Category Archives: Announcements

New Documents: Lisa Trifiletti and Omar Pulido Emails, Wilshire Center BID And East Hollywood BID Emails To/From City Of LA From February 2017

April 8, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

This is just a short note to announce three new sets of documents for your entertainment, your edification, and, if you’re interested, a little puzzle for you to solve.

First we have a couple of monthly sets of emails between BIDs and the City of Los Angeles. This turns out to be a useful request for keeping finger on pulse, often leading to unexpected discoveries, so I make it every month of all my favorite BIDs.¹ Perhaps there are some lurking here:

Emails between the Wilshire Center BID and the City of LA — February 2017. I haven’t looked through these in detail yet.
Emails between the East Hollywood BID and the City of LA — February 2017. There’s at least one gem in here, which I’m going to write about later this morning. But lately everything about this BID is interesting.

And turn the page for the most interesting item of all for today!
Continue reading New Documents: Lisa Trifiletti and Omar Pulido Emails, Wilshire Center BID And East Hollywood BID Emails To/From City Of LA From February 2017 →

Announcements, Business Improvement Districts

New Documents: Palisades BID Bylaws, Gateway To LA BID Homeless Outreach Collaboration With Heirs Of Sister Aimee In Venice, And Beaucoup De Minutes From North Hollywood, Figueroa Corridor, and East Hollywood

March 25, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

So much new stuff! Here’s the list, friends:

2015 Homeless outreach with the GTLA BID, Venice Four Square Church, and LAPD — These are a few records from a brief 2015 collaboration between the Gateway to LA BID and others to provide homeless outreach
Bylaws of the Palisades BID — Given how damned much trouble it is to coax thing one out of the PPBID and given that they’re evidently willing to spend thousands of dollars fighting my requests rather than just complying with them, it’s always a pleasant surprise to get anything at all out of these people. Of course, these are really the bylaws of the property owners’ association which administers the Palisades BID. Unlike seemingly every other BID in Los Angeles, these people named their POA the same thing as their BID, which makes the confusion even more complete than it usually is. This is probably because something else was already called the Pacific Palisades Property Owners Association.

And turn the page for minutes, minutes, minutes, and more minutes. Hours worth of minutes!
Continue reading New Documents: Palisades BID Bylaws, Gateway To LA BID Homeless Outreach Collaboration With Heirs Of Sister Aimee In Venice, And Beaucoup De Minutes From North Hollywood, Figueroa Corridor, and East Hollywood →

Announcements, Business Improvement Districts

New Documents: January 2017 Emails Between East Hollywood BID and City of LA, Also Gateway To LA BID By-Vendor Reports

March 22, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Just a brief note to announce a couple more sets of documents:

January 2017 Emails between the East Hollywood BID and the City of LA — Mostly the usual jive nonsense. Some further interesting and somewhat unexpected interest in his local BIDs on the part of CD4 Councilmember David Ryu. I hope to write something about this in the future.
Gateway to LA BID by-vendor transaction reports — I requested these of ED Laurie Hughes primarily to further my research into the GTLA’s recent BID renewal process. This is notable not least because their BID Consultant, Larry Kosmont, registered with the City as a lobbyist on the basis of his renewal work. As we have seen, not every BID consultant does this.
Continue reading New Documents: January 2017 Emails Between East Hollywood BID and City of LA, Also Gateway To LA BID By-Vendor Reports →

Announcements, Business Improvement Districts

New Documents! Emails Between The City Of LA And Wilshire Center BID, Figueroa Corridor BID, and North Hollywood BID, Also East Hollywood BID Emails Concerning The BID Consortium, And Also BID Consortium Agendas From 2016

March 18, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

So much stuff to announce this morning! Here’s a brief list with links, and there’s a more detailed list after the break.

January 2017 Wilshire Center BID Emails — to/from the City of Los Angeles
2016 Figueroa Corridor BID Emails — to/from City of Los Angeles, also includes January 2017
2016 North Hollywood BID Emails — to/from City of Los Angeles, also includes January 2017
2016 East Hollywood BID Emails — Concerning the BID Consortium
2016 BID Consortium agendas — Also includes January 2017

Continue reading New Documents! Emails Between The City Of LA And Wilshire Center BID, Figueroa Corridor BID, and North Hollywood BID, Also East Hollywood BID Emails Concerning The BID Consortium, And Also BID Consortium Agendas From 2016 →

Announcements

Announcing MichaelKohlhaas.Org Souvenir Coffee Cups!! Commemorating Significant Episodes In The History Of Bad BIDditude And Featuring Your Favorite Bad BIDdies!! Colorful Yet Functional Designs!!

March 16, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

In response to years of ongoing public outcry and fervent pleading, we have finally set up a MichaelKohlhaas.Org store at CafePress. Right now, there are only three products, but they are doozies, friends! If you’re viewing the desktop version of this blog, you can also get to our store through the “Merch” menu up on the top bar, and otherwise go to this dedicated page. We here at the blog are all extremely excited about this new project. The three coffee mugs are pictured here, and also I’m going to describe and link to each of them separately.

First of all we have the Besten Show Award Prize Mug. The executive directrix of the Historic Core BID, third weirdest of the minor downtown BIDs, Blair Besten, is famous for her passive-aggressive, active-aggressive, rageball-acting-out antics in the face of what everyone in the universe except, for some reason her, understands are perfectly normal CPRA requests. Take a look at the actual email which clinched the award for her! Here, after I asked her a few simple questions about a pending request, one that’s been pending for two months now: (a) was there any news on it, (b) had she finished collecting the responsive material into one place, and (c) how much data in bytes was responsive? She answered with, in pertinent part, the following queries:

Please clarify what you mean by “collecting” and what you mean by “data?”

Please define what you mean by “in one place.”

Not clear on how many “bytes.” ?

What do you mean by news?

It’s been going on like that with her for months. Back and forth, pulling teeth, no results yet. None even on the horizon. So she wins the first Besten Show Award, although she will have to buy her own darn mug if she wants one or get someone to buy it for her. Note that Blair Besten was famously appointed to the Citizens’ Prop HHH oversight committee and they are meeting tomorrow, March 17, at 1 p.m. Get your mug and bring it to the meeting to show Blair how you feel! And turn the page to read about our other two offerings.
Continue reading Announcing MichaelKohlhaas.Org Souvenir Coffee Cups!! Commemorating Significant Episodes In The History Of Bad BIDditude And Featuring Your Favorite Bad BIDdies!! Colorful Yet Functional Designs!! →

Announcements, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Lord How The Mighty Have Fallen In The Midst Of The Battle! MK.Org’s Worldwide Alexa Rank Now More Than 400,000 Higher Than The Hollywood Property Owners Alliance!!

March 14, 2017 Trina Leave a comment

Good morning Los Angeles! I am just dropping this quick note on you guys and friends to let you know that once again the forces of good are triumphant over the forces of evil BID badness! Because we are more popular! When I first wrote to you about this issue the evil twins at the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance had a world-wide ranking on Alexa.Com of 2,522,399 in the whole wide world, whereas we at MichaelKohlhaas.org had a pretty respectable but lower rank of 4,630,498. Well, everything is very different now! Take a look here:

Alexa rank for MichaelKohlhaas.Org. It is 3,573,107 in the world at this writing. Here is a screenshot.
Alexa rank for OnlyInHollywood.Org. It is 3,979,574 in the world at this writing. Here is a screenshot.

Continue reading Lord How The Mighty Have Fallen In The Midst Of The Battle! MK.Org’s Worldwide Alexa Rank Now More Than 400,000 Higher Than The Hollywood Property Owners Alliance!! →

Announcements, Business Improvement Districts

Tons of New Documents: Gateway To LA BID Emails And Minutes, Also South Los Angeles Industrial Tract Minutes

March 9, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

This is just a brief note to announce the publication of a bunch of stuff from the Gateway to LA BID out by the Airport. Its executive director, Laurie Hughes, is a pleasure to work with. She’s calm, professional, has read the law, and abides by it. She and Mr. Mike Russell of the Wilshire Center are absolutely the two best BIDdies to work with when it comes to CPRA. There are also some minutes from the SLAIT BID. But enough fuzzies, and on to the goodies!

First, from the South Los Angeles Industrial Tract, we have Board meeting minutes from 2007 through Feb. 2016. I have a request out for the more recent ones, and look for them here soon.² Much more importantly, as I mentioned above, Ms. Laurie Hughes has just recently provided me with a ton of emails and Board minutes, and you can find links and descriptions after the break.
Continue reading Tons of New Documents: Gateway To LA BID Emails And Minutes, Also South Los Angeles Industrial Tract Minutes →

Announcements, Business Improvement Districts

New Documents: Los Feliz Village BID Mailing List, Larchmont Village BID Tax Returns, Wilshire Center BID Tax Returns, Transactions, Bylaws

February 22, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Los Feliz used to be a normal place, and maybe someday it will be again!

Just a quick note to announce a bunch of new materials. Most importantly, the Los Feliz Village BID, in the person of BID boss Rafik Ghazarian, sent me an Excel spreadsheet with mailing addresses for everyone in the BID. Given the months-long, dentaloextractivist-level dramatics created by the City of Los Angeles in the persons of asylum-running lunatics Miranda Paster and Holly Wolcott over e.g. the Venice Beach BID mailing list and the SLAIT BID mailing list,³ this is a surprising and welcome development. It’s especially laudable given that the Los Feliz Village BID has been the target of at least one significant attempt to destroy it, and, given that it’s a merchant-based BID, and thus required to renew each year, will certainly be so yet again.

I also have tax returns from the creepy little apartheid stronghold in South Central Hollywood known to the world as the Larchmont Village BID, as well as a bunch of assorted jive-ass nonsense from Mr. Mike out in Wilshire Center. Turn the page for links and descriptions.
Continue reading New Documents: Los Feliz Village BID Mailing List, Larchmont Village BID Tax Returns, Wilshire Center BID Tax Returns, Transactions, Bylaws →

Announcements, CD13, Downtown Center BID, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Los Angeles City Government, Venice Beach BID

So Many New Documents! CD13 and HPOA Emails, Arts District BID Shenanigans, Miranda Paster In The Ivory Tower, Carol Schatz’s Pet Baby BID Gets Audited, Venice Beach BID And The State Of California!!

February 16, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Deputy Dan Halden thinking about breakfast with Kerry and the boys at the Brite Spot. If you don’t want to be depicted as a cartoon, stop acting like a cartoon. It’s that simple.

Good Lord, there’s too much to describe, but this is a rich, rich set of documents. I spent more than two hours at City Hall this morning scanning this nonsense, and here it is, in the rawest possible form. There are gems in that mine, friends, but until I have time, you’ll have to scratch them out your own self. For now they’re all up on our Archive.Org account. There’s stuff about the Venice Beach BID, and Carol Schatz‘s lil baby, the Downtown Center BID got audited in 2013, Daniel Halden and Kerry H. Morrison are up to their usual dimwitted antics, Miranda Paster collaborated on a grant with a bunch of longhair sociologists at TAMU, and the freaking Arts District freaking redux!! Here’s a list with links and brief descriptions:
Continue reading →

Announcements, Business Improvement Districts, Central City East Association

New Documents: Central City East Association Tax Returns 2012-2015, Westchester Town Center BID Agendas and Minutes

January 24, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Once and future queen of the Central City East Association, Ms. Estela Lopez herself yammering on about something to someone.

I have a couple new sets of documents to announce tonight. First there are tax returns from the Central City East Association from 2014 and 2015, and you can get them:

There’s a little puzzle hidden away in the two new ones. If you can spot it, drop me a line before I write a post on it⁴ and win a prize! I won’t approve any comments that give it away, though. No spoilers!

Also, in the face of the incredible, probably illegal, intransigence displayed by CD11 Councilmember Mike Bonin and his weirdo staff with respect to CPRA requests, I am making requests of the BIDs in CD11 for emails to/from lacity.org. Most of these are likely to be with Bonin or his staff, which will let us keep track of what’s going on in the District Office even if CD11 just actually won’t answer CPRA requests at all. It might be interesting, it might be useful, but there’s no way to know until we get the goods. The very first installment of this material comes from the Westchester Town Center BID, specifically from its Executive Director Donald Duckworth.⁵ Just tonight he handed over minutes and agendas from 2016, with a promise of a lot of emails to follow. For now this is only available on Archive.Org.
Continue reading New Documents: Central City East Association Tax Returns 2012-2015, Westchester Town Center BID Agendas and Minutes →