Day by day for years, the policies of the City of Los Angeles have gradually brought to life the dark, dystopian vision of LA as “Blade Runner City” — a toxic town with giant digital billboards on towering skyscrapers flashing down on the squalor and poverty below.
Ridley Scott’s 1982 film was set in LA in 2019, a horrifying world of repression and android replicants enslaving the masses of poor and powerless.
In the three decades since, billions of dollars in tax revenue have subsidized luxury hotels and gleaming skyscrapers downtown and in Hollywood, many adorned with digital billboards and 20-story high supergraphics.
All the while, the poverty rate has soared, neighborhoods declined as the infrastructure aged and deteriorated and large corporations with good-paying jobs fled along with much of the middle class.
The Blade Runner vision even inspired the design for developer Hassan “Sonny” Astani’s bankrupt 30-story loft and condo project “Concerto” near Staples Center and LA Live — a project whose profitability was to be enhanced with two 14-story moving graphic LED-panels for advertising.
Astani is a go-to player for city politicians, contributing nearly $40,000 to their campaigns since Concerto started going through the planning process in 2004.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and downtown Councilwoman Jan Perry split half that money and now are going to bat for Astani as he wages a high-powered public relations campaign to fend off creditors and keep control of the nearly complete project..
Are projects like this even desirable when there’s a glut of empty housing? Even real estate attorney Dale Goldsmith with the heavyweight lobbying firm Armbruster Goldsmith & Delvac
is skeptical, telling the Times “he isn’t convinced that downtown Los Angeles is a viable market
for large-scale condo development.”
The themes of power and money, influence peddling, densification without a coherent plan, the destruction of single family homes, closing of libraries and parks and cuts in other basic services are all coming together now in the hands of de facto mayor Austin Beutner.
Buetner is the darling of the business community with his promises of cheap water and power, tax breaks and tax holidays, subsidies and short-circuited planning processes to rush through approvals of massive projects without little or no chance for the public to object.
The sell is jobs, jobs, jobs no matter what they cost in taxpayer dollars, no matter what their impact on the quality of life in this city of neighborhoods that once flourished with small bungalows on tree-lined streets.
The race to create Blade Runner City is accelerating and the 2019 setting of the movie might not be far off.
Beutner’s first deal was to subsidize moving a sweatshop with 30 from Compton into the city and was followed by the highly-celebrated achievement of getting Chinese electric car maker BYD, partially owned by billionaire Warren Buffett, to set up its U.S. operations in LA.
The LA Business Journal finally took a look at the details this week in a story headlined “Sticker Shock? Electric car maker’s jobs to cost LA millions.” In round numbers, the 100 jobs BYD might bring each are costing the public $50,000.
Of far greater consequence is what Beutner is doing to the planning process now that he’s disposed of Planning Director Gail Goldberg and installed the obedient Michael LoGrande in the job.
LoGrande is rapidly pushing through radical changes to planning rules even as we learn from the Downtown News that Beutner has decided efforts to cut red tape for developers aren’t working fast enough.
This is Villaraigosa’s much-touted “12-to-2″ effort to streamline project approval from 12 steps to two.
“I don’t think we’ll ever say 12-to-2 was a failure. But I think we will say
that it didn’t live up to our expectations and the mayor is disappointed that
it didn’t result in more meaningful development reform,” said Bud Ovrom,
general manager of the Department of Building and Safety.
“The size
of the city bureaucracy and the procedural difference between departments
turned out to be a lot more complex and a lot more difficult than we ever
imagined,. So active and passive resistance from department heads is an issue
but 80% of the problem was just the complexity.”
A man in a hurry with little concern about public processes, Beutner “quietly
issued a request for proposals in August, asking consultants to study the
current development process and devise a new, streamlined system that will draw
from best practices in other cities. Proposals are due Sept. 28,” according to the Business Journal. Beutner gave contractors only until early October to respond with a six-month deadline to deliver a technology-based solution to fast-tracking projects.
It’s a $600,000 contract and the
plan presumably will cost many millions to implement. Sensitive to the problem
with layoffs and service cuts because of the general fund budget deficits,
Beutner is using developer fees to pay most of the cost of the contract with
private donors paying $100,000.
In other words, he doesn’t regard
the fees as public money and has no qualms about getting developers to donate a
little money to be able to build their projects before the public even knows
they are happening, before all the officials responsible for enforcing zoning
and building code and numerous other laws have scrutinized what they are doing.
Why not just get rid of the Planning
and Building and Safety departments entirely and let anyone who owns property
do whatever they want with it?
Basically, that’s what appears to be
his intent.
The business of our city government
is becoming business.
Services that cost money but serve
the public in general are being gutted. Nearly every public service except the
cops have to be paid for twice — through taxes and through fees for service.
Soon, there will be no point in
having elections since what good are do-nothing politicians who blow hot air
and only get in the way.
It’s only 2010 and we are already a
real-life version of
Yours truly pointed out what a big taxpayer rip-off the BYD deal was back on April 29, 2010:
http://web.mac.com/waltermoore/WalterMooreSays.com/Blog/Entries/2010/4/29_Villaraigosa_Using_Your_Money_To_Pay_Chinese_Car_Company_To_Come_Here.html
The BYD deal pretty much par for the course in this town, BTW. Any time you see Villaraigosa announcing a new factory or employer, you can bet he effectively “bribed” them to move here by giving them your money.
You want another example? Those Balqon electric trucks at the port. I wrote about those on April 15, 2009. (Link below.) Same scam, and they didn’t even move their headquarters into the City of Los Angeles.
http://web.me.com/waltermoore/WalterMooreSays.com/Blog/Entries/2009/4/15_Your_Briefing_On_Villaraigosa%E2%80%99s_%E2%80%9CState_of_the_City%E2%80%9D_Speech.html
Movies are today’s version of Jules Verne, often predicting the future with amazing accuracy.
With all its “fualts,” why would anyone build anything more than two-stories high in downtown? From the looks of the skewed top stories on the building pictured above, it seems like its about ready to topple without a nudge from Mom Nature.
So I guess Walter Moore must be the Android replicant?
I am a replicant, and I didn’t mean to post anonymously above. That really was my post.
Antonio is running out of willing and able to serve on Commissions. Reaching to retreads. Kramer on the Harbor Commission.
The city was set up to have an executive body, a legislative body, an independent city attorney and a Controller. They have all melded into one body where one man: Austin Beutner is calling all the shots. Where in the hell is everybody else? The silence is deafening.
Villaraigosa has been touting his intent to make this City “business-friendly”, and he seems to be making good on that “promise”. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that he has been, threatening city employees with “public-private partnerships” and “hiring and firing” key people in key positions, with that goal in mind. The surprise is that he has placed that goal so high on his agenda, to the extent that he was willing to sacrifice so much. His revealed direction now begs the question as to whether the point of “diminished returns” has been reached, even before the intended “goal” has been achieved.
The light at the end of tunnel has moved even further away.
The good thing is that Villaraigosa is not going to be mayor after this term. O.K., the bad thing is that we are stuck with the guy for what, until 2013? Ouch. Meanwhile what we are seeing is very much similar to the scenario of a guy getting the news that he’s being “let go” with two weeks notice.
The soon-to-be ex-employee shifts his activities to see what he can do to maybe make his new status a little less dismal, taking a few things from the company that might not be noticed, working out to get some last minute services done on the company tab, and seeing what he can do for others so that they might be of help later and cushion his free-fall from employment. And this all is done on a more deliberate and elaborate fashion when there’s more notice of the impending termination. At this point, the company loyalty has fizzled and the busy worker is shaping whatever he can to benefit himself to the maximum extent possible.
Villaraigosa is in this sort of situation, caring only about his own insatiable appetite for attention and trying to make each activity fit into moving him into greener pastures or just provide some self-indulgence at the moment. The greener pastures mentioned is with regard to that “green” that Villaraigosa tends to value more than being even a shade better than mediocre as a Mayor, and before that, CD-14 CM and so on. The impact on our city is a type of “looting” whatever we have left of value at any level, including quality of life, a most noticeable casualty.
What do we get for the money collected anyway? Villaraigosa at one Budget Day speech recently, spun a tale about doing the public’s bidding- of course, all according to survey results. The questions there were framed around more money for more cops to keep the crime stats low. “Unheard of,” as one of his pet phrases to emphasize his points. Instead of just saying how we were paying 3 times the trash rate instantly with the 3-year phase-in step-increases tossed out, he said “we asked if you would be willing to pay more for police services” and on an on in his story telling to construct a situational turnaround that made it look like “WE” said, “Raise those trash fees.” I know I was not one of those saying that.
By the end of Tony’s speeches you are supposed to believe all this work for which he claims credit is for “us.” We wind up paying triple the fees for what used to be more or less incorporated into the general services provided for years before the ala carte approach was so eagerly applied. We got nothing different for that boost in fees, not any better service at all, and they get more cash to handle, i.e., waste. And don’t forget that, like most of what Tony did, the result was to pad his “resume” for the next election for Governor- “I got 1,000 cops for LAPD,” and “Crime is down,…..” (No mention of “down” being in any part a function of 3-strikes laws removing opportunities for recidivism, of course.)
This seems to be a pattern repeated for other city functions. We are told of the dire situation and somehow made to feel that the CMs are only delivering the message (often for the Mayor), but in these cases, it is absolutely the “messenger” that is the very much responsible one.
More people need to wake up to see the real show that is going on here before it packs up and leaves town with all the loot that can be had. Every CM is trying to keep his job going and follow the mayor’s lead with dodging the blame for anything and not stepping on the bankruptcy land mine at the same time, lest they have their political careers abruptly and justly ended as being part of the crew that wrecked Los Angeles. The Mayor’s already been identified as a prime culprit without the need for a bankruptcy to prove it.
They at City Hall are beyond rehabilitation and L.A. Clean Sweep is one step in the right direction and away from corruption. It’s not a complete solution but you have to start somewhere.
Here are a few more excerpts from the LA Downtown News article:
“Ovrom confirmed that internal friction is indeed partly to blame. He recalls one department head say they didn’t want to be part of the system, and suggested that Ovrom just make it “11-to-2.” Ovrom said a staff member from a different department told him that they were instructed by their boss to never say anything, to never contribute, at 12-to-2 meetings. He declined to identify the department heads that resisted, but he said that they’re no longer employed by the city.
In the past year, key officials to depart from departments with major influence in the entitlement and permit process include Gail Goldberg, former director of the Planning Department. Goldberg was a co-author of 12-to-2, and spoke publicly in favor of the plan. Other department heads that have left include Ovrom’s predecessor Andrew Adelman and former CRA chief Cecilia Estolano. Adelman left in a cloud of controversy tied to an alleged sexual assault that did not lead to any charges. Estolano told Downtown News that she left her post voluntarily to pursue a job in sustainable development.
But the larger challenge to implementation, according to Ovrom and Beutner, was the sheer size and complexity of the city’s bureaucracy. Even with willing department heads, 12-to-2 would have been far more complicated to enact than it seemed on paper, they said”.
As an insider, let me start with Bud Ovrom, the hypocrite, who should have retired from government service long time back. He was the Deputy Mayor in-charge of this program and didn’t have the brains or savvy to execute it then when he had power over all the departments. He is now just a manager of one dept: Building & Safety that has no policy control, other than to enforce Code regulations. Why is this man in-charge of this process, leave alone the RFP & consultant selection process.
Second, the article says that Gail Goldberg was the co-author, although in an LA Business Journal profile of her, she claimed it was her idea. That should have been a RED FLAG. Anyone who worked with her knew she was an empty vessel, who picked up ideas and buzz words from the APA trash bin. A woman who had never handled a development project, and never went within 20 feet of a Zoning code, knew nothing about the LA Planning Department, leave alone 11 others, should have been laughed out of LA ages back. Instead, we are continuing with this hare-brained scheme where millions more will be spent in consultant’s fees and implementation to speed up a process in all the wrong places.
Third, Gail Goldberg never consulted her own staff involved with the development process who would have helped her in understanding where the bottlenecks were and how that could be rectified. The idiot got more mileage in shouting aloud at conferences at her brilliant idea & never was looking for solutions. The man she entrusted with the 12 to 2 program was Michael LoGrande, yeah, the same guy who did nothing on this but got rewarded anyway.
Now I could give more details & solutions on this whole program, and for free, but the city would rather give $600,000 to one of their cronies. Has anyone wondered why the city has a staff of well qualified 50,000 strong, who sit around wasting their time, and are rarely asked for their input on matters they know best. Is it any wonder that this city is on its way to bankruptcy when in addition to enormous payrolls, there are millions available for consultants for studies they know so little about.
Los Angeles looking like “Blade Runner” is wishful thinking. I suspect Los Angeles is destined to look like Pacoima given the taste of the leadership. Ever seen Councilman Alarcon’s house?
Which of Alarcon’s houses are you talking about?
6:17PM,the 12-2 plan was doomed from the beginning. It was another thoughtless proposal, like every other proposal Antonio has floated to grab the day`s headline. Million trees, School reform, 20% renewable energy by 2010, “elegant density” etc etc
The light at the end of the tunnel is a massive freight train barreling down the tracks straight at us, loaded down with unfunded pensions and retiree medical benefits, cooked books, and a deteriorating infrastructure.
Hey Jack, in all your great ideas, please leave the retiree medical benefits alone. What do you want us to do in our old age? Look for another job. It was based on this assurance that we dedicated 30 years of our life to the city.