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CHELSEA CODY
OurLA News and Information Director

I first met Michael McCue at a coffee shop in Studio City. He was rifling through a thick folder of paperwork, his glasses perched at the tip of his nose. His signature navy blue blazer jacket emblazoned with his Studio City Neighborhood Council name tag and a number of other small pins advertising his social and political loyalties was draped over the chair behind him. 

I knew very little about him, except for the fact that he was a member of the Los Angeles Green Party and the Studio City Neighborhood Council. But within ten minutes of sitting down with Michael I was enamored of him. His warmth and intelligence were disarming. His passion was infectious and inspiring. His earnestness and buoyancy was refreshing. 

As he shared his story, talking about his upbringing in a Navy family with his Goldwater Republican Father and Kennedy Democrat Mother for whom politics were an appropriate dinner table-topic, Michael McCue came into focus. 

His early involvement as a teenager in local civic issues in his Midwest hometown, his later participation in LA politics clearly illustrated McCue's dedication to grassroots democracy and long-term political goal setting.

His perceptive argument for clean money politics and the infusion of new blood into the ranks of City Hall while hardly novel was renewed by his comprehensive understanding of the interconnected nature of the problems facing LA.

Willing to devote his time entirely to his campaign for the CD2 seat, McCue's dedication to common sense values and the major role of everyday people in changing this city for the better was clear the first day I met him. 

Since then, McCue's following has grown to include several notable members of local news outlets, community activists and innovators, as well as CD2 residents who care deeply about their neighborhoods and their city.

This city needs someone with a bit of common sense and foresight as it grapples with a $405 million budget deficit, crumbling infrastructure, and a whole slew of issues that will fall on the backs of taxpayers because no one has the gall or creativity to address them head on. 

That is why I find it immensely frustrating -no infuriating - that the City Hall political machine discriminates against community candidates like McCue; and by doing so prevents the city's ability to change, grow, and improve.

Without proper funding and political support from those indoctrinated into the city's powerful political scene there is little chance of success for the "little" community-based CD2 candidates in Tuesday's special election in the East San Fernando Valley.

Seven of the ten individuals running in this special election race are grass roots candidates. Each of them is well intentioned and passionate about creating positive change for their neighbors and the LA community. They offer innovative and challenging visions for the future based on their experiences as citizens and taxpayers. 

But lacking the funds, media attention and political backing necessary to become major contenders in a money and special interest driven election means that they stand little chance at doing more than further dividing the vote and forcing a runoff election. 

This leaves voters to choose between the lesser of three evils in the mainstream "big" candidates whose fancy fundraisers and glossy mailers have inundated the community for months.

Baring a sudden dramatic shift in the status quo, we will not see a genuine community representative take the Council District 2 seat in this special election. 

Just another example of how the political system in this city continues to fail us. I personally love Michael McCue but all the community candidates -- Mary Benson, Augusto Bisani, Joe Essavi, Peter Sanchez, David "Zuma Dogg" Saltzburg, Frank Sheftel -- would do a better job for the community than the Big Three.

What will it take to even the political playing field and give candidates like these a fair chance?

Editor's Note: Two North Valley mobile home parks were engulfed by this week's brush fires. At Sky Terrace Mobile Lodge, where residents already were under siege from a developer, dozens of homes were destroyed.

Down the raod at Blue Star Mobile Home Park, residents were luckier with several homes damaged but only one destroy. Residents had the scare of their lives, here's account of what it was like:

By Glenn Bell

Correstpondent

My wife, Jean, and I woke up at our normal time at 5 a.m. Monday morning. We enjoy our early mornings together, as we have for the 25 years of our marriage.

It was not a normal morning. We were experiencing a fire in the hills above us. Fire above Lopez and Kagel canyons is a pretty regular occurrence. Living on the edge of Los Angeles, everyone in our situation has grown used to this. But this time it was different. The smoke was much more rancid. The glow of the fire seemed nearer than in times past. 

Over the past couple of years things have changed in our neighborhood. Los Angeles County has allowed hundreds of diesel rigs to take up residence, without permits, directly up the hill from us. Because of that we have all of that truck-traffic and the pollutants that they cause driving 20 feet outside our bedroom window at all hours of the day and night. We have called the county, the city and the police many times and they will do nothing to remedy the situation. The only reason I bring this up is that this Monday morning, those trucks caused a severe and significant risk to the lives and safety of the thousands of people living below them.   

I started hearing explosions, I don't remember how many, but there were more than a dozen. So I went out to an area in front of my house to have a clear view of the hill above us. My neighbor and I watched as the truck diesel tanks exploded. As they exploded, the winds, blowing roughly 65 miles an hour, would blow the burning fuel down the hill towards our community. With every explosion I shuddered, fearing for our lives. It was the most surreal thing I have ever seen. This set into motion a series of events that will be seared into my memory forever. 

At that same time a police vehicle was traveling at a fast pace through our mobile home park, an officer was screaming into his PA system, GET OUT, GET OUT NOW, THIS IS AN IMMEDIATE AND MANDATORY EVACUATION!

Just like that, he was gone. The evacuation notice was simply a "drive-by" shout into a loudspeaker. There was no assistance offered for an orderly evacuation.

Glenn Bell is a friend of mine, a passionate organizer and advocate for the residents of mobile home parks who are under siege across the state from landowners who are jacking up their rents, evicting them on any pretense and using the sites for industrial parks, luxury homes and any other use the makes them richer.

Glenn prefers to call them manufactured homes and points out they provide affordable housing that can be provided at low cost on a mass scale. But they are endangered.

The brush fires his two mobile home parks hard on Monday -- Sky Terrace Mobile Lodge in the Lopez Canyon area where most residents already had been forced out and the Blue Star Mobile Home Park in Sylmar where Bell and his wife Jean live. Actually, it's where they lived because they're home was among the dozens of manufactured homes destroyed in the fires.

"My house has burned to the ground. We were lucky to get out with our lives," Jean told the Daily News after fleeing with 165 other residents. I saw the trees around my home burning and then my home catch fire. There was nothing we could do."

The Times got photos of what the mobile home park looks like after the fire:

Glen talked about the problems facing manufactured home owners, particularly the elderly living on fixed incomes, at the recent Town Hall meeting of the Saving L.A. Project. Listen to what he had to say about a class of people being victimized by developers who are buying mobile home parks -- people like L.A. Times owner Sam Zell -- and how government agencies are complicit in what's going on

You know it's an important story when you see the names of James Acevedo, Richard Alarcon, developer Mark Siffin (he with a dark past) in the same article with $200 million project and Community Redevelopment Agency and the headline says: "Questions surround Panorama City mall, condos.''

Questions about this plan for the old Montgomery Ward site came up Saturday at the Saving L.A. Project's Town Hall meeting when activists learned that once again the community was being left in the dark while special interests were buying "access" at City Hall.

Let's start with Siffin whose career was outlined in a terrific story Wednesday by reporter Connie Llanos in the Daily News.

Here's a "58-year-old businessman from Indiana whose record includes a failure to finish a previous big project in the Los Angeles area and a conviction for drug dealing in his 20s."

His name ...but no charges were filed and he's had success with projects elsewhere in the country.

But eight years ago, he ran into sharp opposition in West Hollywood over a  660,000-square-foot mixed-use development with a luxury hotel, two office buildings and upscale restaurants and shops with Vegas-style billboards. Residents objected to both his plans and his tactics, and pulled out before the project was complete, Llanos reported

Siffin was convicted in 1973 of possession of heroin with intent to sell and was twice indicted but not tried in the 1980s for buying a gun as a convicted felon and drug conspiracy In 2000, old DEA reports surfaced before the Nevada Supreme Court that Siffin was suspected of being a "major cocaine trafficker" in the 1970s -- information that led to a murder conviction of another man being overturned because authorities had withheld it.

Siffin told Llanos he "didn't act mature in my younger days." His lawyer noted he hasn't actually been convicted of anything in 35 years.

Then, there's Acevedo, the man who fancies himself as "Mr. Big" of the Valley who has built a political machine around Alarcon, Councilman Tony Cardenas and state leigslators Alex Padilla and Felipe Fuentes and profited handsomely along the way.

He's a City Hall political insider who has has served -- amazingly -- on the Harbor Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals -- but his track record on developments he runs is less than illustrious.

Come with me back in time a decade ago and listen to the story of San Fernando Valley secession and what we learned about the rights of the people who pay the bills.

Quite siimply, we learned that all the streets and sidewalks, all the sewers, water lines, power poles and lines, all the the municipal buildings, all the parks, everything that a private individual or business doesn't hold the deed to belongs to the legal fiction known as the City of Los Angeles, Inc.

None of it belongs in any sense to the people, the people who create the government to serve them -- of, by and for them -- and who pay the taxes, fees and rates that paid for the city and support it with their money. So when breakup was the issue, we were told the Valley as a city -- the nation's sixth largest, richest, safest and most intergrated big city -- owned nothing.

Everything public would belong to the City of L.A. even though it was not in L.A. but in the wannabe City of the San Fernando Valley.

Now it's 2008, and the city can't afford to maintain its property except  for coming up with $300 million to turn City Hall into a palace of  gold and marble and $500 milion to build a new police station to beautify downtown for skyscraper developers.

The property issue of the moment is sidewalks. The city ended its policy of fixing sidewalks just about the time the official policy of City Hall became giving every dollar available to pad the salaries of city employees' paychecks and grease the palms of developers and contractors.

The result is a 75-year backlog of broken and crumbling sidewalks that are hazardous to your health and lead to numerous claims and lawsuits.

Enter Assemblywoman Audra Strickland, a Republican from Westlake Village where the sidewalks and streets are in perfect condition She has proposed AB 1985 that would "hold the owner of the property on which the sidewalk is located liable for the repair and maintenance of the sidewalk."

Those are the words of L.A.'s Chief Legislative Analyst Gerry Miller and his assistant Roslyn Carter Phillips who last week sounded the alarm that City Hall's right to ownership without responsibility was under siege.

UPDATE: I haven't been able to connect with LAUSD on the subject but I'm told that despite what the website says about non-profits only, the district has permitted developers and other commercial interests to use school sites in the past. And that's my point public rules for the public and private rules for special interests is the hallmark of LAUSD and City Hall for that matter.

It has been a long-standing policy of the LAUSD to allow the use of public school facilities after hours only to non-profit organizations.

That's why the Sunland-Tujanga community got so aroused when it found out Mt. Gleason school was being turned over to Home Depot for a community meeting June 24 to win support for its effort to convert a closed K-Mart into one of their stores.

They started an email campaign that inundated school officials this week with complaints that giving a permit to one of America's most profitable companies violated the district's own rule.

Whatever you might think about the community's years long fight to keep Home Depot out of Sunland-Tujunga, you should be concerned about how LAUSD solved the controversy.

This is what they put up on district's website today:

Civic Center Permits

---

 
The major function of the Civic Center Permit Office is the issuance of the appropriate permit to allow for the use of school facilities in conformance with the California Education Code mandate and the Board of Education rules, which require that each and every public school facility be made available as a civic center to members of the community and non-profit organizations for supervised recreational activities, meetings and public discussions, when regular school activities are not disrupted.

To qualify for a permit:
A group must be non-profit.(Incorrect)
Updated 6/12/08: The activity requested must be not for profit.

Poof, the problem is gone. Just change the rules. And for that I think the district with an unbroken record of failing millions of students for 30 years deserves the Chutzpah Award for pure blatant utter contempt for the public.

You got to give the bloated, overpaid and incompetent bureaucracy credit for nakedly showing exactly how they deal with all kinds of problems. Cross out the wrong answer and put in the right one. In a word, cheat.

That's exactly why the district fails. It gets the answers to problems wrong every day but instead of learning from its mistakes and getting better, it simply crosses out failure and writes in success That way there's no accountability, no growth.

And that's exactly why the people of Sunland-Tujunga feel that no matter what happens, the Home Depot store will be shoved down their throats Their experience with the city is no different than with the schools and that's what I'm hearing from people all over the city.

For my money, there is only one answer and that's to change tactics and to stop playing by the rules of a rigged game.

So if you care about the schools or the quality of life in your neighborhood or any other issues that affect your life because of local policies, join me and other community activists in a protest at City Hall on July 14, Bastille Day, the day the French Revolution began.

Ellen  Vukovich
Community Correspondent
 

I hate to admit it, but I still like living in Los Angeles.

Well, not exactly Los Angeles, but the San Fernando Valley, primarily Sherman Oaks.  That's why I volunteer my time to help keep my community a nice place to live and work in. 

However, I feel like vultures are circling around us like downed prey. I realize that our relatively traffic-less part of Ventura Boulevard and laid back Valley lifestyle could soon be devoured by a pro-development City Hall. 

Of course, we will fight to keep that from happening. The Valley has long been known for active community involvement but, that's no excuse for sitting on the sidelines, no matter where you live and work.  

Frankly, our generally great So Cal weather almost makes for a good trade-off between our worsening traffic congestion, and degradation of a once-affordable quality of life.

For those yearning to escape into a swimming pool, our mostly sunny days means we actually get to take pleasure in doing something the City does right.  Namely, taking a swim in a nearby Olympic-sized swimming pool owned and operated by LA.

The fact is this City run facility works very well -- clean and clear filtered water, hot water in the showers, and convenient hours reminds me that Los Angeles is still capable of doing something beneficial for the public, at a relatively modest cost to them.

And, yes, I do take note that I am a contradiction -- I spend more time out of the water stating what needs to be fixed in Los Angeles than remembering to say some parts do work well, such as non-toilet water filled swimming pools. 

It's a small world isn't it, small and funny and fine -- at least for people in the tight little circles of influence where opportunity to reward friends and punish enemies abounds.

Take the case of Northeast San Fernando Valley Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes who, while nobody was watching largely because he has been so invisible, took steps to strip the City of L.A. and its citizens of their basic right to decide land use issues by letting developers do almost anything they want like tear down houses and put up apartments.

It should be noted that his skullduggery was aided and abetted by the fact the Daily News no longer has anyone in Sacramento and the Times still doesn't care about such mundane matters as the well-being of the city.

But word does get around and on Friday Rick Orlov reported Fuente's deceit and a brushfire of outrage quickly spread across the city.

(Strike up the appropriate music by clicking here to get in the right mood for what follows)

With a little help from his friends, Fuentes has concocted a measure, AB212, that  "would limit the ability of the city to make zone changes in areas where the community plan is not consistent with the general plan," according to Orlov.

That lack of consistency is everywhere since the general plan is a fraud and the community plans outdated.

Fuentes' goal is affordable housing -- a code word for taxpayer subsidized housing for the poor and densification of neighborhoods all across L.A.

Now I don't know at this point who would get rich from Fuentes' effort to strip the people of L.A. and their government of control of land use but an examination of how he came to be an elected official and how this legislation came to be might be instructive.

For starters, you need to know Fuentes is a tool of City Councilman Richard Alarcon and former City Council President Alex Padilla, who is now a state senator.