All posts by Mike

Business Improvement Districts

Vicki Nussbaum To Replace Dr. John Walker Ph.D. As Zeck Dreck Of The Studio City BID! — This Despite Fact That Sarah Besley Finds Her Weirdo Lonerism “Concerning”! — Guess Sarah Besley Ain’t Running Everything After All! — Oh And The Board Evidently Decided To Hire Vicki Nussbaum At Their Infamous Closed Session On September 17! — You Know, The One Where Dr. John Walker Ph.D. Said There Was Going To Be Nothing To Report Out! — Guess Dr. John Walker’s Credibility Is Completely Shot To Hell Cause Hiring A Damn Staffer Certainly Counts As Action Taken!

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Oh Lord, see, Dr. John Walker, Ph.D., zeck dreck of the infamous Studio City BID, decided at some point that he was going to handle all my CPRA requests his own self instead of having their IT consultant do it like they had done in the past. And the evidence shows strongly that despite having a Ph.D., Dr. John Walker actually can’t carry out a keyword search of his own email. That’s one of the reasons why what was previously a steady flow of interesting material from this creepy little BID has dried to a painfully extracted trickle. But, as I have said, occasionally something interesting gets through!

Anyway, you’ll recall that Dr. John Walker Ph.D. is leaving the BID’s employ, and the two main candidates to replace him are the reprehensible Taylor Bazley and the equally reprehensible Vicki Nussbaum. Originally I thought Vicki Nussbaum didn’t get the job cause she started interviewing in June and they still didn’t seem to have hired her. But just today I received this email from La Nussbaum to BID Pressy Tony Richman making it clear that in fact she has been hired as Dr. John Ph.D.’s replacement:1
From: Vicki Nussbaum <vicki.carr.nussbaum@gmail.com>
Subject: Checking in
Date: September 21, 2018 at 7:40 AM
To: Tony RICHMAN <latonyr@gmail.com>

Tony,

Checking to see how the Board meeting went Monday and if we are official.

Take care,
Vicki

Continue reading Vicki Nussbaum To Replace Dr. John Walker Ph.D. As Zeck Dreck Of The Studio City BID! — This Despite Fact That Sarah Besley Finds Her Weirdo Lonerism “Concerning”! — Guess Sarah Besley Ain’t Running Everything After All! — Oh And The Board Evidently Decided To Hire Vicki Nussbaum At Their Infamous Closed Session On September 17! — You Know, The One Where Dr. John Walker Ph.D. Said There Was Going To Be Nothing To Report Out! — Guess Dr. John Walker’s Credibility Is Completely Shot To Hell Cause Hiring A Damn Staffer Certainly Counts As Action Taken! →

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Los Angeles City Council

Herb Wesson Bows To Irresistible Force And Moves To Rescind Council Office Approval Requirement For Homeless Housing — Something Had To Be Done Cause This Was Recently Outlawed By The State Of California — It’s Obvious He’s A Whiny Little Baby, Though, Cause He Obviously Can’t Resist Having The Last Word — It Means Absolutely Nothing And Everyone Can See That, Herb, So You’re Just Exposing Your Whiny Baby-tude To The Whole Damn World!

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UPDATE: This motion has now been assigned Council File number CF 18-0955

So in March 2018 the incomparable Emily Alpert Reyes wrote a blockbuster article exposing yet another cynically corrupt practice well-beloved of our cynically corrupt City Council members. As she put it:

Before a proposed [homeless housing] building can get funding from the housing department through Proposition HHH, the $1.2-billion bond passed by voters, it must have a “letter of acknowledgment” from the local council member. And if a council member simply withholds that letter, a project can be stopped in its tracks.

As you can imagine, various City Council members defended this grant of absolute veto power outside of any democratic process by claiming it was the only way they could have any input into what gets built in their districts. Like it’s obvious somehow that they even should have input into what gets built? Anyway, no one outside of 200 N Spring Street was buying this loco jive, and especially assemblymember David Chiu. Alpert Reyes’s article moved Chiu to introduce AB 829, which flat-out forbade any projects subject to such a requirement from receiving state funding. This passed easily in September and was quickly signed into law by Jerry Brown on September 27.

Obviously the City can’t afford to give up all that state money, so it became incumbent on them to rescind the requirement as soon as possible. Thus did Council president Herb Wesson introduce this morning in Council a motion recommending said rescission. But Herb Wesson, famously a whiny baby even in the gang of world class whiny babies among whom he works, couldn’t just leave it at that. He ended his motion with a whiny baby last word move which, as far as I can see, has no great effect other than to expose his whiny baby attitude even more to the world than it already has been exposed:

I FURTHER MOVE that the Housing Department be directed to report with recommendations on ways that a Council office and neighborhood council of the area can provide meaningful input on proposed City financing of a housing development in the Council district, and in a manner consistent with the new state law.

Boo freaking hoo hoo hoo, Herb Wesson! Anyway, turn the page for the entire text of the motion, if you dare!
Continue reading Herb Wesson Bows To Irresistible Force And Moves To Rescind Council Office Approval Requirement For Homeless Housing — Something Had To Be Done Cause This Was Recently Outlawed By The State Of California — It’s Obvious He’s A Whiny Little Baby, Though, Cause He Obviously Can’t Resist Having The Last Word — It Means Absolutely Nothing And Everyone Can See That, Herb, So You’re Just Exposing Your Whiny Baby-tude To The Whole Damn World! →

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Business Improvement Districts

Vicki Nussbaum Applied In June 2018 For John Walker’s Job At The Studio City BID — The BID Asked Kerry Morrison’s Opinion On Vicki Nussbaum Cause Why Not? — Kerry Morrison Doesn’t Know Vicki Nussbaum — Ben Besley Found This Fact “Telling” — Sarah Besley Told Hubbie Ben Besley That Vicki Nussbaum Didn’t “Participate In The BID Community” — Sarah Besley Found This “Concerning” — Ben Besley Is On The Hiring Committee — Vicki Nussbaum Interviewed In June — But Seems Like She Didn’t Get The Job Cause They Interviewed Taylor Bazley In September — Seems Like Sarah Besley Did A Hatchet Job On Vicki Nussbaum — Sad If True — But There Are No Innocents In BIDlandia

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The short version of the backstory is that the Studio City BID is hiring a replacement for its executive director, Dr. John Walker Ph.D. You can read the details and see a copy of the job announcement here in yesterday’s post. Yesterday we talked about applicant Taylor Bazley. Today’s topic is Ms. Vicki Nussbaum. Here’s what I know about Vicki Nussbaum. She was the director of the Village at Sherman Oaks BID at least since January 2016 and likely earlier than that.1 More recently she was appointed executive director of the Century City BID.2 So she’s been around BIDlandia for at least three years if not more.

Oh, and I also know that she applied for Dr. John Walker’s job and not only that but just a few days after the job announcement was published Dr. Walker Ph.D. offered her an in-person interview!3 The interview was set for July 11, 2018, and I have no reason to suspect that it didn’t come off exactly as planned. Of course we know they didn’t hire her right then because in early September they interviewed Taylor Bazley.

And BID Board member Ben Besley is on the hiring committee. And he claims to be married to Sarah McPherson Besley, well-known for the fact that she used to work for Kerry Morrison in Hollywood where she was famous for hating Peruvians and hating overpasses. Don’t know which she hates worse. Anyway, for reasons that aren’t yet clear, Sarah Besley went and asked Kerry Morrison about Vicki Nussbaum and Kerry Morrison didn’t know her. And Sarah Besley didn’t know her either. And … oh, heck, why not let Ben Besley tell it. In this stunning little email chain he says:

I also got some interesting feedback, or telling lack of feedback, on Vicki from my wife Sarah, who used to Chair the Los Angeles BID Consortium. Sarah doesn’t know Vicki and neither does her former manager Kerry Morrison. This is telling of someone who is now managing multiple BIDs. Sarah thought it was concerning that she hasn’t been participating in the “BID community” over her the course of her career.

How’s that for hard core, friends? If you don’t know Kerry Morrison and Sarah Besley you don’t get the job! It wasn’t listed as a necessary attribute,4 but man, it sure freaking turned out to be. Pretty tragic for Vicki Nussbaum, I think, cause obviously she had no idea this was a job requirement. At least the publication of this vital information makes it clear for all future applicants! You gotta kiss up to Kerry Morrison and Sarah Besley if you wanna be a BID zeck dreck! Anyway, turn the page for transcriptions of all the emails arranging for Vicki Nussbaum’s seemingly fruitless visit to the damn Studio City BID!
Continue reading Vicki Nussbaum Applied In June 2018 For John Walker’s Job At The Studio City BID — The BID Asked Kerry Morrison’s Opinion On Vicki Nussbaum Cause Why Not? — Kerry Morrison Doesn’t Know Vicki Nussbaum — Ben Besley Found This Fact “Telling” — Sarah Besley Told Hubbie Ben Besley That Vicki Nussbaum Didn’t “Participate In The BID Community” — Sarah Besley Found This “Concerning” — Ben Besley Is On The Hiring Committee — Vicki Nussbaum Interviewed In June — But Seems Like She Didn’t Get The Job Cause They Interviewed Taylor Bazley In September — Seems Like Sarah Besley Did A Hatchet Job On Vicki Nussbaum — Sad If True — But There Are No Innocents In BIDlandia →

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Business Improvement Districts

Emmy Winning Studio City BID Zeck Dreck Dr. John Walker Ph.D. Is Quitting — Mike Bonin Field Deputy Taylor Bazley Applied For His Job — Listed Shadowy Venice Beach BID Boss Tara Devine As A Reference — John Walker Told Hiring Committee What A Loser Tara Devine Is And Maybe Her Recommendation Wasn’t Valuable — And She Wasn’t Returning Their Calls Anyway — Plus Kerry Morrison Was All Like Taylor Who?!?! —It Seems That The Position Is Still Unfilled — Except That These BIDdies Violate The Brown Act Constantly So They May Well Have Filled It In Secret

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Right now there is no BID more interesting to me in the entire City of Los Angeles than the Studio City BID. I mean, I dropped by one of their furtive little meetings last month and one of their directors, famously angry clown Matthew Dunn, was so rattled by my presence that he stormed out of his own meeting.1 And then they committed such an astonishing series of so very flagrant violations of the Brown Act that I was forced to send them a demand letter asking them to pinky swear that they’d never do it again.

And man, when it comes to his CPRAiatic duties, SCBID zeck dreck Dr. John Walker Ph.D.2 is a freaking pain in that thing that writers often resort to mentioning pains in for metaphorical purposes, but once in a while a few items trickle through the border wall as they did yesterday when he, or at least his pocky little minion Damian Gatto, sent over a few righteous goodies! And amongst these was this announcement from June 2018 in which the Studio City BID gave notice to the BID Consortium that it was hiring a replacement for Emmy-winning Zeck Dreck Dr. John Walker!! There is a transcription of this remarkable document after the break.

And then the applications started rolling in! The first applicant I have information about was evidently Ms. Vicki Nussbaum, who used to be the executive director of the Sherman Oaks BID and may still be for all I know, but is at least also the executive director of the Century City BID.3 You’ll hear more about this lady’s application quite soon, but not today.4

And the next applicant that I know anything about is our old friend Taylor Freaking Bazley! That’s right, Mike Bonin’s creepy little field deputy for Venice, deeply implicated in the horror show that is the Venice Beach BID, is out looking for another job! Do his friends at CD11 know about this?! Probably not, because he obviously isn’t using them as references! You can read everything I know in this September 12, 2018 email from SCBID Board member Ben Besley5 to John Walker, Board president Tony Richman, and fellow hiring committee members Barry Wise and Dean Cutler.

Here’s the story in brief, and you will find detailed discussion and transcriptions of all relevant emails after the break! About a month ago Taylor Bazley interviewed for the job. After his interview he sent a sycophantic thanks-friend! email to Board president Tony Richman about how the committee’s shit smelled like roses and so on.6 Also, he seems to have given shadowy BID president Tara Devine’s name as a reference. The hiring committee evidently found it difficult to get in touch with Tara Devine. Finally, Ben Besley got an email from admin@venicebeachbid.com, a well-known pseudonym of Ms. Tara Devine, splaining that Tara Devine was too busy to talk to him right now but maybe later!

Then John Walker weighed in with a story about how TD was being investigated for not spending BID money properly and also how the SCBID didn’t hire her to be their renewal consultant because she charged too damn much. He closed this defamational little missive with the defamer’s favorite excuse: “This is not meant to sway your investigation but I think you should be aware of some history.” So yeah, just another example of how the Los Angeles BID world is like one big seething daisy chain but without the sex.7 Turn the page for transcriptions of all relevant material!
Continue reading Emmy Winning Studio City BID Zeck Dreck Dr. John Walker Ph.D. Is Quitting — Mike Bonin Field Deputy Taylor Bazley Applied For His Job — Listed Shadowy Venice Beach BID Boss Tara Devine As A Reference — John Walker Told Hiring Committee What A Loser Tara Devine Is And Maybe Her Recommendation Wasn’t Valuable — And She Wasn’t Returning Their Calls Anyway — Plus Kerry Morrison Was All Like Taylor Who?!?! —It Seems That The Position Is Still Unfilled — Except That These BIDdies Violate The Brown Act Constantly So They May Well Have Filled It In Secret →

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Downtown Center BID

The Downtown Center BID Is The Latest In A Long Line Of BIDs To Change Up A Brown-Act-Deficient Agenda In Response To My Freely Offered Amateur Criticism — Someday, Lord, And It Won’t Be Long, All These Damn BIDs In Los Angeles Are Just Gonna Follow The Damn Law Right From The Start — In My Dreams, Anyway

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It’s quite a common occurrence around here for some random BID to send out yet another completely freaking illegal agenda or violate some other major requirement of the Brown Act and then, because I can’t send demand letters to all of them, I just drop them a friendly note and they, because you can’t argue with the truth, just go ahead and fix the damn agenda.

This is a useful pastime for all concerned. The BIDs get a free and easy lesson in how to follow the damn law,1 I get to write a blog post on the episode,2 and you, the faithful reader, get to hear about yet another technical violation of the Brown Act, which is really edumacational and why else is anyone even reading this damn blog if not to be edumacated? So like for instance the South Park BID does this on a regular basis, and the Venice BID has had an episode as well.

Oh, and I know I said above that you can’t argue with the truth, but actually the baddest BIDdies of them all of the moment, that unhinged flashmob of sick chuckleheads3 known to all students of BIDology as the Studio City BID, famous for having board members whose consciences are so guilty that they will not allow themselve to appear on camera, can in fact argue with the truth.4 This is why, after they refused to consider my friendly admonition that they were really blowing it with respect to the Brown Act, I had to send them a demand letter.5

But those Studio City-zens are the exception rather than the rule. Which brings us to today’s episode.6 It seems that on Monday, October 1, 2017, I received this agenda for a meeting of the Downtown Center BID’s executive committee, scheduled for yesterday morning. Thereon appeared this item:

IV. CLOSED SESSION
a. Personnel Matters, California Government Code §54957(b)(1) (ACTION) WOLK

And, you know, this is better than some attempts at describing closed sessions I’ve seen. At least they cited an actual code section as justification for closing it, which is more than many BIDdies will do. But it’s still not good enough, not nearly. These BIDdies gotta learn that a basic principal of the Brown Act is that what they say in a closed session might get to be a secret but what they’re doing in there rarely does. Read on for the gory details and what happened next!
Continue reading The Downtown Center BID Is The Latest In A Long Line Of BIDs To Change Up A Brown-Act-Deficient Agenda In Response To My Freely Offered Amateur Criticism — Someday, Lord, And It Won’t Be Long, All These Damn BIDs In Los Angeles Are Just Gonna Follow The Damn Law Right From The Start — In My Dreams, Anyway →

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Business Improvement Districts

Crusading Palisades Journalist Sue Pascoe To Palisades BID In 2016: You’re Violating The Damn Brown Act By Posting Your Agendas Where Disabled People Can’t Freaking See Them — Zeck Dreck Laurie Sale To Rick Scott: “I Feel Like [Following The Law] Is Just Silly” And Plus This Lady Is Really Mean! — Rick Scott To Laurie Sale: We’re Not Your Damn Lawyers So Figure Out Your Own Damn Problems

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Someone recently obtained a bunch of emails from 2016 between Laurie Sale of the Pacific Freaking Palisades BID and Rick Scott of the City Clerk’s office who is, it seems, the BID’s analyst.1 The goodies were passed to me and I uploaded the whole batch of them to Archive dot Org for your edification and titillation, and click here to browse through ’em!

And as you know, the Palisades BID, besides being generally creepy and rather floridly delusional, has proved itself unable to comply even minimally with California’s twin government transparency ordinances, the California Public Records Act and the Brown Act. I’ve written a little about their struggles with CPRA compliance2 and a little more about their struggles with Brown Act compliance, like see this episode and this especially nutty and horrific episode.

So with all of that in mind it was pleasant but not really a surprise to find this little gem of an email exchange in today’s yield. It all began when Sue Pascoe, editor of the famously floofball advertiser known as the Palisades News, emailed Laurie Sale, now retired zeck dreck of the BID, telling her that it was a violation of the Brown Act’s agenda posting requirements to post the agenda in a place that was not handicapped accessible.

Rather than asking a lawyer as anyone with any sense and some assets to protect might do, Laurie Sale emailed Rick Scott of the City Clerk’s office asking him for advice and basically saying that Sue Pascoe was a big meanie and why should the BID have to follow the damn law anyway? Then Rick Scott wrote back and told Laurie Sale that he wasn’t a lawyer and couldn’t give advice. What else did she expect? Turn the page, as always, for transcriptions of everything!
Continue reading Crusading Palisades Journalist Sue Pascoe To Palisades BID In 2016: You’re Violating The Damn Brown Act By Posting Your Agendas Where Disabled People Can’t Freaking See Them — Zeck Dreck Laurie Sale To Rick Scott: “I Feel Like [Following The Law] Is Just Silly” And Plus This Lady Is Really Mean! — Rick Scott To Laurie Sale: We’re Not Your Damn Lawyers So Figure Out Your Own Damn Problems →

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Brown Act Pragmatics, Business Improvement Districts

Latest Episode In The Brown Act Enforcement Project Targets Studio City BID For Three Violations — Most Importantly They Require An ID And Permission From The BID To Attend Meetings — Also They Totally Screwed Up Closed Session Requirements — And Also They Deliberate Via Email Just Like The Byzantine BIDdies — So I Fired Off Another Demand Letter — Now We Wait Thirty Days To See If They Capitulate!

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Last week I attended my first meeting of the Studio City BID‘s board of directors, and what a fiasco, friends! Aggressively clueless board member Matthew Dunn walking out because I was filming him and so on. But I put off telling you about the most interesting parts! Which is why I’ve gathered you all here this morning! You see, the BID violated the Brown Act in two very serious ways at the meeting.

First of all, the BID holds its meetings inside CBS Studio Center,1 It not only requires an ID to get in there and the registration of one’s name and an image of one’s driver’s license, but also convincing a hostile security guard who thinks BID meetings aren’t open to the public and some other problems. All together these are, of course, violations of the Brown Act at §54953.3, which states unequivocally that:

A member of the public shall not be required, as a condition to attendance at a meeting of a legislative body of a local agency, to register his or her name, to provide other information, to complete a questionnaire, or otherwise to fulfill any condition precedent to his or her attendance.

We’ve seen exactly this kind of thing with BIDs around the City, who hold their meetings in so-called secure buildings, where IDs are required by the property owners rather than the BID itself. E.g. in October 2014, the very same month I founded this blog, Kerry Morrison and her Central Hollywood Coalition were guilty of this. More recently, in April I reported the South Park BID to the LA County DA for violating this exact provision. The universal excuse seems to be that it’s legal for the property owner to require ID, just not the BID.

Of course, the plain language of the statute shows that that argument is entirely fallacious. The law doesn’t say anything about who’s not allowed to require ID, so therefore no one is allowed to require ID. And because, as you know, I haven’t gotten much if any satisfaction from the LA County DA on Brown Act violations, I have decided to take matters into my own hands and use the provisions in the law which allow private citizens to enforce it.

I kicked off this project last month with a demand to the Byzantine Latino Quarter BID which was entirely successful, at least so far, in that the BID caved entirely and unconditionally agreed never ever ever to violate the law again. And the Studio City ID and name registration requirement is a perfect test case for the enforcement of §54953.3. Thus did I fire off this demand letter to BID secretary Gilbert Stayner yesterday afternoon, making Studio City the honored second participant in my private Brown Act enforcement project. They have thirty days to capitulate, and if they don’t, we’re off to Superior Court!2

And Brown Act violations are like cockroaches in the usual cliched sense, and this case is no exception to that rule. The BID also seriously messed up its closed session, which of course I added to the demand, and there was a little problem in May 2018 involving them deliberating via email, which I also added. The first of these is highly technical and the second is fairly repetitious, so I put all the details after the damn break!
Continue reading Latest Episode In The Brown Act Enforcement Project Targets Studio City BID For Three Violations — Most Importantly They Require An ID And Permission From The BID To Attend Meetings — Also They Totally Screwed Up Closed Session Requirements — And Also They Deliberate Via Email Just Like The Byzantine BIDdies — So I Fired Off Another Demand Letter — Now We Wait Thirty Days To See If They Capitulate! →

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Business Improvement Districts, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Hollywood Media District BID, The Hapless Client Of Hapless Hollywood Superlawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs, Actually Hands Over Thirty Thousand Actual Dollars To My Lawyer As They Were Ordered To Do By The Judge! — Commemorative Mug Issued For This Historic Occasion! — Get Yours Today! — Maybe This’ll Learn Some Of His Other Clients That They Oughta Just Gimme The Damn Records — Talking To You Los Feliz Village BID, East Hollywood BID, Historic Core BID, And, Believe It Or Not, The Media District BID All Over Again

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Of course you remember in July 2018 when Superior Court judge Mary Strobel splained in terms that were anything at all but uncertain to Hollywood Superlawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs that his client, the freaking Hollywood Media District BID, was going to have to pay my lawyer $30,000 in fees essentially because both they and their lawyer are a bunch of loserific morons?1

Anyway, since the ruling, Jeffrey Charles Briggs and, presumably, his clients, have been stumbling about the place not paying and mumbling semicomprehensible nonsense about how they were going to appeal, about perversions of justice,2 and so on, the upshot of all of which mumbling is that, by God, they weren’t gonna pay. But a court order is a scary, scary thing. So yesterday, September 26, 2018, they paid the damn money to my lawyer, the incomparable Colleen Flynn!

And in honor of their new-found, belated and, sadly, coerced, commitment to actually following the damn law and also to making it continue to be economically feasible for lawyers to help me encourage the City of Los Angeles and its damnable business improvement districts to actually follow the laws that regulate them, I have issued this commemorative coffee mug! Get yours today! And look at all the other mugs while you’re at the store!! And stay tuned for more BID news, as always!!
Continue reading Hollywood Media District BID, The Hapless Client Of Hapless Hollywood Superlawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs, Actually Hands Over Thirty Thousand Actual Dollars To My Lawyer As They Were Ordered To Do By The Judge! — Commemorative Mug Issued For This Historic Occasion! — Get Yours Today! — Maybe This’ll Learn Some Of His Other Clients That They Oughta Just Gimme The Damn Records — Talking To You Los Feliz Village BID, East Hollywood BID, Historic Core BID, And, Believe It Or Not, The Media District BID All Over Again →

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Los Angeles City Council, Street Vending

Bye Bye BIDdies! — City Of Los Angeles Finally Concedes The Street Vending Battle As Curren Price And José Huizar Move In Council Today To Instruct The City Attorney To Draft An Ordinance That’s Consistent With Lara’s Safe Street Vending Act

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As you know the City of Los Angeles has been arguing over how to regulate street vending for pretty much forever now, with business improvement districts and chambers of commerce and other such-like weaponized implements of zillionaire-aligned white supremacy using every last bit of their political juice to introduce all kinds of complex conditions like opt-in districts, opt-out districts, permission from business owners, limitations on number of vendors per block, immediate confiscation of equipment, fees paid to BIDs, and on and on and on, all obviously designed for the sole purpose of continuing the wholesale arrest of street vendors.

But as I’m sure you also know just last week governor Jerry Brown signed Ricardo Lara’s Safe Street Vending Bill into law, severely limiting the power of cities to regulate vending. This bill has been working its way through the legislature since January 2018 and was well known to have an excellent chance of becoming law, and obviously voids pretty much every single feature of the City’s proposals, and yet nevertheless the City Council didn’t even start thinking about it officially until August.

But oh, they do have to think about it now. If the City doesn’t have an actual regulatory ordinance in place by January 1, 2019 they won’t have the power to regulate vendors at all. This, I guess, was enough to move them to action, and therefore this morning Councilmembers Curren Price And José Huizar introduced a motion in Council instructing the City Attorney to draft an ordinance that would comply with SB-946. The whole deal is memorialized in Council File 13-1493-S5.

And the BIDdies don’t have any leverage over this ordinance because state law compels all the essential features. This is a huge blow for our City’s business improvement districts and other nasty, selfish opponents of vending, and a huge win for humanity. We’re going to see some snakey creepy nasty rhetoric from the BIDs over this, you wait and see! Turn the page for the complete text of Price and Huizar’s motion.
Continue reading Bye Bye BIDdies! — City Of Los Angeles Finally Concedes The Street Vending Battle As Curren Price And José Huizar Move In Council Today To Instruct The City Attorney To Draft An Ordinance That’s Consistent With Lara’s Safe Street Vending Act →

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Business Improvement Districts

Summer Of 2017 — Pacific Palisades BID Decides To Try To Collect Full Assessments From LAUSD — Which Does Not Pay Them To Any BID In Los Angeles — BID President Elliot Zorensky — His Burgeoning Paranoia In Full And Ample Abundance — Tells Laurie Sale That Miranda Paster Is Fighting Against The BID — And Also Goes Behind Laurie Sale’s Back To Negotiate With The City — Making Her Look Even More Foolish Than Even She Could Reasonably Pull Off Under Her Own Power

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It’s well known to local BIDdologists that the Los Angeles Unified School District doesn’t keep pace with its companions amongst City entities, no doubt because it hears the beat of a distinctly different drummer.1 For instance we’ve seen recently how the LAUSD even voted against renewing a bunch of BIDs! Not only is it impossible to imagine the City of Los Angeles doing such a thing2 but it’s actually illegal for the City Clerk to vote against BIDs unless the City Council specifically authorizes it, and how is that ever going to happen?

And somewhat famously, the LAUSD evidently voids all its BID petitions by inserting some kind of unauthorized limiting clause. However, these symptoms of the LAUSD’s idiosyncratic attitude towards BIDs are minor quirks compared to the radical agenda set forth in this 2003 memo on LAUSD BID policy.

There’s a lot going on in that memo, but the first thing to look at is the fee schedule on the last page. The short version is that the LAUSD has unilaterally decided that it will not pay the entire amount of its BID assessments. Instead, they pay between 15% and 50% depending on a number of factors regardless of what the BID has decided to bill them.

And evidently BIDs around Los Angeles have just learned to slurp down that bitter draught, because what else exactly are they going to do about it? They have no power to make the LAUSD pay so they have to be content with what they can get rather than what they should get. That is, evidently most BIDs have so learned. The ones run by the marginally competent, the marginally sane, the marginally realistic, and so on. In short, the ones not run by Elliot Zorensky and Laurie Sale of the marginally famous Pacific Palisades BID.

And here is where today’s story begins! It seems that last summer this pair of super-geniuses, almost certainly at the behest of Elliot Zorensky, the superest super-genius of them all, decided that they were going to get that damnable LAUSD to pay the damn money that they damn well owed to the damn BID! Never mind that this was a path every other BID in this City of Angels feared to tread, Elliot Freaking Zorensky was going to rush in! Turn the page for the play by play!
Continue reading Summer Of 2017 — Pacific Palisades BID Decides To Try To Collect Full Assessments From LAUSD — Which Does Not Pay Them To Any BID In Los Angeles — BID President Elliot Zorensky — His Burgeoning Paranoia In Full And Ample Abundance — Tells Laurie Sale That Miranda Paster Is Fighting Against The BID — And Also Goes Behind Laurie Sale’s Back To Negotiate With The City — Making Her Look Even More Foolish Than Even She Could Reasonably Pull Off Under Her Own Power →

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