So much new material to announce!

• Emails from Fashion District BID about Skid Row Neighborhood Council — This is clearly the most important item I have to announce today so I’m putting it first. If you’re interested at all in how the Downtown zillionaire elite crushed the SRNC formation effort you’ll want to read this stuff. There is what appears to be new evidence about the identities of the people behind the infamous United Downtown LA front group that hired Rocky Delgadillo to write a demand letter to City Council over the SRNC, although there’s still no smoking gun. I will be writing more about this material, but it may take a few days, and I wanted to get it before you as quickly as possible.
• Figueroa Corridor BID emails — Between the BID and the City of LA, also USC, also Securitas. Various time ranges.
• North Hollywood BID emails — City of LA and their security provider. Various date ranges.
• Figueroa Corridor BID tax forms — From 2013 through 2015. It’s interesting to learn here that the Figueroa Corridor BID has been “IN THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPING A CONFLICT OF INTEREST POLICY, WHISTLEBLOWER POLICY, AND DOCUMENT RETENTION AND DESTRUCTION POLICY.” at least since 2013, with no sign of actually producing anything. Ah, sigh.
• North Hollywood BID tax forms — From 2013 through 2015. It’s interesting to learn here that this BID and the Figueroa Corridor BID, both of which are administered by our old friends at Urban Place Consulting, turns in copypasta from the FCBID on their tax forms. Just for instance, they too have been “IN THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPING A CONFLICT OF INTEREST POLICY, WHISTLEBLOWER POLICY, AND DOCUMENT RETENTION AND DESTRUCTION POLICY.” at least since 2013, with no sign of actually producing anything.

And turn the page for beaucoup de bylaws and some interesting preliminary material on the privatization of public space in the San Fernando Valley. Most interestingly, there is a very rare appearance of some new material from the outlaw stronghold known to the world as the Larchmont Village BID!

• Materials relating to the North Hollywood Pedestrian Plaza — The North Hollywood Pedestrian Plaza seems to be a former alleyway off Lankershim that the City converted into a plaza. They signed a MOU with the BID to administer it, and these are some materials relating to the process, including the MOU and a letter from Paul Krekorian about how peachy-keen the whole thing is. You can read the BID’s policy for using the plaza, over which they evidently have final say. Note the many potential violations and at least one actual violation of the First Amendment. This kind of privatization of public space will certainly not stand up to a court challenge, but until someone’s willing and able to press the issue things just drift along in their unresolved state, which, as always, defaults to repression. I’m gathering materials on this situation, but it’s fairly low priority, so it’ll be a while before I write anything substantial.
• North Hollywood BID Bylaws — As always, these are really the bylaws of the property owners association which administers the BID rather than of the BID itself. Also as always, the distinction doesn’t usually make a difference.
• Figueroa Corridor BID Bylaws — See above comment.
• Larchmont Village BID bylaws — Last but never least, here are the bylaws of the Larchmont Village Property Owners Association. I’m going to have to break out of the list to discuss this one because there’s too much to say!

These people are well known for being willing to completely ignore, to flout, to trample upon, their duties under the CPRA. You may recall how, last year, I had to spend months hassling and ultimately pay a lawyer to threaten this creepy little BID in South Central Hollywood because they completely ignored my requests for information about their freaking signal box art contest. Well, that led to this interesting saga, the moral of which is essentially that being flamboyantly stupid doesn’t stand in the way of the financial, social, and political success of rich white people.

So anyway, in October 2016, right after they finally handed over those emails, I asked them for a copy of their bylaws, because they seem to never actually meet, they don’t notice their meetings publicly as required by the Brown Act, and bylaws can be helpful in understanding how often and on what schedule BIDs are bound to meet. Well, my astute readers will have noticed that it is now six freaking months later, and I am just finally getting the bylaws. This is because they ignored me again, and even though I personally threatened them with litigation, that was, evidently not enough. I had again to get an actual lawyer involved which, as before, was finally enough to make them cough up the goodies.¹
And these bylaws are pretty interesting. There are a number of places where they’re not sticking to their own rules,² although at this point I don’t understand the California Corporations Code well enough to know what kind of trouble they can get in for this.³ The most egregious thing, though, is found in Article IV, Section 10, which states:

ACTION WITHOUT MEETING. Any action of the majority of the Board of Directors of the Association, although not at a regularly called meeting and the record thereof if assented to in writing by all of the other members of the Board, shall always be as valid and effective in all respects as if passed by the Board at a regular meeting.

This procedure, of course, is in direct, explicit, contradiction to the Brown Act’s requirement that all business of this BID be conducted at open, noticed, public meetings. The Larchmonties are infamous for not noticing their meetings either on their website or by mail,⁴ for pretending they had meetings when they did not,⁵ for seemingly forging minutes of meetings ex post facto,⁶ and so on. But that their bylaws actually allow them to violate the Brown Act is a whole new level of shocking. It’s also upsetting in that, insofar as the City Clerk’s office, which claims to monitor the operations of BIDs,⁷ certainly ought to have caught this problem at some point and made them revise their bylaws. Well, my work with this small-scale criminal conspiracy is ongoing, and perhaps you’ll hear much much more about it here soon enough! Have a good weekend, and it’s off that I’m signing!

Image of Tom Kneafsey came from here, got mogrified, remogrified, trans-, cis-, and hetero-mogrified, and came out the other end of the mogrification machine bearing the proud symbol of ©2017 MichaelKohlhaas.Org. Suck on that, Libs!! Also note that the words we proudly placed into Cap’n Tom Kneafsey’s slavering bourgeois maw were shamelessly ripped out of Zack Jackson’s mouth via Urban Dictionary. Thanks, Zack!!!

1. There are a number of other issues involved, which I’m eliding in this version of the story, but I will write on them as soon as they get at least a little more resolved.
2. Not surprising behavior for the zillionaire elite, who seem to feel no need whatsoever to follow laws. This is probably because they believe, and certainly all the evidence that this view is correct is with them, that laws were written for other people to follow and for zillionaires to wield as a weapon.
3. I’m working on understanding it, though, because someone has to do something about “these people.” They violate many provisions of this on a regular basis. It really is a lawless little group over there, although what can one expect from “those people” in South Central Hollywood. They didn’t just get that reputation from nowhere, amirite? Where there’s smoke there’s fire, friends. Perhaps a gang injunction is called for.
4. Both of which are required by the Brown Act.
5. Discussion of this forthcoming.
6. Likewise.
7. Although if you read this blog regularly you will know that this is actually a blatant lie.