Tag Archives: CD11

Business Improvement Districts, Municipal Ethics

Shadowy BID Consultant Tara Devine Moonlights As A Planning And Zoning Lobbyist, Also Unregistered!

February 17, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

A recently discovered shadowectomized portrait of shadowy BID consultant Tara Devine by French Fauvist painter Raoul Dufy, who never drew a shadow in his entire career.

As Karl Marx so wisely pointed out once upon a time¹ crime is a career like any other. One reason is that there’s a learning curve. It takes some experience to be able to make crime pay. And the same, it seems, is true for unregistered lobbyists like our perennial subject, shadowy BID consultant Tara Devine. I reported last week that I had turned Tara Devine in to the Ethics Commission based on exhaustive research that indicated that she had spent more than 30 compensated hours over three consecutive months in 2016 lobbying for the Venice Beach BID without having registered with the City.

And I really thought I had found most of the relevant evidence,² but it turns out that I was ever so wrong. Just last night I discovered, never mind how, that Tara Devine not only does shadowy BID consultancy, she also represents permission-seeking clients before planning boards. You can see details, dates, and so on after the break!
Continue reading Shadowy BID Consultant Tara Devine Moonlights As A Planning And Zoning Lobbyist, Also Unregistered! →

Business Improvement Districts

Attention South Park BID Property Owners! Now Revealed!! What Shadowy BID Consultant Tara Devine Absolutely Does Not Want You To Know About Your Right To Defer Payment Of Your Assessment!!! As She Says: “It Is Not Advisable To Broadcast This”! “We Don’t Like To Advertise”!!

February 10, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Shadowy BID consultant Tara Devine as deftly reimagined by the justifiably famous MK.Org technologico-informational-infrastructural machinery.

The $80,000 woman and famed co-conspirator of shady contributors and City Attorney lawsuit targets, liar and sneaky deceiver and putter of words into Mike Bonin’s mouth and subject of investigations, shadowy BID consultant Tara Devine, was the guest of honor at Wednesday’s meeting of the third creepiest BID downtown. Her appearance was recorded for this blog by an intrepid correspondent.³ The background is that the South Park BID and its little mutant offspring the South Park II BID are going to merge next year. The process is essentially as complex as starting a brand-new BID, and Tara Devine is the consultant leading the faithful through the ~~slough of despond~~ City bureaucracy. The South Parkies are going to miss some mandated deadline, which will cause the first year’s assessments to be billed and collected by the Los Angeles City Clerk’s office rather than by the County Assessor.

And this so-called “manual billing” has various consequences for the BID’s income that differ in various ways from what happens when the assessment is collected by the County of Los Angeles. You can listen here as Tara Devine explains one of these differences, which is a top-secret, not-to-be-advertised, not-advisable-to-broadcast, hitherto-unknown-to-anti-BID-theory hardship mercy rule. That is, for whatever reason, if the Clerk’s collecting the money instead of the County, and the property owner has a problem paying, it can be worked out:
Continue reading Attention South Park BID Property Owners! Now Revealed!! What Shadowy BID Consultant Tara Devine Absolutely Does Not Want You To Know About Your Right To Defer Payment Of Your Assessment!!! As She Says: “It Is Not Advisable To Broadcast This”! “We Don’t Like To Advertise”!! →

Los Angeles City Council, Selma Park

Cracks Show In LA City Council Unanimity (At Least On Staff Level) As David Ryu’s Director Of Policy, Nicholas Greif, Comes Out Publicly Against Mitch O’Farrell’s Moronic Playground Motion

February 6, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Nicholas Greif evidently agrees with his fellow Palms NC Board members that Mitch O’Farrell’s anti-playground motion is evil, evil, evil… which may be embarrassing for Nicholas Greif’s boss, David Ryu, who will have to vote for the motion if it ever comes up before Council…which it almost certainly will not at this point.

BACKGROUND: Recall, if you will, that this L.A. Times editorial kicked off a somewhat misguided firestorm of opposition to Mitch O’Farrell’s recent Council motion 16-1456 seeking to develop a legal tool for banning adults without children from playgrounds in parks in the City of Los Angeles.

So just tonight the Palms Neighborhood Council filed yet another Community Impact Statement opposing Mitch O’Farrell’s Kerry-Morrison-behested anti-playground motion. And like the Eagle Rock NC and the Lincoln Heights NC and the Los Feliz NC before them, they’ve made a well-reasoned and articulate argument:

This measure would penalize lawful park users and would result in discriminatory enforcement. Such a ban improperly assumes that adult park users in a children’s playground area are there solely for nefarious purposes and seeks to ban lawful conduct. Simply being present in a park and enjoying the surroundings is not illegal. There are already criminal laws on the books to address any improper conduct in these areas.

Again, as with all of the others with the minor exception of Los Feliz,⁴ this statement was adopted unanimously, leaving Mitch continuing to flounder around in the pool of shit into which he impulsively flung himself just because Kerry Morrison said it would please her to watch him jump. And there is one thing about the Palms Neighborhood Council which makes tonight’s Community Impact Statement marginally more impactful than the others. You see, Mr. Nicholas Greif is not only the chair of the Palms NC Executive Board and therefore part of the unanimous majority that approved the CIS, but he is also David Ryu’s director of Policy and Legislation.
Continue reading Cracks Show In LA City Council Unanimity (At Least On Staff Level) As David Ryu’s Director Of Policy, Nicholas Greif, Comes Out Publicly Against Mitch O’Farrell’s Moronic Playground Motion →

Venice Beach BID

Shadowy BID Consultant Tara Devine Seems To Get Paid About $80,000 For Establishing A BID, Which I Managed To Discover Despite The Fact That She’s So Darned Secretive

February 4, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Shadowy BID consultant Tara Devine looks fate’s oncoming train straight in the eye.

There’s an unresolved problem in the application of the California Public Records Act to business improvement districts. The thing is that the Property Owners’ Associations which administer the BIDs are, in part, subject to CPRA because §36612 of the Property and Business Improvement District Law of 1994 makes them so, stating that:

“Owners’ association” means a private nonprofit entity that is under contract with a city to administer or implement improvements, maintenance, and activities specified in the management district plan. … an owners’ association shall comply with the California Public Records Act … for all records relating to activities of the district.

The problem is that the Owners’ Association doesn’t seem to be required to comply with CPRA until it actually is under contract with the City. This, if accurate, means that the activities of the POA before the BID is approved are largely opaque to scrutiny. And this has been a severe problem in the case of the Venice Beach BID, where a number of people, not just me, have had the experience of CD11 staff,⁵ City Clerk staff, and even freaking Holly Wolcott herself, falsely denying that the City is involved in the BID formation process at all and telling members of the public that they should therefore seek information from shadowy BID consultant Tara Devine. Tara Devine, of course, ignores all requests for information from anyone who seems to be even a little skeptical about the benefits of BIDs.

None of this is the final word on the matter. The only reason that the legislature even made BIDs subject to CPRA is that Aaron Epstein, a brave and determined property owner, sued the living shit out of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance⁶ in the 1990s and the Courts determined, in a stunningly righteous decision, that BIDs were subject to both CPRA and the Brown Act. It’s quite possible, perhaps even probable, that if the courts were asked whether or not POAs were subject to CPRA before the contract was signed, they would find that they were. However, that’s not a struggle in which I presently have the resources to engage, so alternative methods of information collection are required.

Fortunately,⁷ Tara Devine is not a one-BID woman. See, in 2015 the South Park BID was up for renewal.⁸ The process of BID renewal is essentially the same as the process for BID establishment, with the huge difference that it’s carried out by a POA that’s already under contract with the City, and is thus subject to CPRA. And thus was it possible to gather surprisingly much information about how Tara Devine conducts her dangerous business!⁹ Continue reading Shadowy BID Consultant Tara Devine Seems To Get Paid About $80,000 For Establishing A BID, Which I Managed To Discover Despite The Fact That She’s So Darned Secretive →

Hypocrisy, Los Angeles City Council

Despite His Generally Sympathetic Rhetoric, It Turns Out That Since 2015 Mike Bonin Has Moved Or Seconded Almost 60% Of Anti-Homeless Oversize Vehicle Bans, Helping To Make Revised Ban On Car Sleeping Even More Draconian Than Anticipated

January 31, 2017 Mike 1 Comment

RVs on Lillian Way between Santa Monica Blvd and Melrose Avenue, banned in 2016 with the help of Mike Bonin.

Here’s the story so far: Last year the City Council repealed its law against sleeping in cars, which it more or less had to do because the Ninth Circuit told them they couldn’t enforce it anyway. Then in November they passed a new version of the law, published as LAMC 85.02, which supposedly corrected the last version’s problems. The new law, according to guidelines published by the City of Los Angeles, purports to allow living in a vehicle under these circumstances:

Between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. – more than one block (500 feet) away from licensed schools, pre-schools, daycare facilities, or parks.

Between 9:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. – in non-residentially zoned areas which are more than one block (500 feet) away from licensed schools, pre-schools or daycare facilities or parks.

When the law was passed last November, CD11 Councilmember Mike Bonin was quoted in the Times to the effect that these restrictions would leave half the streets in the City open to homeless car dwellers. More recently, the incomparable Gale Holland reported that, not only did the official City map only show about 10% of our streets open, but that that estimate didn’t even take into account so-called block-by-block restrictions. According to Gale Holland, Mike Bonin used this insufficiency as a reason to hurry along his proposed Safe Parking program, which would open up some City property for homeless parking. So I decided to look at these weirdly specific¹⁰ block-by-block restrictions, which seem to have been passed almost exclusively post-Desertrain, from 2015 on. Read on for statistics and links to all of the Council Files.
Continue reading Despite His Generally Sympathetic Rhetoric, It Turns Out That Since 2015 Mike Bonin Has Moved Or Seconded Almost 60% Of Anti-Homeless Oversize Vehicle Bans, Helping To Make Revised Ban On Car Sleeping Even More Draconian Than Anticipated →

Venice

There Is At Least One Substantial Way In Which Slavering Psychopath Mark Ryavec Is Not Like Donald Trump And That Is That We Have His Freaking Tax Returns

January 28, 2017 Mike 1 Comment

Something is happening and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

This has nothing much at all to do with businesss improvement districts, but it’s Saturday night and I just felt like laying some Form 990s on you. These five beauties are from slavering psychopath Mark Ryavec’s agressively moronic Venice-based gang of subliterate meatheads, known to the mundane world as the Venice Stakeholders Association. They are available here on Archive.Org for your reading and researchical pleasure.

These items are interesting for any number of reasons. One is that they show that the VSA is not just a vision of sugar plums dancing ‘neath the fevered brow of Mark Ryavec, but that there are actual real-life other people involved:¹¹ Michael King, Bonnie Felix, Anil Comelo, Robert Feist, Richard Myer(s).¹² Had they appeared in another context I’d have been willing to bet that these names were merely selected from the myriad to be found in Ryavec’s floridly diverse collection of multiple personalities, but I don’t know many people, even the really, really, crazy ones, who have a lack of foresight sufficient to cause them to swear under penalty of perjury in a document submitted to the Federal government that the names of their imaginary friends represent real-life actual human beings.¹³

Another interesting thing is that the forms contain descriptions of accomplishments the VSA deems significant enough to brag about to the Federal government. These have the perhaps unintended effect of revealing both the breadth and the depth of the slavering psychopathy at work out there in the lorn, lost, lamented, former utopia west of Electric Avenue. Selected instances may be found after the break.
Continue reading There Is At Least One Substantial Way In Which Slavering Psychopath Mark Ryavec Is Not Like Donald Trump And That Is That We Have His Freaking Tax Returns →

Business Improvement Districts

Gang Members, Seeking Respite From The Seething Urban Hell That Is Present-Day Santa Monica, Pour Over Northern Border Into Pacific Palisades, Bringing Crime, Fear, Misery — LAPD Unleashes Helicopters Against Palisades Homeless — The Last Days Are At Hand! Build That Wall, Mr. Bonin!

January 25, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

You probably thought that this place was nothing more than a colony of self-satisfied zillionaires and their floofly little dogs, just strolling around on the bluffs in their $1,400 Jimmy Choos, but it turns out that it’s a seething urban hell, generating crime wave after crime wave in the Palisades. Build that wall, Mr. Bonin!

OK, remember after the Venice Beach BID was approved for the second time and Mike Bonin gave a meandering, semi-sensical, victory speech, pronouncing definitively that he

…acknowledge[d] that there have been issues and problems with BIDs in other areas. But there have also been BIDs that have been very successful and have been great partners in solving homelessness. In Pacific Palisades we have a BID that has actually worked with the Pacific Palisades Task Force on Homelessness and has helped get people housed.

Combine this statement, just begging to be fact-checked, with the fact that Mike Bonin’s weirdo staff is engaged in a criminal conspiracy to violate the California Public Records Act, thereby bringing the legally authorized investigations of brave citizen journalists into the shady shenanigans of CD11 to a grinding halt, and how could I resist asking Mike Bonin’s darling Pacific Palisades BID for a bunch of public records?

Well, last night, PPBID executive directrix Laurie Sale, in addition to coming at me all salty with a bunch of copypasta lawyerese about how she wasn’t handing over anything unless God and the FBI told her she had to,¹⁴ also provided me with a year’s worth of agendas and minutes from her according-to-Mike-Bonin-exemplary little BID out there to the northwest of reality in zillionaireville. Of course I put it up on Archive.Org immediately. And there’s some fine craziness in there, friends.

Greetings homeless neighbors! On behalf of the Palisades BID I would like to announce that we are from the LAPD and we are here to help the old amongst you, especially those whose health has deteriorated!

First of all, with respect to the homeless population of the Palisades, which according to Mike Bonin this BID’s handling of is a pattern of enlightened BIDolatry, take a look here at the Minutes from February 3, 2016, where we read, in the words of Laurie Sale her own self, that:

Older homeless are receptive to services as their health deteriorates. On the enforcement front, Michael Moore will be here soon to attest to the fact that they’ve gotten a lot more support from LAPD. Have provided more air support and foot support and they’ve mapped out all of the encampments. The signage has helped and allowed them to go in and get people off of the bluffs. Currently have a count of approximately eighty (80) homeless in the area but no market [sic] increase.

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 it¹⁵ 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.¹⁶ 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 →

Venice Beach BID

Now Mike Bonin Is Tara Devine’s Ventriloquist’s Dummy: How The Shadowy BID Consultant Herself Answered A Bunch Of Questions That Yo! Venice Reporter Melanie Camp Sent To Mike Bonin And How Melanie Camp Subsequently Attributed The Answers To Mike Bonin

January 21, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Tara Devine in City Council Chambers at the Venice Beach BID Hearing Take 2 on November 8, 2016.

Check out this interesting series of emails from August 2016. It begins when Yo! Venice reporter Melanie Camp writes to Mike Bonin’s communications director David Graham-Caso, stating:

Hi David,

I have several questions regarding the BID. The information you provided, coupled with the information/misinformation flying around raises a couple of issues that need clearing up.

I’m interested in Mike’s opinion, as well as your own, on any or all of these.

Less than 40 minutes later, David Graham-Caso forwarded the email¹⁷ to Debbie Dyner Harris along with a terse note that said:

Can you please send this to the BID consultant to get her help with the answers?

And a mere 13 minutes after that, Debbie Dyner Harris forwarded the email¹⁸ to Tara Devine, stating:

Hi Tara. Can you please respond to her? Thanks

David Graham-Caso, CD11 Director of Communications, is a really cute guy, but also a conduit for misattributed propaganda!

Further conversation ensued, but the upshot is that, the very next day, Tara Devine sent over a page of answers, not to Melanie Camp, but to David Graham-Caso and Debbie Dyner Harris to do with as they would do. And evidently what they did do was send the answers to Melanie Camp. And evidently what Melanie Camp did was attribute the answers to Mike Bonin in the article she published a few days later, entitled Venice BID Approved.¹⁹ She not only attributed them to Mike Bonin when they were written by Tara Devine,²⁰ but she essentially copy/pasted them into her article. You can see some specifics after the break!
Continue reading →

Announcements, Central City East Association, Lawsuits, Los Angeles City Government, Venice Beach BID

Many New Documents: CCEA Emails, Venice Beach BID Emails, Carol Schatz Freakout, Chua v. City of LA

November 24, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

A rare photograph of MK.org secret headquarters and Fortress of Solitude, located in an undisclosed location in the heart of North Central Hollywood.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends! Today I have an unanalyzed document dump for you. There’s a lot of fabulous material here, and I’ll be writing about much of it over²¹ the next few days. For now, though, there’s just a bare inventory, which you can find directly after the break.
Continue reading →