PLUM) placed approval of Gehry’s 8150 Sunset project on their agenda for consideration and then approved it, before knowing the HCM status for Lytton – the consideration for which was scheduled several weeks later. Not only was it feckless of PLUM to avoid first making a decision about Lytton, but it was also a backwards procedure. What to do about Lytton should have appropriately and logically been decided before deliberating about the 8150 Sunset project. 

Not satisfied with being chickens just once, the same PLUM committee -- Chair Jose Huizar, Curren Price, Gil Cedillo, Mitch Englander and Marqueece Harris-Dawson -- when they eventually heard the case for HCM status decided to forward it to the full City Council without any recommendation. Twice, they abandoned their responsibility to weigh in on a significant land use issue that eventually benefitted a developer. 

Bravely, Councilmember David Ryu (CD4), who brokered an agreement over the 8150 project, stepped in and publicly voiced his support of Lytton’s HCM status. This helped push it through. Whatever it was that happened behind the scenes, led to the result, a few days ago, of the council unanimously approving Historic-Cultural Monument status for the Lytton Savings Bank building. 

All councilmembers, including the five PLUM members that twice dodged the issue, voted for it in the go-along-get-along City Council culture. In this case, they appear to have gone along with Ryu. 

What the supporters of Lytton have gained may be a Pyrrhic victory: the HCM vote may slightly delay demolition, but it does not guarantee that the building will survive. At least, not at its present site. 

In an October 27 letter to the City Council, Frank Gehry addressed the Lytton Savings Bank building issue, telling the politicos that he had tried different massing options without finding one that would preserve the Lytton bank. He concluded, “I really do not believe that I can design a successful project while keeping the bank on the site.” More prosaically, he admitted to the PLUM committee that his construction crane needs to sit on the existing footprint of the Lytton building so, he says, the Lytton building cannot coexist with his project. 

If he sticks to the claim that the Lytton Bank building is in his way -- although there are two alternative findings in the Environmental Impact Report concerning Lytton that challenge that assertion -- the only other option for saving it is to move the building to a new location. But finding a sponsor and a piece of land may be very difficult. Two valuable resources, cash and location, would need to materialize and, so far, there is no one, including Gehry, who publicly advocates and is willing to pay for moving Lytton to another site. 

The effort to save Lytton has produced many wins, including the willingness to challenge a world famous architect, pushing the politicos, exposing the double-cowardice of PLUM members Jose Huizar, Curren Price, Gil Cedillo, Mitch Englander and Maurice Harris-Dawson, and creating a cohesive community around this critical neighborhood issue. 

The only possible loser is the zig-zag-roofed Lytton Savings Bank –and maybe -- a couple of city councilmembers on the decaying PLUM committee (Gil Cedillo-CD1 and Curren Price-CD9) who are up for re-election in March 2017. They could be ripe for replacement by anti-out-of-control-development voters in the City of LA.

(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].) Photo credit: Los Angeles Magazine. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CORRUPTION WATCH-When it comes to government corruption, extortion and bribery are two sides of the same coin. It is often hard to distinguish between the two. A military contractor may approach a Congressman and offer to get his kid into a prestigious private school and arrange for the tuition to be “handled.” In Los Angeles, for example, it costs between $11,000 and $32,000 a year to send one child to private school. When the person who pays the money initiates the deal, we call it bribery. 

On the other hand, the Congressman may tell the military supplier, “You know that X-71B which you manufacture? My committee doesn’t think that it is essential and we will be holding hearings in a few months to cut it from the appropriations package.” The Congressman’s kid is then admitted, with tuition pre-paid to the RichieLoo School for Privileged Brats, and miraculously, the cutting of X-71B never appears on the Committee’s agenda. We call this extortion or “grow up, this is how things operate.” 

Extortion Comes to Los Angeles 

City government also has oodles of opportunity for extortion, but until recently Los Angeles’ comprehensive Mutual Bribery operation kept the system relatively clear of extortion. It was a beautiful system in its efficiency and the way it allotted “developer corruption” throughout the City. 

Each councilmember could make any deal he wanted with a developer without any regard for the law, guaranteeing unanimous approval of the project. LA City Council’s Mutual Bribery system is so well known now that it is no longer news. 

How Extortion was Held to a Minimum 

What no one had noticed was the degree to which it limited extortion. With a City Council of fifteen, it would be financially ruinous if a developer had to enter into deals with a majority of the city councilmembers. Thus, each developer has only had to deal with the councilmember representing the district in which he wanted to build his project. We will leave aside the fact that this system has resulted in massive over-development that has turned Los Angeles into the least desirable urban area in the nation. 

Why Los Angeles Is Facing Run-Away Extortion 

Recently, the City of Los Angeles has embarked on an era of massive extortion. A number of factors have contributed to this and it will infect LA in the coming years. 

1. As noted above, extortion and bribery are two sides of the same coin. Thus, adding extortion to Los Angeles’ modus operandi is an extension of its general criminal nature. 

2. Part of the Mutual Bribery pact was: “You stay out of my district and I will stay out of your district.” There are many places during the administrative process where other councilmembers could throw up road blocks to a project outside their district, but they refrained from such interference. For example, if a councilmember became angry, he could use his influence to have a home declared historic, which would throw a monkey wrench into a project. When Councilmember Krekorian and Ken Bernstein at the city planning department decided that Marilyn Monroe’s home was not historic, it would be troublesome if another councilmember agitated to have the home declared historic. 

3. The Sea Breeze Project showed that Mayor Garcetti was dealing himself into the Mutual Bribery scam even though he was no longer a member of City Council. Garcetti wanted and got $60,000 so that the Sea Breeze Project could proceed. 

What was worse, councilmembers far outside Council District 15 where the project was located were getting significant pay offs. 

As the LA Times article noted, “In several cases, elected officials received the money as they were poised to make key decisions about the development, known as Sea Breeze.” 

In addition to the $203,500 to then CD 15 Councilmember Janice Hahn and $94,600 to subsequent CD 15 Councilmember Joe Buscaino (you gotta love the flexible morality ex-cops like Dennis Zine and Buscaino,) hundreds of thousands of dollars went to councilmembers far flung from South Bay’s CD 15. 

Councilmember Englander got $65,800 and his district CD 12 is located in the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley and newcomer Councilmember Nury Martinez got $7,700. She too represents the Valley. 

Interestingly, Councilmember Huizar who represents DTLA got $30,400. Gee, I wonder why? The LA Times noted, “More than $30,000 went to Councilman Jose Huizar, who heads the powerful council committee that reversed the Planning Commission’s decision and approved Leung’s project.

At least $65,800 went to Councilman Mitch Englander, who sits on that committee with Huizar.” 

Remember, one famous ploy of extortion is a threat which then disappears. The Planning Commission had thrown up a road block to the Sea Breeze Project, but then Huizar’s PLUM Committee removed that road block. I am certain it was all in the interest of justice and the $30,400 had nothing to do with the obstacle’s disappearance. 

4. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Richard Fruin says that city corruptionism is okay. This decision is no surprise as Judge Fruin announced a long time ago that the City is above the law and he would do nothing to interfere with the system of Mutual Bribery. Echoing Woodrow Wilson’s call to make the “world safe for democracy,” on December 13, 2016, Judge Fruin made Los Angeles safe for corruptionism. The unintended consequences are already evident. 

When the courts sanction massive eternal bribery, the courts have to turn a blind eye to extortion. There is no way the court can dissent to the massive extortion which the LA Times laid bare in its October 30, 2016 article without infringing on the City Council’s right to operate on the basis of Mutual Bribery. 

How would the court word its opinion? “It is okay to accept bribes, but it is not acceptable to solicit bribes (extortion).” Of course, developers would point out that extortion is essential. How else will they know whom to bribe and when to bribe them? 

5. Thanks to Judge Fruin all councilmembers may now create obstacles which will be expensive for the developers to overcome As the December 13, 2016 issue of WeHoVille wrote, “In a unanimous decision this morning, the Los Angeles City Council approved designating the 56-year-old Lytton Savings building at 8150 Sunset Blvd. as a historic cultural monument (HCM).  The designation bestows certain protections against demolition on the mid-century modern building, but does not guarantee its survival.”  

OMG – classic extortion! A huge problem, which may be made to disappear. On the other hand, is Councilmember Ryu’s striking back at Garcetti’s interference in his district similar to his interference in CD 15 with the Sea Breeze Project? Councilmember Ryu was elected on his claim that he would listen to his constituents about development. This hideous project is the one massive Hollywood project which falls outside Mayor Garcetti’s CD 13. (We know Garcetti still runs CD 13 and Mitchie is his stooge.) 

We won’t belabor the behind the scenes machinations and pressures on Councilmember Ryu, but the most powerful community group, Fix The City, Inc., has sued over 8160 Sunset. It is clear that Councilmember Ryu’s constituents hated this nightmare, yet he could not stop it. 

So which do we have? Are all the councilmembers dealing themselves into the extortion game at the same time Judge Fruin has given his judicial stamp of approval to corruptionism, or is the City Council retaliating against Garcetti for messing with their rights to be lord and masters of their own council districts? After all, that is the promise holding the Mutual Bribery pact together: “I get to be absolute ruler of my council district.” Maybe it is a little of both. 

Judge Fruin would have been wise to heed Lord Acton who said in 1887, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” By placing the City Council above the reach of the law, anything goes. The knowledge that the courts will never interfere with the City Council’s corrupt ways imbues the councilmembers with massive power to do whatever they want – including de-generating into vicious internecine warfare over the billions of dollars to be divvied up under Measures JJJ, HHH and M.

(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.

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Barbara Boxer was never a particularly effective senator. Just name a signature legislative achievement or a victory for California in her 24 years representing the state.

So her exit was fitting.

She went out protesting the passage of what had been our own bill of water projects. And she went out blasting her own colleague, Dianne Feinstein, for crafting a practical compromise on water that was attached as a rider to that bill.

Feinstein effectively made a deal with Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Bakersfield Republican who is #2 in the House. It wasn’t perfect, but it was an improvement. It states protections for species while allowing for more water deliveries South and more flexibility in managing water, with the goal of capturing water from storms.

Boxer, who was clearly not part of negotiations, opposed the bill and vowed to block it.

“This is a devastating maneuver,” Boxer said, as quoted by the Sacramento Bee. “This last-minute backroom deal is so wrong. It is shocking, and it will have devastating consequences if it makes it into law, which I can tell you I will do everything in my power to make sure that it never, ever makes it into law.”

As it turned out, there wasn’t much in her power. The bill went through and appears likely to be signed by the White House as of this writing. Feinstein patiently explained that “This bill isn’t perfect but I do believe it will help California,” Feinstein said, and noted that it was a better deal that she might have gotten once Trump takes office.

Feinstein took criticism from skeptical editorial pages. But she got the deal done. Boxer made a point, but not much else.

California desperately needs Kamala Harris to be more Feinstein than Boxer.

(Connecting California Columnist and Editor, Zócalo Public Square, Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (UC Press, 2010).

LESSONS FOR CHARTERS--In 2014, when teachers at Los Angeles’ Jefferson High School opened their own charter school, the Student Empowerment Academy, they hoped to bring the larger world into their classrooms. They wanted to show kids opportunities outside of their neighborhood, where academics often took a back seat to economic survival. Kids would learn science, math and social studies by solving real-world problems in teams, just as they would in the work-force, while teachers would have autonomy and genuine decision-making authority. 

But faculty members soon found themselves facing one real-world problem they hadn’t bargained on -- a tug of war for power with administrators and board members. Conflicts reached a boiling point in 2015, with staff leaving en masse – either fired, pushed out or stressed beyond their limits. 

The school also ran afoul of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which oversees the city’s charter schools, for financial mismanagement and other shortcomings. With enrollment dwindling, Jefferson announced that SEA would have to move to another facility for the 2017-18 academic year. If these obstacles weren’t enough, in its last year the fledgling charter school was led by a former professional football player with no teaching background and little administrative experience, and who, along with the academy’s board of directors, would throw the academy and students under the school bus once the going got tough. 

SEA’s story highlights the precarious nature of small independent charter schools, and brings to light the fact that charter boards of directors are largely independent and don’t always have to account to parents, teachers and communities for decisions that affect students. In the end, the academy’s board of directors concluded that SEA faced problems that were so intractable that the only solution was to shut it down, and last June, two weeks after classes ended for summer break, the directors voted for permanent closure. 

Teachers and parents were left reeling. Parents demanded to know what happened to the public funds that created the school, and where their kids would attend classes the next year. Teachers argued that more could have been done to save the school. 

Jefferson High sits in a South LA neighborhood where corner stores, modest homes and ramshackle apartments huddle cheek by jowl with small factories, all in the shadow of downtown’s skyline. Alumni include diplomat Ralph Bunche, the first African American Nobel laureate, choreographer Alvin Ailey, jazz saxophonist Dexter Gordon and singer Etta James. About a decade ago Jefferson became notorious for massive brawls that erupted on campus. Television news reports blamed racial tensions, but more-in-depth accounts noted that nearly 4,000 kids were crammed into a school built for a third that many. 

Six years ago in response, the school created small learning communities to break down the anonymity of the giant high school. One of those initiatives was the New Tech High School for Student Empowerment Academy, a sort of school within a school. When, in 2013, administrators announced staff cuts and larger class sizes, faculty member Linda Rahardjo was one of several teachers who designed the 300-student independent charter version of SEA to carry on the work they had begun. 

Rahardjo told Capital & Main the decision to go charter was an ultimately futile attempt to preserve what the faculty had originally built. The teachers who formed SEA were a closely-knit group who came to school early and stayed late to create a safe place where students could learn to study and think. “Being able to pass their classes became the in-thing,” she noted, adding that the students had begun to put brains above brawn, especially where disputes were involved. “They’d step back [from a fight] and say, ‘That’s not what we do here.’” It was a cultural shift at Jefferson. 

SEA’s troubles began in earnest with a perfect storm of problems that included its coming expulsion from the Jefferson High campus, declining enrollment and financial instability — all of which exacerbated tensions between the academy’s faculty and its board members. Matters weren’t helped by a financial scandal. 

Earlier this year LAUSD demanded an explanation after SEA paid an outside contractor more than $130,000 for services that should have been provided for free by the school district, and for supplies that district staff said would have been much cheaper if purchased from LAUSD. 

For instance, the contractor charged nearly $5,000 for toilet paper that district officials said LAUSD would have sold for less than $1,000. He allegedly inflated shipping and handling fees and billed $2,000 for taking notes at four board meetings. 

One of the SEA board’s most consequential choices, however, was to hire of one of its own to run the school as it was floundering at the end of the 2015 school year. The last principal had been let go amid student walk-outs and teacher dissatisfaction. Had there been other eyes on the process, and greater scrutiny of the next principal’s track record, the new man might not have landed the job. 

Marvin Smith is a former National Football League linebacker who played for the LA Rams in 1983 until, he said, he was sidelined by an injury. He has since resurfaced as an ordained minister, a radio talk-show host and an advocate for low-cholesterol diets.  Smith doesn’t appear to have a teaching or administrative credential. In his resume, he claims a master’s degree in business from Azusa Pacific University; however, a university spokeswoman said Smith enrolled in a program in organizational management and attended classes, but she could find no record of his graduation. 

More notably, Smith is a charter school devotee who said he intends to remain in the field his entire life. But so far, his educational ventures have been short-lived. 

He founded and directed the Doris Topsy-Elvord Academy, a small charter middle school in North Long Beach. But he closed the school three years ago because of some of the same financial and enrollment problems that would plague SEA. 

The SEA board has been remarkably charitable about Smith’s CV. 

“Sometimes you learn more by failing than succeeding,” said SEA board chair Tommy Newman, when asked about the closure of Smith’s Long Beach charter venture. He told Capital & Main that the board stood by the decision to hire Smith. 

Ref Rodriguez, an LAUSD school board member whose district includes Jefferson High School, called Smith a “wonderful person,” while admitting that he lacked understanding of teaching and learning. 

Others have not been so sanguine. 

“Not only did this guy not know instruction but he didn’t know how to manage a school,” Betty Forrester, a United Teachers Los Angeles vice-president told Capital & Main. “Top it off with a lack of transparency, communication and democracy. Those things make people wonder.” 

Smith explained to Capital & Main that he took the SEA post to bring unity and calm to the school, insinuating that, operating behind the scenes, disgruntled teachers had sparked the student protests that led to the ouster of his predecessor. It’s an opinion both Rahardjo and student leader Karen Espinoza reject. 

“The reason I stepped in is, I don’t like kids being manipulated by adults for adult agendas,” Smith said, without identifying those agendas. “We have to push for the kids.” After assuming control of SEA, Smith said he embarked on what he called a “team effort” to overhaul the school. 

On the contrary, Forrester said, Smith did not truly welcome teacher collaboration, which she argued would have given the school a better chance to succeed. 

“People didn’t know what was going on,” she said. “There were no clear answers. It was like, ‘Shut up, go into your classroom and do what we tell you.’” 

While the school struggled during its last months, Smith was already exploring new charter opportunities for himself in Ohio, with an apparent assist from one of SEA’s board members. Bryan Bentrott, a Newport Beach developer, who is a personal friend of Smith’s, wrote him a letter of support for the venture just six months before SEA closed. Bentrott, who also served as a board member for Smith’s failed Long Beach charter school, portrayed Smith as a charter superhero who had saved the academy from closure. 

“Last year Marvin singlehandedly rescued a charter school in Los Angeles,” Bentrott wrote. “Despite tremendous odds, Marvin stepped in and saved a school, which was on the verge of shutting down.”

In reality, SEA was in its death spiral. 

As teachers rallied to solve SEA’s problems, Smith may have already given up, perhaps having gotten wind of the coming closure. The school’s budget documents show that in May, he cashed out his paid time off, collecting over $11,000 a month before the shutdown vote. 

Smith may still be pursuing the chance to open a new charter school in Ohio. He wouldn’t answer questions about it. Such applications are difficult to track because many private and public agencies are authorized to approve charters in Ohio. 

While the teachers’ efforts to help save the academy didn’t bear fruit, José Cole-Gutiérrez, a director at LAUSD’s charter school division, said they weren’t necessarily wrong to try. Unless it had a fatal flaw, such as a serious threat to student safety, he said his office would have considered renewal if SEA showed improvement. 

It also turns out that the school’s financial picture might not have been as bleak as Tommy Newman and his board colleagues painted. A draft audit shows the school ending 2016 $175,000 in the black, although he contends that late legal bills might not have been factored into the bottom line.

Newman, an attorney who currently works as communications and public affairs director for a nonprofit housing developer, also cited an unpaid loan, high personnel costs and legal expenses associated with negotiations for a union contract as reasons the school could not continue. He also said the school faced risk because of the contractor affair, although Cole-Gutiérrez said no specific action on the overpayment is currently contemplated, adding that LAUSD has the authority to ask its inspector general to investigate or refer the matter to the district attorney. 

SEA’s closure meant kids would lose the close teacher-student relationships the school had cultivated, and either have to navigate a large high school or scramble for a spot elsewhere long after enrollment decisions had been made for the next year. 

“To me, the shame is that this was a teacher-led and teacher-initiated school,” said LAUSD board member Ref Rodriguez. “That we were not able to make it work pains me.” 

A couple of months before the closure vote, social studies teacher Kari Mans and art teacher Bill Neal had both joined with co-workers in a last-ditch effort to solve some of the school’s most vital issues, like finding space for the school to operate out of, or recruiting students. In an interview, Neal said he was still hopeful, even though he said his and the other teachers’ efforts had largely been ignored or rebuffed by Smith. 

“We were starting to get this sinking feeling,” he said. “All of this had already been decided. It was like a foreboding. This is going to be bad.” 

“It was heart-breaking,” Newman acknowledged. “It felt like failure. I’d invested a year and a half of my life in it.” 

However, he argued, the school couldn’t survive financially because of low enrollment and lack of funds. He contended that even if SEA made it through another year, the Los Angeles Unified School District would be unlikely to renew its charter because of poor oversight reports. Still, the latest report also highlighted strengths, such as the school’s $250,000 Walton Foundation grant and its substantial implementation of the innovative aspects of its charter. 

Teachers pointed to other assets: Graduation rates were relatively high, and many in the class of 2016 were bound for college. Mans, who had recently joined the faculty, told Capital & Main that the school’s project-based learning approach produced students who could think critically and solve problems. 

For all the dedication he described, Tommy Newman didn’t have to answer to anyone for his vote.

He and his four fellow board members were essentially in charge of a very tiny school district, with final responsibility for everything from finances to personnel to purchasing, albeit with oversight from the LAUSD. 

But unlike the LAUSD’s board members, SEA’s weren’t elected to their posts and when they decided to throw in the towel, they faced no consequences. They were not required to show they’d done everything possible to keep the school open. With the exception of the sole parent representative on the board, they didn’t live in the community and could return to their jobs or businesses after the closure without looking back. 

The LAUSD’s Cole-Gutiérrez said he takes closures seriously, but that a school’s board of directors holds ultimate decision-making power. 

“It’s contemplated in the Charter Schools Act that there is an exchange of autonomy for accountability,” Cole-Gutiérrez said, adding that shuttering schools is sometimes a necessary part of that. 

In addition to Newman and the lone parent, the board included a retired middle school principal, Bentrott and another attorney. The board might have been savvier than some, but Newman said he had no idea of the problems he’d face when he agreed to join. 

That’s not uncommon, said UTLA’s Betty Forrester, who got involved at SEA after teachers voted to join the union. Charter school board members are sometimes recruited simply because they raise their hands to volunteer, or so that a school can meet the basic requirement of having a board in place, she said. And even though they don’t have to answer to voters, their decisions carry huge weight for the children they serve. 

“Students only get one chance to be in ninth grade,” Forrester noted. 

For what it’s worth, parents and teachers could get some answers about the school’s financial viability when the school’s final audit is submitted later this week. 

They will be lucky if they do. The state Department of Education reports that many charters can’t afford to provide a final audit, or simply ignore the requirement after they close. Smith’s former charter, Doris Topsy-Elvord Academy, was one that did not bother submitting a final audit as required by law. 

Additionally, more than 100 shuttered schools have failed to return public funds they’ve been granted; collectively they owe the state upwards of $49 million.  

The question of whether the school itself could have made it, had the board not opted for closure, will likely remain unanswered, because board members have no further obligations to the community the school served. 

What is known, said Forrester, is that the students Marvin Smith vowed to fight for were the losers at the Student Empowerment Academy. 

“There were issues with academics, with supplies, and massive teacher turnover,” she said. “Stability is huge in education. They weren’t able to stabilize the school. They didn’t do right by the students.”

(Robin Urevich is a journalist and radio reporter whose work has appeared on NPR, Marketplace, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Las Vegas Sun. This piece first appeared in Capital & Main.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-Back in October, I wrote my CityWatch column about the presidential election as a referendum on feminism. For the first time in U.S. history, a woman was on the top of the ticket for a major party. Her rival was a man known over the years as much for his pronouncements about the female form during his appearances on Howard Stern as for his experience as a mogul and as a reality TV celebrity on The Apprentice. When a conversation between former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush and Trump went viral mid-election season, we knew the GOP candidate believed his fame entitled him to “grab” and kiss women without their consent. 

The following month, Donald J. Trump had pushed past the magic number of 270 electoral votes to become President-Elect. As results indicated a Trump victory (and the following day as I listened to Hillary Clinton’s concession speech), I reflected on my October column. Did the election results indicate that Americans no longer support feminism? 

As we follow news, whether via the NY Times, Washington Post, CNN or via Twitter, Politico or other online sites, Election 2016 appears to be more complicated, given our intelligence citing Russian hacks and possible interference even at the polls. Regardless of whether or not the absence of interference might have changed the election results, women remain a formidable force. 

Kamala Harris is headed to the Capitol to replace Barbara Boxer and closer to home, Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger will join Sheila Kuehl, Hilda Solis and Mark Ridley-Thomas on the LA County Board of Supervisors. Women will form the majority in the country’s largest local government agency. The 15-member LA City Council, however will only have one woman. 

Next month on January 21, on the day following the Inauguration, tens of thousands will join the Women’s March on Washington with similar events across the U.S., including a Women’s March LA to be held downtown. 

According to the Women’s March on Washington site, the organization and participants “stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health and our families – recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country. 

“We support the advocacy and resistance movements that reflect our multiple and intersecting identities. We call on all defenders of human rights to join us. This march is the first step towards unifying our communities, grounded in new relationships, to create change from the grassroots level up. We will not rest until women have parity and equity at all levels of leadership in society. We work peacefully while recognizing there is no true peace without justice and equity for all.” 

The election has turned out to be a referendum but not in the sense I once suspected. The rallying of women throughout the country, as well as the men who support us, has shown that we remain a powerful force for change. 

For more information or to register: 

Women’s March on Washington  

Women’s March on LA  

Register for Women’s March on Washington – Los Angeles (by 12/24.)

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

@THE GUSS REPORT-There are grudging, trudging phases that politicians go through when dealing with guerilla journalists. Often, they provide a window into which direction the story will lead. 

The first phase is to ignore us. The second is when they realize we are onto a story and we have an outlet and an audience. That’s when they call us their friend or employ the pregnant pause and the faint praise, “I really admire your…..passion.” Third, when we nail a story that is picked up by the mainstream media, and we are credited for breaking the story, they go silent and cold as a nuclear winter. And fourth is the thaw when they realize that people beyond their reach are reaching out to us to share their stories. 

Before we launch into 2017, let’s take a quick look back at the 2016 you and I shared. 

In 2016, I contributed 39 articles to CityWatch, amplified by the occasional invitation to talk on KFI AM 640 where the Sunday Morning News humorously bestowed upon me the title, “Eric Garcetti’s Worst Nightmare.” In developing these stories, there were more than a few humorous encounters like when I prepared to exit an LA City Hall elevator and a certain chief of staff was on the other side of the opening doors; someone’s jaw dropped, and it wasn’t mine. Others included awkward overtures and a hearty, guffawing handshake from an elected official who never previously said as much as “hello” to me. 

In February, my article LA’s Hypocrisy on World Spay Day: ‘Backyard Breeders’ Get a Pass showed how city officials are all talk and no action when it comes to controlling the pet population that results in overcrowded pounds that kill thousands of healthy, happy and adoptable animals. In March, I wrote of billionaire hedge fund guru Bill Ackman costing many of his clients their life savings by investing against (i.e. “shorting”) the stock value of LA’s Herbalife while overdosing on investments in Valeant, a dubious Canadian pharmaceutical firm. Since then, Herbalife kept winning in court and in its stock price while Valeant lost half of its remaining value, reaching an all-time low last week. 

As spring approached, I wrote how Time Warner Cable would have little to offer us after the 2016 season in which iconic Dodgers announcer Vin Scully retired, having deprived subscribers of other services of enjoying his last few seasons. Now rebranded as Spectrum, it is the same tired service, at higher prices and virtually no portability while DirecTV launches its lower priced, bundling-not-necessary and completely portable DirecTV Now service. 

In April, I wrote in (Dis)-honorable Mentions at LA City Council how our lawmakers honored a local school whose alumni included what amounted to a rogue’s gallery of former LA Sheriff Lee Baca, former LA City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, former LAPD Chief Darryl Gates and former tennis champ Bobby Riggs. Later, in LA City Council Soapbox Evades its Own Sexual Misconduct Failures I told you the story of how city officials talked about helping sexual assault victims while standing alongside, and completely ignoring the costly sexual harassment settlements of, their colleague Councilmembers Mitch Englander and Jose Huizar. 

In May, I showed in ‘No Kill’: LA’s Big Lie how Mayor Eric Garcetti falsely claimed the city’s animal impounds are no longer killing animals because he simply redefined the meaning of death and adoption. A week later, I showed in Duped Councilman Rationalizes Mayor’s Animal Bamboozle how Councilmember Paul Koretz, LA’s biggest phony on humane issues, rationalizes the fraud to please his wife’s employer….Mayor Garcetti.

Also in May, my Ill-Prepared LA Grovels for a Super Bowl it Won’t Get told how the City of LA, which doesn’t have an NFL team or stadium, groveled for a Super Bowl that it would not, and ultimately did not, get.

In June, I wrote Garcetti Reappoints ‘Arrogant’, Delinquent Commissioner to show the mayor’s disconnect in reappointing Roger Wolfson, the “No-Show Commissioner” of LA Animal Services. He, along with fellow panelist Larry Gross, contributed articles to CityWatch this year, but ironically, none of them were about humane issues. And that’s just the way the Mayor wants it -- experts in areas other than the Commissions to which he appoints people. 

When we got to July, I wrote about a Deputy LA City Attorney named Hugo Rossitter who failed to disclose his outside legal businesses, let alone pay business taxes to the cities of LA and Beverly Hills, in LA Prosecutor, Fake Businesses … and, Why It Matters. 

In August, I launched a series of articles with Herb Wesson: King of the Foreclosure Dance on how the Los Angeles City Council president was continuously on the verge of losing his homes due to decades-long foreclosure troubles, while he sold the public on failed affordable housing and homelessness issues. Wesson later misled LA Times’ City Hall reporter David Zahniser on the origins of his problems, and what he was doing about them. (Photo above: Herb Wesson.)

As late summer turned to fall, I tracked down in Sherman Oaks Gives Tourists … and LA’s Curious … the Bird a wayward peacock named Percival, who was as colorful and overt in his Valley activities as Congresswoman-turned-County-Supervisor Janice Hahn’s campaign flunky John Shallman was in his anonymous online pursuits in Exposed: Hahn Operative Trolls CityWatch.

In the September through November corridor, I showed, starting with Garcetti Playing Dirty Pool? how the mayor removed a heroic LAFD whistleblower named John Vidovich from his post just a few months prior to his retirement for exposing fraudulent fire inspectors, and what role the overtime-gobbling firefighters’ union had to do with it. My big “get” of the year was when the LA Weekly and KCBS picked up on the story after I exposed the LA Times’ original story on Vidovich to be bogus and – perhaps – vindictive. 

As Trump v. Clinton came on the horizon, I took one more jab at the Mayor’s phony humane claims with How Eric Garcetti Falsified 8,807 Pet Adoptions and Worse. 

A day before the November 8 presidential election, I cautioned in Wall Street. Wednesday. Watch Out! that the stock market, were Trump to win, would experience dizzying turbulence. When it appeared Trump would in fact win, the Dow Jones pre-market price dropped almost 800 points, but has boomeranged to unprecedented heights ever since. So I was right about the turbulence, but so very wrong about its duration. 

After a foray into the hurt feelings of the election in Obama: ‘Go Out There and Win an Election’ and Vote Recount: The 3rd Stage of Grieving I attempted to bring some reasoning to Thanksgiving with Thanksgiving: Both Sides Now. 

And finally in December, I delved into dangers of tourists pursuing access to our world famous landmark in Runaround Ryu and Hollywood Sign Danger and how Garcetti, City Council, City Attorney Mike Feuer and City Controller Ron Galperin are in denial about much bigger problems that LA faces in 2017 in City Hall’s Latest Delusions on Terror, Fraud, Fire … and Everything Else. 

In 2017, the LA City Hall and LA County Supervisors’ bubbles may finally burst, and the leaders’ spines will be tested. My predictions and previews are coming next week.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640 and Huffington Post. 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.

PERSPECTIVE-I had a firsthand look of the chaos bestowed on the population by the passage of Prop 47. As almost all of you know, the measure raised the threshold of a felony and led to the early release of many career criminals. 

A neighbor’s house was ransacked and robbed last night. The family was on an errand for a period of less than two hours, not a long time by most measures, but far more than enough time for criminals to do their deed. 

I talked with the LAPD officers who were investigating. When I mentioned there has been a steady increase of property crimes in the community since the passage of Prop 47, the officer piped right up, “We are seeing an influx of thieves from other states. They know the odds of going to jail are slim.” 

There have been steady reports posted to Nextdoor about burglaries in Valley Village. As president of the homeowners’ association, I am acutely aware of this growing problem, which effects many communities in Los Angeles. I have lived here since 1986 and have never before seen such a spike in crimes. 

Many of the crimes are brazen – carried out in broad daylight. Thieves have walked all the way up driveways to break into cars, not simply satisfied to target those parked on the street. That takes some cajones -- and desperation -- a combination that is dangerously explosive and could indicate a propensity for violence by the perpetrators. 

It is bad enough that thousands of professional burglars have flooded the streets after early release; we have also become a magnet for out-of-state talent, as the LAPD officer related. 

The people of California voted for Prop 47. It was supported by the top elected officials in the state. It even had the support of New Gingrich! 

It is time for the state’s voters to reverse this truly misguided policy. It will require a new ballot measure, and, in the short run, legislation mitigating the impact of 47. 

It is also time to build new prisons. Instead of selling bonds to construct an extraordinarily expensive high-speed train, let’s invest in state-of-the-art prisons which have the facilities for addressing and correcting the causes of recidivism. There will always be those who do not respond to intervention – they will ultimately require a lifetime of incarceration, so the capacity must be in place to deal with them as well. 

Opponents to this would claim we cannot incarcerate ourselves out of a growing, statewide crime wave. The converse for that argument is more grounded in reality – we cannot reduce crime by rapidly increasing the supply of criminals, as Prop 47 has done.

(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and serves as President of the Valley Village Homeowners Association. He blogs at Village to Village and contributes to CityWatch. The views presented are those of Mr. Hatfield and his alone and do not represent the opinions of Valley Village Homeowners Association or CityWatch. He can be reached at: [email protected].) Graphic: Jeff Durham/Bay Area News Group. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LEANING RIGHT--Unlike my counterparts from the Left, I will neither underestimate nor under empathize with those who approach this Christmas and New Year with dread and fear.  There are quite a few reasons to fear a President-Elect Trump, but exploring the source and lessons from where that dread and fear are coming from show promise for our nation...and ourselves:

1) The Russians/Nazis/Racists are coming, and they're out to control and destroy our nation!
Well, well, well...I'd like to see them try.  A bunch of skinheads and Nazis want to start pushing around Latinos, African-Americans, Muslims, and Jews?  Wow.  Now THAT would lead to a butt-whooping if ever I saw one--with the skinheads and Nazis being on the receiving end of that little smackdown.

Furthermore, if the Breitbart bunch are dominated by racists, then they're some of the silliest racists I've ever heard of, because they're dominated by Jewish editors.  Sheriff Clarke, that bad-ass African-American sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin? Not exactly the kind of person I'd expect to tolerate any racist gibberish or crimes.

And the Russkies? Well, any hacking is a serious issue, but weren't we told for so long that the Clinton server and e-mails were no big deal?  So why is any server/e-mail exposure to foreign hacking...now...a big deal?  And are we being played by the President who once derided Mitt Romney that he was focused on the wrong decade?

No, I think that Ms. Clinton lost the presidential election of 2016 all by herself.

2) The Male Chauvinists are coming, and they're out to control and destroy our nation!
Well, well, well...I'd like to see them try.  Eliminate the education and buying power of half our nation, would they?

Considering how the new Trump Administration stands to be filled with many women (including some firmly against Trump over the past election cycle), and considering how the new "first lady" (Ivanka, not Melania, Trump) will push for affordable childcare for single mothers, it's not too likely that women will be shoved out of the workforce.

And virtually all abortions will be legal for a long, long, long time, because even if Roe vs. Wade ever were reversed we'd see 50 states with laws allowing legalized abortion through the second trimester within nanoseconds.  Of course, the question of why healthy babies with healthy mothers needed to have a third trimester abortion would finally be answered.

Although it might be nice to allow and demand that boys become good men, and to allow and demand that girls become good women.  And with the understanding that LGBTQ rights should be upheld, it might be nice to dispel the notion that male and female humans are wired the same, or that one gender is "better" than the other.

3) The Polluters are coming, and they're out to control and destroy our nation!
Well, well, well...I'd like to see them try.  I doubt that this nation is ready to shred its goals for clean water and fresh air, just to make a few greed-bags a few bucks.

Although the debate over what role the U.S. has in Global Warming, er Global Cooling, er, uh, Climate Change would be welcome.  Because while anyone visiting Glacier National Park knows that the glacier for which that park is named has virtually melted away, what we can or should do about it is up for considerable debate.

And as for making a few greed-bags a few bucks?  How about the Green Machine, where a few opportunists have allowed our local and regional utilities to thrash the middle class and their employers with high utility bills and excessive regulations that help a few connected folks get rich while the overall economy is hamstrung?

It's great that Big Oil has to account for its actions.  It's now long overdue for Big Green to do the same.  Perhaps population control and a healthy economy can stimulate environmental reform that REALLY works for EVERYONE.

4) The Christians are coming, and they're out to control and destroy our nation!

Well, well, well...I'd like to see them try.  But which Christians are we talking about?  The ones who accept and support Jews and the nation of Israel more than many American-born Jews do?

Which Christians are we talking about? The ones who enlisted in our nation's armed forces and fought to create and defend democracy and human rights of Muslims and others in Iraq, Afghanistan, and throughout the entire world?

Which Christians are we talking about? The ones who merely want to be left alone and celebrate their religion in peace, while encouraging the same for others?  The ones who believe in charity and kindness to others?  The ones who share followers of both black and white, both Asian and Arab, and both Catholic and Protestant backgrounds?

Well, I'm one Jew who doesn't tolerate any bigotry, or cruelty, or bullying, from anywhere or anyone...and I'm hardly alone.  I've had Christians pray for my eternal soul, and I'll take any help I can get. 

I'm solidly and blissfully aware of what Christmas means.  Yes, it's the pagan/solstice thing that places December 25th as the birth of Yeshua, also known as Jesus, and also known as the Christ. It's not known whether Jesus was born on December 25th, but that's a moot point--it's THAT Jesus was born that matters.

And THAT there is a God to be worshipped who understands the joys and misery of the human condition, because Christmas celebrates a God who lived and died as a human to show God's never-ending Covenant with Humanity.  No floods or rainbows...just a brief life and a painful, horrible death.

So Merry Christmas, everyone, and Happy Holidays to All.  Fear not for what hasn't come to pass, but be ready and confident if bad things do come to pass.

There's no "don't worry, be happy" to be bandied about, but it shouldn't be forgotten that there's room to accept both our personal and national successes AND failures.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.  Life will be filled with joys and battles to be experienced to the enrichment of us all.  And we will say that, yes, we did have the privilege of living in very, very interesting times!

(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

URBAN PERSPECTIVE-On Wednesday, December 21st, the South Los Angeles Homeless TAY and Foster Care Collaborative (Collaborative), along with the Crenshaw Chamber of Commerce and other local partners, will honor the lives of homeless youth who have passed away and those experiencing loss during the holiday season with a prayer and candlelight vigil. 

December 21st is considered as one of the longest nights of the year. Likewise, the month of December is one of the most stressful periods for homeless youth suffering trauma due to a lack of stable housing and a strong support system. 

The Collaborative is gathering more than 100 community members to embrace love and compassion for youth experiencing homelessness, heighten awareness about homeless youth, and offer prayers, comfort, and new beginnings. 

To wrap up 2016, the Collaborative will share advances in the Homeless No More Community Plan to End Youth Homelessness and encourage ongoing commitments to end youth homelessness by 2020. 

“We are taking this opportunity to remember the resiliency of youth and our commitment to end youth homelessness in South Los Angeles,” said Rev. Kelvin Sauls, Chair of the South Los Angeles Homeless TAY and Foster Care Collaborative. “We believe our youth need our focused attention and are taking this evening to connect with them by showing that we care and that they matter to us.” 

With the approach of a colder winter in Los Angeles, the Collaborative also encourages people to join in their Covenant of Engagement, a promise to do something to end youth homelessness: 

• Connect with local agencies in the Collaborative who have specific in-kind needs this holiday season 

• View a list of partner organizations and contact them to volunteer or get more information on how youcan get involved. 

• Offer platforms to dialogue about youth experiencing homelessness. 

• Participate in the upcoming January 2017 Homeless Count 

• Contribute financially to partner organizations to increase resources for homeless youth. 

“We are doing something very profound. We are letting our youth know that we are here to be of service and support. This village is committed to helping our youth achieve a better quality of life“, said Armen D. Ross, President of the Crenshaw Chamber of Commerce. 

The Collaborative’s Youth Remembrance Ceremony will be held on December 21st, from 6 pm, in Leimert Park and is held in conjunction with National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day, an annual event commemorated in more than 150 cities and counties across the United States.

(The South Los Angeles Homeless TAY and Foster Care Collaborative is a coalition of business, government, nonprofits, and residents working to prevent and end homelessness for South Los Angeles’ Transition Age Youth. For more information, visit the organization’s website at www.southlatay.org.) 

-cw

NEW GEOGRAPHY--The oligarchs’ ball at Trump Tower revealed one not-so-well-kept secret about the tech moguls: They are more like the new president than they are like you or me.

In what devolved into something of a love fest, Trump embraced the tech elite for their “incredible innovation” and pledged to help them achieve their goals—one of which, of course, is to become even richer. And for all their proud talk about “disruption,” they also know that they will have to accommodate, to some extent, our newly elected disrupter in chief for at least the next four years.

Few tech executives—Peter Thiel being the main exception—backed Trump’s White House bid. But now many who were adamantly against the real-estate mogul, such as Clinton fundraiser Elon Musk, who has built his company on subsidies from progressive politicians, have joined the president-elect’s Strategic and Policy Forum. Joining Musk will be Uber’s Travis Kalanick, who half-jokingly threatened to “move to China” if Trump was elected.

These are companies, of course, with experience making huge promises, and then changing those promises to match new circumstances. Uber, for instance, touted itself as a better deal than a cab for both riders and drivers before it prepared to tout a better deal for riders by replacing its own soon-to-be obsolete drivers with self-driving cars.

Silicon Valley and its leading mini-me, the Seattle area, did very well under Barack Obama, and expected the good times to continue under Hillary Clinton. Tech leaders were able to emerge as progressive icons even as they built vast fortunes, largely by adopting predictably politically correct issues such as gay rights and climate change, which doubled as a perfect opportunity to cash in on Obama’s renewable-energy subsidies. Increasingly tied to the ephemeral economy of software and media, they felt little impact from policies that might boost energy costs or force long environmental reviews for new projects.

No wonder Silicon Valley gave heavily to Obama and then Clinton. In 2016, Google was the No. 1 private-sector source of donations to Clinton, while Stanford was fifth. Overall the electronics and communications sector gave Democrats more than $100 million in 2016, twice what they offered the GOP. In terms of the presidential race, they handed $23 million to Hillary, compared to barely $1 million to Trump.

Yet, there is one issue on which the Valley has not been “left,” and that is, predictably, wealth. It may have liked Obama’s creased pants and intellectually poised manner, but it did not want to see the Democrats become, God forbid, a real populist party. That is one reason why virtually all the oligarchs favored Clinton over Sanders, who had little use for their precious “gig economy,” the H-1B high-tech indentured-servants program, or their vast and little-taxed wealth.

Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder with a net worth close to $70 billion, used his outlet, The Washington Post, to help bring down Bernie, before being unable, despite all efforts, to stop Trump. So now Bezos sits by Trump’s side, hoping perhaps that the president-elect’s threats to unleash antitrust actions against Amazon will be conveniently forgotten as an artful “deal” is struck.

For these and other reasons, there’s little doubt that the tech elite would have been better off under Clinton, who likely would have, like Obama, disdained antitrust actions and let them keep hiding untaxed fortunes offshore. Now, they will have to share the head table with the energy executives they’d hoped to replace with their own climate-change-oriented activities.

The tech oligarchs have long had a problem with what many would consider social justice. Although the tech economy itself has expanded in the current period, its overall impact on the economy has been less than stellar. For all of its revolutionary hype, it’s done little to create a wide range of employment gains or boost worker productivity.

To be sure, there have been large surges of employment in the Bay Area, Seattle, and a handful of other places. California alone has more billionaires than any country in the world except China, and nearly half of America’s richest counties.

But for much of the country, notably those areas that embraced Trump, the tech “disruption” has been anything but welcome news. This includes heavily Latino interior sections, home to many of America’s highest employment rates. Overall, the “booming” high-wage California economy celebrated by progressive ideologues like Robert Reich does not extend much beyond the Valley. In most of California, job gains have been concentrated in low-wage professions.

Despite its vast wealth, California has the highest cost-adjusted poverty rate in the country, with a huge percentage of the state’s Latinos and African Americans barely able to make ends meet. California metropolitan areas, including the largest, Los Angeles, account for six of the 15 metro areas with the worst living standards, according to a recent report from demographer Wendell Cox. Meanwhile, the middle and working class, particularly young families, continue to leave, with more people exiting the state for other ones than arriving to it from the, in 22 of the past 25 years.

Even in Silicon Valley itself the boom has done little for working-class people, or for Latinos and African Americans—who continue to be badly underrepresented at the top tech firms as many of those same firms aggressively promote diversity. A study out of the California Budget and Policy Center (PDF) concluded that with housing costs factored in, the poverty rate in Santa Clara County soars to 18 percent, covering nearly one in every five residents, and almost one-and-a half times the national poverty rate. Since 2007, amidst an enormous boon, adjusted incomes for Latinos and African Americans in the area actually dropped (PDF). 

Much of this has to do with change in the Valley’s industrial structure, which has shifted from manufacturing to software and media. The result has been a kind of tech alt-dystopia, with massive levels of homelessness, and housing costs that are prohibitive to all but a small sliver of the local population.

With a president whose base is outside the Bay Area, and dependent on support in areas where jobs are the biggest issue, the tech moguls will need to find ways to fit into the new agenda. The old order of relentless globalization, offshoring, and keeping profits abroad may prove unsustainable under a Trump regime that has promised to reverse these trends. In some senses the Trump constituency is made up of people who are the target of Silicon Valley’s “war on stupid people.” Inside the Valley, such people are seen as an obstacle to progress, who should be shut up with income supports and subsidies.

So can Silicon Valley make peace with Donald Trump, the self-appointed tribune of the “poorly educated”? There are two key areas where there could be a meeting of minds. One is around regulation. One of the great ironies of the tech revolution is that the very places that are home to many techies—notably blue cities such as San Francisco, Austin, and New York—also tend to be the very places most concerned with the economic impacts of the industry.

Opposition to disruptive market makers in the so-called sharing economy like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb is greatest in these dense, heavily Democratic cities. What’s left of the private-sector union movement and much of the progressive intelligentsia is ambivalent if not downright hostile to the “gig” economy. Ultimately, resistance to regulations relating to this tsunami of part-time employment could be something that Trump’s big business advisers might share in common with the techies.

More important will be the issue of jobs. It may not work anymore for firms to lower tech wages by offshoring jobs or importing lots of foreign workers under the H-1B visa program, since Trump has denounced it. IBM’s Ginni Rometty, who had been busily replacing U.S. workers with ones in India, Brazil, and Costa Rica, has now agreed to create 25,000 domestic jobs. Other tech companies—including Apple—have also been making noises shifting employment to the United States from other countries. Trump may well feel what “worked” with Carrier can now be expanded to the most dynamic part of the U.S. economy.

If the tech industry adjusts to the new reality, they may find the Trump regime, however crude, to be more to their liking than they might expect. Companies like Google may never again have the influence they had under Obama, but many techies may be able to adjust. As long as the new president “deals” them in, the techies may be able to stop worrying about Trump and begin to embrace, if not love, him.

(Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. … where this piece was most recently posted. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, will be published in April by Agate. This piece first appeared at The Daily Beast and was published most recently by New Geography.) 

-cw

VOICES--Whenever there is a discussion of overly generous public sector pension plans, the first thing you hear is "yes, but they don't get Social Security.”

They don't get Social Security for a very basic reason: they haven't paid into it. When that statement is made, the tone suggests that the public sector person believes getting Social Security is somehow comparable to, or better than, their public sector pension. It most certainly is not! It is much worse. And just thinking this way demonstrates how ill informed many of these folks are. 

Let's look at what a recipient of Social Security receives: 

First of all, you can't retire and collect any Social Security benefits before the early retirement age of sixty-two.
Then, the maximum amount you can get from Social Security in 2016, if you retire early at 62, is $2,102 a month, or $25,224 a year. If you retired in 2016 at full retirement age of 66, the maximum benefit is $2,639 a month, or $31,668 a year. This is the maximum. No one can make more than this retiring at 62 or 66 years of age. This is what someone who has earned the Social Security maximum pay for their entire career can draw out of it.

Note that the retirement age is older than for public sector workers. Note that the amount anyone can receive is lower than public sector workers earning less for their entire careers receive through their pension.

Here's another very significant difference. A public sector worker who retires at 50 to 60 years old can collect pension benefits from the first employer, and take a new job from another employer without jeopardizing benefits from the first job. Not so with Social Security. If you start collecting Social Security at 62 and take another job, you can only earn $15,720 before your Social Security Benefit is reduced. They reduce it by $1 for every $2 you earn over the $15,720 limit. Once you reach full retirement age of 66 years old you can again work without reducing Social Security benefits.

Public sector Defined Benefit pension plans are clearly better than Social Security -- in retirement age, benefit amount, and program flexibility. Any time you hear "we don't even get Social Security,” take it on. There is not a person alive who wouldn't take a public sector pension in place of Social Security.

(Jef Kurfess is a Cal graduate and lives in Westlake Village.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GELFAND’S WORLD--It's easy to become despondent about the right wing war against science. It's been exposed in books and in countless blog posts. There is a lot of truth to the existence -- and danger -- of the unrestrained attacks on scientific practice. The world is descending into global warming and its effects are not entirely predictable, yet there are those who continue to deny. In addition, there are those who oppose the proper teaching of modern biology due to its foundational theory of evolution. That's the downside, but as the infamous year 2016 heads to a finish, it's worth considering the bright side of things. Science is continuing, and an enormous amount of progress is being made. 

We might begin the discussion by considering a seminal event, the 1836 creation of a library of medical texts that served the office of the U.S. Army Surgeon General. It grew and was moved around over the next century or so, most notably in 1866, to the same Ford's Theater where Lincoln had been assassinated. People were opposed to the idea of the theater being reopened for plays, so the government took the building and placed its collection of medical books there. The Library, eventually known as the National Library of Medicine (NLM), came to its new location in Bethesda, Maryland in 1962. Incidentally, one of those involved in the creation of the new library was Senator John F. Kennedy, who got to see its opening after he became the president. 

Within a few decades, the growth of computer technology and then the rapid expansion of the internet allowed for an equally rapid expansion of scientific communication. In the 1970s, the Library created Medline, an online search tool that was available to a few medical libraries. In 1986, the Library, demonstrating that it did not lack for a sense of humor, released a computer program called Grateful Med. It allowed anybody with a desktop computer and a dialup modem (remember those?) to go online and search for articles of interest. At the beginning, you had to write to the NLM in Bethesda and ask for the program disks, which came to you by mail (remember mail?). The program worked in the pre-Windows environment, and users had to pay to use the system. By the 1990s, it was possible for anyone, at any place in the world that had a telephone line, to look up the latest findings in most any scientific field. 

By the late 1990s, online searches of the scientific literature were available as a free service. The online system is called Pubmed, and the jargon, "do a Pubmed search" is familiar to pretty much all life science researchers. 

It's hard to explain how great was the effect of Pubmed on the ability to do science in a knowledgeable and intelligent way. The best I can do is to remind people of a certain age what life was like before we had Google searches or what playing music was about prior to iTunes and the smartphone. The before and the after were whole different worlds. 

The expansion and widespread acceptance of the internet as a part of our lives resulted in the migration of scientific journals to the online realm. There are still a lot of journals that put out print editions, but most have some sort of online presence. One result of digital efficiency is that new results go online quickly. The NLM picks up the information on new publications within the week and puts them in its Pubmed database. 

This isn't just theory, but actual result. We had a paper accepted in final form by an international journal on December 9. When we bothered to check it on Pubmed a week later, it was already listed on the search engine. 

Because knowledge is available at the click of a button, it's possible to design experiments more quickly. What used to take two weeks -- trying to look things up in the brick and mortar library -- is now a task that can be accomplished in five minutes on your laptop keyboard. And when you've done the search, you can download abstracts or even print out entire research papers on your desktop printer. 

The result of these informational advances is to make science itself more efficient and more effective. 

The other big change is that automated laboratory systems for sequencing DNA and finding RNA allow for the accumulation of the kind of data that are opening the view into how living systems work, right down at the submicroscopic level. There is enormous complexity in currently available biological data, but it can be dealt with and, to a certain extent understood, even at the level of a laptop computer running Excel. 

So where am I going with this wordy introduction? Let me offer one example from personal experience. We were interested in the effects of a toxic chemical on cellular function. In particular, we wondered if we could see any changes in the expression of any of the genes. (You know, that process where DNA is copied into something called RNA, a mechanism called transcription.) 

In living memory -- at least the memory of some people still living -- this was impossible to do. The tools did not exist. Then it became possible to analyze the effects on a few genes. You had to know which genes you were looking for, and the whole process could take as much as a month, but you could find things out. 

More recently, it became possible to send the RNA collected from cultured cells to a testing lab and within a week or two, receive back an email listing the effects on every single known gene. By doing this, we found that out of the approximately 25,000 genes available to the human cell, there were a few dozen that were particularly affected by this one known chemical. 

We were not alone in doing this kind of research. Other researchers developed methods for rapid DNA sequencing that allowed clinicians to look for mutations particular to a particular condition or disease. To do this kind of work, you need to have samples from lots of people (some having the disease and others without it). Then you get DNA sequence data from all of those people and look for differences that fit one group but not the other. 

Think about what I just said. At one point, some audacious people suggested that we sequence the entire human genome. It was a daunting prospect for those who chose to engage, but through advancing technology, the project was finished within a few years. Now, it is possible to sequence many samples in parallel and compare them against each other. 

This is one of the most promising areas for current research, because it provides the possibility of defining some diseases at the ultimate causative level. There are certain genetic disorders such as sickle cell anemia where the genetic defect has been known for a long time. Other diseases such as cancer can be the result of many genes interacting in a complex way. Over the past 20 years or so, many of the defects and changes that lead to cancer have been discovered. There is still lots of work to be done, because there are complex interactions among these factors, but the understanding of how the disease begins and progresses is building. 

Science is making progress. Let's consider a couple of snapshots in time. Running a Pubmed search on the category cancer yields a few citations from the early 1800s. Apparently the curators have been photographing articles from very old journals and making them available right along with modern studies. One of the earliest is from a journal called Medico-Chirurgical Transactions and is from December 23, 1828. The article has a rather unusual title by modern standards: Two cases of fracture of the thigh-bone taking place without any violence, in which a diseased state of the bones appears to have been the predisposing cause of fracture, and concurring with cancer in the breasts in both patients. 

The author, Thomas Salter, ESQ, F.L.S., explains that each of the two women suffered a spontaneous broken bone, high in the thigh, in the absence of a major violent event. Both are also described as having had breast cancer, although there is no additional detail. We can surmise that in an era without X-ray and where little was actually known about the cause of disease, the spread of cancer to the bone several years after the initial onset was not something that doctors were trained to look for. And if they were to look, there would have been little or nothing they could do about it. 

The other snapshot is today's edition of Pubmed in which the search using the term cancer yielded three and a half million citations. Taking only the most recent citations, we can find an article titled (don't panic when you read this. It's not on the test) Association of single nucleotide polymorphism re6983267 with ulcerative colitis and colorectal cancer. Without going into detail, this is a study which locates a single mutation in a single spot in the genome, and shows that the mutation correlates to a certain type of cancer and a certain medical condition. This understanding comes from being able to sequence samples from numerous people quickly and inexpensively. 

This is the beginning of a new era in which researchers will look for specific cures for specific genetic mutations. At the least, the information will guide the development of targeted treatments. 

As I mentioned above, these are two citations out of nearly four million. Most of the citations are from recent decades and taken as a whole, represent huge progress in medical science. Compared to modern knowledge and methods, that surgeon of 1829 might as well have been doing archeology on old bones in terms of developing insight into disease causation. 

So here is the good news: In spite of the anti-science prejudices of some of our politicians led by all too many corporate lobbyists, we are making progress in science. Even if American science is stultified by Republican committee chairmen in congress, the rest of the world will continue. In addition, medical science will probably face less congressional wrath than climate science, so even in America, we will continue. 

By the way, Pubmed searches for heart disease yield more than a million citations, and searches for terms such as arthritis yield their own hundreds of thousands of hits. Mankind is making progress, and luckily it has little to do with the political winds, other than that politicians can provide funding or cut funding. 

Molecular biology, which has come so far, has led to attempts at molecular medicine, and out of molecular medicine has come all those new drugs with names ending in mab. The mab is short for monoclonal antibody, and is this generation's approach to targeting specific molecules on the surfaces of specific cell types. For some things, monoclonal antibodies really work. They didn't even exist when many current scientists were getting started. 

But the current generation of treatments is just the beginning. New research into something called microRNAs (miRs for short) may lead to the next generation's approach to therapy, maybe even paired with carefully chosen stem cells. But that's a subject for another year.

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

-cw

SKID ROW-In the Court of Public Opinion, LA City Councilmember Jose Huizar was released early from a six-month probation period due to a sentence reduction based on “time off for good behavior,” which was to end January 31, 2017. (Photo above: Councilman Huizar with author General Jeff.) 

This “punishment” stems from Huizar’s initial support for a proposed microloft project in Skid Row which would’ve converted buildings (through adaptive reuse zoning designations) previously owned by Salvation Army and used for well over 60 years to provide housing and social services to countless homeless people who reside in this area, commonly-known as “the homeless capitol of America.” 

In a Zoning Administration hearing at City Hall in June of this year, Huizar’s staff representative publicly conveyed the councilmember’s support for the project even though there was strong and contentious opposing testimony from the Skid Row community. The current owner, architects and land-use consultants of the proposed microloft project were all in attendance. 

With an extensive delay in the ZA’s decision, mostly due to the need to research a long-standing Wiggin’s settlement clause, no decision was reached that day. 

About a month later, members of the Court of Public Opinion convened and Huizar testified that he “thought everyone was in support of the project” and “this is the first I’m hearing of any opposition.” After a brief deliberation, Huizar was immediately sentenced: his “People’s Champ” title was immediately vacated with no resistance by the defendant. 

It was first rumored in September that a decision on the microloft project had been reached, but nothing could be confirmed. Finally, in October, the Court of Public Opinion learned there was “official movement” on the project. The owner and his representatives “formally withdrew” their application and requested that “no further action be taken” on file number ZA-2015-2843-ZAD. 

Ding-dong the Wicked Witch is dead! 

With other local matters affecting homelessness, such as Proposition HHH and other tax-based ballot initiatives in the air during that time, the temperature between Huizar and the Skid Row community went ice cold. It was rumored that polar bears in Alaska were jealous of the “daily, below-zero-type freezing temperatures.” 

Members of the Skid Row community went to City Hall themselves and researched the “microloft file” and were able to confirm and clarify the status of the project. Soon, the Court of Public Opinion was contacted regarding a new hearing of determination on Huizar. 

Without delay, the Councilmember’s good standing in Skid Row resumed without further comments from either side. He was immediately released from probation and his “People’s Champ” status returned and reinstated. (Wow, who’s this guy’s lawyer?) 

Now that the $1.2 billion dollar HHH homeless housing initiative has passed and LAHSA’s next “Homeless Count” is fast-approaching (next month), a more cohesive level of communication between Councilmember Huizar and his constituents in Skid Row will be critical if significant strides in “reducing homelessness” across Los Angeles is to happen anytime soon. 

With the pending formation of a Skid Row Neighborhood Council and the final determination as to whether LA will land the 2024 Summer Olympics both happening in 2017, Skid Row will need the “People’s Champ” to rise to the occasion. These matters and more will greatly impact homelessness across the entire City of Los Angeles moving forward. 

If Huizar gets all of this right, he could be the next Mayor of Los Angeles in 2021.

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

STATES FIRST LANGUAGE IN DECLINE--How are Californians going to save Spanish?

Yes, I know that a call to preserve the Spanish language might seem ludicrous in a state whose very name comes from a Spanish romance novel. Nearly half of us are either from the Spanish-speaking world, or trace our heritage there. We constantly hear Spanish—in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and in our media; an estimated 38 percent of Californians speak Spanish (the second highest percentage after New Mexico). In the U.S. more than 37 million people now speak Spanish, up from 11 million in 1980.

And yes, my question about saving Spanish may seem daft now, as America’s deranged politics pit Trumpian xenophobia, with its fear of being overrun by foreigners and their languages, against liberal triumphalism about growing diversity.

But—and I speak to that small, hardy tribe of Americans who still prefer to be ruled by facts and not fears—the realities of immigration, education, and language acquisition put the lie to the notion that Spanish has nowhere to go but up. To the contrary, there are clear signs that the Spanish language has already begun its decline. Which is why Californians, who have long benefited from our state’s bilingualism, should think now about how we are going to preserve it.

Spanish is confronting what might be called the “Three Generation Death” law of non-English languages here. German, Italian, and Polish all but disappeared after three generations—a first, immigrant generation that learned some English, a second, U.S.-born bilingual generation that lost its proficiency in the non-English language over time, and a third generation that grew up speaking English only, and knew the old language only by studying it.

It’s possible that Spanish in 21st century California may prove to be a little more durable, given the undeniable cultural power of the language and the geographic (and now digital) proximity of the Spanish-speaking world. But it’s far more likely that Spanish will simply become the latest and largest tombstone in the language graveyard that is America.

At root, this is less the story of the decline of Spanish than it is the familiar tale of immigrants and their descendants integrating enthusiastically into American life.

Census statistics and Pew Research Center analysis tell the tale. While nearly 80 percent of all people who identify as Hispanic (and are age 5 and older) spoke Spanish in the previous decade, that number is expected to fall to about two-thirds by 2020. While 25 percent of Hispanics spoke only English at home in 2010, that figure is estimated to reach 34 percent in 2020. Here in California, the trend is most evident in our schools, where the numbers of English-language learners who speak Spanish has fallen to 1.1 million, from nearly 1.4 million a decade ago.

Spanish’s decline is likely to accelerate even as the percentage of people who trace their heritage to the Spanish-language world accelerates. To a great extent, this reflects the law of the three generations. While 61 percent of first-generation Latino arrivals to this country are Spanish-dominant and 33 percent are bilingual, some 69 percent of third-generation Latinos are English-dominant, and 29 percent are bilingual.

Other trends also will hurt Spanish. Even before the U.S. elected a Mexican-slurring bigot threatening a border wall, immigration to the U.S. from Mexico was at or below net zero, and immigration from Latin America was in deep decline. That’s unlikely to change, given growing middle-class prosperity, lower birth rates and higher education levels across much of Latin America. In this country, the U.S.-born constitute a rapidly increasing percentage of people of Spanish-speaking heritage. Greater integration of families is another factor; more than a quarter of Latino babies have a non-Latino parent.

The Spanish-language media are already grappling with the pressures of this change. Univision helped create Fusion, an English-language network, to woo the rising generations of English-speaking Latinos. (More recently, the network has repositioned itself to focus on millennials of all backgrounds). But there is likely to be considerable carnage among U.S.-based Spanish-language broadcasters and newspapers, which have been losing audiences as more Latino adults consume their news in English. Also troubling for such media: Surveys suggest that the percentage of Latino adults who get their news in both languages is also declining.

At root, this is less the story of the decline of Spanish than it is the familiar tale of immigrants and their descendants integrating enthusiastically into American life. Another branch of the story involves the unrivaled and growing power of English as our planet’s dominant tongue. English proficiency is on the rise in every corner of the earth—as the language of global commerce, culture, and technology. It’s also a wonderfully democratic language, without the divisive gender or class distinctions of Romance and other languages, without the tricky tones of Asian languages, and without the complex grammatical constructions that make German and Russian such slogs.

Californians should welcome the trend. Our more homegrown, more English-speaking population should be more cohesive, and thus have a greater chance of better governing itself. But English’s rise also poses important questions for California, because of our state’s special interest in the Spanish language. It would be good for the Golden State if we found ways to stop the decline, and preserve Spanish in our state.

It would be good for the Golden State if we found ways to stop the decline, and preserve Spanish in our state … Spanish is at the heart of the history of California.

The reasons for such preservation go far beyond the desire to honor the heritage of those Californians of Spanish-speaking ancestry. Spanish is at the heart of the history of California. It’s not merely that we were a Spanish colony founded by Spanish missionaries. Our state itself was founded in Spanish, as you’ll see if you look up the records of California’s original 1849 constitutional convention in Monterey and realize that was a bilingual event, with translation by W.E.P. Hartnell. (Fittingly, one of California’s greatest community colleges, a Salinas school that’s good at educating native Spanish speakers, today bears his name). For the first 30 years of our state, the constitution required that all laws be published in Spanish and English. (The San Francisco anti-immigrant forces that wrote the openly racist 1879 constitution changed that).

Preserving Spanish would serve the present and the future as well. There’s big money to be made if we can increase trade with a Spanish-speaking world on the rise. And it would be a huge step-up for our education system to make Spanish a core requirement. Right now, you can graduate from a California high school without taking even one course in a foreign language. And the UC and Cal State systems require only two years of foreign language for admission. That borders on the criminally negligent, given all we know about the good that learning another language does for our brains.

In November, California voters approved Prop 58, but that modest measure merely removed some bureaucratic barriers to teaching California students in languages other than English. Spanish needs much more, including state requirements and investment so that instruction is available to all. Your columnist is very grateful to have attended Pasadena private schools that made Spanish a full academic subject, with the same number of class hours as math and science and English, from grades six to 12. California would be much better off if that was the standard statewide.

If we preserve Spanish, we’ll have a comparative advantage over the rest of the country, where the language doesn’t have the same history and is more likely to die out. Indeed, if we do this right, Spanish could become a special force in California, distinguishing us and binding us together.

And with that happy thought, I wish you Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año Nuevo.

(Connecting California Columnist and Editor, Zócalo Public Square, Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (UC Press, 2010).

-cw

RANTZ & RAVEZ--As we approach the Christmas and Hanukkah season we gather with family and friends to celebrate the many blessings and opportunities we all have to share in the Great Land of America. Family gatherings with plenty of beverage and food and conversations and those thoughtful and sometimes unique and unusual gifts. Like the traditional Fruit Cake we receive from Aunt Mary. 

This year is another of those infrequent times in the calendar when Hanukkah and Christmas come together as the eve of Christmas is the beginning when we light the first candle for Hanukkah. Interesting how the calendar brings us together at this very special time of the year. 

While we should all enjoy the happiness and love of this special season, our state elected officials will really enjoy the salary increases they have received courtesy of the California taxpayers. Those hard working people who go to work and bring home the money to live in a residence and provide for their families. 

No matter your economic situation, we are all feeling the pinch on our income. There is rent or a mortgage and utilities and taxes and car payments and insurance and school clothing and all the rest of the expenses for a family living in the Southern California region. With condo and apartment rents running well over $3,000 and home expenses in the thousands of dollars, who is helping you and your family? The simple answer is no one.+++++++

When you pay your monthly living expenses, think about the 4% salary increase our state elected officials recently received courtesy of the Citizens Compensation Commission. Our state elected officials were and continue to be the highest paid state representatives in the nation. Governor Brown’s salary has increased from $182,789 to $190,100. State legislators increase from $100,111 to $104,115 and the Assembly speaker and Senate president pro temp will receive a salary of $119.734. The newly appointed attorney general Xavier Becerra will leave the $174,000 base salary as a Congressman and earn $165,126 as the California Attorney General. We all wish a very Merry Christmas to all of our State Elected Officials.

+++++++

The City of Los Angeles can always find unique ways to spend your hard-earned tax dollars.

Reports show that there is an estimated 1 to 3 million feral cats roaming the streets and alleys of Los Angeles on a daily basis. How the city came up with this number is interesting. What formula did they use to justify this number? With this in mind, the city wants to spend $800,000 to try and figure out what to do about the situation of roaming cats in Los Angeles. While I love animals, I find it interesting that the city can justify spending $800,000 to examine the Feral Cat Population in LA. The director of Animal Services Brenda Barnett reported that her department does not have a report at this time. I guess they will have a report once they spend the $800,000.

+++++++

If you think that $800,000 is an amazing amount of tax dollars to spend on an analysis of the feral cat population in Los Angeles, you will love the next idea of the LA City Council when it comes to spending or may I say squandering your tax dollars. This time the council wants to use taxpayer’s money to start savings accounts for kindergartners! 

A council committee is exploring the options of establishing a children’s savings account program for the approximately 72,000 kindergartners who enroll in the LA Unified School District each year. City Councilman David Ryu is supporting the program and encouraging his colleagues to support it. Between $50 and $100 will be given to each of the 72,000 kindergartners to start the savings account. Is it the responsibility of the taxpayers or parents to start savings accounts for boys and girls who start kindergarten?

+++++++

If you need money for the holidays and want to put your motorcycle up for collateral, there is a new game in town. 

Traders Loan and Jewelry is now loaning money on motorcycles. This is a new and interesting way to obtain holiday money. If you are in need of holiday money and want to put your motorcycle up for the loan, contact Traders Loan and Jewelry. They are located at 18505 Sherman Way in Reseda.

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Traffic Citation Amnesty is available from now thru March 31, 2017 

If you have an unpaid traffic ticket that was due by January 1, 2013, or if your driver’s license is suspended and you are making payments on a ticket, you may qualify for traffic amnesty from October 1, 2015 until March 31, 2017 and get your license restored. Go to www.courts.ca.gov/trafficamnesty for additional information.

+++++++

Thank you Betty Breneman for your kind comments on my recent article on the holidays and family memories. I am glad you enjoyed the walk down memory lane. 

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to each of you and your families. May this Holiday Season bring you and your families and friends great happiness and the best of times in 2017.

(Dennis P. Zine is a 33-year member of the Los Angeles Police Department and former Vice-Chairman of the Elected Los Angeles City Charter Reform Commission, a 12-year member of the Los Angeles City Council and a current LAPD Reserve Officer who serves as a member of the Fugitive Warrant Detail assigned out of Gang and Narcotics Division. Disclosure: Zine was a candidate for City Controller last city election. He writes RantZ & RaveZ for CityWatch. You can contact him at [email protected]. Mr. Zine’s views are his own and do not reflect the views of CityWatch.)

-cw 

YOUR BUDGET VOICE--The Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates (NCBA) are your voice at the City Budget table and are continually pushing for balance with the City’s budget. The Budget Advocates are currently at work on the 2017 NCBA Budget White Paper to be released next Spring … and, need your help! 

The 2016 White Paper (“Building Trust In City Hall”) focused on six key topics, infrastructure, homelessness, education, transportation, sustainability/resilience and transparency with every city department. 

These topics were chosen because so many city residents responded to the Budget Survey and questioned liability exposure and large settlements, inefficient personnel procedures and practices, lack of stakeholders input, failure to incorporate up‐to‐date technology and system consolidations in various city departments, as well as the dearth of interdepartmental communication and cooperation. 

Over the past year, the focus of the community has shifted completely. With a new national administration coming into office, the citizens of Los Angeles are concerned with its influence on LA’s budget and possible funding cuts. 

Los Angeles and California receive billions of dollars in Federal funding and with President-Elect Trump’s threat to cut funding, there are a lot of city departments at a standstill waiting to see how this plays out once he takes active office. 

But, possible federal influence on the City’s budget is just one of the issues facing the 2017-2018 plan and influencing the Budget Advocates Charter-called-for advice to Mayor Garcetti. We need you to tell us how you think the City should spend your money. What your priorities are. How you think the City should handle the looming Federal threat. 

Watch for the 2017 Budget Survey and a guide to how you can make your voice heard … coming soon at CityWatchLA.com … and to a neighborhood council near you. 

(Adrienne Nicole Edwards is a Neighborhood Council Budget Advocate. She can be reached at: [email protected].) 

-cw

TRUMPWORLD--A few weeks after I arrived in Lebanon to volunteer with Syrian refugees, I learned that my plan to offer an English class for both Lebanese and Syrian youth in the small town of Bqarzla was so sensitive as to require an audience with the village priest. 

After Sunday mass in the village church, a fellow volunteer, Samer—Syrian, Orthodox Christian—and I were escorted to the high-ceilinged sitting room of the priest’s spacious quarters next door. A group of men wearing suits and smoking cigarettes—village notables and friends of the priest—had been invited to join us. They greeted us amiably and invited us to sit.

The priest, or Abuna—an honorific meaning “Our Father” in Arabic—eventually emerged from an interior room, also in a suit, and bearing a pot of strong coffee, and commenced to smoke a cigarette. After we had dispensed the usual pleasantries, he asked me the “American” question that, prior to the election, I heard frequently. “Inti ma Trump walla Clinton?” (“Are you with Trump or Clinton?”) “Akeed mu ma Trump,” I said. “Huwweh majnoon.” (“Of course not with Trump. He is crazy.”) 

Abuna did not visibly react to my remark, but he and his friends launched into a spirited discussion in Arabic, which I only partially followed. Afterward, Samer told me that they had been opining that immigration was ruining America and that Trump would set things straight. 

The conversation echoed others I had been privy to, focused on tensions around immigration in Akkar, a remote district in northeastern Lebanon on the Syrian border. A common complaint here is that the Syrians are taking jobs and hogging resources provided by the government and international aid organizations. Some Lebanese Christians I spoke with also told me they view the primarily Sunni Muslim refugees as a demographic threat. Lebanon has refused to hold a census since 1932 lest the findings upset the precarious balance in its political system, which parcels out its top leadership posts based on religion. 

Clearly Abuna and his friends saw in Trump someone they believed would be sympathetic to their plight. Fortunately, our political differences did not prevent Abuna from granting my English class his seal of approval. 

Bqarlza is tucked away in the hills of Akkar. The occasional army helicopters overhead are a reminder of the war next door, but the village itself is sleepy, surrounded by the olive groves that drive much of its economy. If you changed its language and the architecture, the Maronite Christian enclave could easily pass for a small Texas town. The streets outside of Bqarzla are littered with shell casings and sometimes bird carcasses left by the local men who go out shooting every morning before dawn. Young people hang out at a couple of pool halls and a pizza shop. The neighbors take note of whether you went to church on Sunday. 

The backdrop of many conversations I’ve had is a contentious history between Lebanon and Syria that dates back at least as far as 1976, the beginning of Syria’s three-decade occupation of Lebanon, shortly after the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war. There remains a complicated and sometimes fluid map of loyalties for and against the Syrian regime in the Lebanese political system and society. 

Perhaps because I am an American, perhaps because there is a sense of recognition across complicated political landscapes, these conversations frequently come back around to the U.S. election. Local Lebanese acquaintances in Akkar told me before the election that they liked Trump because he is a zelameh (real man) or that they didn’t like either Trump or Clinton, but at least Trump would be something different. I might have heard the same things in any number of small towns back home. 

Local Lebanese acquaintances in Akkar told me before the election that they liked Trump because he is a zelameh (real man) or that they didn’t like either Trump or Clinton, but at least Trump would be something different. 

A week before the U.S. presidential election, the Lebanese parliament settled on their own new president after a two-year standoff, and the battery of celebratory gunshots turned the streets of Akkar into a mock war zone. As supporters of Lebanese president-elect Michel Aoun commenced their jarring festivities, I was driving home from teaching a remedial French class to Syrian kids. 

In the olive groves and empty lots in and around Bqarzla, Syrians live in scattered clusters of tents provided by the UNHCR, known in English as the United Nations’ Refugee Agency. Many of them, although registered as refugees, are not legally authorized to be in the country, leaving them in a tenuous position and largely restricted from traveling and working. For a couple of months in the fall most of them work the olive harvest, a brief bright spot before winter comes, the work dries up, and the rainy season tests the soundness of the plywood and plastic sheets reinforcing their makeshift homes. 

From UNHCR, they get basic assistance with food and shelter. From the Lebanese government, they get the right to send their children to the local public school, which is largely abandoned by the Lebanese who send their children to private schools if they can scrape together the funds. NGOs like the one I volunteer with fill in some of the gaps, including supplemental classes to help children who are struggling in Lebanese schools. 

In an English class I was teaching at one of the informal refugee camps the week before the election, we practiced saying what we did and didn’t like. Several of my Syrian students listed Trump among their dislikes, along with flies and traffic. 

Mohammed, a quiet teenager from Aleppo with an easy smile, echoed my assessment of then-candidate Trump: “Huwweh majnoon.” (“He is crazy”). 

The night before the U.S. presidential election, Samer and I dropped by one of the refugee camps in the olive groves outside of Bqarzla. We sat on the floor and drank black tea and mate with a group of young refugees from Hama. 

It was cold and windy outside, but inside the tent, the family had set up their sobia, a wood burning stove, and the small room was soon warm enough that I took off my jacket. We didn’t talk about the election or the war in Syria. The next morning, I stared at the television in a stupor as Trump made his acceptance speech, interrupted briefly by one of Lebanon’s frequent power outages. I suddenly felt very far from home. 

During the next day’s adult English class with the refugees, I joked that I needed to look for a husband from Canada. 

“Why not Syria?” they joked back. “There are no problems there.”

(Abby Sewell is a freelance journalist based in Lebanon. She previously reported for the Los Angeles Times before relocating to Lebanon to volunteer with the NGO Relief & Reconciliation for Syria. This piece first appeared in Zocalo Public Square.  Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

15 CANDLES, 96 POINTS OF LIGHT- (Editor’s Note: This month marks the 15^th anniversary of the certification of Los Angeles’ first Neighborhood Council. CityWatch is celebrating with a multi-month celebration of introspective articles and view points on how LA’s Neighborhood Councils came about, how they’re doing and how their future looks. This perspective by Anastasia Mann is such an effort.)   

When I first read about the concept of Neighborhood Councils in the Los Angeles Times some 15 years ago, my first thought was "finally.”  

In my heart I knew that this idea was likely a direct result of the fervor for secession by the movements in Hollywood, The Valley and San Pedro. I was a secessionist.  

The reason these attempts at secession were defeated is because the entire voting populous of the city was able to vote. Had only the actual communities in question been voting separately, as in elections for city council representatives, etc., it's more likely the splits would have prevailed.  

(The passion for secession was born because the "city fathers" were only focused on Downtown. That still remains as issue for some today.) 

So the NCs were born to give the “stakeholders" in each geographical area more input into local government. More "say so.”  

I first served as Area 5 (Outpost) chair to Hollywood Hills West NC. The following year I was elected president, taking the reins from founder and first president, Dan Bernstein. Dan did the hard work. He had it rough. A bit of an unruly board in a system governed by a new city department barely getting its feet wet: The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, aka: DONE.  

Our board has 23 elected representatives, which includes nine area chairs and ten issue committees, and five officers on the executive committee. We are the largest geographical NC among the 96 in the Greater LA Area.  

The get-go was slow -- not for lack of interest, but due to lack of training, direction and publicity via the city. And of course the continuous creation and application of rules that made no sense. A bit like kindergarten. An NC member across the opposite end of the city gets his hand in the "funding" cookie jar, then all us kids have to face the wall. Very frustrating. Trying to fund projects is like jumping through hoops on fire with the lion.  

But the good news is that we have indeed come a long way. The system is still riddled with red tape and an excessive number of rules which can be baffling, but today we are actually getting things done. Very good things. HHWNC has one of the finest boards that I have had the pleasure of overseeing in my entire 12 year experience. The resumes of our board members threaten any Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton could muster.  

From at one time having zero stakeholders attending our monthly meetings, we now have numbers ranging from 25+ into the hundreds. Yes. Hundreds.  

We've been blessed to have the cooperation and support over all these years from CD4, under both Tom LaBonge and David Ryu. Also from the deputies for CD13 and previously CD5. Moreover, we now have active participation from our State Assembly members for AD 46 and 50.  

We work closely with LAPD, LAFD and even DWP. We help to get streets repaired, city services improved, support schools, LAPD and Fire Department programs, our library, theatre arts projects.....and play a major role in planning and land use issues, particularly when it comes to density and major developments within our congested boundaries. We've had to battle controversies that include protecting Runyon Canyon from commercialization to controlling the out-of-control situation with the Mini Tour bus issues. We listen to developers as well as those opposed to them. 

We ask questions, request Improvements, meet over and over again until we can find consensus. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But our rate of cooperation is very high. In certain limited cases we cannot beat City Hall, but that's another story. We try to protect historical heritage sites as well.  

Current issues facing and frustrating all our communities include homelessness, traffic, more traffic, party houses, the impacts from Hollywood Blvd on the adjacent residential units, crime (of course,) and more tour bus problems...on and on.  

But we are planting trees in Runyon Canyon, protecting the off leash dog privileges by keeping it a wilderness area and not a sports venue, getting pot holes and street lighting fixed, advising our city council reps on the quality of life issues facing our stakeholders. Every day there seems to be a new issue.  

Our board members each hold their own meetings to bring every imaginable issue to the full board table. That's four to 20 meetings per month! There are hundreds of hours being devoted to our communities every month. Most of the time, these volunteers go unnoticed and under-appreciated. The entire NC system and existence is still a mystery to most Angelenos. This must change.  

Unless the media gets behind what we do and gets the word out, the system may be doomed. The public must demand that we keep these volunteer voices active, loud and clear. Many members of the media have stepped up to the plate, like CityWatch; and KNBC with the Tour Bus Coverage; the LA Times with the 8150 Sunset "Gehry" project and Runyon Canyon; and the Beverly Press. They all have an interest in what we do. 

But our own story about what we do -- how and why -- still needs to be told. We should have everyone -- resident, business owner and employee, property owner or renter, club member and worshipper signed up as stakeholders within every single one of the 96 NC's. Numbers talk.  

We hear rumors that some city officials would love to eliminate the NC system. DONE (now Empower LA) is understaffed and overwhelmed. HHWNC is fortunate to have support from our Council District. But many NCs do not enjoy this sentiment; rather, they are faced with the opposite.  

The more everyone gets involved the better future for us all. Because, frankly, we are all in this together.

(Anastasia Mann is president of the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ALPERN AT LARGE--At this time, there appears to be two choices for those of us living in the City of the Angels:  Enjoy the Show, and just get used to being lied to while your neighbors either don't vote and/or complain about things while doing nothing ... or leave.  Because telling the truth and spending the taxpayers' money well?  That's just in the movies. 

Much of the problem is that "representative democracy" and "civics" and the like is too often relegated and dismissed as "nerd-talk", and much of the problem is that we're all so exhausted with our jobs, families and personal crises that, well, who has the time to keep up with all the corruption and chicanery of local and state government?  

So let's go over two big lies, shall we?  And not just, "That's life in the big city" but real whoppers that will really affect the lives of many Angelenos: 

1) The LAUSD Board, flush with last November's financial surge, just gave the middle finger to LAUSD students and their families. 

That big change in the school year to move the end of the summer break closer to Labor Day? The nice compromise that saves energy bills and the quality of life for the school district, students and parents?  The reasonable preservation of the school year that starts the week before Labor Day and allows most of August (and its high air-conditioning bills) to be part of "summer"? 

Gone. 

In the dead of night, the LAUSD Board showed they lied to us when they said they would listen and that they cared about the needs of parents and students. 

Yep, we all now know that the LAUSD Board, who clearly did NOT promote this vote, did a nice whipsaw and punked the daylights out of their paying constituents ... and didja notice this unannounced change in schedule occurred AFTER the November elections, and AFTER they got their money from the trusting voters? 

But perhaps this is what happens when you give those with a history of lying and misspending our money a blank check ... they realize they can punk you, hurt you, slap you, kick you in the crotch, punch you in the nose ... and yet they know you'll come back for more. 

And for those who, like the lying and treacherous LAUSD Board member Scott Schmerelson, changed their minds because they were "concerned" that kids would be pulled out of district-run schools and enrolled in charter schools that started earlier, lemme give you a hint (and my kids go to charter schools): 

This move will only encourage a GREATER exodus of parents who truly LOVE their kids to go to charter schools, because charter schools want to give parents a choice--and these parents will do what it takes to both have a summer with their families and make them study hard during the summer to be prepared for their AP and honors classes. 

It's creeps like the LAUSD Board that truly, sincerely, brazenly, makes us all wonder if a new Trump-led federal Department of Education is just the thing we need to slap down these insulated miscreants who would take our money and then slam us with this treasonous move.   

School choice has just made a great leap forward, because this can and should be "Exhibit A" as to why more money, and more centralized power, is the last thing that families and societies should do for their school boards. 

2) The Pension Crisis--it ain't going away! 

Oh, how those of us who don't read CityWatch, or listen to the radio, or read a newspaper, or go online to find out what's really happening in local and state politics, really wish we would just SHUT UP and GO AWAY about this whole "pension issue". 

I mean...just LOOK!  The sun is still rising and setting, the roads are usually working OK, and things are still all fine in the big picture, so what is this doom and gloom about "pensions". 

Well, maybe if enough middle-class families have their utility bills go up enough, they'll start ignoring this pension issue as mere "blah, blah, blah" and realize that maybe there's some relevance to this issue, after all.  

As fellow CityWatch contributor Jack Humphreville recently noted the LADWP retirement plans are both expensive to maintain and underfunded. 

So we should all just FORGET about funding of old/unrepaired infrastructure unless we pay even higher utility bills. Because those bills are going to folks who stand to enjoy virtually the same amount of retirement income that they got while they were working. 

Nice deal--those retire earlier than the rest of us, and will live life richer and happier than the rest of us.  Fair, right? 

And this pension thing is hardly limited to the LADWP. All over this City and State, we're seeing this problem at the city, county, and statewide levels.   

Occasionally, we see cities going bankrupt.  Occasionally, we see projects and first-responder funding get halted. And sometimes, we see exposes in other states (like in Dallas, TX) when the police/fire pension plans achieve critical mass. 

Perhaps we'll see massive walkouts of public sector employees.  Perhaps we'll see elections won or lost based on these issues. 

But so long as we keep feeding the fire with our tax/ratepayer dollars, and so long as we keep re-electing the insulated leaders who know that--in the end--we'll just continue to "take it" then these lies will just keep happening. 

So maybe we shouldn't worry so much, or scream about so much, Trump the anti-Christ and last November's election results. 

Because the real horror story is that last month we threw away all evidence that Californians, and particularly Angelenos, have any fiscal sense whatsoever. 

And the politicians and public sector union leaders all know it...and will act accordingly.

(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