Looking south along Vermont Avenue from Russell Avenue in 1974 (with a good old triangular RTD sign in the foreground!). The trees are bigger now, but otherwise is Los Feliz Village really better off 43 years later?Long-time readers of this blog will recall that the locus classicus of operational BID policies in the City of Los Angeles is to be found in Council File 96-1972, which is too old to have actual documents online, but I scanned and published a number of them last year.1 Therein may be found the City’s BID Policy and Implementation Guidelines, which are meant to provide an L.A.-specific implementation of the Property and Business Improvement Law of 1994.
Chapter 2 of that law describes the process for establishment and renewal of a BID,2 and it’s remarkable how tentative, how conditional the process is. It’s well-known by this point that in order for a BID to be formed it’s necessary that property owners representing more than 50% of the assessed value be in favor.3 It’s necessary, but it by no means sufficient. Section 36625(a) very clearly leaves the question of formation up to the Council:
If the city council, following the public hearing, decides to establish a proposed property and business improvement district, the city council shall adopt a resolution of formation…
The only mandatory requirement with respect to BID establishment in the whole Chapter is found in Section 36623(b), which says that if owners holding 50% or more of the assessed value are opposed to the BID, not only can it not be formed, but no further attempts can be made to form it for a year.
And the discretionary nature of the process is reflected in the City’s BID Policy and Implementation Guidelines as well. Therein it states:4
The City Council can proceed with the BID if the protest is less than 50%. However, BID proponents are cautioned that they should not expect a favorable vote from the City Council with a significant number of protests.
From the context it’s clear that the policy means that there is some threshold of protest less than 50% with respect to which the Council will not establish the proposed BID even though the Property and BID Act would allow them to do so.
The Venice Post Office; zoned commercial. Now it’s in the BID! Now it’s out of the BID! Now it’s back in the BID!I recently wrote in excruciating detail about how everyone involved with the BID formation process denies, almost certainly wrongly, that they have any power at all over which parcels are included in a BID. Thus, e.g., did Tara Devine inform unhappy property owner William Kuel in this email from August 2016 that his property, which is zoned commercial but used for residential purposes, must be included in the Venice Beach BID. She went so far as to tell him explicitly that “neither the Engineer nor I can remove your parcel from the proposed BID.” This phenomenon has been hugely controversial in the formation of the Venice Beach BID, and is the basis of a lawsuit filed against the City by Venice residents upset over the inclusion of their property in the BID. Tara Devine leaving the lectern at a 2016 Los Angeles City Council meeting.
So what a surprise it was to find, buried amongst thousands of pages of nonsense in this latest pile of emails between Tara Devine and various employees of the City Clerk’s office, this June 30, 2015 missive from Tara Devine to a bunch of people, stating that she was unilaterally removing a commercially zoned property from the BID for, seemingly, no particular reason:
I will also re-send the database as we made one tiny change. After a discussion with Ed, we removed the federal USPS parcel (Venice post office.) It was on the edge of the BID and was not required for a contiguous boundary, so we just removed it from dbase and other docs.
Leaving aside the evident fact that Tara Devine doesn’t know the difference between contiguous and continuous, isn’t this interesting? She “just removed” a piece of property from the BID. And then a year later she was telling property owners that she didn’t have the power to remove parcels, and some of those property owners are now suing the City partially on the basis of this claim she8 has been pushing about her powerlessness. It will be interesting to see if this turns out to be evidence in the lawsuit!9 It’s extremely interesting to see that she told a bunch of City Clerk employees that she’d done this and not one of them questioned her ability to do it, which is in stark contrast to Holly Wolcott’s 2016 assertions that no one was empowered to remove properties.
What’s so funny, Captain? Peter Zarcone smiling with his eyes at a HPOA Joint Security Committee meeting in April 2015.I spent about three hours yesterday in City Hall and at the LAPD Discovery office scanning stuff. There are thousands of pages of stuff here, some of it quite important. It will take a long time to go through it and write about the highlights, so I thought I’d put it up on the Archive in (very, very) raw form immediately. Here’s what we have today:
More emails from 2015 between Peter Zarcone and the HPOA — What happened is that the first time I made a request for this material, the LAPD IT department somehow missed a number of responsive documents. I could tell that they did because of automatically generated out-of-office responses that they did provide the first time around. However, the emails which had triggered those responses weren’t included, which was evident from the dates. They accepted this argument and reran the search. Consequently many but not all of these documents have already been published, but I have not yet had time to sort out the duplicates. As I said, I want to make the material available immediately.
Emails between Tara Devine and the LA City Clerk’s Office — Here are thousands of pages of emails between Tara Devine and various people in the LA City Clerk’s office. Some of these have been previously published but most of them have not. Interestingly, although most of the material is about the Venice Beach BID, there is also a bunch of stuff about the South Park II BID11 renewal, which Tara Devine was also the consultant for. I will be writing about much of this material, but here’s the raw stuff. Drop me a note if you spot anything that seems especially pressing.
If you don’t like what the street signs say you can just knock them down and ignore them, friend.There are two main reasons why I am not a professional journalist. The first is that on career day at Venice High way back in the 1970s, those of us who ventured east to the venerated southwest corner of First and Spring found, well…never mind what we found,12 discretion prevents me from discussing it, but it sure didn’t make me want to join the ranks despite the fact that the paper was more than a decade into its renaissance under the sainted guidance of Otis Chandler himself. And the second reason is that I have never, ever, in my entire life been able to understand the inverted pyramid — or maybe I understand it and I just have no freaking idea what’s most newsworthy in any given story. This interpretation is borne out by the fact that I’m starting this evening’s tale off with a bunch of half-invented, half-remembered, half-plagiarized, nonsense about my high school career day.13
For instance, does the inverted pyramid suggest that we next analyze the founding principles of BIDs? I have no idea. But the locus classicus of BIDs, their founding text, which is to say the California Streets and Highways Code at §36601(e), tells us that amongst the benefits provided by BIDs are crime reduction, business attraction, business retention, economic growth, and new investments. Note the conspicuous absence from this list of parking ticket fixing for zillionaire BID stakeholders. However, despite the fact that parking violation fines are a major social justice issue in Los Angeles and yet another example of covert regressive taxation, apparently a major use that zillionaires, that is to say those for whom the fine attached to a parking violation is not a significant fraction of their annual income, have found for their BIDs is to serve as a vehicle for interfering on their behalf with the normal statutory operation of the City’s parking enforcement apparatus.
We saw this, e.g., last year when Ms. Kerry Morrison, outraged14 by the fact that her good friend and stakeholder, zillionaire white real estate capitalist running dog lackey Evan Kaizer, was ticketed on Hollywood Boulevard for meter-feeding, fired off an email to LADOT honcho-ette Seleta Reynolds, putatively asking for an explanation but really, as everyone could see, providing an opening for the whole thing to go away. It doesn’t seem to have happened that the ticket got fixed, but that particular toys-from-pram episode ended up interbreeding with a sort of free-floating generalized zillionaire rage over vibrant urban spaces,15 eventually begetting a conceptual exploration, fueled by outraged privilege, of the possibility of using this state-law-mandated meter-feeding prohibition to attack the very existence of food trucks.
Looming reality in the form of the 1st Street Federal Courthouse as seen from the shores of Lunada Bay. Is it getting closer? Is it just an illusion? We will find out on February 21, 2017 at 10 a.m.!See here for yesterday’s post on this matter and if you need background take a look at this excellent article from the Times on the suit.
Well, just one day after I decided to add Cory Spencer v. Lunada Bay Boys to my PACER watchlist, an avalanche of opposition to the plaintiffs’ motion to have the thing turned into a class action suit hit the RSS feed. It’s all pretty interesting, and I have uploaded it all to the Archive.Org page that I made yesterday to host all this stuff on. There is a list of new items with links after the break, but the common theme of many of them, as exemplified in the Objection to Plaintiffs’ Evidence in Support of Motion for Class Certification, a 112 page behemoth with which most if not all of the individual defendants seem to have joined in, seems to go something like this:
There is no such thing as the Lunada Bay Boys.
But if there is such a thing as the Lunada Bay Boys, none of the defendants are members of it.
But if some or all of the defendants are members of it, they didn’t do any of the stuff alleged in the complaint.
But if they did do some or all of the stuff alleged in the complaint, they didn’t do it to the plaintiffs.
But if they did do it to the plaintiffs, there wasn’t really any cognizable damage.
But if there was cognizable damage, it’s not really possible to figure out who was damaged.
The City of Palos Verdes Estates (PVE) along with their Chief of Police take a slightly different tack in e.g. their opposition to the motion for class certification. Their theory seems to be that since one plaintiff said something nice about the PVE cops in 2016, they must be innocent all the way back to 1966. Perhaps that even makes sense (?!)
The incomparable Emily Alpert Reyes has the story in this morning’s Times and we have the primary sources, hot off of PACER! As long as I was getting these pleadings, I figured I’d go ahead and get the ones from the case he filed last July as well,19 and all of them are available here:
There’s not much to this morning’s post, but I did manage to get another 1200 Media District emails converted to PDF and posted on the Archive. These are highly miscellaneous both in terms of subjects and senders/recipients. As with the previous batch I was not able to batch-export the attachments. However, because the emails came to me as .eml files I am able to reconstitute attachments individually,22 so if you spot any that you need drop me a line and I’ll forward it/them along to you. Continue reading Almost 1200 More Newly Published Media District BID Emails Now Available→
A rich white Palos Verdes surf gang thug attacks a visitor to the public beach at Lunada Bay.The story of the violent zillionaire surf-localism gang known as the Lunada Bay Boys and the ongoing federal lawsuit against them is well-explained in this L.A. Times article. Essentially generations of rich white surfer boys in Palos Verdes estates have for decades violently intimidated any outsiders who wanted to visit the public beach at Lunada Bay and they’re finally being called to account in federal court.23 So I finally had time to investigate the matter on PACER, and collected a ton of pleadings and orders on Archive.Org. Note that most of the early documents, including the initial complaint, are presently sealed because one of the defendants, now known as N.F., is a minor but was named in the early pleadings.
Of particular interest are twenty declarations made by various victims of the Lunada Bay Boys over the years, collected by the plaintiffs in support of their motion to certify the suit as a class action, which document endless sordid details of the astonishing violence and idiocy of the Lunada Bay Boys over multiple generations and many decades, as well as the complicity of the police and city government of Palos Verdes Estates. This material is so interesting that I made these twenty documents into a single eBook, with a table of contents and pagination and so on, to make them easier to read on a tablet or whatever. You can download a copy of that here from the Archive. Here are a couple examples of what’s in there, and there are plenty more after the break.
From the Declaration of John Macharg:
I was surfing Lunada Bay the morning of Jan. 29, 2016. The waves were big and my surfboard leash broke. My surfboard drifted to shore by the rocks near the patio. When I reached my board, David Melo walked down the patio stairs and immediately started harassing me by making statements like “You only come around here when the waves are good.” I responded by telling David that he had no right to question how or when I surf the Bay and that localism in general was wrong headed, unfair and illegal. At that point, Sang Lee butted in and began to argue with me. I told Sang that Lunada Bay was public property and did not belong to him. Sang poured out a portion of the beer that he was holding onto my head. I asked Sang if he was trying to start a fight and said “There is a cop right here.” Sang replied “It’s just beer.” There were several officers on the patio deck and one was observing from just a few feet to my right while I argued with Sang and David.
From the Declaration of John Carpenter (31 years on the Riverside PD):
During our walk down to the beach at Lunada Bay [in 1983 or 1984], we did not encounter many people. However, once we paddled out, we experienced Lunada Bay’s localized culture firsthand. There were about 6 surfers in the water, all of whom were male. Almost immediately after we paddled out, the other surfers started yelling at us, saying “you guys don’t belong here” and “get out of here.” They also called us names and cursed at us. These surfers also aggressively violated surf etiquette – they would drop in on my waves and cut me off. This behavior was dangerous because it required me to pull off a wave, which could have resulted in the waves pummeling me or could have caused me to crash into the nearby shallow rock reef. The experience was frustrating and dangerous because I risked getting injured by a Bay Boy each time I tried to surf a wave.
After about 45 minutes of suffering from the Lunada Bay Boys’ harassment, Sue and I felt too uncomfortable so we decided to leave. When we got back to the car, we discovered that Sue’s car antenna had been mangled and that someone had vandalized the car by smearing surf wax on it. They wrote derogatory words about Sue being a woman. Based on my friends’ experiences and my 45 minutes of trying to surf at Lunada Bay, I was almost positive that the Lunada Bay Boys were responsible for this vandalism.
Due to this negative experience, I have not returned to surf Lunada Bay. When I recently heard that the intimidation and exclusionary behavior at Lunada Bay is still occurring – more than 30 years after I experienced it firsthand – I was shocked. As a law enforcement professional, I know that the conduct taking place at Lunada Bay is no different than criminal gang activity. Like a criminal gang, the Lunada Bay Boys have taken over a public place and use intimidation tactics to scare others to stay off their turf.
In response to this conduct, the City of Palos Verdes Estates’ police should have taken action to address the issues and treat the situation like a gang injunction. For example, they should have set up cameras, conducted surveillance, and prosecuted wrongdoers based on the complaints they received. Instead, the City and the police ignore the complaints or take down reports of aggression but then fail to follow up and investigate and prosecute the wrongdoers.
This is an old story, and a sad one. Here’s how it goes: Kerry Morrison whispers sweet nothings in the receptive ear of CD13 field deputy Dan Halden at one of their monthly breakfast meetings. Dan, who for some reason thinks Kerry and her minions are Mitch’s constituents, passes the whisper on to “his boss.”24 Mitch O’Farrell, no doubt contemplating the oodles and scads of money trickling down to him from the heavy-laden coffers of Ms. and Mr. Kerry Morrison, mutters to himself something like “That sounds good! No need to run that by anyone sane! Kerry Morrison and her money would never lead me astray!!”
But once in a while sane people are paying attention, and then all those reasons that seemed so compelling in the back room suddenly start to look a little — and then a whole freaking lot — crazy. This happens all the time.25 And it’s beginning to happen again with this whole playground thing. If you subscribe to the Council file , you will have been notified last night that the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council voted unanimously to oppose Mitch and Kerry’s motion (full text after the break if you’re PDF-averse).
Eddie Guerra, kicking ass and taking checks from the Media District BID, $400 at a time.How much does a private nonprofit organization have to pay an LAPD officer in exchange for him running off some homeless people who are having a barbecue on the sidewalk and scaring the neighborhood zillionaires? Newly received evidence suggests that the going rate is $200 per running-off incident.
It has been more than two months since the last entry in our ongoing LAMC 49.5.5(A) project, in which we report various City employees to the Ethics Commission in an attempt to discover exactly what the most fascinating ordinance ever,26LAMC 49.5.5(A), actually prohibits. It’s high time for another report, and this is it. First, recall what the law actually says:
City officials, agency employees, appointees awaiting confirmation by the City Council, and candidates for elected City office shall not misuse or attempt to misuse their positions or prospective positions to create or attempt to create a private advantage or disadvantage, financial or otherwise, for any person.
