Full Recording Of Yesterday’s Venice Beach BID Meeting Now Available For Scholarly Analysis And Weekend Hatewatching!

April 14, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

This is just the briefest of notes to announce that, thanks to a faithful friend of this blog, I’m able to make available a complete recording of the April 13, 2018 meeting of the Board of Directors of the Venice Beach Business Improvement District. I will watch this 90 minute monstrosity this weekend and report back on highlights, but I wanted to provide links as soon as possible. It’s available both on YouTube and also on Archive.Org.

Like I said, I haven’t watched it yet, but my first impression after skimming around in the depths of this invaluable item is that President & CEO Tara Devine is even more unhinged than I had originally thought, and that’s saying an awful damn lot.
Continue reading Full Recording Of Yesterday’s Venice Beach BID Meeting Now Available For Scholarly Analysis And Weekend Hatewatching! →

Business Improvement Districts, Homeless Issues, Los Angeles City Council

A Motion In City Council Asks The HHH Citizens’ Oversight Committee To Recommend Ways To Speed Up Development Of Housing For The Homeless, Creating An Unacknowledged But Not Unexpected Conflict Of Interest For Members Kerry Morrison And Blair Besten, Whose Salaries Are Paid By Real Estate Developers For The Express Purpose Of Advocating For Their Interests With The City

April 13, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

In November 2016 the voters of Los Angeles approved Measure HHH, which provided a huge amount of funding for housing homeless people. The measure also created a Citizens’ Oversight Committee, putatively for the purpose of making sure the money was well-spent. Subsequently, Eric Garcetti appointed Hollywood BIDdie and famous mayoral pookie-pie Kerry Morrison and some other people to the Committee and the City Council appointed Downtown BIDdie and famous José Huizar pookie-pie Blair Besten to the Committee.

These appointments meant that 2 of 7 committee members work for business improvement districts,¹ which was bad enough in itself given that one of the main purposes of BIDs is to banish the homeless from their districts and to basically waste public money in the form of their assessments while doing that. But on Wednesday matters got immeasurably worse.

What happened is that Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Mitchell Englander introduced a motion proposing to expand the remit of the CoC to include making

comprehensive recommendations to the Homelessness and Poverty Committee regarding changes to the permanent supportive housing process and funding structure to enable a more expedited delivery of homeless housing.

That is, the Committee is now charged with weakening the funding process and the permitting and building approval process for projects that will help house the homeless. This sounds superficially like a good thing, but there’s at least one huge problem with it. Blair Besten’s employers, Kerry Morrison’s employers, are huge commercial property owners and developers and weakened processes are their bread and butter. They know exactly how to turn weakened processes into strengthened profit margins.

At least some of them, e.g. Ruben Islas, make immense amounts of money from building and owning housing for the homeless. Blair Besten has lobbied the City intensively on relaxing zoning codes and on granting psychotically expansive tax breaks to such developers. This new proposal, therefore, would grant Blair Besten and Kerry Morrison the power to make recommendations directly to City Council on issues that they are already paid by developers and property owners to lobby the City over.
Continue reading A Motion In City Council Asks The HHH Citizens’ Oversight Committee To Recommend Ways To Speed Up Development Of Housing For The Homeless, Creating An Unacknowledged But Not Unexpected Conflict Of Interest For Members Kerry Morrison And Blair Besten, Whose Salaries Are Paid By Real Estate Developers For The Express Purpose Of Advocating For Their Interests With The City →

Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Council

Leron Gubler Of The Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce Wrote To The City Council To Tell Them That Legal Street Vending Is Causing Hollywood Boulevard To Be “Compared To A Third World Bazaar” — And Because He’s A Racist Fucking Moron He Takes It For Granted That That’s A Bad Thing

April 12, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

ACTION NOTE: Carol Schatz told us that City Council was going to be taking up street vending again soon, and she was correct. It’s scheduled for the Economic Development Committee on April 16 at 2 p.m. in City Hall room 340, which is the Ferraro Council Chamber. Obviously they’re expecting a crowd.

Business Improvement Districts and other white supremacist zillionaire flunkies like various chambers of commerce and the Central City Association have spent the last three years fighting against legalized street vending in Los Angeles because they’re a bunch of puritanical racists. Ordinarily, though, they have the sense to hide their puritanical racism behind a thin screen of concern for slightly more acceptable issues like civic order, the rule of law, public health, whatever.

However, a couple days ago, Leron Gubler of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce let the mask slip just for a moment. He sent this letter, a transcription of which is after the break, to City Council to oppose legalizing street vending.² And in it he stated:

The Chamber and the Hollywood Entertainment District BID continue to be inundated with complaints from our property owners and visitors on Hollywood Boulevard about the increase in sidewalk vendors over the past year. The street, especially at night, is being compared to a third world bazaar.

It’s not even a dog whistle. He’s explicitly complaining that there are too many unruly darkies on Hollywood Blvd., because who else is found in a “third world bazaar”? These people³ don’t seem to have the first clue that they don’t own Hollywood Blvd., they don’t own this City. And this is not the first time they’ve complained about nonwhite people taking over Hollywood Blvd.

Their visions for Hollywood Blvd., for Los Angeles, are no more important or valid than anyone else’s, no matter what the color of their skin or whether or not they have a zillion bucks in the bank. Most of Los Angeles likes street vending. Most of Los Angeles likes unruly darkies. We are unruly darkies here. Without unruly darkies there would be no Los Angeles. Our City would be just like freaking Hancock Park or San Marino. Most of Los Angeles likes what vending does for our streets, our neighborhoods, our humanity. If these BIDdies don’t like it, why don’t they move back to America or Palos Verdes or wherever they came from?
Continue reading Leron Gubler Of The Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce Wrote To The City Council To Tell Them That Legal Street Vending Is Causing Hollywood Boulevard To Be “Compared To A Third World Bazaar” — And Because He’s A Racist Fucking Moron He Takes It For Granted That That’s A Bad Thing →

Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Government, Public Records Act Pragmatics

John Walker Of The Studio City BID Asked Rita Moreno Of The Clerk’s Office For Advice On A CPRA Request I Made And She Gave Him A Detailed, Thoughtful, Largely Correct Response Despite The Fact That Doing So Directly Contradicts Her Boss, The Mendacious Ms. Holly Wolcott, Who Has Asserted Time And Again That “the Clerk’s office [does not] have the authority to control/direct the records management practices of … BIDs”

April 12, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

In the great and good⁴ City of Los Angeles, business improvement districts are overseen by the City Clerk‘s office. They have a whole subsection of their website about BIDs; how to form one, what they are, and so on. And not only that, but as part of their oversight process, each BID signs a contract with the City Clerk’s office. These are all about the same as one another, and if you want to look at one, here’s a link to the Studio City BID’s contract.⁵

And, like every one of these contracts between the City and its BIDs, this one contains, in Section 16.3, the following fairly unequivocal requirement: “… Corporation and the Board of Directors are also subject to and must comply with the California Public Records Act.” Finally, buried deep down in this website, they have published a stunning little item called the Service Operations Summary, which purports to explain the City’s role in relation to its BIDs.

In particular, in Section 5, this document claims that:⁶ “THE [CLERK’S] OFFICE PROVIDES CONTINUOUS CONTRACT COMPLIANCE ASSISTANCE. Staff monitors the use of revenue in order to ensure that assessments paid by district members are used appropriately and in accordance with contractual, budgetary, statutory and City regulations and procedures.”

Now, it’s a tragic aspect of the CPRA that the only remedy for noncompliance that the legislature has seen fit to provide is a lawsuit. However, it seems at least plausible from the foregoing that if a BID is not complying with the CPRA, it’s the duty of the office of the Clerk to ensure that they do comply with it. Acting on this theory, and hoping to avoid a bunch of damn lawsuits,⁷ once upon a time in 2016 I tried to get Ms. Holly Wolcott to mediate between me and uppity non-CPRA-compliant BIDs.

But she, almost certainly acting on the advice of rogue deputy city attorney Michael Joseph Dundas, denied that the City had any power whatsoever to compel BIDs to comply with the law, despite what the above-quoted Service Operations Summary claimed. Despite the fact that the City has a contract with each BID and the contract requires CPRA compliance. And she didn’t just deny it, she denied it vehemently:, stating in an email to me⁸ that:“…the Clerk’s office [does not] have the authority to control/direct the records management practices of the various BIDs which are entities wholly separate from the City.”

Anyway, a couple weeks ago, I sent a CPRA request to the Studio City BID, asking for a bunch of stuff. When the material showed up yesterday, I found an exchange between John Walker and Rita Moreno, a City Clerk staffer in charge of many aspects of BIDs, discussing my request. Basically he was all like do we have to do it because expensive and time-consuming. And she was all like … well, turn the page to read all the emails and see exactly what she was all like, but suffice it to say she was all like DIRECTING him to do it because of the law. That is, she was doing precisely what her boss, the famous Ms. Holly Wolcott, said that the City would never do and didn’t even have the power to do.
Continue reading John Walker Of The Studio City BID Asked Rita Moreno Of The Clerk’s Office For Advice On A CPRA Request I Made And She Gave Him A Detailed, Thoughtful, Largely Correct Response Despite The Fact That Doing So Directly Contradicts Her Boss, The Mendacious Ms. Holly Wolcott, Who Has Asserted Time And Again That “the Clerk’s office [does not] have the authority to control/direct the records management practices of … BIDs” →

LAPD

Robert Arcos, Candidate For LAPD Chief, Not Only Used To Run With The CRASH Unit Back In The Rampart Scandal Days, But As Of 2015 He Was Still Attending CRASH Alumni Reunions At The Freaking City Club Of Los Angeles

April 11, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

If you’re reading this blog you probably care about Los Angeles. And if you care about Los Angeles you probably know about the Rampart Scandal. And if you know about the Rampart Scandal, you probably know about Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, better known, of course, in the weirdo heavily-armed-frat-boy culture of the LAPD, as CRASH.

And if you know about all that stuff… well, maybe you still don’t know, because I didn’t, that many CRASH alums have moved on to bigger and better things in the LAPD. For instance, our old friend Peter Zarcone, late of Hollywood Division but now cracking skulls for the man out on 77th Street, was in CRASH. And not only him, but also Deputy Chief Robert “Bobby” Arcos, now running for Chief of the whole damn show, used to run with the CRASHies.

And it’s a legit question, really, how it was that he was a senior lead officer back in the day, and all his subordinates⁹ were out stealing cocaine and falsifying evidence and beating suspects within an inch of their lives and whatever else it was that they got up to out there in the Rampart Division, and he had no clue that any of this was going on? It kind of sheds a negative light on his leadership ability, does it not?¹⁰ Is this the guy we want running the LAPD?

And it’s not even like Bobby Arcos has left the bad old days behind. The inspiration for this post is an email I just received from the LAPD.¹¹ It’s from long-time Zarcone wingman Alex Baez organizing a reunion of CRASH officers to be held in 2015 at the City Club of Los Angeles. Zarcone was invited, and Chief-to-be Arcos was invited as well.

The email is pretty amusing, what with the detailed dress code of the City Club that everyone’s going to have to adhere to, and there’s a transcription after the break as always. But what’s more interesting is why Bobby Arcos thought those bad old days in CRASH were something to get together with friends and drinks and reminisce about. It doesn’t sound much like he’s moved beyond, does it? If I were going to hire him as Chief, I’d want him to come totally clean about what happened back then, what he knew and when he knew it, and so on. And I’d want him to quit going to the damn reunions.
Continue reading Robert Arcos, Candidate For LAPD Chief, Not Only Used To Run With The CRASH Unit Back In The Rampart Scandal Days, But As Of 2015 He Was Still Attending CRASH Alumni Reunions At The Freaking City Club Of Los Angeles →

Business Improvement Districts

Highland Park BID Executive Director Misty Iwatsu Wanted To Apply For A Job In Culver City But Thought Culver City Is Part Of Los Angeles — Thank Goodness The Leaders Of Los Angeles Have Chosen To Appoint To Its Positions Of Influence And Power Persons Of Such Deep Wisdom And Knowledge About The Politics, Society, And History Of Our City!

April 11, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

Tonight I have for you another juicy morsel from the recently announced set of emails from the Highland Park BID. Our story begins with this email from the BID Consortium to all of its zombie-like followers who, it seems, include Misty Iwatsu. The email was a listing of job opportunities for the LA BIDdie community, ensubjectified “Announcement:::BID Opportunities” and containing, in pertinent part, the following likely little slab of puckey:

Culver City Arts District BID – Executive Director

The Culver City Arts District is looking to hire a part-time Executive Director to help manage the programs and Board. The position will only be about 20-25 hours a month ($45-50 an hour). They are hoping to find someone that can assist with the business outreach, events, board administration, oversee a marketing consultant and generally keep things humming along. It is fairly low-key – and relatively flexible – though the board is looking for a self-starter with exceptional communication skills that can keep things moving along without a lot of oversight.

Contact: Elaine Gerety Warner (elaine.warner@culvercitv.org)

And friend Misty Iwatsu evidently read that and thought something along the lines of “I’m gonna cut me a slice of that cake!” because, somewhat less than three days later, she sent this cheerful little missive off to City of Los Angeles employed BIDmeisterin Rita Moreno, whom so many of our BIDs rely on for her good sense and relative sanity,¹² asking for some job-related info and, in the process, fatally revealing the fact that she thought Culver City was somehow a part of Los Angeles when everybody who’s actually paying attention knows it’s its own damn place, got their own damn mayor, their own damn city council, their own damn muni code. It’s just like a real city, only smaller!

As usual, turn the page for a transcription, more emails, and the usual mockery!
Continue reading Highland Park BID Executive Director Misty Iwatsu Wanted To Apply For A Job In Culver City But Thought Culver City Is Part Of Los Angeles — Thank Goodness The Leaders Of Los Angeles Have Chosen To Appoint To Its Positions Of Influence And Power Persons Of Such Deep Wisdom And Knowledge About The Politics, Society, And History Of Our City! →

Business Improvement Districts

Highland Park BID Accused Of Promoting Gentrification By Among Other Things Asking The City To Enforce Anti-Mural Laws And Selectively Promoting White-Serving Businesses — Board Of Directors Spy On Activists’ Facebook Comments — All Of Which Sheds Some Light On The Exceedly Underappreciated Facts That (A) Property-Based BIDs Do Not In Any Way Represent Businesses — They Represent Property Owners And Only Property Owners and (B) The City Is More Complicit In Gentrification Than Anyone Will Admit

April 9, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

One purpose of this post is to announce the availability of a bunch of emails from the Highland Park BID from 2017 and early 2018. The Highland Park BID is a new client¹³ of mine, and thus far they, in the person of their executive director Misty Iwatsu, have been exceedingly cooperative, for which I thank them very much.

There’s a lot of interesting material in there,¹⁴ and I’ll be writing about at least a few more items over the coming weeks, but most interesting of all, I think, is some material from November 2017 about antigentrification activists in Highland Park and their understanding of the BID’s role in social cleansing for the sake of financial gain.¹⁵

This story provides an excellent example of what pernicious gentrification looks like in Los Angeles, how it is covertly but significantly supported by the City government, and how property-based BIDs do not care a whit about the interests of business owners per se. They only care about the interests of the owners of commercial property who, in this City at least, are predominately white. Turn the page for all the details!
Continue reading Highland Park BID Accused Of Promoting Gentrification By Among Other Things Asking The City To Enforce Anti-Mural Laws And Selectively Promoting White-Serving Businesses — Board Of Directors Spy On Activists’ Facebook Comments — All Of Which Sheds Some Light On The Exceedly Underappreciated Facts That (A) Property-Based BIDs Do Not In Any Way Represent Businesses — They Represent Property Owners And Only Property Owners and (B) The City Is More Complicit In Gentrification Than Anyone Will Admit →

Street Vending

Letters Of Support For SB 946, Senator Ricardo Lara’s Street Vending Regulation Bill, Begin To Arrive At The Capitol — We Have Copies!

April 5, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

As I’m sure you’re aware, the City of Los Angeles has been trying for years now to develop a framework for legalized sidewalk vending, but the process has been so thoroughly hijacked by the City’s Bad BIDdies that we’re going to be lucky if sidewalk vendors get out of this process merely no worse off than they are now.

Just for instance, if the BIDdies have their way, and if it’s left up to their tame councilpets why would they not, they’re going to have vendors on their knees begging the owner of McDonalds can they please sell pupusas outside her damn store and they will have to pay BIDs for the right to vend inside the BID’s territory. These are merely two of the many, many abominable restrictions that BIDdies would dearly love to impose upon our City’s beloved sidewalk vendors.

Well, seeing the years-long series of episodes of confusion and terror that the City of Los Angeles has been putting itself through with respect to this issue, Senator Ricardo Lara decided that enough was, as they say, enough, and introduced SB 946, which would severely limit the ways in which cities are allowed to regulate street vending. The incomparable Emily Alpert Reyes recently published a fine article on this bill in the Times.

One of the most striking limitations is found in the cartoon above, but they’re all very powerful, very sane requirements, and they would, it turns out, completely gut the anti-vendor, anti-human traps and snares that the BIDdies have so successfully schemed to embed in the City’s proposal. Thus, naturally, the BIDdies are gearing up for a fight.

And we mustn’t underestimate the power that these BIDdies have to torpedo state-level legislation when it threatens their weirdo parochial interests. Last year, e.g., we saw them absolutely destroy a very sane, very modest, improvement to the California Public Records Act, merely because they’re a bunch of damn whiny-babies who can’t or won’t live up to contracts that they themselves signed willingly.

In any case, these battles are fought and won or lost at the state level via letters of support or opposition, which are collected by the bill’s author and are available on request. So the other day I asked Lara’s staff to send them to me, and this afternoon they did! I set up a page on Archive.Org to collect them. As of today, there are only five, and they’re all in support. Expect this to change, and I’ll have copies here as they arrive.

Turn the page for links to all five of them and a transcription of one of them. I’m sure no one will mind if you want to appropriate some of the ideas and/or language for your own letter, which you can send to your legislator(s) after locating them using this web page!
Continue reading Letters Of Support For SB 946, Senator Ricardo Lara’s Street Vending Regulation Bill, Begin To Arrive At The Capitol — We Have Copies! →

Business Improvement Districts, Lawsuits, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Larchmont Village BID Sued To Enforce Compliance With The California Public Records Act

April 4, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

It’s been two-ish years now since I sent my first CPRA request to the kooky little South Central Hollywood gang of white supremacist law-flouting gangster thugs known to the world as the Larchmont Village Business Improvement District.

That first time they ignored me and they ignored me and they ignored me until finally I had to hire a lawyer and pry the goodies out of their creepy grasping fingers by main force. But, as we know, the thug life is a powerful draw, and gangsters get hooked on lawbreaking like a drug. Despite being given every chance by society to reform their outlaw ways, these hardcore BIDdies sadly persisted in their chosen life of crime.

As you may recall, they’ve never managed to comply with the damn Brown Act, despite occasional signals that either they were going to start complying or maybe that the City of Los Angeles was going to force them to comply. And after that one time in 2016 they’ve never managed to comply with the CPRA again. I sent them a few requests in May 2017 which they ignored and ignored and ignored.

And so, as before, I hired a lawyer. And the lawyer filed this petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court. And served the petition on Tom Kneafsey earlier this week. And served a letter to Cap’n Tom along with the petition. I wish there was some way to get these BIDdies to follow the law other than by filing petitions against them but the State Legislature, in its inscrutable wisdom, has made this the only remedy. Sad but true. Stay tuned for more information and turn the page for some excerpts from the petition.
Continue reading Larchmont Village BID Sued To Enforce Compliance With The California Public Records Act →

Lawsuits, Los Angeles City Government, Venice Beach BID

Judge James Chalfant Issues Final Judgment In Okulick Petition Against The Venice Beach BID — The News Is Not Good, Friends, Even Though It Seemed Last Month Like It Was Going To Be

April 4, 2018 Mike 1 Comment

I created a page on Archive.Org to collect pleadings from the Okulicks’ case, and you can find it right here. Unfortunately right now I only have the original petition and yesterday’s tentative ruling, since adopted as final. This article from the Times is also useful background.

Yesterday afternoon the final hearing in the Okulick’s lawsuit against the Venice Beach BID took place before Judge James C. Chalfant in Department 85 of the Stanley Mosk Courthouse of the Los Angeles County Superior Court. One of the petitioners’ claims was that BIDs don’t give any special benefits to property owners whose parcels are zoned commercial but are used solely as owner-occupied residential.

Last month, it seems, Chalfant agreed with the petitioners, stating in his tentative ruling at that time that:

The Petition for writ of mandate is granted in part. Only the portion of the assessment directed to properties used by their owner exclusively as their residence is unlawful. A writ shall issue directing a refund of that portion of the assessment and Petitioners are entitled to a declaratory judgment to that effect. In all other respects, the Petition is denied.

However, it seems that the respondents, i.e. the City of Los Angeles and the Venice Beach BID, convinced him to hold off on making this ruling final to allow for another round of briefing just on the specific part where he found in favor of the Okulicks. I don’t have copies of those briefs, but yesterday’s hearing consisted of the oral argument surrounding them. Whatever the City of LA put in its brief did the nasty trick, evidently.

By yesterday Chalfant had changed his mind completely, and nothing that the petitioners’ lawyer, the brave, the honorable Geoffrey T. Stover, could say would sway the judge. Turn the page for the money quote from yesterday’s bad news tentative ruling and a little bit of amateur discussion based on notes I took at the hearing.
Continue reading Judge James Chalfant Issues Final Judgment In Okulick Petition Against The Venice Beach BID — The News Is Not Good, Friends, Even Though It Seemed Last Month Like It Was Going To Be →

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Monthly Archives: April 2018