October 2008 Archives

And the winner is ... David T. Vahedi.

The 60 or so representatives of dozens of groups that are part of the Coalition of Homeowner Associations-Council District 5 came to a near-unanimous verdict that Vahedi, an attorney and former state tax auditor, was their choice to succeed Councilman Jack Weiss, the wannabe City Attorney they disliked so much they tried to recall him.

I was one of the moderators of the group's recent two-hour forum in which five Fifth District candidates participated and here's what homeowner activists said when asked later "which candidate or candidates were the most likely to be an advocate for protecting and preserving neighborhoods":


As community groups come together, we are seeing positive signs of change. The Cultural Heritage Commission vote to grant monument status to Griffith Park, the DWP debate on a Ratepayer Advocate, the Planning Commission push for a ban on new billboards are just a few of the recent events where public pressure have helped move things forward.

Even the lively City Council debate on ballot measures this week shows what happens when the poltiicians see the community is paying attention, getting aroused and organizing.

For a long time, I've said i'm not sure if we can change the people but I know we can change the agenda.

I'm now beginning to think we could even change the people. The entry of DWP board president Nick Patsaouras into the Controller race, strong challengers to Weiss for City Attorney and the possibility Rich Caruso will jump into the mayor's race provide the opportunity to wake up the voters and make a difference.

It's hard to believe that the City of Los Angeles has designated 900 places for preservation as cultural-historical monuments and it's taken this long and this much effort from so many to get the city's greatest asset, Griffith Park, within reach of that status.

In a hearing room packed with 150 or so community activists, the Cultural Heritage Commission voted 4-1 to approve monument status for the park, setting the stage for the City Council to act on their decision.

The key moment came at the outset when Councilman Tom LaBonge, who represents the park area and is it's No. 1 cheerleader, ended doubts about where he stands with unequivocal support for the commission staff report which found nearly all of the park contributed to its cultural-historical significance.

LaBonge talked about his love affair with the park and his daily hikes, and how Babe Ruth found out he was traded from the Red Sox to Yankees while playing golf at Harding and how his idol Walt Disney dreamed up Disneyland watching kids playing on the park's merry-go-round.

The crowd loved it and cheered him for his support, and for dispelling the notion that he harbored a dream of creating a different kind of "Disneyland" in the thousands of acres of wilderness in Griffith Park.

In all, 58 community members signed up to speak and they got their chance after representatives of the Autry National Center and the lobbyist firm Latham & Watkins accused them of having "misunderstood" or worse "misstated" the Autry's position on the park proposal.

They were all for approving monument status for the park as long as it fully excluded the Autry.

The Autry, the zoo, Toyon Landfill were among the parts of the park that city planning staff determined were not elements of the historical nature that justified granting special protections.

The Autry, which pays $1 a year lease for its 12 acres and wants to expand dramatically on the 10 unused acres, is the most contentious issue and its continuing dismissal of community opposition only fans the passions of their opponents.

The sore spot has less to do with Griffith Park but its willingness to commit to maintaining the Southwest Museum in the Mt. Washington/Highland Park area as a living museum of western and Indian culture. Long mismanaged, the Southwest -- with a collection of art and artifacts far more valuable than the Autry's -- was taken over several years with a promise it would be restored and maintained.

The Autry, once seen as a savior, now faces intense community opposition and the Cultural Heritage Commission spent a lot of time talking what it's role could be since it is included in the overall monument area but not a "character defining" element of the history.

The issue of the Autry and similar elements was left vague and the staff was directed to develop a policy that would let the commission intervene if any development might negatively impact the park's character.

In the end, community activists came away pleased that they had gotten as much as they could have hoped for and started gearing up for the dealing with the City Council.

So how does an out-of-state company that gets paid $32 million under a three-year contract with L.A. County to help welfare recipients get jobs win a contract renewal when it fails to meet five of its eight goals?

This is L.A., baby, so it does it the L.A. way. It hires well-connected lobbyists like Harvey Englander and Associates and it starts spreading the money.

According to Garrett Therolf in the Times, Maximus Inc. of Virginia has contributed thousands of dollars to county supervisors and spent $124,000 on lobbying the county this year, making it the third biggest spender on influence peddling for the first half of the year, according to records.

The money seems to have helped. Maximus is still in the running for a new contract, one that includes a 21 percent bonus for achieving certain goals, despite being rejected by Department of Public Social Services officials, a review panel and the county auditor-controller.

"The recommendation to cut Maximus follows previous efforts by county officials to sever the county's relationship with the company, whose aggregate 13 years of service have been marked at times by significant shortcomings," the Times reported.

It may have helped Maximus that the top-rated firm for the contract, Policy Studies Inc., of Denver spent only $5,000 on lobbyists.

Or maybe having Supervisor Don Knabe's son Matt on the payroll of Englander's lobbying firm is helping or that Englander himself has served as a political consultant to Knabe in the past.

No way any of that would influence anybody, according to everyone involved.

Whether Maximus gets the contract appears to depend on Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky with Knabe and Mike Antonovish on side with the company and Gloria Molina and Yvonne Burke opposed, in part because they think the job placement work should be done by unionized county workers.

In 2000, Yaroslavsky took heat from the unions for casting the deciding vote for Maximus a year after the company made a $25,000 donation to a political committee run by his political allies fighting efforts to expand the Board of Supervisors.

Yaroslavsky is likely to be in the same swing vote position again. His spokesman, Joel Bellman, said: "He is still studying and gathering information."

For a few hours Wednesday afternoon, the Los Angeles City Council actually acted like a legislative body debating issues of great public importance as if they represented democracy in action -- instead of a conspiracy to hoodwink the people and sell out the public interest.

The issues that caught my ear as I listened in were the Instant Runoff Voting ballot measure and the Luxury Tax on big houses.

The sell in both cases amounted to money, nothing but money. And why not when the city admits to a $110 million current deficit and a looming $400 million shortfall and knows it will get worse in the months ahead.

Instant Runoff is one of those great ideas that works in really democratic communities where there's lots of candidates for every office, a contentious political environment and competitive races -- towns like Berkeley or Santa Monica or Cambridge, Mass.

It eliminates runoff elections by having voters number their first choice, second choice and so on. So when no one gets a majority, the also-rans are eliminated and the second choices are counted until a majority is attained.

In L.A., the unions and such great advocates for the masses as Jackie Goldberg and other ultra-liberals are gung-ho for it because they believe it will all but eliminate the pretense of city elections and allow them to indulge their destructive political fantasies for decades to come no matter what the people think.

Surprisingly, the argument that eliminating runoffs would save millions fell apart because election officials pointed out the near impossibility of doing that in isolation from the state and and county and Councilman Dennis Zine honed in on the fact it would actually cost more for the next few years at the least.

Others spoke up like Jan Perry and noted that underdogs in L.A. stand almost no chance in elections that are as lopsided in fund-raising and insider support as they are unless they can force a runoff. The playing field levels then as it did in her upset win to her first term.

Councilman Richard Alarcon's class warfare against the rich was even more inspiring since what he proposed had even less merit.

Frankly, I could sooner support a soak-the-rich city income tax than go along with charging them money because they have a big house as Alarcon wants. That at least would represent an honest socialist point of view about redistributing the wealth rather than taxing them on the presumption that owning a big house requires more city services.

By that illogic, residents of poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods would pay higher taxes because they require more cops and support services than affluent hillside residents.

Bill Rosendahl actually got testy about it -- a violation of the council's rules of tepid engagement and unanimous agreement -- and Alarcon bristled at the violation, arguing the $10 million his plan would raise would make his class warfare supporters happy even if it wouldn't do anything to solve the massive deficit problem.

All in all, I took it as a good sign that there was still some life left in City Hall politicians. Maybe, just maybe they aren't dead souls.Maybe they are just the living dead and we can still resurrect them if we can awaken ourselves.

In an orgy of self-congratulations and abdication of responsibility, City Council members agreed Wednesday that the LAPD's crime lab needs more money to eliminate over the next 30 months the 7,000 backlog of rape kits that have gone untested for DNA for years.

Council members, without even a hint of shame, acted as if they had not ignored the problem and endless warnings for years even as they admitted that an up-to-date crime lab is a  necessity, a basic service, to protect the public.

No sooner had the hour-long discussion of how they are all committed to contracting with outside labs in the short-term and hiring 10 criminalists every six months than officials of Emergency Management Department stepped forward and said they were ill-prepared for the city's frequent disasters whether its fires, floods, earthquakes or train wrecks.

They said they desperately need three of the seven positions they have been asking for filled to begin to deal with their inability to provide this basic service.

Again, it's about basic services that aren't being met even as revenues soared. Now the city faces a massive deficit.

I invite you to respond in comments or email me at ron@ronkayela.com with your examples of basic services that are not being delivered.

That's what Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Tuesday at a hurriedly called press conference that he had miraculously found nearly $1 million to pay for testing of semen stored in the nearly 7,000 rape kits that have piled up because City Hall didn't have enough money to hire lab technicians.

I don't want to be overly harsh about the mayor's audacity in boasting about how he keeps promises but maybe the operative word might be "bank" since we all have learned in recent days that they can't be trusted and are subject to failure.

But let's not get lost in the question of breaking promises. The issue is untested rape kits and it was put in perspective just last week by City Hall's persona non grata, Controller Laura Chick, who in a scathing report riled up the public by exposing just how negligent city officials have been in investigating rape cases.

Given the abhorrent nature of rape and other sex crimes, the report prompted the mayor, Police Chief William Bratton and the trio of ambitious City Council members -- Jack Weiss, Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti -- to hold a press conference in time for the evening TV news to announce $950,000 was suddenly available for the LAPD's crime lab.

Noticeably not invited to the event was Chick for reasons that should be obvious: If she's going to embarrass City Hall for rolling up a deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars and not solve the most basic problems, then she won't get invited to the self-promotion party.

The mayor, under whose leadership police requests for adequate crime lab funding were turned down, declared the city has a "solemn obligation to seek justice" when crimes are committed and he now has found the political will to fulfill his duty.

"When I put my word to it, you can take it to the bank," the Daily News quoted him as saying.. "If you are a rapist and you think you got away, forget it."

The price certainly won't be cheap but the brand is pure gold -- Beverly Hills 90210.

Feeling a lot like the woebegone residents of Los Angeles whose leaders have sold out the city and its people, the community is fighting what they believe is a critical battle against high-rise development that will set the course for the city for years to come.

At issue is a project adjacent to the Beverly Hills for a massive high-rise development at one of the nation's busiest and most famous intersections -- where Wilshire and Santa Monica meet.

It is the dreamchild of tough guy developer, the one-time schlock computer maker Beny Alagem and the hardball lobbyists and consultants he has hired to sell voters on the virtues of Beverly Hills tallest building and two other high-rises that will provide expensive condominiums and a Waldorf Astoria Hotel adjacent to the Beverly Hilton.

Residents see it as the start of something big, way too big -- a domino effect that would turn Beverly Hills into Century City and Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood, creating massive traffic congestion, changing the skyline, polluting the air during five or more years of construction.

For many like Terre Thomas, daughter of the late entertainer Danny Thomas and sister of actress Marlo Thomas, community activism had meant her involvement in St. Jude Children's Research Hospital which had been her father's favorite charity.

"We know this isn't the '50s anymore," says Terre Thomas, daughter of the late entertainer Danny Thomas and sister of actress Marlo Thomas,  whose community activism had meant her involvement in St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, her father's favorite charity.

"But some things have got to stay the same. Many people are very upset at Beverly Hills becoming a high-rise city and that this will unleash a whole lot of other high-rise projects. We don't want to see Beverly Hills ruined."

Thomas has helped produce a video that tells the story of why so many oppose what Alagem, who has parlayed his wealth from the knockoff computer maker Packard Bell nearly two decades ago into a real estate fortune.

The Planning Commission rejected his proposal after months of review 5-0 but the City Council approved it 3-2, forcing residents to get a petition drive going and get it on next Tuesday's ballot as Proposition H.

They want people to vote "No" and reject the project, forcing Alagem to come back with a more appropriate sized project.

If it's any consolation to residents of L.A. who are fighting battles like this all over town, the issue isn't demographics -- Beverly Hills is 85 percent white. BH has an annual household income nearly twice L.A.'s. BH has a tenth the population of L.A. and BH has hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank versus L.A. facing a deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars.

So why did the Beverly Hills City Council ignore the interests of the community and sell out the city's future? Listen to what the No on H campaign has to say and what the yes on H campaign has to say about this project:

 

Editor's Note: I wrote this article for the October edition of Nina Royal's North Valley Reporter which is now available.

For too long the politically conscious people of Los Angeles have projected their own good hearts and good intentions onto their City Council members and come hat in hand hoping for favors like a speed bump on their street or been seduced by a smile and flattering word.

If we're going to change the political culture of City Hall and save the city from over-development, over-population and over-taxation, we're going to have to stop being so naive and get tough with our elected officials.

The problem in a nutshell is they treat us like their servants and order us around and make decisions for us that aren't in our or the city's best interests. The elected officials have to be put in their place. They're the servants, the public servants and they are handsomely rewarded for it.

They live like millionaires -- and somehow most of them become millionaires while on the public dole -- with the highest salaries of municipal officials in America and lucrative perks.

I've listened to a lot of City Council meetings in the last six months and I've attended a lot of commission and city hearings and I'm shocked -- critical as I've long been about the arrogance of City Hall -- by the way the pubic is treated.

Nick Patsaouras, president of the DWP Board of Commissioners and a long-time watchdog on public spending, disclosed Monday that he will run for City Controller in the March 3 primary.

Patsaouras, who played a key role in the Villaragosa Administration keeping costs under control and overseeing construction of the new LAPD Headquarters as well as performing similar roles for the County-USC Medical Center and Harbor-UCLA Hospital, will challenge Councilwoman Wendy Greuel for Controller for the right to succeed Laura Chick, who is termed out.

In recent months, Patsaouras has emerged as an advocate for DWP ratepayers and championed creation of an office within the utility specifically to serve as the equivalent of an ombudsman or inspector general.

"I don't believe in coronations. We need to discuss the issues," he said a phone interview.

"We need someone in the Controller's Office who has the experience, technical knowledge and ability to make sure we're using the best management practices and look after the public's money..

"We have to think about our kids and the future of the city."

Greuel, a two-term councilwoman from the East Valley, appeared to be headed towards an easy primary victory without significant opposition until Patsaouras entered the race.

His decision to run for controller caught City Hall insiders by surprise.

"There's a lot of very surprised people tonight -- especially Wendy Greuel," said one source. "This is not the way it's supposed to work in LA nowadays. Wendy and Nick travel in the same circles and have many of the same friends and political allies.  Given Nick's personality, this will be a helluva of a race."

A Greek immigrant who worked his way through community college and CSUN, he brings 30 years of experience in key roles in city government from the Tom Bradley years through to today.

He runs a successful electrical engineering company and is president of Polis Builders, a developer of mixed use projects.

Patsaouras was a key figure in the MTA and its predecessor transportation agencies and helped drive the subway and light rail projects. The Patsaouras Transit Plaza near Union Station is named in his honor.

He and his wife Sylvia are long-time residents of the Valley and have two grown children.

UPDATE: True to form, DWP General Manager David Nahai issued a smiley face statement about the latest screwup which continued under his watch as president of the utility's board and went to trial for six weeks last year, adding millions to the overall cost. "We are pleased to have fashioned an agreement which will enable energy efficiency improvements and overall lowered energy usage for the plaintiffs in this action. We can also take comfort in the fact that the involved parties are government entities whose constituents are largely LADWP customers. That the beneficiaries of this settlement serve the residents of the city and County of Los Angeles was a prime factor for LADWP to enter settlement negotiations."


Now you know what your DWP rate hikes are going for and why so many more are coming:

You have to pay for the incompetence and dishonesty of your officials.

A settlement was announced today between lawyers for various government agencies and the Department of Water Power which had to admit it had cheated them for a decade and will have to pay them $160 million. Or more precisely, you will have to pay them.

That's 10 times what DWP officials claim it will cost extra to give its workers a whopping 5.9 percent pay raise in the middle of the worst recession in a generation.

In June 2007, Superior Court Judge John P. Wade ruled that DWP had inflated its electric bills to governmental customers going back to 1998 by a total of $223.8 million because it charged them more than a share of the capital costs needed to generate electricity in proportion to the share of the plant's output they used.

Use 5 percent of the plant's electricity, pay 5 percent of what it cost to build. That was the rule. That was the law. But DWP plays by its own rules and charged a lot more than that.

"This settlement will give back to the school district and our other
clients some much-needed funds," said Eric R. Havian, a San Francisco
attorney with Phillips & Cohen LLP, which is representing all the non-State
agencies. "We are pleased that the matter was resolved without the need for
further litigation."

So here's the windfall coming to local agencies:

* Los Angeles Unified School District -- $67.7 million
* Los Angeles County -- $32.3 million
* Metropolitan Transportation Authority-- $28.1 million
* State agencies -- $22.3 million
* Los Angeles Community College District -- $5.58 million
* University of California at Los Angeles -- $3.8 million.

In the face of LAPD 's adamant defense of every aspect of Special Order 40, former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates said Mondaythat officers were being handcuffed by City Hall politicians (click here gatesclip.mp3)from using it against illegal immigrant gang members.

In a hearing put off for six months by the council's Public Safety Committee Chairman, Jack Weiss, the wannabe City Attorney, emotional statements flowed freely from the family of Jamiel Shaw Jr. -- the South L.A. youth slain allegedly by a illegal immigrant gang member last spring -- and others who wanted tougher law enforcement and those who defended Special Order 40 and how it's being used.

Police Commission member Andrea Ortin, who was the U.S. Attorney for L.A. when Gates adopted Special Order 40 nearly 30 years ago, gave no ground in her defense of the policy or LAPD's use of it.

LAPD officials took the same tack, conceding only that it was being  applied unevenly in different parts of the city by officers. Training is now under way so officers will understand that they are to report when they believe people arrested for felonies or multiple misdemeanors might be in the country illegally

They argued they aren't authorized to enforce federal laws -- a contention that was challenged by Councilman Dennis Zine who introducted a motion to stregthen Special Order back in April shortly after the murder of Jamiel Shaw Jr. .

Gates traced the reasons he adopted Special Order 40 to the failure of federal officials to collaborate in his efforts to crack down on gang activity. He said it was necessary to get illegal immigrants who were victims of crime or witnesses to cooperate with police. It was never intended to protect gang members who engaged in crime from immigration law enforcement

In the end, the committee decided to do nothing more than ask the LAPD to provide periodic reports on training of officers in Special Order 40 without suggesting any changes to it.

So nothing changed. The Shaw family will continue to try to qualify Jamiel's Law for the ballot through the petition drive and the controversy over illegal immigration and the protection of the civil rights of all immigrants will continue.

Righteous passions are aroused these days about chickens penned in cages so small they can't move and elephants locked in the L.A. Zoo without room to roam in anything like a natural way.

Voters and officials  alike seem touched by these concerns about man's inhumanity to animals and want to see the quality of their lives improved by giving them space to breathe.

So I can't help but wonder why we don't care as much about man's inhumanity to humans with regard to the same issue of quality of life and space to breathe.

I guess man's inhumanity to humans doesn't touch the same compassionate nerve as it does when it's directed at animals. Maybe all these endless wars and violence have damaged the neurons that connect our brains to our compassionate hearts.

Density bonuses, subsidies for multi-million-dollar condos and luxury hotels, inclusionary zoning, exclusion of the public from development decisions and now Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's $5 billion "affordable housing" plan -- it all adds up to people living in little boxes all stacked up to the sky and unable to road freely on gridlocked streets and highways, giant digital billboards flashing in their eyes day and night.

It's not a pretty picture but then money rules in L.A. -- not the people. And money has everything to do with the mayor's plan for the city, not the quality of human lives.

Of course, the economics are different. Not a lot of chicken, calves or pigs are raised in L.A. anymore so they don't make the city's fat-cats rich or fill the treasury with currency to squander. The space they require long ago was filled with humans.

And the elephants at the zoo, though thrilling to children, won't really help the city pay the bills that are piling up as it continues to spend far more than it takes in.

So when you look at Villaraigosa's audacious five-year housing plan to create 20,000 new units -- an average cost of $250,000 each assuming the money actually goes for construction -- you have to understand it's about the money and who it benefits.

The City Hall power structure has been in hard-sell mode for quite a while trying to convince the public that the population will soar no matter what we do, that the poor have an inalienable right to live in L.A. even if there's nothing but low-paying service jobs and housing costs half their paychecks. 

City officials are in a mad rush to build taller residential buildings and malls and entertainment complexes and offices, to pave every scrap of land as if living like caged chickens will make us happier and more prosperous.

It's called densification. But slumification might be more apt.

I recently listened to Helmi Hisserich, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Policy, provide the Planning Commission with a thoughtful and persuasive-sounding presentation of the plan.

But I was struck by a couple of charts she showed.  

One compared the number of housing units built in 2007 in various income levels to the number of units needed at those income levels. For incomes below $29,000, it showed 1,019 built to 3,405 needed; for $29,000 to $42,000, it was 595 to 2,187 built; for $42,000 to $72,000, it was 14 -- yes 14 units total -- to 2,413 needed. Above that, from $72,000 to $120,000, there was actually more units built --12,661 -- than needed -- 6.104. You can bet there's lots of housing being built and available for the affluent but for some reason the mayor's team didn't supply the numbers.

It seems so clear to me that whatever you believe, there is something askew.

We have a glut of housing for the affluent and relatively affluent and we're doing a fair job of providing subsidized housing for the very poor and working poor.

But 14 units for the middle class -- the people who are right at the average median income for households in L.A. $42,000 to $72,000?

These are the people who have jobs, often very hard jobs, and go to work every day and struggle to make ends meet. They are the bedrock of society, the class of people whose numbers are diminishing as the city continues to be inhospitable to business and industry with good-paying jobs, tolerates gangs and failing schools and looks the other way as sweatshop operators and slumlords thrive. Talk about broken windows.

A healthy society has a healthy balance of rich and poor with the largest number in the middle. The LAUSD is a prime example of what happens when the numbers get out of balance. It's not the change in ethnicity that occurred over the last 30 years or even the stifling bureaucracy that has led to its breakdown. There's simply too many students whose needs are too great so a third to half of them never get a diploma and the cycle of poverty goes round and round.

It's through those eyes that I looked at the Mayor's Housing Plan -- an ambitious proposal to marshal $5 billion from public and private sources over five years to preserve or build 20,000 units.

So who will get these units?

For the chronically homeless, the goal is 2,200 units. For the very poor, households with less than $29,000 a year, there is 8,800 units.  And for the poor with incomes of $29,000 to $42,000, there's 3,800 units. That's 14,800 units in all, or nearly 75 percent of what the mayor proposes.

This is what he means by "affordable housing."

The remainder of the units -- 5,200 -- are intended for those with incomes at the L.A. median range of $42,000 to $90,000. That's the middle of the middle class.

So let's be clear about what's on the table. The word "affordable" is a big lie. What's affordable to one person, isn't affordable to another. What we're talking about is housing for the poor -- not the middle class.

We're talking about tearing down the Jordan Downs housing project and building a new project next to it for three times as many families in a much denser space. We're talking about densifying the poorest areas of the city with more poor people and we're talking about densifying the whole city -- except for the most afflurent areas -- with more market rate housing that will overwhelm the city's resources and its infrastructure.

What we're not talking about is what kind of city L.A. will become if the mayor and the developers have their way.

Are his goals the right goals for L.A.? Will more housing for the poor attract more poor people or will it make them less poor? Will businesses with good-paying jobs locate or expand without workers with the skills and employment records they require?

The issue isn't the need for more housing for more people as the mayor and the power structure have defined it. The issue is how we make this a healthier, more prosperous and better city for the people who live and work here.

I don't see how people living like caged chickens or elephants locked in the zoo achieves anything except turning L.A. into the Blade Runner city envisioned by filmmaker Ridley Scott a quarter century ago.

It seems fitting somehow that Nadya Mahdavi, the landlord at the heart of the mystery about who's killing my neighborhood, surrendered to police a month to the day after she failed to show up in court.

Mahdavii faces several charges that could carry six months in jail and $1,000 fines growing out of the illegal conversion of a modest single family house in my neighborhood into a tenement with three apartments and a dozen rooms.

Jessica Tarman, in Councilman Dennis Zine's office, alerted me that Mahdavi was arrested Thursday night. Zine, who took an intense interest in the case after we had a confrontation over how it was being handled months ago, had wanted me to join him in making the arrest but police brass nixed the idea.

Tarman didn't know much else so I called Chief Inspector Frank Bush of the Building and Safety Department who filled in a few sketchy details. An officer left a note at one of the houses where Mahdavi was believed to live and got a call from an attorney who met the suspect at the Devonshire Division station where she turned herself in.

She was booked and posted the $5,000 bail on her warrant and then released. Her company, Fidelity Investments LLC has a Nov. 5 date in Van Nuys Courthouse, Bush said

The Watch Commander at Devonshire Division, Sgt. Walters, wasn't on duty last night so he couldn't add much. And yes, they took a booking photo but no, you can't have it because it's against policy.

Very routine, happens everyday kind of crime, not the stuff of best-selling mysteries.

But it's not that way for my neighbors. This is a drama that started back in February and there's no end in sight despite the honest efforts of Building and Safety, City Attorney Don Cocek, the LAPD and Zine.

My neighbors see the house at 19952 Haynes St. as an eyesore, a cancer in their neighborhood, It undermines the quality of their lives and destroys the sense of place that they learned to love living in a quiet tract of single family homes abutting an L.A. River channel with streets designed to keep traffic to a minimum.

This is their home and in some cases has been their home for 50 years.

And there's a tenement with a bunch of people living in it and five or six cars in the driveway or parked in front and a dog named Kashi tied up in front much of the day and the night. The residents don't make a lot of noise and niether does Kashi but my dog Bruno -- a pit bull and shar-pei mix who carries 60 pounds of jaw and muscle and latent fury from the abuse he suffered before we found him in our bushes -- is so scared of Kashi from an early confrontation that he looks the other way when we walk nearby.

I understand why the system sees this problem as no big deal. This is a city where gangs run wild, drug dealing is rampant and the political system is corrupt.

So the concerns of a few people in one little tract don't amount to a hill of beans.

But that isn't how my neighbors feel. Or how people all over the city feel about the concerns they have. The concerns of the city's people don't matter much in the grand scheme of things.

That's really what's wrong with L.A., why there is so much discontent, so much middle class flight for so long, why L.A. is becoming a city of rich people who can take care of themselves and poor people who can't do anythiing about it.

I believe it's likely that justice of sorts will be done in this case. That the residents of the tenement who haven't violated any laws will be evicted and given help by the city to find another place to live.

But how long will it take and will it really solve the mystery of who's killing my neighborhood?

Honestly, I don't make this stuff up. DWP Commissioner Edith Ramirez actually said in public the other day that the people don't need a Ratepayer Advocate because her board is "vigilant in assuring the public that the rights of ratepayers are being protected."

And it's not just the commission but the whole Department of Water and Power management who loves you the ratepayer so much and care so deeply that they are hiking rates as fast as they can with another 13 percent increase in water charges coming in January and such horrendous increases in the offing that nobody even dares to talk about yet.

It's why DWP employees are getting 6 percent pay hikes and have huge pensions guaranteed by you while you are living in fear of losing your job, your house and your future as your retirement investments shrink to nothing.

It's why the mayor and City Council who have squandered your taxes are already eyeing the bottomless pit of DWP ratepayer money to cover the $110 million deficit they've created this year and the $400 million shortfall next year.

It's why Ramirez and her colleagues on the commission with the exception of Commission President Nick Patsaouras rolled over to the mayor and came out in opposition Tuesday to creating a Ratepayer Advocate. It's an act of love not contempt, take their word for it.

Who do they think they're kidding?

Don't they know the DWP has no credibility in the community, that it's seen as a thief stealing the public's money to give to contractors and public employee unions while it lets the infrastructure rot, plans to pipe recycled toilet water into homes and pays huge premiums for "green power" so the mayor can boast he's an environmental saint and get re-elected.

DWP General Manager David Nahai is so shameless he claims that the whole city government structure has no interest but the public interest on its mind and that with the board, the City Council and various committees there are "no less than 22 ombudsman ratepayer advocates."

That's not the view of Patsaouras who has been around City Hall for 30 years and made the point that " we are political appointments, let's be honest with ourselves."

OK, Nick, let's be honest with ourselves. With the exception of you, Jane Usher in Planning and a few other commissioners out of all the hundreds of them, there is no one with a record of showing independence, of serving as the public watchdog, ombudsman or advocate.

They represent a narrow class of people beholden one way or another to the politicians who appoint them. And the politicians are virtually appointed by the unions and various other special interests who put them in the jobs with campaign contributions and support.

This isn't democracy. This is a tyranny of a tiny minority controlled by narrow and selfish interests who have failed miserably in their most fundamental function of managing the city's resources to provide good police and fire services, pave the streets and sidewalks, solve basic problems like traffic congestion, plan for healthy neighborhoods and work for a business climate that generates good-paying jobs.

And so when something comes up as modest as proposing a Ratepayer Advocate to make sure the DWP spends the public's money wisely and can ask tough questions so the public knows what is going on, the mayor and the power structure go ballistic.

They are scared to death of the truth coming out about their scandalous abuses of the public trust that they are sworn to uphold.

Ramirez is right about one thing  If she and the elected officials and bureaucrats fulfilled their duties they would be vigilant of the public interest. But they aren't.

They betray themselves and the people and go about their lives as if they had any honor left but there is no honor among thieves.

I don't know how they say the things they say, or do the things they do. But I do know this:
If they can't see their way to appoint a public advocate to help clean up the corrupt policies of the DWP as the LAPD and the MTA have done, they leave the public no alternative but to fight them every inch of the way in every way they can.

There is an army of thousands of community activists out there who have worked long and hard to try to partner with the city to make L.A. better. The power structure may dismiss them as amateurs, crazies, gadflies and Nimbys but they are mobilizing and breaking down the barriers that keep them apart and one of these days, the bills will come due as they always do -- or there won't be much of a city left to fight over.
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Deflecting blame for the city's money woes on "forces and factors outside" his control,  Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ordered a series of "belt-tightening measures" Tuesday to try to reduce a looming $110 million budget deficit this year and a $400 shortfall next year.

The mayor's memorandum to department heads, the City Council and other top officials praises cost-cutting efforts undertaken already and tosses around phrases like "prudent, focused and multi-faceted," "hard work and sacrifice," and "conservative revenue forecasting and expenditure discipline."

But those efforts are not enough, he said, because the city "has had to endure enormous financial challenges" caused by the national housing and credit crunch, failure of financial institutions and the stock market declines.

In addition, his budget underestimated the cost of gas prices and lawsuits by $55 million and overestimated revenue by the same amount.

The six-page memo called "FY 2008-2009 Belt Tightening Measures" AVBudget.pdf contains seven directives to department heads but it contains no drastic steps such as layoffs or cuts in public services.

Instead, he urges them to limit hiring and overtime to essential needs; suspending general fund purchases for furniture, equipment and computers; raiding infrastructure investment funds as has been done often in the past; cutting back on mailings; speeding up grant and bond funds recovery and seeking $2 million from signage on the Convention Center and $38 million from selling the Mangrove site.

He called these steps "but a part of the extraordinary measures we must take to address our projected year-end deficit."

But taken as a whole his actions seem like window-dressing for a mayor seeking re-election right at the time next year's budget must be put together rather than a tough CEO prepared to brave criticism for imposing austerity measures that would get ahead of problems of declining revenue and rising costs.

The giveaway is his plan to go ahead with a 3.9 percent cut in business taxes on Jan. 1. He called it a "stimulus" even as he is seeking tax hikes on the general public on the Nov. 4 ballot and his administration plans on imposing a 13 percent water rate hike on Jan. 1. Clearly, one of his goals is to keep the business community on his side -- something that could be vital to his re-election if developer Rick Caruso who runs a multi-billion-dollar corporation jumps into the race.

The mayor's strategy all along has been to raise so much money -- now nearly $2.5 million -- that he can scare off well-funded challengers and avoid a runoff election campaign in March and April when more severe actions likely will be needed.

Besides going forward with the business tax cut,  Villaraigosa suggested a series of other actions that should be taken::

* Limiting fee waivers for special events
* A 10 percent reduction in water and power use in city buildings
* Voluntary furloughs by city employees
* Advertising revenue on the city's public access computers and at its wi-fi locations
* Reviewing existing contracts for possible savings
* Reducing fuel consumption and replacing gas-guzzling vehicles with higherf-mileage ones.

"Working together, creatively and wisely as we have, I know that we can all meet the current fiscal challenges,'' he concluded

Community activists won a major victory in their effort to protect Griffith Park from various proposed development projects when city planners on Tuesday recommended granting it cultural-historical monument status.

The finding that the park -- with the exception of the zoo, Autry National Center, I-5, Roosevelt Golf Course and Toyon Landfill -- meets the criteria for preservation sets the stage for a hearing Oct. 30 of the City Cultural Heritage Commission.

Community activists have intensified their campaign in recent months and will step up their pressure on the commission in the next week.

Various proposals have been made for projects in the park and the cultural-historical monument status would make sure there is a full and public examination of any development to protect what most would agree is L.A. greatest asset.

The Planning Department's Office of Historic Resources saw the importance of that in the report prepared by Edgar Garcia and Ken Bernstein. The challenge now is to make sure the commissioners respond and to mount a major public campaign to keep the City Council from slipping in loopholes.

Here's their report: griffithparkreport.pdf.

Often, when I listen to City Council debates on an important issue like Prop. 11, I think I must have come from another planet because what they say seems so to be in a language I don't understand or maybe they're just lying through their teeth.

I'm sure they feel the same way about what I have to say.

I know they are elected officials and claim theyhave the support of voters so they think that makes them right about everything. But when you look at the numbers it doesn't mean they have anything like a mandate from the people, or that there is anything like democracy in L.A.

Among those who denounced Prop. 11 Tuesday -- the Nov. 4 state ballot measure that creates an independent Redistricting Commission in hopes of ending the gerrymandering of legislative districts --were Council President Gil Garcetti and Councilmen Richard Alarcon and Tony Cardenas.

Garcetti won his last election with less than 5,000 votes and Alarcon with just over 7,000 -- out of the 275,000 who live in their districts. And Cardenas got similar vote totals with nearly 10 times as much money as all his challengers put together.

In Garcetti's mind -- if he meant what he said about Prop. 11 -- the problem is Sacramento isn't caused by districts the legislators drew for themselves so that only far left Democrats and far right Repbulicans could get elected. Gridlock is caused by partisanship and he'd like to see the parties abolished so everybody could get along unanimously like they do on the City Council. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

For Alarcon, this whole redistricting thing is infuriating, nothing but a dirty trick being played by Republicans to cheat the voters who can't stand them.

Cardenas credits gerrymandered districts for the surge in Latino elected officials as if the massive demographic changes had nothing to do with it.

A single quote or characterization doesn't do them justice. You really got to listen to them for yourselves. And then listen to the supporters of Prop. 11 -- former Democratic Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg, former L..A Chamber of Commerce head David Fleming and City Controller Laura Chick explain their position.

From the ivory tower of a newsroom, I long ago grew critical of City Hall's inaction. Now that I'm getting down to there in person an activist, my attitude has changed.

The corruption of democratic processes, the view of the public as second-class citizens, the ingrained subservience of politicians and bureaucrats to special interests is far worse than I thought.

On Monday, I trekked to the 10th Floor of that Palace of Greed and found myself as usual wondering what could have been achieved if they had spent half of the $300 million it cost to luxuriously refurbish City Hall on programs that benefited the people, like effective gang prevention programs, a police crime lab, street paving and other basics of civilized society.

I was there to see how Zoning Administrator Andre Parvenu handled the crowd of Echo Park residents upset over T-Mobile's plan to put 12 cell phone towers atop a landmark apartment building, the Delmor, at 1551 Echo Park Blvd.

Parvenu, who didn't return my landline phone calls last week, didn't show up. And neither did T-Mobile or the landlord who stands to reap a handsome windfall profit if the cell phones towers go on his building.

Albert Landini was handling the hearing. He seemed like a decent man but officious and clearly acted like the 40 or so community activists in attendance were more an annoyance that had to be tolerated as part of the job but whose concerns were largely irrelevant.

It seemed he only had ears for T-Mobile as he asked at least 10 times if the company's representatives were present before acknowledging in the end that the company "blew me off." and its absence "bodes well" for the community.

The community's case was helped by the support given by Council President Eric Garcetti who sent a staffer who made two key points that Landini took seriously: The towers would rise 10 feet above the 45-foot height limit in the area and Garcetti will see historical-cultural status for the century-old apartment building, exactly what activists are seeking to protect Griffith Park from development.

Listen to the audio atof the start of the hearing where Landini lays down tough ground rules to the community, shows he's eagerly looking around for T-Mobile representatives and then happily agrees Garcetti's staffer should go first.garcetti(128Kbps).mp3

Then, it was Echo Park's turn. They lined up one after another and pridefully told their story: How artists, musicians, students, young professionals were creating a lively and hip neighborhood, how Echo Park was just named one of America's 10 great neighborhoods by the American Planning Assn., how assaults on the character of the community like T-Mobile's undermined its regeneratin.

They presented petitions from 500 people and complained the towers were a threat to their health and the value of their property. They complained the towers were visual bligh to the thousands of people who live above the Delmor. They warned the leaky roof of the Delmor might collapse and kill them from the weight of the towers. They resented the fact T-Mobile and the landlord would profit handsomely and the community would be trashed.

Throughout the hearing, Landini made it clear that the health concerns of all those radio waves was under federal law not an issue for his consideration and, beyond that, he repeatedly scoffed at the idea that cell towers are dangerous in any way.

He dismissed as mere hearsay worries about renters fleeing and other negative impact on property values.

What struck me most is the impression I got that cellular companies had a "right" to put towers wherever they wanted unless there was a clear legal reason standing in their way. And that's what is so disturbing:

Why doesn't L.A. have clear rational rules that protect community interests and define where and how the towers can be placed? Other cities do that but then other cities actually care about the people who live, work and do business in them.

Near the end, I joined the parade of witnesses to make the point that the concerns of Echo Park are the concerns of every neighborhood in the city -- which is the whole reason we started the Saving L.A. Projectcellron1.wav

Finally it was Landini's turn to sum up what he heard from careful notes he took of each issue that was raised. Given the rules he operates under and the mentality of City Hall, it seemed a fair analysis of the situation landini-end.mp3.

It'll be interesting to see what goes on behind the scenes over the month or so Landini needs to make up his mind and write his decision.

But you can bet T-Mobile will find a way to tell its story in back rooms where deals can be cut and you can be sure the city will not adopt new regulations that give the community a genuine voice in decisions.

Last year, T-Mobile paid 78,000 to a lobbyist to try to get DWP policies affecting it changes. This year, in contrast, it has contributed just $500 each this year to Council Members Eric Garcetti, Ed Reyes and Janice Hahn and paid $15,000 to a small firm called John Q. Public Affairs for help in putting cell phone towers wherever it wants around town.

If the company really wants to screw the John Q. Publics of Los Angeles, it's going to have throw a lot more money than that around City Hall.

And even that might not work if more communities get organized like this Echo Park neighborhood and if communities around the city the issue isn't just local to one neighborhood but affects us all.

Innocent people arrested, jailed and even extradited. Rapists and other criminals walking the streets free to carry on their mayhem. Officials breast-beating and butt-covering with calls for public hearings and private investigations.

Only in L.A.

This is a town where public officials line up like lemmings to sign off on a federal court consent decree that handcuffs the entire Police Department and costs the public hundreds of millions dollars because of the misdeeds of a couple of bad cops but can't find a few million bucks for a modern, efficient crime lab.

Don't they watch all those CSI shows on television and know how science solves crimes?

It's going to take more than the ineffectual Councilman Jack Weiss posturing for the cameras to help his candidacy for City Attorney -- heaven help us -- or the LAPD's Inspector General who's ignored the problem for years to get to the bottom of this problem.

Innocent people who were jailed because of this bungling had their civil rights violated and that's a crime that ought to justify the California or U.S. Attorney General stepping in with an independent prosecutor to find out the truth about whether this is misfeasance or malfeasance -- incompetence or criminality.

The latest evidence of wrongdoing comes out today with City Controller Laura Chick's audit of why the LAPD has thousands of rape kits containing DNA evidence that are untested despite years of controversy and demands for the funds needed to upgrade the crime lab.

To make her point, Chick is releasing the audit on the steps of City Hall with Sarah Tofte, a  researcher at Human Rights Watch and Kathy Spillar, Executive Vice President of the Feminist Majority Foundation at her side.

Weiss, as head of the City Council's Public Safety Committee, has been the point man for getting funds for the crime lab but he has as little respect from his colleagues as his constituents so he gets ignored and the LAPD's DNA testing staff is as grossly inadequate as ever.

The same is true about the fingerprinting section as the Times reported last week.

"The Los Angeles Police Department has acknowledged in a confidential report that people have been falsely implicated in crimes because the department's fingerprint experts wrongly identified them as suspects.

"The 10-page internal report, obtained by The Times, highlighted two cases in which criminal defendants had charges against them dropped after problems with the fingerprint analysis were exposed. LAPD officials do not know how many other people might have been wrongly accused over the years as a result of poor fingerprint analysis and do not have the funds to pay for a comprehensive audit to find out, according to police records and interviews."

When I listened to Los Angeles Planning Department General Manager Gail Goldberg boast last week about how Echo Park was named "one of America's 10 greatest neighborhoods," I couldn't help but laugh.

The city has had little or nothing to do with the regeneration of this wonderful but rundown community. Echo Park, like Eagle Rock and Highland Park and a few others neighborhoods, are undergoing an exciting revival. It's happening despite City Hall policies that are ruining many other neighborhoods.

What was ironic about Goldberg's boast is that she probably isn't even aware that a zoning administrator who works for her is holding a hearing Monday on T-Mobile's request to put a dozen 55-foot cell phone towers atop a nearly 200-year-old apartment building right in the center of an area that is attracting young professionals, artists, students and others who are making it a hip place to live.

Apart from the unknown health issues associated in living beneath and around massive bursts of radiowaves is the hideous visual blight those 12 towers would create, the sense of the neighborhood being violated by their intrusion. This wouldn't even be a question if the city had a comprehensive policy that protects community interests and processes to inform and help residents look after themselves.

Have a laugh yourself. Listen to Goldberg