Tag Archives: Elliot Zorensky

Brown Act Pragmatics, Business Improvement Districts

Palisades BID Brown Act Demand Letter Leads To Complete And Total Victory! — Elliot “Cabeza De Calabaza” Zorensky And His Merry Gang Of Freaks Out In Northwest Zillionaireville Issue An Unconditional Commitment To Stop Breaking The Damn Law!

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Of course you remember my ongoing Brown Act enforcement project, whereby I use threats of imminent lawsuits to try to get our City’s various business improvement districts to just follow the damn law for once. And a few weeks ago I sent the Pacific Palisades BID a sternly-worded demand letter outlining an egregious violation of the Brown Act involving illegal meetings via email and insisting, per statute, that they unconditionally commit to never breaking that particular requirement of the law again.

Well, they got the letter, and then they had two closed sessions and an open session to figure out what to do about it. You can read the agendas here. No doubt they had to have so many discussions because Elliot Zorensky is the second ragiest rageball in all of BIDlandia1 and probably had to have his oversized head wrapped in pressure bandages to keep it from exploding during the discussions and a mummy-style noggin and an impending privilege-violation-induced aneurysm are not elements highly congenial to rational, reasoned, efficient discussion.

But whatever the circumstances, it seems that reason did in fact ultimately prevail, and, them not having any other reasonable option, they decided to send me the required letter. And thus it was that, after many a twixt-lip-slip involving USPS protocols for receiving certified mail, I did finally lay my hands on a copy of said letter. And it says all the stuff it’s supposed to say. In other words, it’s another great victory for the rule of law and a great defeat for those parochial weirdo zillionaires out in the Palisades.

There is nothing like a little cheerful gravedancing on a Friday afternoon, friends! I can recommend it highly! And not only that, but there’s a transcription of their letter of capitulation after the break so you can read it too. And if you want to do a little gravedancing of your own I can highly recommend this little number right here as the soundtrack!
Continue reading Palisades BID Brown Act Demand Letter Leads To Complete And Total Victory! — Elliot “Cabeza De Calabaza” Zorensky And His Merry Gang Of Freaks Out In Northwest Zillionaireville Issue An Unconditional Commitment To Stop Breaking The Damn Law! →

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Brown Act Pragmatics, Business Improvement Districts

Latest Episode In The Brown Act Enforcement Project Targets Pacific Palisades BID For Secret Email Meeting Violation — They Do This Kind Of Thing All The Time But They’re So Incredibly Slow To Respond To CPRA Requests That I’ve Never Caught Them Within The Nine Month Enforcement Window — Until Now! — Smarmy Caruso Puppet And Self-Proclaimed Board Member Rick Lemmo Channels Donald Trump Even As He Aids And Abets Brown Act Violations — Typical! — Sad!

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Yesterday morning the Pacific Palisades BID became the third lucky winner in our ongoing Brown Act enforcement project, following in the hallowed footsteps of the Byzantine Latino Quarter BID and the Studio City BID after them. I sent the BIDdies this demand letter, based as usual on the Brown Act at §54960.2, which gives civic outlaws like the Palisades BIDdies the chance to avoid getting sued back to the Stone Age by issuing an unconditional commitment never to break the same law again no more.

The Byzantinios caved and issued such a letter, and the Studio Citizens did too, at least with respect to three out of the four violations of which I accused them.2 And there’s a reasonable chance that the Palisadesean BIDdies will cave as well, in the fierce face of my ferociously convincing rhetoric. But maybe they won’t, cause BID boss Elliot Zorensky is a stone cold psychopath whose anger, it seems, has so far overmastered his prudence that he will cheerfully drown his own metaphorical babies merely in the hope of splashing some metaphorical bathwater on the metaphorical silken neckties of his quite literal enemies. Hard core, yes. Sustainable? Certainly not.

And of course, to faithful readers of this blog the fact that the Palisadeseans have violated the Brown Act won’t even seem like news. They are locally famous for scoffing in the face of the Brown Act. There was that time in January 2016 when they went and held a vote by email, and that other time in April 2016 when they went and held a vote over the telephone, and that other other time in April 2016 when Sue Pascoe of the Palisades News had the damn nerve to tell Laurie Sale that the Brown Act required them to post their damn agendas where people could see them and Laurie Sale flipped out and cried on Rick Scott’s shoulder all night long.

But the problem with all those episodes in relation to the enforcement project is that good old §54960.2 requires one to start the legal process with a demand letter sent within nine months of the violation. I made my first CPRA request of the PPBID in January 2017 but because they’re a bunch of law-flouting privilege monkeys, they didn’t hand over many if any records until July 2018,3 so that the Brown Act enforcement deadlines for all those 2016 violations were past before I even learned of them.

However, in that steaming heap of records that Elliot Zorensky handed over to me in July4 there was a crucial exchange of emails between Board members that adds up to a big fat violation of the Brown Act at §54952.2(b)(1), which says:

A majority of the members of a legislative body shall not, outside a meeting authorized by this chapter, use a series of communications of any kind, directly or through intermediaries, to discuss, deliberate, or take action on any item of business that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the legislative body.

And not only that, but the conversation took place in May 2018, so we are well within the nine month deadline. And it’s that conversation, the details of which are interesting in themselves and are to be found after the break, that forms the basis of today’s demand letter. The BID now has thirty days to respond or else we’re going to court, and you will read all about it here if you want to!
Continue reading Latest Episode In The Brown Act Enforcement Project Targets Pacific Palisades BID For Secret Email Meeting Violation — They Do This Kind Of Thing All The Time But They’re So Incredibly Slow To Respond To CPRA Requests That I’ve Never Caught Them Within The Nine Month Enforcement Window — Until Now! — Smarmy Caruso Puppet And Self-Proclaimed Board Member Rick Lemmo Channels Donald Trump Even As He Aids And Abets Brown Act Violations — Typical! — Sad! →

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Business Improvement Districts

Crusading Palisades Journalist Sue Pascoe To Palisades BID In 2016: You’re Violating The Damn Brown Act By Posting Your Agendas Where Disabled People Can’t Freaking See Them — Zeck Dreck Laurie Sale To Rick Scott: “I Feel Like [Following The Law] Is Just Silly” And Plus This Lady Is Really Mean! — Rick Scott To Laurie Sale: We’re Not Your Damn Lawyers So Figure Out Your Own Damn Problems

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Someone recently obtained a bunch of emails from 2016 between Laurie Sale of the Pacific Freaking Palisades BID and Rick Scott of the City Clerk’s office who is, it seems, the BID’s analyst.5 The goodies were passed to me and I uploaded the whole batch of them to Archive dot Org for your edification and titillation, and click here to browse through ’em!

And as you know, the Palisades BID, besides being generally creepy and rather floridly delusional, has proved itself unable to comply even minimally with California’s twin government transparency ordinances, the California Public Records Act and the Brown Act. I’ve written a little about their struggles with CPRA compliance6 and a little more about their struggles with Brown Act compliance, like see this episode and this especially nutty and horrific episode.

So with all of that in mind it was pleasant but not really a surprise to find this little gem of an email exchange in today’s yield. It all began when Sue Pascoe, editor of the famously floofball advertiser known as the Palisades News, emailed Laurie Sale, now retired zeck dreck of the BID, telling her that it was a violation of the Brown Act’s agenda posting requirements to post the agenda in a place that was not handicapped accessible.

Rather than asking a lawyer as anyone with any sense and some assets to protect might do, Laurie Sale emailed Rick Scott of the City Clerk’s office asking him for advice and basically saying that Sue Pascoe was a big meanie and why should the BID have to follow the damn law anyway? Then Rick Scott wrote back and told Laurie Sale that he wasn’t a lawyer and couldn’t give advice. What else did she expect? Turn the page, as always, for transcriptions of everything!
Continue reading Crusading Palisades Journalist Sue Pascoe To Palisades BID In 2016: You’re Violating The Damn Brown Act By Posting Your Agendas Where Disabled People Can’t Freaking See Them — Zeck Dreck Laurie Sale To Rick Scott: “I Feel Like [Following The Law] Is Just Silly” And Plus This Lady Is Really Mean! — Rick Scott To Laurie Sale: We’re Not Your Damn Lawyers So Figure Out Your Own Damn Problems →

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Business Improvement Districts

Summer Of 2017 — Pacific Palisades BID Decides To Try To Collect Full Assessments From LAUSD — Which Does Not Pay Them To Any BID In Los Angeles — BID President Elliot Zorensky — His Burgeoning Paranoia In Full And Ample Abundance — Tells Laurie Sale That Miranda Paster Is Fighting Against The BID — And Also Goes Behind Laurie Sale’s Back To Negotiate With The City — Making Her Look Even More Foolish Than Even She Could Reasonably Pull Off Under Her Own Power

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It’s well known to local BIDdologists that the Los Angeles Unified School District doesn’t keep pace with its companions amongst City entities, no doubt because it hears the beat of a distinctly different drummer.7 For instance we’ve seen recently how the LAUSD even voted against renewing a bunch of BIDs! Not only is it impossible to imagine the City of Los Angeles doing such a thing8 but it’s actually illegal for the City Clerk to vote against BIDs unless the City Council specifically authorizes it, and how is that ever going to happen?

And somewhat famously, the LAUSD evidently voids all its BID petitions by inserting some kind of unauthorized limiting clause. However, these symptoms of the LAUSD’s idiosyncratic attitude towards BIDs are minor quirks compared to the radical agenda set forth in this 2003 memo on LAUSD BID policy.

There’s a lot going on in that memo, but the first thing to look at is the fee schedule on the last page. The short version is that the LAUSD has unilaterally decided that it will not pay the entire amount of its BID assessments. Instead, they pay between 15% and 50% depending on a number of factors regardless of what the BID has decided to bill them.

And evidently BIDs around Los Angeles have just learned to slurp down that bitter draught, because what else exactly are they going to do about it? They have no power to make the LAUSD pay so they have to be content with what they can get rather than what they should get. That is, evidently most BIDs have so learned. The ones run by the marginally competent, the marginally sane, the marginally realistic, and so on. In short, the ones not run by Elliot Zorensky and Laurie Sale of the marginally famous Pacific Palisades BID.

And here is where today’s story begins! It seems that last summer this pair of super-geniuses, almost certainly at the behest of Elliot Zorensky, the superest super-genius of them all, decided that they were going to get that damnable LAUSD to pay the damn money that they damn well owed to the damn BID! Never mind that this was a path every other BID in this City of Angels feared to tread, Elliot Freaking Zorensky was going to rush in! Turn the page for the play by play!
Continue reading Summer Of 2017 — Pacific Palisades BID Decides To Try To Collect Full Assessments From LAUSD — Which Does Not Pay Them To Any BID In Los Angeles — BID President Elliot Zorensky — His Burgeoning Paranoia In Full And Ample Abundance — Tells Laurie Sale That Miranda Paster Is Fighting Against The BID — And Also Goes Behind Laurie Sale’s Back To Negotiate With The City — Making Her Look Even More Foolish Than Even She Could Reasonably Pull Off Under Her Own Power →

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Yet Another Egregious Violation Of The Brown Act By The Pacific Palisades BID In 2016 — If This Is Mike Bonin’s Idea Of A Good BID What In The World Would A Bad One Look Like — As Before Not One Board Member Objected To Illegal Votes By Email, Telephone — As Before Legal Action Is Time-Barred So Yet Again The Palisades BID Escapes Consequences Of Their Actions

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A couple weeks ago I published some evidence of mind-blowingly egregious Brown Act violations by the Pacific Palisades BID, which, what with Zeck Dreck (ret.) Laurie Sale’s twisted lurching obstructionism and Board Member and Caruso minion Rick Lemmo’s willingness to break the bank just to thwart my inquiries, has turned out, under the acrimonious influence of the world’s angriest CPRA lawyer, which is to say Carol F. Humiston, to be one of this City’s most difficult BIDs from which to obtain records in an orderly, prompt, lawful manner.

Nevertheless, persistence has paid off, and I did, eventually, this summer, obtain a big stack of goodies from these evil henchies up in Northwest zillionaireville and, as I said before, I’m gradually prepping this sizzlin’ hot mess of a production for publication. The text for today’s sermon is a series of emails from April 2016 showing yet another egregious9 Brown Act violation on the part of these littoral lunkheads. Here’s what went down. Laurie Sale10 emailed her damn Board on April 20, 2016, and this is what she had to say for herself:

From: Palisades BID <laurie@palisadesbid.org>

Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2016 11:26 AM

To: ‘Asvina Narain’; ‘Benjamin Gold’; ‘DeeDee West’; Don Scott; Elliot Zorensky; ‘Joyce Brunelle’; ‘Laurie Sale’; Lee Ford; ‘Lynn Borland’; Rick Lemmo; Shaun Malek; Susan
Carroll

Cc: ‘Sharon Shapiro’

Subject: SPECIAL MEETING OF PALISADES BID BOARD

Attachments: Agenda Special Meeting April 28, 2016.docx

Dear Board Members,

Elliot and I spoke about setting up a SPECIAL BID meeting for next Wed., the 27th at 8:30. We’d like to have a resolution (ACTION ITEM) about formally supporting the Caruso Project. As you know, there is still some local opposition, but all of the other community organizations have given their support, and we’d like to know your thoughts on the matter. There is a planning committee meeting on Thurs. the 28 th We’d like the Caruso folks to know where we stand, and so, have decided to call this meeting, prior to the planning meeting.

The agenda is attached, and, as you will see, it’s simply a one topic special meeting. We’d really appreciate your attendance if possible.

I know it is last minute, but if you CANNOT attend, would you please email me with your written support or opposition to having the BID officially support the project. You may also call in to the meeting, at 8:30, and become part of the discussion, if you wish. Here is the number for the conference call:

Dial-in Number: ■■■■■■■■■
Access Code: ■■■■■■■■■

Also, at 8:00 on Wed., the folks from Spectrum, who are doing the power washing, will be there, so we can take photos for the press, and well be able to witness the completion of our first BID project.

Please rsvp to me

Thanks,

Laurie

No doubt you’ve spotted some problems here, and there are others that become clear only on reading the responses. Turn the page for links to emails, transcriptions, and discussions of all the juicy illegal details!
Continue reading Yet Another Egregious Violation Of The Brown Act By The Pacific Palisades BID In 2016 — If This Is Mike Bonin’s Idea Of A Good BID What In The World Would A Bad One Look Like — As Before Not One Board Member Objected To Illegal Votes By Email, Telephone — As Before Legal Action Is Time-Barred So Yet Again The Palisades BID Escapes Consequences Of Their Actions →

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Pacific Palisades BID In 2016 — Newly Obtained Emails Reveal The Most Egregious Violation Of The Brown Act I Have Ever Seen In The Wild — Zeck Dreck Laurie Sale — Who Sadly Is Highly Unlikely To Be Prosecuted For Her Criminal Ways — Conducted An Actual Vote On An Actual Motion By Email — Not One Single Board Member Objected — The Statute Of Limitations Has Run So They’re Not Going To Jail — But Obviously They’re Still Going To Hell — Cause There Ain’t No Statute That Can Limit The Freaking Wrath Of God!

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I know some of you out there have been remembering such classics as the story of the angry scary fat black homeless male man or the story of the gang members escaping the seething urban hellscape of Santa Freaking Monica and thereby wondering just why it is that it’s been since March freaking 2017 since I last posted any full frontal mockery of the halfwits-by-the-sea out in Northwest Zillionaireville. I’m speaking of course of the Pacific Palisades Business Improvement District, Mike Freaking Bonin’s platonic ideal of a good BID.

And it’s certainly no coincidence that my last few posts about these coastal dimwits had to do with Laurie Freaking Sale’s weirdo Humistonian CPRA aggression. For instance there was the incident of Ms. Laurie Sale’s being too busy to follow the law, a theory which doesn’t work so well for non-zillionaires.11 Then there was the case of board member Rick Freaking Lemmo explaining how they were going to spend 3% of their annual assessments on lawyers to keep records out of my hands.

Well, it turns out that that’s not working out so well,12 because earlier this week I took a trek all the way out to the damn Palisades on public transit13 to finally inspect some records after fifteen tooth-pullingly painful months trying to talk some sense into Ms. Laurie Sale and then a few more months of my lawyer trying to talk some sense into the world’s angriest CPRA attorney, Ms. Carol F. Humiston.14

And good lord, friends! The craziness in these records is beyond fever pitch! It’s beyond Ebola pitch! Can’t easily be measured by disease slash pitch comparisons is how crazy it is! For various technical reasons it’s going to take a long time to prep this steaming pile o’ puckey for publication, so I’ll be dribbling it out a bit at a time. Today’s installment consists of 44 pages of emails amongst the BID Board, which can be found here on Archive.Org.

And amongst the millionish sharp little shards of crazy to be found here is the single most egregious violation of the Brown Act that I’ve ever known to be committed by a BID.15 In January 2016 BID zeck dreck Laurie Sale16 emailed her board with a motion to approve a contract and one by one they all voted yes by reply-all. This is beyond bad, beyond obvious. Turn the page for a discussion of the section that this violates, of what can be done about it now,17 and transcriptions of and links to all the evidence.
Continue reading Pacific Palisades BID In 2016 — Newly Obtained Emails Reveal The Most Egregious Violation Of The Brown Act I Have Ever Seen In The Wild — Zeck Dreck Laurie Sale — Who Sadly Is Highly Unlikely To Be Prosecuted For Her Criminal Ways — Conducted An Actual Vote On An Actual Motion By Email — Not One Single Board Member Objected — The Statute Of Limitations Has Run So They’re Not Going To Jail — But Obviously They’re Still Going To Hell — Cause There Ain’t No Statute That Can Limit The Freaking Wrath Of God! →

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Anxious Rich White Palisadeseans Are Reassured That Mike Bonin Won’t Allow Street Vendors To Besmirch The Lily-White Palisadesean Streets (Except For The Farmers’ Market Cause White People Like Farmers’ Markets) And Also LAPD Advises How To Get Rid Of Scary Fat Nasty Angry Black Homeless Male Man!

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When last we peeked into the Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Pacific Palisades BID, we learned that they were all sitting around up there in Northwest Zillionaireville quaking in their super-pricy boots over the influx of gang members from urban Santa Monica. Today, well, there’s the serious matter of street vending to discuss, of course, but first, take a look at the minutes from January 4, 2017, where we learn about this:

Homeless issue – One person is a problem on Via de la Paz lately. He is a 300 lb., male black man with a nasty temper. Officer Moore recommends signing a “Trespass Arrest Authorization” form which was handed out.

Got it? He weights three hundred pounds.18 He’s black. And not only that, he is both male and a man. This is a truly frightening situation! I’m wondering if their trespass authorization form has a place to put the weight of trespassers that the cops are authorized to arrest? The standard form does not, but the LAPD is famous for deploying multiple helicopters to fly against the homeless in the Palisades. Are they going to refuse them a custom anti-homeless trespass form? Especially if they’re being overrun by a horde of three hundred distinct pounds of angry homeless black male man?

I mean, I know you can never be too rich or too thin, but that the Palisadesians are extra-scared of this man because “he is a 300 lb., male black man…” is somewhat unexpected, even though 300 lb. people can certainly “pose to be dangerous.” I would have thought that fear of the homeless would be measured more by the individual than by the pound, but I’m wrong again. Certainly this is why I can’t afford to live in the Palisades amongst the jittery little psychopathic self-interested zillionaire theorists of homelessness. My priorities are obviously really confused.

And if they’re going to pieces to this extent over one “300 lb., male black man,” how are they going to feel about the gracious shimmering snow-white streets of their little village19 being overrun by the herds of dark-skinned heladeros, frutateros, and eloteros that are even now massing at their borders just waiting for the City Council to give them the go-ahead to swarm in and start supplying their victims, the hitherto-uncorrupted-by-Mexican-ice-cream-treats Palisadeseans, with paletas de limón? Not good, I’m telling you that much. But their man on Spring Street, Mike Bonin, is there for them as he always is. Turn the page for details.
Continue reading Anxious Rich White Palisadeseans Are Reassured That Mike Bonin Won’t Allow Street Vendors To Besmirch The Lily-White Palisadesean Streets (Except For The Farmers’ Market Cause White People Like Farmers’ Markets) And Also LAPD Advises How To Get Rid Of Scary Fat Nasty Angry Black Homeless Male Man! →

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Business Improvement Districts, Public Records Act Pragmatics

In Which I Use The Palisades BID As A Test-Case For A New Tactic In The Neverending Quest To Find Some Way To Force Business Improvement Districts To Comply With The California Public Records Act Without Having To File Yet Another Freaking Writ Petition

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Laurie Sale is a sympathetic character, no doubt, but if we start letting our personal feelings towards people stand in the way of enforcing the law then anarchy will follow as surely as the night follows the day, so we’re not gonna do that! Plus even sympathetic characters, if they’re lawless, can still pose to be dangerous!
Here’s the short version of this post: Laurie Sale of the Palisades BID has been telling me for months that she is too busy to work on my CPRA requests. Yesterday she turns out to be too busy to send copies of emails in a reasonable format. She continues to be too busy to provide an estimated date of production even though CPRA requires it. She keeps telling me she only works half-time. BIDs sign a contract with the City which requires them to maintain staffing adequate for the completion of required work in a timely manner. CPRA compliance is required work. Being too busy to do it is not doing it in a timely manner. Too busy for CPRA, BIDs?? Breach of freaking contract!!

And here is a quick recap of how we got to this place. About 80% of the staff of this website grew up in Venice, so we all got really interested in the Venice Beach BID. Unfortunately, CD11 staffie Chad Molnar took offense at the use I made of the fruits of a couple CPRA requests and stopped complying with the law altogether, forcing me to turn him in to the City Ethics Commission. That’s going to take forever to resolve, though.

Thus thwarted in my attempts to learn about the inner workings of Mike Bonin’s weirdo little empire directly, I have turned to requesting materials of all the BIDs in his district, which are Westchester Town Center, Brentwood Village, Gateway to LA, and last, but never ever least, the Pacific Palisades BID,20 which was explicitly called out by Mike Bonin himself on the floor of the Council Chambers as one of the good BIDs. I have received some material from these halfwits-by-the-sea, which provided raw material for our most popular post in the month of January, but mostly their executive directrix, Laurie Sale, keeps telling me that she’s too damned busy to send stuff in a timely manner.

And finally, yesterday, she condescended to transmit a bunch of emails to me by forwarding them, with her own typed annotations prepended. I had asked for them in native format,21 and providing them in native format is required by CPRA.22 It’s important to get emails this way because it preserves the integrity of the headers and also it ensures that attachments arrive in precisely their native formats as well.23 I habitually request emails in native formats and most BIDs have figured out how to comply with this requirement. So I told Laurie Sale that her forwarded emails weren’t acceptable and could she please figure out how to send them in the right format. I can tell from her headers that she uses Outlook, so I sent her a link to Microsoft Support which explains how to export emails to a PST file. It’s not hard.

But she was having none of it. She fired back this cranky little number, stating:
Continue reading In Which I Use The Palisades BID As A Test-Case For A New Tactic In The Neverending Quest To Find Some Way To Force Business Improvement Districts To Comply With The California Public Records Act Without Having To File Yet Another Freaking Writ Petition →

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