Results tagged “Los Angeles” from Ron Kaye L.A.

The City of Angels has become a city of limits, facing major environmental decisions that will determine the political agenda until the end of the century and the quality of life for decades.

Loosely controlled growth in the postwar years has outpaced efforts to protect Los Angeles' air, water and soil from pollution. Studies by local, state and federal agencies warn that deterioration of the city's environment will reach critical levels as the population soars by an expected 20 percent in the next 13 years.

Cleaning up the environment will cost billions of dollars and force drastic changes in lifestyle, with such measures as trash separation, water conservation and mandatory car pooling, according to interviews with politicians, community leaders, educators, environmentalists and consumers.

"There is a collision with myth and reality," said Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Woo. "The main crisis now is there is a conflict of the dream of living in Southern California. The dream is colliding with the reality of what L.A. is becoming - a big city with pollution problems."

Those are the top four paragraphs of a two-part story by reporter Karen West published in the Daily News on Nov. 29, 1987 under the headline: "City of Limits: L.A. MYTH, REALITY CLASH, ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS LOOMS. (Read the stories here City-of-Limits.rtf)

The articles examined the problems of over-development, traffic congestion, air and water pollution, landfills and ultimately the threat to the quality of life in a city of neighborhoods with tree-lined streets and abundant sunshine.

Clearly, things haven't worked out too well -- and they are about to get worse..

For every step forward, there have been two steps back.

Traffic congestion is worse, the worst in the nation. For strides made in cleaning the polluted air, we still have the nation's dirtiest. Contaminated ground water is still as big a problem as it was 23 years ago.and water is increasingly in short supply. The still relies on dirty coal plants for nearly half our electricity. Despite progress in recycling, there is still a long way to go to reduce our reliance on landfills.

You can read these articles and judge for yourself whether our officials have recognized that a generation ago LA had reached the limits of growth and the growth economy and needed to change the direction of its policies to conserve resources to preserve the essence of what made our city such a great place to live and work and do business.

No issue that was touched on in "City of Limits" was more important than development.

The articles were written at a time when then Councilmen Zev Yaroslavsky and Marvin Braude had overwhelming voter support for a ballot measure that was supposed to put tight restrictions on new projects.

"If we don't make tough decisions very soon, the region as a whole could take a quantum leap backward," said City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky.

"We are entering a generation of sacrifice.

"Uncontrolled growth is the largest single contributing factor to our
sewage problem. Unless we check this growth, there is a real likelihood that sewage flow will soon exceed capacity."

The truth is we have trampled on the limits on growth, becoming one of the densest cities in the nation with high-rise office buildings even as we gobbled up industrial land and open space.

We have turned a city of single-family homes into a city dominated by apartment buildings, chased away the middle class, good jobs and major corporations..

Our roads and sidewalks are crumbling, our water and power systems aging and deteriorated, our public transit system inefficient, carrying no more passengers than it did two decades ago.

Our city teeters on the brink of bankruptcy even as it slashed public services and imposes fee and rate increases on its heavily-taxed citizenry.

Yet, we still refuse to recognize our reality and are racing forward to short-circuit planning processes and rules that protect the quality of our lives.

The architect of this escalation in pro-development policies is Austin Beutner, the de facto mayor, first deputy mayor for job creation and economic development, interim general manager of the DWP.

Beutner's vision is to line up the interests of business, developers, contractors, organized labor and the political apparatus while using the wealth in the Community Redevelopment Agency, DWP, Airport and Harbor departments to subsidize even more development.

At the same time, he is embarking on a radical transformation of planning policies to speed approval of new developments, remove safeguards and limit public input.

In an article on City Watch LA, Cary Brazeman outlines many of these changes and offers his evaluation of their danger.

The seven changes he examines are Zoning Code Makeover, Westside Subway EIR, New Hollywood Community Plan, Draft Urban Design Standards, Community Design Overlay Ordinance, "12-2" Plan B, California Sustainable Communities Strategy

He rates some as far-reaching dangers, others as moderate -- evaluations that many concerned people believe are even more threatening.

Commenting recently on the City Planning website, activist James O'Sullivan concluded that the proposed zoning code simplification ordinance had only one purpose: To make it easier for developers to get around the rules on variances.

"They were easy enough to get around before but Planning is now looking for slam dunks...The reason I think is simple, to make it easier for Planning to approve more projects, to make many more projects basically by-right."

LA has been in a long downward spiral for a long time and the speed of our descent is about to accelerate for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.

It is madness.

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 Blade Runner City.

Frank Sinatra - The House I Live In (That's America To Me).mp3

I have more questions than answers which may explain why I stumbled into being a newspaperman and never could find a way out, at least until I was sent out to pasture 2 ½ years ago.

Two weeks later, on April 16, 2008, I started my new life as a blogger, speaking my mind in my own voice under my own name for the first time in my life.

"Free at last!" - Those are the first words on my blog 1,083 entries ago.

"I want to write from my heart and I want others to ... engage in a public conversation about who we are and what we could become if we pull together and work together for the common good.

"We'll never know what that is or how to achieve it unless we talk about our experiences, our values, our needs and our aspirations. I believe with all my heart that that kind of public conversation will cut through the fog of political, media and corporate double talk and lead us to the common ground where we can start solving the problems of our community and make life better for us all ...

"So let's tell the truth as we see it and learn from each other. Let the games begin."

The next day I asked these questions and offered my own answers:

"Is love of America, love of freedom wrong in some way? Are those ideas obsolete? I think not, I think the liberal mind hears something that's loaded and politically repulsive when conservatives speak that way, obscuring the fact that it's unthinkable not to love the soul of this country or hold freedom for all precious ...

"We need to stop talking Democrat language and Republican language. We need to stop speaking conservative and liberal language. We need to give each other the benefit of the doubt a little and start speaking the common language that brings us together to work for making things better for ourselves and others.

"I don't know how anybody can look at a world torn apart by hatred, at the looming environmental catastrophe, and the breakdown of the health care system and all the other tensions of the world and not think it's time, if it's not already too late, to start fixing what we have broken ...

"If we the people of Los Angeles can't start fixing what's broken here, if we can't find a way to respect our differences in all our diversity of race, creed and religion, who can?"

On Day Three, the question du jour was this: "How dumb does City Hall think all us little people are? And why do they want to keep us dumb?"

My answer:

"They know we are dumb because we let them stay in office instead of putting them in jail or at least throwing them out on the streets where they can cadge with the rest of the bums.

"And they want to keep us dumb so they can keep on living high without actually doing anything to make life better for the people ..."

 On Day Four, the headline asked: "What is America to me?"

I didn't try to answer, only offering this song, "The House I Live In," as sung by Frank Sinatra in a popular movie short at the end of World War II.

A lot has happened in the months that followed. The economy collapsed, City Hall fell into chaos and confusion as the bills piled up and revenue shrank and the discontent of the people began to jell in hundreds of cells of activist energy.

That energy is what LA Clean Sweep (lacleansweep.com) is trying to mobilize into a force powerful enough to break the stranglehold on power held by the few, to create a city in which democracy flourishes, where everyone has a seat at the table of power.

 In a word, democracy.

Through months of discussion and haggling by hundreds of people, I'm not sure there is an agreement on anything else except some basic principles of good government: Open, honest, fiscally responsible, basic services to the public, making our neighborhoods healthier and creating a positive economic climate.

We all live in this house, our city, our state, our nation, and we all need to feel an ownership stake, a sense of belonging, of being part of something greater than ourselves.

It should be clear to anyone paying the least attention that the people who hold public office and the people who wield power in LA will not change unless they are forced to by calamitous circumstances or a grassroots uprising of the people.

It takes more than 10,000 cops to make a great city. It takes libraries and parks and a lot more. Most of all, it takes the faith of the people.

 

Labor Day ought to be a celebration of all working people, of all who want to work and aspire to a better life and are willing to acquire the skills and are willing to tackle the jobs that need to be done.

In my lifetime, organized unions have fallen from a third of the workforce to little more the 12 percent, much of that in the public sector, not the private. Unions are as important in creating  balance against the excesses of employers as community organizations are to the excesses of government.

Balance of power is what is missing in our society so the voices that are heard are those with the most money and the most clout.

What about the vast majority whose interests and values are not served?

We need to build a new house that has room for all of us. Surely, we will quarrel but as equals we will find a common ground and move forward together in the clumsy and inefficient way that democracy allows.

We are a house divided against itself today and the consequences are dire unless you believe that a society can exist for long with rich and poor and few in the middle.

Major changes in America, in California, in LA are needed and I, for one, don't see that happening unless we the people find a way to come together and begin the process of restoring our fundamental ideals as the vision that motivates are actions.

Faced with the prospect of closing libraries on Sundays and shorter hours of operation the rest of the week, Santa Clarita is moving to turn operation of its libraries over to a private company.

Officials believe it will reduce costs by a third and allow them to use the money to expand the collects of books, audio books and other materials.

Los Angeles has different ideas about how to deal with its budget crisis -- confusing and contradictory as its policies might be.

Libraries were the first to go. More than a third of the staff was fired and libraries reduced to only five days of operation and hours shortened.

In the case of city-owned parking garages which have huge debt burdens and generate a fraction of the income they would if well run, LA is looking to lease them for 50 years to one or more private companies.

As things stand now, the city expects to get $53 million upfront and would use the money to keep a few thousand employees in their jobs until next July when the estimated $320 million deficit that looms will force even more drastic cuts in services and layoffs of workers.

The opposite approach is being taken with regards to the golf cart concession at city-owned golf courses.

Since 1975, the J.H. Kishi Co. -- thanks to the heavy political influence of Michael Yamaki -- has held the concession despite a couple of fires in its golf cart barns, complaints about aged carts and questions about whether the city was being paid its full share of the proceeds.

For the last eight years, Kishi has held the contract on a month-to-month basis while city officials dickered and dawdled about new lease terms.

In 2008, the Recreation and Parks Commission agreed with a staff recommendation and awarded the contract to Michael Bernback's Ready Golf, operator of the driving range at Balboa-Encino in expectation of increased revenue to the city and brand-new carts with GPS. (See earlier stories LA's China Syndrome and Death of a City).

But the Council -- even in the midst of soaring budget deficits -- preferred to play politics and pander to special interests over serving the public so the contract was nixed and Kishi kept the concession month-to-month.

On Wednesday, the golf cart fiasco took yet another turn.

GM Jon Kirk Mukri, in a lengthy report to the Commission, (RAP-golfcarts.pdf) outlined what a travesty the golf cart concession has become.

His recommendation: "Reject all proposals received on July 24, 2007, for the Electric Golf Carts Rental Concession ... terminate Concession Agreement No. 227 between the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks and J. H. Kishi Company ... Direct staff to self-operate the electric golf cart rental operation."

The commission unanimously adopted his proposal with Chairman Barry Sanders admitting that "if I were a potential contractor under these rules, I would think twice" before submitting a proposal

That's exactly Bernback's take: "They don't have the budget ... They don't have the experience. And the union employees are so much more expensive than the nonunion employees."

Get it?

They are un-privatizing the golf cart concession even though city labor costs are far higher than those of Kishi or Ready Golf, which means less revenue to the city treasury for other services like parks programs for kids that are about to be gutted because of massive layoffs of Rec and Parks workers.

They don't even have a plan for how city workers would run the golf cart concession and may hire some or all of Kishi's workers who would be delighted to learn they would be paid twice as much, have full health care and lifetime pensions of up to 75 percent of their highest salary.

The likely case is that all 40 of Kishi's employees will be fired and other city workers facing layoffs will get their jobs and keep their salaries and benefits.

None of this serves the public interest. It only serves the political interests of the Council and mayor who get to keep the contract with Kishi indefinitely while a plan is worked out and to pander to the unions by protecting their jobs at the public expense.

But what's the Rec and Parks GM Mukri to do?

Like other department heads, he is subject to frequent bullying and threats from the mayor's minion and being overruled by the obedient commissioners the mayor appoints.

This is no way to run a city.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Earl Ofari Hutchinson interviewed me Friday about LA Clean Sweep on his radio show on KTYM 1460AM. You can play or download the show by clicking here.

LA Clean Sweep took a major step forward on Sunday with about 100 people showing up for professional training to make them more effective as activists and candidates for public office.

 

Everyone who was there came away feeling they had learned valuable tools that will aid them in the struggle to elect candidates to city office who will put the public interest first - a point emphasized by remarks by City Attorney Carmen "Nuch" Trutanich during a 30-minute appearance.

 

Trutanich was elected last year in no small part by support from the same coalition of community activists who help Paul Krekorian win the CD2 seat and defeat Measure B, the solar energy boondoggle.

 

He made is clear in his remarks that given the political culture of City Hall, its subservience to special interests and the budget crisis, have made public service a challenge every day to do what he believes is right for the city as a whole and its people.

 

The event was not without its moment of controversy.

 

Matt Robbins of the nonprofit American Majority that trains Tea Party activists began the training programs for activists and candidates for city offices with a lengthy presentation on the group's view of U.S. history and how it led to the failure of our governmental institutions today.

 

It is based on a very fundamentalist view of the Constitution as outlined by James Madison and John Adams - not Thomas Jefferson - and blames Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive movement at the start of the 20^th century for federalizing the government.

 

It is a viewpoint that did not sit well with some activists, myself included who believe in Jeffersonian democracy and think Teddy Roosevelt was our greatest president for breaking up the monopolistic cartels and taking the most beautiful lands in America out of private hands by creating the National Parks.

 

An emotional argument ensued that threatened to disrupt the event - an argument that does to the heart of City Hall political machines attacks on Clean Sweep and the misgivings of many activists who share Clean Sweep's goals to get involved.

 

It is no small matter and we must get past it or we will remain divided and powerless while our city officials put the future of the city at risk by slashing basic services, subsidizing unwanted developments with tax dollars and turning a budget crisis into a catastrophe.

 

Clean Sweep's goals are clear and simple. We are trying to bring together people from all over the city regardless of their political views to work in common cause for a greater Los Angeles and to create a new spirit of LA that unites people no matter what their backgrounds or economic condition or political beliefs.

 

We don't have to agree on anything except the need for dramatic change because our city government has failed us.

 

We need new leaders who owe their elections to the people in their district, not the dirty money provided by special interests, officials committed to fiscal responsibility and providing the core services that make a city livable for all its people, to rebuilding the aging infrastructure to create a healthy economic climate and healthy neighborhoods.

 

A new political culture at City Hall where elected officials and the bureaucrats see themselves as servants of the people - not their lords and masters - will not be without its conflicts over policies and programs.

 

Officials with honesty and integrity and reflect the values and interests of the communities they represent will quarrel and conflict our in the open where the public can learn the facts and understand the arguments. They will reach compromises or one side or another will prevail issue by issue.

 

They will not vote unanimously 99.93 percent of the time as our current City Council does without meaningful public debate because the consensus is built in the privacy of back rooms outside the public view.

 

It was a heated and scary moment at Sunday's Clean Sweep meeting but Nick Dalton-Pawle of the Sun Valley Neighborhood Council somehow found the words that quelled the fire of conflict.

 

Nobody walked out and the meeting got down to the basic tools of how to work effectively for change and in the end everyone felt they had learned something about how to work more effectively for their goals, and hopefully how we can all work together for the goals we share.

 

It came down in the end to a choice: Will we break apart and remain a conquered populace because we disagree with or even find abhorrent the views of some on some issues or stand united on the common ground where he can win power and begin the hard job of building a better city for all.

 

This is the choice we all have to make, rich and poor and everyone in between.

 

We will not stop the City Hall political machine from its course of destruction if we got lost in all that divides us. We must find our way to the light of unity.

 

If there's another way, any other way, let those who attack Clean Sweep bring it forward.

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Activists in Northeast LA have been fighting for years to get the LA Community College District to deliver on its promise to build a satellite campus in the community.   One of the commitments in the LACCD bond issue was to transform the old Van de Kamp bakery into a college site. Instead, the city has moved in decided to take control of the property for other purposes. In this open letter and in a letter delivered today to the LACCD board (NoticetoSue.PDF), the coalition's attorney, Daniel Wright, announces the intention to sue to block this misuse of funds.

By Daniel Wright

Once upon a time in the city we all love and hate, a man named Antonio stepped forward and inspired us with promises of a better life for everyone, of a new era with a new spirit that brought us all together..

He was going to plant a million trees and beautify our neighborhoods.

He was going to take over our schools and make sure every kid git a good education and graduated.

He was going to end corruption at City Hall after defaming the Hahn Administration as the "most investigated" in LA history.

Most of all, he was going to make us the "greenest city in America" -- something that would restore our pride in the city and create tens of thousands of good jobs.

Fairy tales can come true or they also can turn into nightmares where everyone suffers, well, nearly everyone. Insiders and the well-connected flourish while neighborhoods are destroyed, kids still drop out cause they can't read or write, corruption reaches unprecedented levels.

The man of a thousand broken promises has turned on his friends in the unions and embraced the evils of unbridled capitalism, indulging himself in a life of royal luxury while half a million of his subjects can't even find a minimum wage job.

And now, in the latest chapter of this fairy tale gone awry, comes the ultimate hypocrisy: Antonio wants his pals in Sacramento to make a special exemption from environmental policy for LA so we can keep on destroying the oceans around us for another two decades.

"The city of Los Angeles has launched an aggressive lobbying campaign to roll back tough new state regulations meant to limit the environmental damage that power plants inflict on the oceans," the LA Times reports today.

The justification for this is that it will cost $2.3 billion and require increases in the already soaring power rates of at least 6 percent for eight years.

Driving the effort for the exemption is Austin Beutner, first deputy mayor, jobs czar and part-time temporary DWP general manager.

"That's money that will cause jobs to be lost in our economy and money that we can't use to invest in other renewable energy initiatives that we have," he says.

The issue is Assembly Bill 1552, now in the Senate, a measure created through subterfuge at the last minute with help from people like Antonio's cousin, Speaker John Perez, and other phony environmentalist lawmakers.

It would exempt the DWP from tough, new State Water Board regulations that require sharply reducing the amount of seawater used for cooling coastal power plants.

Under AB 1552, every coastal plant in the state -- except the three owned by DWP -- would still be required to pump in seawater for cooling only once and then recycle it or move to air cooling

DWP's three plants, now required to comply between 2015 to 2020, would be given up to 11 years longer, to 2031.

Environmental groups -- long-time friends of the mayor -- are as furious at him as his long-time friends in labor and the voters who elected him.

Heal the Bay has started a phone call and email campaign under the heading: "Your Help is Needed to Protect California's Coast & the Public Process - OPPOSE AB 1552."
.
"It completely ignores five years of process and guts the entire policy," said Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay.

Adds Sierra Club California lobbyist Jim Metropulos: "Now here is the L.A. DWP coming in at the last second with a special-interest exemption for them."
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What's spectacularly appalling about this is that the DWP under then General Manager David Nahai was working on a rational compromise with the State Water Board long before the regulations were approved.

But like so many others, he ran afoul of the mayor's political priorities -- and in his case the greed of DWP union bully Brian D'Arcy -- and was fired last fall.

His successor, David Freeman, the poet laureate of green energy who never actually built any, dropped the ball on that effort as he did so many others during his two disastrous terms running the city's mos valuable asset.

Freeman preferred to play political hardball with the state board when the regulations were being finalized but struck out.

"It makes the department appear cynical and manipulative," Nahai told the Times.. "I believe it was unnecessary, because the state board has shown a willingness to try, even now, to deal with the department's concerns."

Put your money on the environmentalists winning the fight because they are right that DWP never should have been put in this position. You'll need those winnings to pay your power bill.

So how did so many high hopes end in failure and broken promises? Whatever happened to the Antonio we knew and loved so much to put him in charge of our city at a time when we needed great leadership?

No one could possible have gone so wrong, betrayed so many. The answer can only be that the real Antonio was kidnapped and a replicant was put in his place to turn LA into the vision imagined in "Blade Runner."

What other explanation could there be?

For decades, City Hall experimented with a bizarre form of municipal socialism, enriching the rich, impoverishing the poor and driving away the middle class.

The 2000 census showed that white flight in the 1980s had become middle-class flight, cutting across racial and ethnic lines with the poverty rate in the San Fernando Valley -- once the largest enclave of middle class families in the nation -- soaring by 50 percent.even as home ownership rates plummeted by more than a third.

Today, the situation is far worse. LA has become a city of rich and poor. The result is declining neighborhoods, public schools overwhelmed by the numbers of children with special needs and a workforce that is largely unskilled and competing for the shrinking number of service and laborer jobs.

It is largely the result of misguided public policies that have turned city government into a jobs program, not a services provider, while the roads, sidewalks, water and power systems have deteriorated.

And now City Hall is about to deliver the coup de grace to the middle class.

No longer able to afford the cost of salaries and benefits in the public sector and forced to shed thousands of city workers, the mayor and City Council have slashed core services to the general public like parks and libraries and building code enforcement.

The city's shrinking resources are focused instead on "revenue generating" services like those that those that impose escalating fees, penalties and rates on the public in the name of "full cost recovery."

Beyond those policies, First Deputy Mayor and Interim DWP General Manager Austin Beutner is the architect of what amounts to a desperate attempt to save LA by turning city government into a profitable business without the burden of providing services other than police to the public.

City Hall, in the name of becoming "business friendly," is moving rapidly to buy jobs in the private sector.

Tax holidays and discounted DWP rates for new businesses will shortly be matched by tax breaks and discounted DWP rates for existing businesses.

The city's cash cows -- DWP and the Community Redevelopment Agency -- are being milled for subsidies even as they squeeze money out of the pockets of residents and tax dollars out of the city treasury.

The death blow to the middle class is now being delivered by Beutner's hand-picked Planning Director, Michael LoGrande who is all but eliminating public input and involvement in the planning process to speed up the approvals of new projects.

In the sweltering days of August with many on vacation, LoGrande -- untrained as a planner but quick to obey orders from above -- is pushing through radical changes in the policies that control development in the city.

Just two weeks ago, community activists Lucille Saunders and Cindy Cleghorn found the Planning Department was proposing to the revise the General Plan Framework with far-reaching "Urban Design Guidelines" that set the zoning rules on density throughout the city.

The proposal -- which wasn't made public -- was exempted from requirements to meet the state environmental laws and concerned citizens only given to Aug. 25 to comment on something that wasn't even available to them except by appoing.

Saunders and Cleghorn made an appointment and met with planner Michelle Sorkin. It was days after their meeting that they learned also was including changes in the .
"Community Design Overlay" policy in the same short-circuited process.

LoGrande's response to community concerns and the flurry of viral emails is to extend the deadline for comment until Labor Day.

No involvement of Neighborhoods Councils, homeowner or other groups allowed. No honest debate. No information.

The outrage of many was captured by Ken Alpern in a City Watch LA article in this sentence in all capital letters:

THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES IS ABOUT READY TO END PUBLIC INPUT ON A HUGE SERIES OF GUIDELINES THAT WILL DETERMINE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT THROUGHOUT LOS ANGELES RIGHT AFTER LABOR DAY WITHOUT HARDLY ANYONE KNOWING WHAT'S PRECISELY IN THOSE GUIDELINES!!!

If they get away with this, they can do anything they want whenever they want.

The public will be completely disenfranchised and the result will be virtually instantaneous approval of nearly all development projects no matter what their impact on the quality of life, on traffic congestion, on the drain on limited water and power resources and the availability of public services.

These policies may be "business friendly" but they are a disaster for the residents of the city.

Next Sunday, LA Clean Sweep -- the voter movement to elect a clean slate to City Council -- will offer professional training to potential candidates and activists who are ready to go to work to end the cycle of failure and bring responsible government to Los Angeles.

Experts in political campaigning will teach you the skills you need to win elections and fight City Hall on the issues that you carry about to protect you neighborhoods, your jobs and your business. The session for activists run from 8:30 a.m. to noon Sunday Aug. 29 at the Mayflower Club, 11110  Victory Blvd., North Hollywood. Training for candidates for the March 2011 City Council elections and the 2013 city elections run from 1 to 5 p.m.

Click here (CSTrainingDayFlyer-1.pdf) or go to lacleansweep.com and click on events for the details. The trainers are providing their services for free and all proceeds from the event will help fund LA Clean Sweep's efforts to inform voters and mobilize forces for reform.

For too long, the concerned residents in all parts of the city have fought their own separate battles against the powerful forces that run City Hall and control our elected officials. LA Clean Sweep. The skills you will learn from this program will help you to work together with people in every part of LA and beat the lobbyists and special interests and help elected candidates who will stand up for the public interest.

Our city officials have been overspending for year,  and even in the face of financial crisis, are making things worse without facing the fundamental issues. Libraries and parks are closing, cuts in the Fire Department are jeopardizing public safety and we are now paying the full cost or many core services in addition to soaring rates, taxes and fees.

The cycle of failure must be broken. It will only if you get involved and get the know-how to fight back successfully against the powerful entrenched interests of City Hall.

We need a new spirit of LA, one that brings together every region of the city, breaks down the barriers of ethnicity and economic status, and celebrates the freedom of possibilities of what should be the greatest place on earth.

Hundreds of activists from every part of the city have worked to develop basic ideas that we can rally around to restore credibility to our city's leadership and fix what is broken so we can move forward together:

Here's what LA Clean Sweep stands for:

THE PLATFORM

Issue No. 1: Clean Up City Hall

L.A. needs a change of leadership. We must elect candidates who demonstrate a firm commitment to promoting the public interest, not special interests. Candidates must commit to end the practice of giving subsidies, waivers, below-cost deals, tax breaks and other special treatment to politically connected individuals, public officials, organizations and businesses.
So that no actions of government are hidden from the public, candidates must commit to enforce and enact open access laws. Slush funds and office holder accounts need to be eliminated. City Hall must never sell, lease or otherwise dispose of public property without obtaining fair market value for it. City Hall must treat all people with dignity, fairness and equality.

 

Issue No. 2: Fix the Budget

City spending is out of control. The city needs to live within its means.  Candidates must commit to support a City Charter amendment to limit the annual increase in city government spending to the rate of growth of inflation and city population. In good economic times, revenues that exceed the expenditure limit should be saved in a rainy day fund. This would allow the city to maintain essential services in an economic downturn.
Elected officials have a history of borrowing against future tax revenues to finance special interest economic development projects. Candidates must commit to stopping this practice, including all projects funded through the Community Redevelopment Agency. Candidates must commit to supporting compensation for city employees that is affordable and sustainable. Without these changes, additional taxes and fees will put an increasing burden on residents and force severe cutbacks in city services.

Issue No. 3: Focus on Core Services

City Hall lacks focus and wastes money. Time that could and should be spent on critical problems is instead frittered away on self-serving resolutions and other minutiae. Candidates must commit to focus on core services: Police, fire, other public safety services, street and sidewalk maintenance, sewage, trash, water and power, parks, libraries, and land use planning. Elected officials should not spend their time or taxpayers' money on matters unrelated to the delivery of core services. 

Issue No. 4: Power Sharing

Government is formed for the benefit of the people, yet City Hall routinely ignores the peoples ' legitimate concerns. Candidates must commit to work with Neighborhood Councils and bona fide community groups on land use, economic development and other local issues. Candidates must commit to redrawing City Council district boundaries to align with established communities. Gerrymandering of council boundaries must end.
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Contribute your time, your passion, your money. Go to lacleansweep.com. Los Angeles will not change without you getting involved.

The horseshoe is beginning to smell like horseshit.

 

Only a couple weeks ago, Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon -- and his wife - were indicted for voter fraud and lying about where they lived. 

 

And since I've already used the somewhat offensive word, I'll say it: Alarcon swears he lives in that shithole of a house in his district, rather than the nicer home in Paul Kerkorian's district.

 

Bruno has seen pictures of the house Alarcon doesn't live in and heard his neighbors' complaints that it's an eyesore. Bruno thinks Alarcon is full of it.

 

OK, enough of that.  Ronnie will cut my kibble ration.

 

Today, Walter Moore has a terrific piece on his blog about Los Angeles City Councilman Tony Cardenas - and his sister!

 

I won't repeat all of Walter's terrific post here -- but it seems Cardenas has spent an incredible amount of campaign funds for stationary at sis's store, while at the same time the city has directed tens of thousands of dollars to the same rather small establishment.

 

Maybe I should suggest to Ron he use the headline "All in the Family."

 

My pal Wally has been less than successful in his bids for elected office.

 

Of course, Wally shot pretty high. His first attempts were for mayor of the nation's second largest city. He ran twice and didn't do bad last time --- running second and coming within 4 percentage points of forcing a runoff with the mayor -- but of course he was helped by the fact Antonio isn't exactly beloved by those who decided to trudge to the polls.

 

I think Wally missed his calling (he's a lawyer by trade) and should become an investigative reporter -- especially since there are so few left at the Dog Trainer and Green Sheet.

 

I'll make room for him in my doghouse.

 

I'll even send him a free "Bruno LA's Watchdog" coffee mug if Ronnie ever gets off his butt and decides to sell them like he promised. After all, who do you love more him or me?

 

Woof!