Tag Archives: Blair Besten

Business Improvement Districts

How Is South Park BIDdie And Famously Manic Minion Katie Kiefer Just Like Richard Nixon? Well, We Won’t Have Either Of Them To Kick Around Any More — Not Sure Where Nixon’s At But Katie Kiefer’s Off To Work For José Huizar In CD14 — Did I Mention That I Recorded This Morning’s South Park BID Meeting? Well I Did!

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This is just a short note to announce the availability of video of this morning’s meeting of the South Park BID‘s board of directors. There’s a lot going on here, and I have at least a few detailed posts to write about this material over the next few days, but I just wanted to provide links so you can see for yourself, and also to announce a stunning piece of news about the SPBID’s director of operations Katie Kiefer.

She is leaving the BID to go work for the prince of darkness himself, Mr. José Huizar, over at 200 N. Spring Street. This makes her the latest BIDdie to move over to Huizar’s office, the last known instance being Mr. Ari Simon, late of the Historic Core BID, batty little fusspot Blair Besten’s weirdo empire on Broadway.

Here are links to the video, and turn the page for a transcription of bad BIDdie Ellen Riotto’s announcement to the board:

Continue reading How Is South Park BIDdie And Famously Manic Minion Katie Kiefer Just Like Richard Nixon? Well, We Won’t Have Either Of Them To Kick Around Any More — Not Sure Where Nixon’s At But Katie Kiefer’s Off To Work For José Huizar In CD14 — Did I Mention That I Recorded This Morning’s South Park BID Meeting? Well I Did! →

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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

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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 →

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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!

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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,2 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! →

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Business Improvement Districts, Downtown Center BID, Fashion District BID, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Street Vending

How Kerry Freaking Morrison Found Out About Senator Ricardo Lara’s Street Vending Bill In January 2018 And Told No-Epithet-Yet Suzanne Holley, Chardonnay-Swilling Scarf Monster Rena Leddy, And Batty Little Fusspot Blair Besten All About It And Suzanne Freaking Holley Went And Told Carol Freaking Schatz, The Zillion Dollar Woman, Who Subsequently Swore A Solemn Oath To Destroy SB 946

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Just another quick note from all them DCBID emails I’ve been dining out on for weeks now. It’s inconsequential in one sense, but on the other hand, it illuminates how information spreads among the zillionaire flunkies who run this City’s BIDs. Here is the original email chain, and I’m just going to lay it on you without commentary. Or without much, anyway.

On January 31, 2018, the incomparable Emily Alpert Reyes emailed Kerry Freaking Morrison thusly:

From: Alpert, Emily mailto:Emily.Alpert@latimes.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2018 9:23 AM
To: Kerry Morrison <Kerry@hollvwoodbid.org>

Subject: State bill on street vending

Hi Kerry — I hope all is well! I was curious for your thoughts on this state bill that would override local regulations on vending:

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB946&search_keywords=vendor

I’m at ■■■-■■■-■■■■. Thanks!

Emily

Did Kerry Morrison answer her? Well, I don’t know, but I will say that Emily Alpert Reyes published a fine article on Lara’s bill on February 2, and Kerry Morrison is not quoted in it. In any case, we do know that Kerry Morrison read the email because …. turn the page if you want to find out!
Continue reading How Kerry Freaking Morrison Found Out About Senator Ricardo Lara’s Street Vending Bill In January 2018 And Told No-Epithet-Yet Suzanne Holley, Chardonnay-Swilling Scarf Monster Rena Leddy, And Batty Little Fusspot Blair Besten All About It And Suzanne Freaking Holley Went And Told Carol Freaking Schatz, The Zillion Dollar Woman, Who Subsequently Swore A Solemn Oath To Destroy SB 946 →

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Fashion District BID

Chardonnay-Swilling Scarf Monster Rena Leddy And Her Gang Of Halfwit Henchwomen Discuss How To Market Fashion District Artsy-Shartsitude, Showing How They Subvert The Rule Of Law, Undermine Civil Society, And Betray The Social Compact For Far Less Than 30 Pieces Of Silver — Not To Mention Long-Awaited Proof That Creak-Voiced Marketing Queen Ariana Gomez Is Really Truly Smarter Than Kylie Freaking Jenner!

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The other day we wrote about Thursday’s fun-filled3 meeting of the Fashion District BID‘s most funnest committee ever, which is to say, the Marketing Committee.4 Today I have a couple more interesting episodes to present to you!

First, Chardonnay-swilling scarf monster5 Rena Leddy began a little discussion with her gang of half-witted henchwomen, notably Laurie Sale, Laurie Rosen, Linda Becker,6 Mark Levy,7 and Ariana Gomez, about how to market the arty-shartsy side of the Fashion District. You can watch it here if you have the stomach for it. There’s no transcription after the break, cause really, it’s too inconsequential to bear.

The main thing about it, though, is its absolutely puerile triviality. They’re all like “EEK, there are galleries, let’s promote them! There are murals, OMG!!” BIDs do an awful lot of this kind of jive, where they take the products and activities of actual human beings, bleach them into a kind of blindingly inoffensive white soup, and then natter on about how unique it all is and how they can use it for their branding efforts or whatever.

And that would all be fine, maybe a little irritating or cookie-toss-inducing, as that kind of tin-eared jargonistic verbal outsplorching will be. It would be, that is, if it were all these BIDs were up to. But it’s not all they’re up to. Not even close.
Continue reading Chardonnay-Swilling Scarf Monster Rena Leddy And Her Gang Of Halfwit Henchwomen Discuss How To Market Fashion District Artsy-Shartsitude, Showing How They Subvert The Rule Of Law, Undermine Civil Society, And Betray The Social Compact For Far Less Than 30 Pieces Of Silver — Not To Mention Long-Awaited Proof That Creak-Voiced Marketing Queen Ariana Gomez Is Really Truly Smarter Than Kylie Freaking Jenner! →

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Business Improvement Districts, Public Records Act Pragmatics

An Unforced Error By Self-Proclaimed Hollywood Superlawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs Provides Unique Insight Into The Thoroughly Cynical, Thoroughly Bogus Nature Of BIDs’ Use Of The Deliberative Process Exemption To The California Public Records Act — They Even Used It In One Case To Cover Up A Blatant Brown Act Violation

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One of the biggest flaws in California’s Public Records Act is that the various local agencies that constitute our government are trusted to search their own records, decide without oversight what’s responsive to requests and, worst of all, decide what’s exempt from production. My general feeling about BIDs and record searches is that they purposely don’t find everything, about their exemption claims that they’re mostly lying.

Unfortunately, without a lawsuit, it’s not realistically possible to get a look at records for which they’ve claimed exemptions.8 Hence it’s not usually possible to check how closely this feeling corresponds to reality. However, due to an interesting confluence of events, I recently obtained a number of emails between various people at the Hollywood Media District BID for which their lawyer, Jeffrey Charles Briggs,9 had claimed exemptions, thus making it possible to compare his claims with the actual records. Unsurprisingly the exemption claims turned out to be 99\frac{44}{100}\% pure and unadulterated nonsense. You can find the emails and some analysis after the break, but first I’m going to ramble on a little about some tangentially related issues.

Like many policies, this default assumption of honesty on the part of local agencies no doubt works when it works, but when it comes to the BIDs of Los Angeles, who are staffed, for the most part, with the most unscrupulous bunch of pusillanimous chiselers ever to engorge their bloated reeking tummies at the public piggie trough, it doesn’t work at all.10 They lie, they confabulate, they delude themselves and others, and generally display utter and overweening contempt for the rule of law.11

And nowhere does their misbehavior reach a more fevered pitch than in the use of the so-called “deliberative process” exemption to the CPRA. In short, this is an exemption that courts have built up out of the “catch-all” exemption to CPRA, found at §6255(a), which says:
Continue reading An Unforced Error By Self-Proclaimed Hollywood Superlawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs Provides Unique Insight Into The Thoroughly Cynical, Thoroughly Bogus Nature Of BIDs’ Use Of The Deliberative Process Exemption To The California Public Records Act — They Even Used It In One Case To Cover Up A Blatant Brown Act Violation →

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Business Improvement Districts, Homeless Issues, Los Angeles City Council

Report From Yesterday’s Historic Core BID Annual Meeting: Huizar Announces Council’s Support For Revision To State Definition Of “Gravely Disabled” But Is Unwilling To Say Explicitly That The Goal Is To Make It Easier To Lock Up Homeless People — BID Board Member Ed Rosenthal Misses The Point And Asks If This Will Make It Easier To Lock Up Homeless People

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Well, well, well! The Historic Core BID, third weirdest of the minor Downtown BIDs and the exclusive demesne of batty little fusspot queen Blair Besten,12 held its Annual Meeting yesterday in the crown jewel of Michael Delijani’s Broadway empire, the Los Angeles Theatre. The local zillionaires were blessed by the heavens opening and, well, maybe not the angels of God descending,13 but at least they got José Huizar in all his freaking Councilmanic14 glory.

Of course I taped the whole damn thing, and you can watch it here.15 There are a lot of interesting episodes here, not least these slavering remarks from the meanest woman in BIDlandia, President Tara Devine, who’s handling the Historic Core BID’s ongoing renewal.

Oh, and remember that adenoidal twerp who told the SRNC proponents that they needed to get an education? Well, it turns out that that adenoidal twerp has a name, although I can’t recall it right now and I can’t freaking be bothered to look, but here he is at yesterday’s meeting spewing yet another load of his characteristically adenoidal twerpery all over José Huizar’s new suit.16

However, the very most interestingest bit was José Huizar’s announcement that he and his colleagues had just dropped a motion allowing the City to seek to have the Lanterman Act17 amended so that the the definition of “gravely disabled”18 includes refusing medical services. The whole mess can be found in CF 18-0002-S11.19 You can watch Jose Huizar talking about it and also there’s a transcription and some more snarky discussion after the break.
Continue reading Report From Yesterday’s Historic Core BID Annual Meeting: Huizar Announces Council’s Support For Revision To State Definition Of “Gravely Disabled” But Is Unwilling To Say Explicitly That The Goal Is To Make It Easier To Lock Up Homeless People — BID Board Member Ed Rosenthal Misses The Point And Asks If This Will Make It Easier To Lock Up Homeless People →

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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.20 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.21

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 lobbying22 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,23 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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Los Angeles City Government

“Hello ■■■■■■■■■ and ■■■■■■■■■. My name is Josh Albrektson and I live in Downtown. I thought you guy smight [sic] be interested in what your colleage [sic], ■■■■■■■■■ does in his spare time.”

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Recently I reported on the fact that idiosyncratically facial-haired DLANC douchebag-at-large, Joshua Albrektson, had threatened to expose my deepest darkest secrets to the world if I didn’t stop requesting documents via the California Public Records Act and writing about them on this blog. Well, the other day I obtained a few of the emails he sent in furtherance of this criminal conspiracy to repress me, and I thought I’d publish them here. For once I don’t have any snark to intersperse. The guy’s work is self-mocking. So turn the page for links and transcripts!
Continue reading “Hello ■■■■■■■■■ and ■■■■■■■■■. My name is Josh Albrektson and I live in Downtown. I thought you guy smight [sic] be interested in what your colleage [sic], ■■■■■■■■■ does in his spare time.” →

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Skid Row Neighborhood Council

It Seems That Piratical Swashbuckling Downtown Real Estate Vigilante Jacob Douglas Van Horn Supplied Anti-Skid-Row-Neighborhood-Council Conspirators With Patti Berman’s Copy Of A DLANC Voter Registration List In Advance Of The Subdivision Election For Purposes Of Electioneering, Thereby Potentially Misusing His Power As A Member Of DLANC’s Board

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Background: You can read my previous stories on the Skid Row Neighborhood Council formation effort and also see Jason McGahan’s article in the Weekly and Gale Holland’s article in the Times for more mainstream perspectives.

You may recall that one of the major issues raised in the Skid Row Neighborhood Council Formation Committee’s appeal to the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners over probably illegal, certainly immoral, shenanigans in the horrifically shady campaign against the SRNC was the question of whether DLANC had illegally opposed formation by sending out emails via its Mailchimp account. The turning point, though, was when the opposition convinced CD14 repster José Huizar to allow online voting at the last minute and to automatically register all people who’d voted in the last DLANC election.

The fact that Huizar decided to allow online voting meant that contact information for all the automatically registered voters suddenly became very valuable. I haven’t uncovered any new information on the Mailchimp front, but one of the emails from yesterday’s release of records from the Downtown Center BID reveals that on April 3, just three days before the hotly contested election, then-DLANC-Board-member Jacob Douglas van Horn,24 sent DLANC’s copy of the registered voter list to a rogues’ gallery of anti-SRNC conspirators. Here is the email and here’s what it says:

Attached is a spreadsheet with the list of pre-registered voters from the last election. All of these people have already been sent a login and pin by DONE. For many it is ending up in their spam email box. Please every take a few minutes to look over this list. If you know anyone on the list please follow up with them and make sure they have voted.

And turn the page for a discussion of what may be wrong with Jacob Douglas van Horn sending this to his co-conspirators, who those co-conspirators were, and how I know that this is DLANC’s copy of the spreadsheet.
Continue reading It Seems That Piratical Swashbuckling Downtown Real Estate Vigilante Jacob Douglas Van Horn Supplied Anti-Skid-Row-Neighborhood-Council Conspirators With Patti Berman’s Copy Of A DLANC Voter Registration List In Advance Of The Subdivision Election For Purposes Of Electioneering, Thereby Potentially Misusing His Power As A Member Of DLANC’s Board →

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