Just over a year ago, City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana — as honorable as a bureaucrat can be when working for a gang of thieves — presented an overview of the “Proposed Convention Center Renovation & Downtown Event Center Project” to the City Council for rapid approval without answers to a thousand thousands.
Nothing was mentioned about privatizing the Convention Center — a white elephant facility rebuilt several times and still drains a fortune of taxpayer money every year, more than $1 billion over decades that could have made the streets safer and pothole-free.
He didn’t have to because he had been pushing to put parking lots, the zoo, the convention center and just about everything else the city had bungled for so long into private hands.
Frankly, it was so obvious to everyone that the rebuilding the Convention Center and as an integrate part of Farmer’s Field football stadium made it a certainty that AEG — the architect of the scheme and its prime beneficiary — would be operating the combined “events center.”
That’s why they are designing it. That’s why they are guaranteeing the city bonds will be paid back. That’s why they will effectively own — thanks to massive public subsidies, tax rebates and infrastructure investment — the entire entertainment-sports complex and many of the hotels around Staples Center/LA Live and the new events center.
What I don’t get is why it has taken a year for Santana to come clean about what was going on if it’s such a good deal for you and for me.
And why it will take another year to go through the motions of pretending this is an open and competitive process when AEG has all the clout to get whatever it wants out of City Hall, and will have control over when two NFL teams play at the stadium as well as booking other events and the global reach of a vast sports/entertainment company that could actually help attract conventions to the Convention Center.
It’s the only thing in this whole deal that makes any sense at all.
“The common mission and goal of any top-tier convention center is to bring convention business to the city for the purpose of attracting out of town visitors that will generate spending and hotel business,” Santana wrote in a report Monday to the mayor and City Council (CAO-Conventions).
“However, in the last several years, the city’s competing focus has been generating sufficient operating revenue. Booking priorities have shifted at times compromising citywide conventions … for trade and consumer shows.”
The mayor, newly reinvented as a self-styled “radical middle” politician, was beside himself with joy at the CAO’s suggestion as if this wasn’t the deal all along, as if he didn’t approve Santana’s report in advance.
“My goal is to ensure the Convention Center is being managed to reach its maximum potential as citywide conventions significantly bolster the local economy by generating (transient occupancy tax) and sales tax revenue,” Villaraigosa said in a statement.
“Cities like Chicago and San Francisco – with highly successful convention industries – have entered into public-private partnerships, making it something worth supporting.”
Santana begged to disagree, saying: “Our biggest competition is Sacramento. And with all due respect to Sacramento, Los Angeles is an international city and we should be competing with Chicago, New York and San Francisco.”
Sacramento? How sad! Even Santa Monica beat out LA for the American Film Market gathering “because the city was unable to accommodate the request as a result of an existing Auto Show booking,” Santana said.
Santana’s view is the reason the Convention Center is just an economic disaster — costing $61 million a year out of the general fund — is that it has been grossly mismanaged for years although it’s recently departed general manager, Pouria Abbassi, was feted by the Council for the spectacular job he did before leaving to become a drug rehab facility executive.
The trouble was Abbassi booked local trade and consumer shows and not the major conventions that bring in tourists pouring nearly a thousand dollars each into the local economy, if international hotels and national food chains count as local.
It is always the fault of the dearly departed.
What ought to worry everyone is what a paltry saving the city would get from privatizing its billion-dollar white elephant: “$14 million to $37 million over five years and would help the city better compete for lucrative conventions,” according to Santana.
So we’re tearing down half the Convention Center, borrowing to rebuild it to AEG’s specifications and designs, giving it and others luxury hotels half their tax revenue back, subsidizing all workers pay with the “living wage,” and probably hiring Mafia-run construction companies to do the building.
Don’t you love LA? I do. Aren’t you dying to pay $250 for an end zone seat to watch the kind of losing teams that are up for sale? I am, you can be sure of that.
Not everyone feels that way about this deal, though.
Lowell Goodman, a spokesman for Service Employees International Union Local 721, is disgusted Santana’s proposal because it would replace city staff with cheaper workers, accusing the CAO of “Wal-Martization of the city workforce.”
“We are against handing control of an important public asset like the Convention Center to a private operator,” Goodman said.
You can understand Goodman’s anger. The Convention Center employs 113 people with the inflated salaries and lucrative pensions and benefits that public employees have a god-given right to expect and only 101 would be guaranteed transfers to other city jobs under Santana’s proposal — vacant jobs the city can’t afford to fill.
The remaining dirty dozen with “unique” jobs would have 90 days to prove themselves to AEG, which you can be sure is more generous with its wages than Walmart but undoubtedly is at least as ruthless in expecting employees to meet expectations.
On the corrupt redisticting process “Wesson told The Times on Tuesday: “I’m not going to talk about redistricting. Period. As far as I’m concerned, it’s time to move on.” In the past, both Wesson and the city attorney’s office have said that the maps are legally defensible and that the public was provided with many opportunities to weigh in”.
The CAO is the mouthpiece of the Mayor and the CLA of the City Council and our City Attorney, the defender of the corrupt. Expect the same response from the City Attorney that the public was provided with many opportunities to weigh in on the AEG proposal. This is how the wealthy in the US get even wealthier with partners from the taxpayer funded government entities. And, our despicable Mayor will move on to greener pastures where he can continue to sell the country as he has LA, while one of the three LA politicians will take over as Mayor to continue selling of what’s left of LA.
Villar will continue to enrich himself and his cronies because you never bothered to stop him. Where we’re you in 2009?
You all are just talk and no action. How about that–it’s the democratic party that elevated Villar to the convention chair. How about you all vote against this party candidates to show you are mad as hell and not going to take this anymore. ?
How about this Mr or Ms Anonymous? Nah you only huff and puff and then do as a good obedient stooge is told. Democrat good, republican bad.
Say hello to your next governor – Antonio villarraigosa.
I doubt any commenters on this site voted for Antonio or the other crooks in City Hall. Neither is it a battle between Democrats or Republicans. They should be judged individually. However, if there are any sensible republicans outside the dumb, hate- filled Tea Party, we’ll consider them. Mention some worthy names.
Don’t you just love how we’re all painted with the same broad brush, like we vote in lock step to keep support the gang of thieves running City Hall.
I for one didn’t vote for Villaraigosa, twice! Nor for my own city councilman, because every time Zine was up for election it was a choice of worse or worser! Sometimes in all good conscience, one can’t vote for anyone on the ballot and wishes there were a box to “x” in None of the Above!
I did not think you voted for Villar. You just didn’t vote against him. Many of you just sat in 2009 and let him get re-elected with a slight margin. Was it what 50,000 maybe 75,000 out of millions of registered voters. Getting rid if Villar would be an important step in dismounting the “machine”. Instead you did nothing.
And funny to hear about hate from somebody who resides in the city where there are black districts, Jewish districts, Latino districts. Where la raza (the race) politicians get elected and re-elected. Where the national anthem gets booed and other country team is cheered over the United States.
What makes you so arrogant to think you know how anybody voted? You have no idea how I or anyone voted.
Did you vote for Villaraigosa or did you put an “X” in the box next to Walter Moore’s or anyone else’s name?
And BTW, you must be an LAUSD grad. Can’t read; can’t interpret what he’s read. I don’t know where you saw “hate,” but you are either illiterate or have one helluvah an imagination.
ex-valley was probably responding,
not to you, but to earlier anonymous…
“hate-filled Tea Party”…
Let’s just get this agony over with in on whack of the ax.
Sell the entire city to AEG; they already think they own it and behave as if they do.
Get an investment team to out bid AEG for the Convention center and hold the convention center hostage from AEG commanding a much higher price.
Don`t you know that before schemes like that are announced, the deal is already done? AEG bid ,no bid, will take it over. They run the City anyway. Antonio has checked out, traveling , having a good time, while making his own deals. After all he has to make a lot of $$$$ to support the standard of living he is accustomed to……….
Its about time the Neighborhood Councils took a stand for something to speak out for the people, isn’t that their job? This is a way for them to change the minds of many people who think they are nothing more then a bunch of lazy, incompetent, do nothings who just complain. If all the NC’s took a stand and said NO to this deal then voices would be heard. All the Mayoral Candidates should be asked what they think of this project and which ones have taken money from AEG? How many city council members have been given money by AEG to get this approved?
We really do not have to argue with one another, do we?
If you are capable and willing, run for office. At 91, I am
unaable to walk, never mind run for anything. Ron has done
a big job keeping us informed. Now it is up to the rest of us
to do a clean sweep just to get rid of all encumbents. Now…
we need to find qualified and willing new names on the ballot.
It doesn’t matter if you are Democrat, Republican, Tea Party or
Decline to State. You do not have to commit to a career in politics, jus help
us clean up this dirty place called Los Angeles. It is not Home
Sweet Home anymore. I will thank you now – those willing
to give it an honest try – I appreciate your effort.
LET US NOW PRAY:
Dear Allah (no more God with Obama in the White House) please let the Bank accept my lower than Hell offer for a home FAR FAR FAR away from the disease and plagued ridden clutches of City Hall. Please Allah, let me find a Left Wing Fanatic that has alot of money to buy my home too! Let me be emancipated from a City that has no civil rights for homeowners, businessowners, and others. Let me move to a City where the sales tax is 7.25%, where paper and plastic bags are LEGAL, and where pot shops are totally ILLEGAL, and where home, auto, and health insurance is 20-30% LOWER than the Liberal Hellhole I now dwell in; and when you need to call 911, they don’t have you wait 20 minutes and then tell you to dial another number!
Yes, Lord, LET IT BE! Amen.
Good luck, my friend.
I sold my house in the valley two years ago and moved away from that 3rd world toilet the valley has become to resemble.
Couldnt be happier. Nice clean neighborhoods, smiling polite people on the street, no annoying mobile or stationary billboards, nobody stealing my recycleables, no blighted apartment buildings – row after row, geez No comparison. Plus good jobs – what else to ask.
Ricardo, iff the City Council did its job, we would not need neighboirhood councils
which have been useless as the City Council intended. We do not need both.
Visit yours next meeting.
so true…
city council & neighborhood councils…
corruption & dysfunction…dysfunction & corruption
Neighborhood Councils are a failure and a waste of money for the taxpayers. Let’s support a Charter measure to be rid of them.
the sooner the better…before they do more damage…
Ahhhh…A land where no pandhandlers are in front of every gas station and convenience store, A land where every street is paved and free of potholes, A land where you can drive down a street and not be stopped by ticket-writing scumbag cops making their quotas; Yes, A land where digital billboards, pot shops, blighted and abandoned buildings, cars parked on front lawns are just nothing more than stories heard about in parts unknown! A land where the temperature didn’t break 75, A land where its legal to camp out on the beach and throw a frisbee, a land where dogs are allowed on a beach with his master. It’s true you must drive miles and miles and miles away from the Liberal Hellhole, but that’s the way it is.
I can see why the Reagans long ago found this place, and why they built his library here. I wish I would of come here decades ago. Now, it’s nearly impossible to move up here, as financially and distance-wise its not really feasible.
I must, unfortunately, return to the Liberal Hellhole, as I await the Great Answer: WILL I GET MY NEW LEASE ON LIFE? Or will I be stuck in a Land where you have no rights to exist? We’ll see….
Thanks Ron for deleting my recent post. It reminds my how little anyone matters in L.A. whether its here or at City Hall or where ever/whenever. I’d go on, but why?