All posts by Mike

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Announcing An Interesting Although Limited Selection Of New-Ish Hollywood BID Patrol Records Including Twelve Characteristically Imbecilic Seyler Reports — Also Some Fairly Gratuitous Mockery Of Hurricane Kerry Morrison, Who Was Recently Named One Of The 500 Most Influential People In Los Angeles By A Local Who’s Who Scam Operation, Including A Surprising Fact About Her Substance Of Choice

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Well, yesterday’s post on how the BID Patrol arrests about 90% fewer people per year since October 2014 (when I started writing about them) seems to have reminded readers that I haven’t written much about them lately.1 I got some correspondence on the matter, and the result is this post.

The main substantial matter disclosed here is the publication of some new records about the BID Patrol. I’ll be writing about some of this stuff in great detail in the future, but until then, you can find an assortment of records here on my Archive.Org site and also I’ve updated the collection of Steve Seyler’s imbecilic reports to the Joint Security Committee with entries from 2016 and 2017.2

Also to be found after the break is some much deserved, much delayed, mockery of Ms. Kerry Morrison, who last summer, it seems, was named one of LA’s 500 most influential zillionaire lackeys by the Los Angeles Business Journal, paper of record for the zillionaire elite of Los Angeles, in what seems to be nothing much more than a ramified Who’s Who scam given that they’re selling copies for $100 each. You can read Ms. Kerry Morrison’s entry before turning the page to read what it means!3 Continue reading Announcing An Interesting Although Limited Selection Of New-Ish Hollywood BID Patrol Records Including Twelve Characteristically Imbecilic Seyler Reports — Also Some Fairly Gratuitous Mockery Of Hurricane Kerry Morrison, Who Was Recently Named One Of The 500 Most Influential People In Los Angeles By A Local Who’s Who Scam Operation, Including A Surprising Fact About Her Substance Of Choice →

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Featured, Hollywood BID Patrol

Final BID Patrol Arrest Rates For 2016 And 2017 Show Close To 90% Drop From 2014, Which Was Their Last Unscrutinized Year — This Precipitous, Unexplained Decrease Leads Hollywood BIDs To Consider Using Unarmed Security In 2018 Or 2019

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I started scrutinizing the three major Hollywood business improvement districts in late 2014, and soon discovered that the so-called BID Patrol, armed security guards employed by Andrews International under contract to the two BIDs managed by the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, that is to say the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset & Vine BID, was responsible for more than one thousand custodial arrests of homeless residents of Hollywood every year.

And these arrests were1 ugly affairs. They involve harmless people, like ice-cream vendors, being handcuffed, forced into SUVs, and chained to a bench, sometimes for hours. There were 2,682 such arrests in 2007, a number of such shocking incomprehensibility that I published a four volume set of photographs of these victims in order to provide some means of visceralizing the sheer incredible magnitude.

So it was a welcome discovery indeed to find out that in 2015, almost certainly as a result of my scrutiny, BID patrol arrests dropped 70%, from 1,057 to 313. Circumstances beyond my control have, maybe you’ve noticed, limited my ability to write about the HPOA, but I recently obtained arrest rate statistics for 2016 and 2017, and they show an even more precipitous drop in arrests in the two HPOA BIDs, with only 152 custodial arrests in 2016 and only 131 in 2017.

Thus from 2015 to 2016 there was a more than 50% reduction, which was an 85.6% reduction from 2014, their last unscrutinized year. This trend continued in 2017. Of course, this huge reduction in arrests did not lead to any corresponding reduction in costs. The HPOA paid roughly the same in 20172 to have 131 homeless people arrested as it did in 2014 to have 1,057 homeless people arrested. I have no doubt whatsoever that this is due to my scrutiny, and I am about as proud of saving these multiple thousands of people the pain, humiliation, and legal troubles consequent on these chickenshit arrests as I am of anything I’ve ever done.
Continue reading Final BID Patrol Arrest Rates For 2016 And 2017 Show Close To 90% Drop From 2014, Which Was Their Last Unscrutinized Year — This Precipitous, Unexplained Decrease Leads Hollywood BIDs To Consider Using Unarmed Security In 2018 Or 2019 →

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Venice Beach BID

Video Clips Of January 5, 2018 Meeting Of Venice Beach BID Board Available — In Conjunction With December Letter To Property Owners These Clips Suggest That They’re Egregiously Violating The Brown Act — President Tara Devine Is Even More Horrifically Offensive, Irritating, Mendacious, And Reprehensible Than Hitherto Suspected

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As you may recall, the Venice Beach Business Improvement District putatively began its existence on January 1, 2017. However, the BID did nothing whatsoever for most of its first year except cash its zillion dollar checks from the City. In late December 2017 the BID finally announced a public meeting both through a letter sent to property owners on December 22, 2017 (there’s a transcription of this PDF at the bottom of the post) and via an email sent to the BID’s MailChimp list on January 2, 2018.

Well, the meeting took place, although I was not able to attend. The indefatigable Margaret Molloy recorded some selections, though, and has published them on her YouTube Channel. I have not watched all of them yet, but I’ve watched some of them, and it’s not a pretty sight, friends. These Venice BIDdies are a bunch of bad, bad babies.

So here’s what I have for you tonight. After the break, along with the promised transcription of devious little chump Mark Sokol’s letter to property owners, there’s also a reproduction of Margaret’s directory of these clips along with direct links through to them. Also there’s a transcription and a little bit of accompanying discussion of this particular clip, in which President Tara Devine explains how and why she and her fellow bad BIDdies on the board egregiously violated the Brown Act in the months leading up to this January meeting. Read on!
Continue reading Video Clips Of January 5, 2018 Meeting Of Venice Beach BID Board Available — In Conjunction With December Letter To Property Owners These Clips Suggest That They’re Egregiously Violating The Brown Act — President Tara Devine Is Even More Horrifically Offensive, Irritating, Mendacious, And Reprehensible Than Hitherto Suspected →

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Business Improvement Districts, Venice Beach BID

The California Board For Professional Engineers Explicitly, Openly, Refuses To Enforce Professional Standards Against Engineers Who Produce Crack-Headed Nonsensical Reports For BID Formation , With Venice Beach Being A Prime Recent Example, Even Though The Legislature Clearly Intended Some Oversight — This Is An Overt Abrogation Of Their Duty But At Least It Explains The Submoronic Lobotomized Quality Of The Damn Reports

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NOTE: This post turned out to be a lot more complex than I’d originally planned, so here’s a TL;DR:

  1. New BIDs are required to submit a report written by a state-certified engineer explaining why their boundaries and assessments make sense.
  2. Ed Henning, the engineer for the Venice Beach BID, submitted this totally nonsensical report.
  3. One of the same Venice residents who is suing the BID filed a complaint against Henning with the California Board for Professional Engineers alleging that Henning made up a bunch of stuff and otherwise acted incompetently in the report’s preparation.
  4. The Board rejected this complaint with this letter, claiming that they do not consider the preparation of BID reports to be within their jurisdiction. There’s a transcription of this PDF at the very end of this post.
  5. This is yet another example of how no one in the government, state or local, is willing to regulate BIDs at all or hold them accountable for anything.

My recent post on the East Hollywood BID in relation to one of the purposes of the Management District Plan for BID operations, focusing in part on some of the esoteric technicalities of the Property and Business Improvement District Act as it did, reminded me of another topic touching on PBID technicalities I’ve been meaning to write on for a few months now but have not yet, until today, gotten around to dealing with.

One of the required elements of the process of forming a property based BID, imposed by the PBID Law at §36622(n), is:

… a detailed engineer’s report prepared by a registered professional engineer certified by the State of California supporting all assessments contemplated by the management district plan.

This subsection actually incorporates a requirement imposed on all special assessment districts1 by the California Constitution at Article XIIID(4)(b), which imposes the same requirement in slightly more general language, having as it does to apply to any kind of special assessment:

All assessments shall be supported by a detailed engineer’s report prepared by a registered professional engineer certified by the State of California.

Now, these engineers’ reports which go along with BID formation are particularly interesting documents. First they’re interesting because they’re so mind-numbingly boring. My feeling is that if people write stuff this tedious and impossible to read they’re almost certainly hiding something, which is already of intrinsic interest. Second, they’re interesting because of the sheer unexpected variety of the nonsensical bullshit straight-facedly included in them, about which I’ll have more to say at a later date.
Continue reading The California Board For Professional Engineers Explicitly, Openly, Refuses To Enforce Professional Standards Against Engineers Who Produce Crack-Headed Nonsensical Reports For BID Formation , With Venice Beach Being A Prime Recent Example, Even Though The Legislature Clearly Intended Some Oversight — This Is An Overt Abrogation Of Their Duty But At Least It Explains The Submoronic Lobotomized Quality Of The Damn Reports →

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Lawsuits

Street Vending Lawsuit Teetering On Brink Of Settlement: Check Cut By City And Plaintiffs Have Signed Release But Defendants Have Not Yet Signed — Carol Sobel Anticipates Dismissal Within Two Weeks

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You can read up on the background in this 2015 LA times story and also in our multiple stories on the subject. Most of the paper filed in the case is available here.

About five weeks ago a pending settlement was announced in the monumental street vending case brought by brave local civil rights attorneys on behalf of a number of street vendors against the diabolical forces of the City of Los Angeles and the Fashion District BID.

Well, nothing moves fast in Federal Court, so it’s no surprise that it’s taken this long to even get a hint of what’s happening behind the scenes. However, finally, yesterday afternoon plaintiffs’ attorney Carol Sobel filed a status report (transcription of this PDF after the break) with the court stating that things are moving along, that the City has cut a check for the settlement amount, presumably $150,000 as previously announced, and that the plaintiffs have signed the release. The defendants have not yet signed, but she anticipates that everything will be finished and the case will be dismissed within two weeks.1 Continue reading Street Vending Lawsuit Teetering On Brink Of Settlement: Check Cut By City And Plaintiffs Have Signed Release But Defendants Have Not Yet Signed — Carol Sobel Anticipates Dismissal Within Two Weeks →

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Business Improvement Districts

East Hollywood BID Poised To Advocate For Cop-Sponsored Delusional Anti-Prop-47 Pro-Death-Penalty Propaganda Presentation At January 16 Board Meeting, Thereby Just About Stretching Their State-Law-Mandated Local-Activities-Only Restriction To The Freaking Limit And Beyond

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One of the most neglected aspects of the Property and Business Improvement District Act, the fons et origo of the state’s grant of authority to establish, regulate, and control BIDs, is a limitation found in §36625(a)(6), which states:

The revenue from the levy of assessments within a district shall not be used to provide improvements, maintenance, or activities outside the district or for any purpose other than the purposes specified in the resolution of intention, as modified by the city council at the hearing concerning establishment of the district.

This places two essential limitations on how BIDs are allowed to spend the money they collect from property owners.1 First, BIDs must only spend their money on stuff inside their districts, and second they must only spend it on activities specified in the resolution of intention to form the district. In the City of Los Angeles, at least, these activities are specified by incorporating the BID’s management district plan, which is filed with the City Council at some point prior to the BID’s formation, into the ordinance of intention.2

Now, if you follow this blog even half-heartedly, you’re well aware that this statute is completely flouted by BIDs in the City of Los Angeles. For instance, Blair Besten’s lobbying over Skid Row, which isn’t part of the Historic Core BID at all, not to mention Hurricane Kerry Morrison’s indefatigable lobbying everyone in the whole freaking universe over reforms to the Public Records Act.

And of course, all of them, every last delusional white supremacist BID in the whole freaking City of Los Angeles lobbying3 against Proposition 47, a particularly half-witted example of which can be found here. Which brings us to today’s subject, which is that squarmy little love child of Jeff Zarrinnam and David Miscavige known to the world as the East Hollywood BID.

It seems that at their upcoming meeting,4 at least according to the agenda, they’re poised to discuss the following item:

Presentation on the Reducing Crime and Keeping California Safe Act of 2018…………….Michael Ziegler, Public Safety Consultant, Assemblymember Jim Cooper

And turn the page for details and discussion!
Continue reading East Hollywood BID Poised To Advocate For Cop-Sponsored Delusional Anti-Prop-47 Pro-Death-Penalty Propaganda Presentation At January 16 Board Meeting, Thereby Just About Stretching Their State-Law-Mandated Local-Activities-Only Restriction To The Freaking Limit And Beyond →

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Cory Spencer v. Lunada Bay Boys

Lunada Bay Boys Defendant Brant Blakeman Objects To Magistrate Judge Rozella Oliver’s Recommendation That He Be Sanctioned Via The Sarcastic Use Of About A Zillion Scare Quotes — Meanwhile Judge Otero Issues Order Accepting Oliver’s Recommendations With Respect To Charlie and Frank Ferrara and Sang Lee And Thereby Casts Much Doubt On The Likely Efficacy Of Blakeman’s Middle-School-Style Strategy

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For background take a look at this excellent article from the Times on this lawsuit. Also see here to download all pleadings in this case. You can also read all my posts on the case.

So maybe you recall that in December, Magistrate Judge Rozella Oliver filed an amended report and recommendation to the court regarding the plaintiffs’ motions for sanctions against Charlie and Frank Ferrara and Sang Lee for their plausibly willful mishandling of evidence in the case. Yesterday Judge James Otero filed an order accepting Oliver’s recommendations. In particular, following Oliver’s recommendations precisely, Otero ruled:

… that Plaintiffs are permitted to depose Defendants Sang Lee, Charlie Ferrara, and Frank Ferrara regarding issues relevant to spoliation, with costs to be shared by Plaintiffs and the deposed Defendants. At trial, the parties will be permitted to present evidence and argument related to the unrecoverable text messages for Defendant Lee and the Ferrara Defendants and the unavailable cellular billing records for Charlie Ferrara.

This was not unexpected, but it’s interesting nevertheless. However, the plaintiffs’ motion for sanctions against these three clowns was not the only such motion concerning which Rozella Oliver has recommendations. There’s also, of course, her report on Brant Blakeman and his wildly antisocial handling of evidence in his possession. Well, on December 27, John Stobart, Blakeman’s lawyer, filed an opposition to Oliver’s recommendations, and this morning the plaintiffs responded to Blakeman’s objection. The two pleadings are available here:

The plaintiffs’ response was written by the agressively sane Samantha Wolff of Hanson Bridgett. And it’s definitely worth reading, but it’s, you know, competent, prudent, measured, and so on. Therefore there’s not much for me to comment on.

On the other hand, Brant Blakeman’s objection, written by John Stobart, is, as befits the rapiest Bay Boy, a surreal sludge pot of scare quotes, sophomoric sarcasm, and generalized cack-handedness, and, as such, is required reading!1

Selections after the break, and please, note that I didn’t add a single quotation mark. Not a single one. Footnotes also are as in the original,2 and read them if you want to see some of John Stobart’s most flamboyantly weird scare quotation.
Continue reading Lunada Bay Boys Defendant Brant Blakeman Objects To Magistrate Judge Rozella Oliver’s Recommendation That He Be Sanctioned Via The Sarcastic Use Of About A Zillion Scare Quotes — Meanwhile Judge Otero Issues Order Accepting Oliver’s Recommendations With Respect To Charlie and Frank Ferrara and Sang Lee And Thereby Casts Much Doubt On The Likely Efficacy Of Blakeman’s Middle-School-Style Strategy →

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Venice Beach BID

Venice Beach BID To Hold First Public Meeting On Friday, January 5, Inaugurating Both A Quantum Freaking Leap And A Sea Freaking Change In The Illegal Freaking Bullshitization Of Venice — Please Attend And Tell These Shameless, Already-Being-Sued, Law-Flouting Creeps What You Think Of Their Nonsense — Also, If You’re Able To Film The Meeting, Please Do So!

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Perhaps you recall that the infamous Venice Beach Business Improvement District has been nonoperational for an entire year after the second-time’s-a-charm reapproval by City Council, whose blindingly arrogant indifference to both law and decency necessitated this expensive and amateurish do-over.

Well, they’re operational now, friends! Yesterday morning the VBBID CEO, AKA President-For-Life Tara Devine, transmitted in interstate commerce1 an announcement of the BID’s first-ever meeting. Here are the documents involved:

The meeting is on Friday morning at 10 a.m. If you’re able and willing to attend and film the entire meeting, which is your absolute right under the Brown Act, please do so, as various prior commitments prevent me from attending. If you’d like some tips on how to film Brown Act meetings effectively, please get in touch!

Meanwhile, turn the page for a critical analysis of selections from these woefully deficient documents as well as some special bonus info on how and why President Tara Devine and her co-conspirators are so arrogantly outlaw.
Continue reading Venice Beach BID To Hold First Public Meeting On Friday, January 5, Inaugurating Both A Quantum Freaking Leap And A Sea Freaking Change In The Illegal Freaking Bullshitization Of Venice — Please Attend And Tell These Shameless, Already-Being-Sued, Law-Flouting Creeps What You Think Of Their Nonsense — Also, If You’re Able To Film The Meeting, Please Do So! →

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Municipal Ethics

Worst-Of-The-Bunch Ethics Commission Veep Serena Oberstein, Who’s Paid $87,500 Annually By Her 501(c)(3) Employer Vision To Learn, Both Of Whom Were Poised To Reap Benefit From Version Of Municipal Lobbying Ordinance Revision Pushed Hard By Serena Oberstein, Suspiciously Neglected To Mention This Fact In Any Of The Literally Zillions Of Public Forums Held On The Matter

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It hasn’t even been two weeks since the Los Angeles Ethics Commission put our City’s Municipal Lobbying Ordinance in danger of being made meaningless, primarily at the instigation of worst-of-the-bunch Commission Veep Serena Oberstein, with respect to 501(c)(3) nonprofits, so it’s not surprising that all the ramifications of their misfeasance have not yet been completely understood. Along those lines, therefore, here’s another episode from the ethical Twilight Zone in which at least some members of the Commission seem to dwell in these latter days.

You see, Serena Oberstein is not just the City’s most corrupt Ethics Commissioner, what with her sub rosa agenda-pushing for her nonprofit buddies Shyaam Subramanian1 and Nancy Berlin, amongst others, not to mention her refusal to agendize a perfectly reasonable request that her Commission disclose their ex parte communications,2 she’s also the Chief Operating Officer of some Westside do-gooder outfit called Vision to Learn.

And while I had some inchoate notion that her involvement with 501(c)(3) nonprofits might explain at least some of her motivations in the recent fiasco, whereby mostly at Serena Oberstein’s instigation, the Commission ended up recommending to the Council that all 501(c)(3)s with gross annual revenues under $2 million be exempt from registration as lobbyists, I hadn’t taken the time to investigate. But recently it occurred to me to look at Vision to Learn’s3 Form 990s to see how the modifications pushed by Serena Oberstein would affect her employer.4 I published the last few years here on Archive.Org, or you can go directly to the PDFs here:

So take a look at the evidence yourself, or turn the page to see what I found!
Continue reading Worst-Of-The-Bunch Ethics Commission Veep Serena Oberstein, Who’s Paid $87,500 Annually By Her 501(c)(3) Employer Vision To Learn, Both Of Whom Were Poised To Reap Benefit From Version Of Municipal Lobbying Ordinance Revision Pushed Hard By Serena Oberstein, Suspiciously Neglected To Mention This Fact In Any Of The Literally Zillions Of Public Forums Held On The Matter →

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Business Improvement Districts

How The East Hollywood BID, Drunk On White Privilitude And Zillionairity, Not Only Confessed Openly To Their Plans To Hold An Illegal Meeting But Their Boss Flunky, Jacob Jauregui, Even Argued With And Condescended To Me When I Was Kind Enough To Warn Him And His Damn Lawyer In Advance Rather Than Reporting Them To The Duly Constituted Authorites — And Then They Took My Good Advice And Cancelled Their Damn Meeting!

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OK, I have a tiny little story for you about a tiny little BID, the East Hollywood BID, located in beautiful EHo, a toponym commonly used by no living human being ever for East Hollywood.

On December 20, 2017, at 4:26 p.m., East Hollywood BID Boss Flunky Jacob Jauregui1 sent out an email to the EHBID mailing list announcing a special meeting to be held by teleconference on Friday, December 22.2 I noticed that there was no physical location given in the announcement or on the agenda. However, the Brown Act explicitly forbids this. See §54953(b), which requires that if teleconferencing is used there must by physical locations which are open to the public at which they can participate in the meeting.

So for a while I thought I’d wait till they held the illegal meeting and then turn them in to the Public Integrity Division of the Los Angeles County District Attorney. But then, moved perhaps by the true spirit of Christmas,3 I decided to let Jacob Jauregui know of his BID’s impending transgression and give them all a chance to do the right thing for once.
Continue reading How The East Hollywood BID, Drunk On White Privilitude And Zillionairity, Not Only Confessed Openly To Their Plans To Hold An Illegal Meeting But Their Boss Flunky, Jacob Jauregui, Even Argued With And Condescended To Me When I Was Kind Enough To Warn Him And His Damn Lawyer In Advance Rather Than Reporting Them To The Duly Constituted Authorites — And Then They Took My Good Advice And Cancelled Their Damn Meeting! →

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