Today I uploaded documents from the DCBID, the Fashion District, and some emails from Raquel Beard to the Mayor’s office. The DCBID’s Operations Committee agendas are here, and according to Suzanne Holley this is all of them for which there are electronic copies. They don’t meet very often, it seems. Next up we have 2015 minutes and agendas for the Fashion District BID Board of Directors. There’s some interesting stuff here, although I haven’t had time to read them carefully. For instance, on February 26, 2015, the Board heard about the Central City Association’s plot to hire Rodriguez Strategies to fight the legalization of street vending in LA. The new information here is that Carol Schatz evidently pegged the cost at $60,000 and Kent Smith of the FDBID asked and received from the Board approval to donate $10,000. I think that, given how the original initiative expanded, including the hiring of subordinate publicists, that original estimate must have ended up to be quite low. In March Kent asked for and received from the board $5,000 to oppose Carol Liu’s Right to Rest Act. I really do wonder if this kind of political activism is a legal use of BID money, since it’s supposed to be used to provide services in the district above and beyond what the City provides. How, I wonder, is taking positions on state laws consistent with this charge? A question for another day, I guess. And finally, after the break, we have some emails from Raquel Beard of the CCEA to Eric Garcetti’s office.

The most interesting item here is Assistant Chief Jorge Villegas’s response to yet another cri de coeur from Raquel K. Beard. Although she didn’t explicitly call for anyone to be arrested, Jorge could evidently read the subtext well enough. He told her:

Raquel,

Thank you for your attentiveness to this issue. As you know it is an extremely complex issue to address. It is not as simple as simply making an arrest. As you know, we cannot arrest [our] way out this complex social issue.

We are working with the city to develop an overall strategy to address.. I’m hopeful that we, as a city, will be ready to unveil that strategy soon.

[…]

Respectfully,

Jorge

It is refreshing to see an acknowledgement of that obvious truth from a member of the LAPD command staff. Now if only there were some way to get the word out to the BID Patrols.

Image of Jorge Villegas is a public record. I got it from his official LAPD bio.