Tag Archives: Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Business Improvement Districts, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Two Interesting Protests Against BID Renewals In Hollywood — One By A Civil Engineer Attacking The Constitutional Adequacy Of Ed Henning’s Self-Plagiarized Boilerplate Engineering Report — The Other Somewhat Plausibly Accusing Kerry Morrison Of Complicity In The Payoff Of Transients To Harass Anti-BID Property Owners

July 9, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

You may have noticed that the Property and Business Improvement Law of 1994 makes allowance for property owners in a proposed BID to file “protests,” which must be accounted for by the City during the establishment or renewal process.¹ For whatever reason, possibly the mandate that the City make a determination regarding protests received,² these protests show up in the relevant Council File for all the world to read! And sometimes they are really interesting! Like the two recent doozies I have for your pleasant perusal today!

◪ Setrak Kinian protest — this is against the renewing Hollywood Entertainment District BID, filed by a property owner in the old Sunset & Vine BID — the two BIDs are being unified in their current renewal — and has some essentially kooky but nevertheless fairly explanatory³ allegations against Ms. Kerry Morrison.

For instance, Kinian claims that her BID pays off homeless people to hang around the properties of BID opponents in order to encourage them to support the BID. He also makes the not-completely-implausible claim that one goal of the BID is to force smaller property owners to sell out to larger ones. The Council File for this renewal is CF 14-0855. As always, turn the page for some selected transcriptions and commentary.

◪ Jim McQuiston protest — Against the renewing Hollywood Media District BID. McQuiston is a civil engineer and provides a really detailed⁴ denunciation of Ed Henning’s characteristically crapola engineer’s report. This is especially interesting to me given that one of my ongoing projects, which is to get the Board for Professional Engineers to take the preparation of engineering reports for BID formations seriously as the practice of civil engineering.⁵ The Council File for this renewal is CF 12-0963. Also Henning’s report is here. As always, turn the page for selected transcriptions and commentary.
Continue reading Two Interesting Protests Against BID Renewals In Hollywood — One By A Civil Engineer Attacking The Constitutional Adequacy Of Ed Henning’s Self-Plagiarized Boilerplate Engineering Report — The Other Somewhat Plausibly Accusing Kerry Morrison Of Complicity In The Payoff Of Transients To Harass Anti-BID Property Owners →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Homeless Issues, Los Angeles County Government

In 2017 Kerry Morrison — Whose Experience Of Mental Health Policy Seems To Consist Mainly Of Illegally Locking Up Homeless People In Hollywood — Was Asked By County Mental Health Staff To Name Potential Commissioners — Among Others She Identified Steve Seyler — Whose Experience With Mental Health Policy Seems To Consist Of Bossing A Heavily Armed Gang Of Thugs In Hollywood Responsible For Incarcerating The Homeless At An Astonishing Rate — And Who Doesn’t Even Live In L.A. County, For That Matter

July 7, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

As you’re surely aware, our old friend Kerry Morrison has managed over the last twenty two years to position herself as some kind of neutral expert on homelessness in Los Angeles and thereby to be appointed to all kinds of influential positions even though actually, as executive director of the Hollywood Property Owners’ Alliance, she earns her salary by overseeing the arrest of homeless residents of Hollywood at an astonishing rate as part of her ultimate goal of moving them out of her BIDs by any means necessary.

For instance, as a result, former CD13 rep Eric Garcetti felt free to appoint her to the LAHSA Commission and subsequently to the Prop HHH Citizens’ oversight committee.⁶ The fact that Kerry Morrison is a politically viable candidate for such appointments despite the fact that her positions differ not at all in any pragmatic way from those of e.g. open advocate for violence, slavering anti-homeless psychopath, and manifestly unappointable-to-anything Mark Ryavec shows the disheartening extent to which she’s managed, through deception and the inattention of journalists to BIDs in Los Angeles, to maintain her public image as some kind of local Mother Teresa figure.⁷

Kerry Morrison’s genius for reputation-laundering reached a kind of apotheosis in 2016 when she wangled herself a Stanton Fellowship, which is some kind of grant awarded by the Durfee Foundation⁸ to “allow leaders to test a hunch,” whatever that means.⁹ And regardless of what it means to the Foundation, it’s also very convenient for Ms. Kerry Morrison as yet another way to fail to acknowledge her paymasters at the BID.¹⁰

Given all this it was no surprise to discover that in 2017 Kerry Morrison somehow found her way onto something called the Los Angeles County Mental Health Commission‘s Ad Hoc Committee on LA County’s Board And Care System. When I learned of this in February, naturally I went ahead and sent a CPRA request to the County for all relevant emails. After an astonishing level of obstructionist shenanigans¹¹ they finally released some subset of what I asked for, and you can read the whole set here on Archive.Org.

One moderately interesting item lurking amongst the chaff is the actual report prepared by the Ad Hockies. It’s mostly expected platitudes and stuff, though. The most interesting part is that, as discussed above, Kerry Morrison gives her institutional affiliation as “Stanton Fellow 2016-17” rather than as something honest like, e.g., queen homeless killer for the HPOA.

And there is a lot to write about in this set of records, but the text for today’s sermon is this June 12, 2017 email from Kerry Morrison¹² to her gang of yes-people on the Hollywood 4WRD mailing list¹³ asking if any of them want to be appointed to the County Mental Health Commission. Turn the page for links to the emails, transcriptions thereof, and some commentary!
Continue reading In 2017 Kerry Morrison — Whose Experience Of Mental Health Policy Seems To Consist Mainly Of Illegally Locking Up Homeless People In Hollywood — Was Asked By County Mental Health Staff To Name Potential Commissioners — Among Others She Identified Steve Seyler — Whose Experience With Mental Health Policy Seems To Consist Of Bossing A Heavily Armed Gang Of Thugs In Hollywood Responsible For Incarcerating The Homeless At An Astonishing Rate — And Who Doesn’t Even Live In L.A. County, For That Matter →

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

April 2, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

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 →

Announcements, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

MK.Org U.S. Alexa Rank Almost Twice As Good As U.S. Alexa Rank Of Sorry HPOA Losers! This Is What Happens When You Farm Out Your SEO To Russian Commie Zombie Fake Followers! “Sad!” As HPOA Patron Saint Likes To Say On The Twitterz!

February 7, 2018 Trina 1 Comment

Is this HPOA’s SEO Flag of Convenience these days? I mean, it would make sense, right?

Zip, zap, POWIE, friends! As of today, here’s what’s going on in HPOA-loserville, otherwise known as Alexa.com! What it is is:

MichaelKohlhaas.Org U.S. Rank is 385,272 and here is a screenshot.
OnlyInHollywood.Org U.S. Rank is 665,137 and here is a screenshot.

That is, we are almost twice as better than they are. We are exactly twice as better if you ignore all those pesky meaningless digits after the first ones, which of course we will do!

You might notice that their world-wide rank is higher than ours is. Obviously there is no good reason for a bunch of foreigners to read their pathetic amateurish loseriffic website, so we are going with the theory that the HPOA hired invisible armies of Russian commie zombie SEO troll minions, which, true or not, explains everything. EVERYTHING! And if they did it, they did it because they are embarrassed that if they didn’t cheat we would beat them all the time instead of just this time.
Continue reading MK.Org U.S. Alexa Rank Almost Twice As Good As U.S. Alexa Rank Of Sorry HPOA Losers! This Is What Happens When You Farm Out Your SEO To Russian Commie Zombie Fake Followers! “Sad!” As HPOA Patron Saint Likes To Say On The Twitterz! →

Featured, Hollywood BID Patrol

Final BID Patrol Arrest Rates For 2016 And 2017 Show Close To 90% Drop From 2014, Which Was Their Last Unscrutinized Year — This Precipitous, Unexplained Decrease Leads Hollywood BIDs To Consider Using Unarmed Security In 2018 Or 2019

January 23, 2018 Mike 2 Comments

I started scrutinizing the three major Hollywood business improvement districts in late 2014, and soon discovered that the so-called BID Patrol, armed security guards employed by Andrews International under contract to the two BIDs managed by the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, that is to say the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset & Vine BID, was responsible for more than one thousand custodial arrests of homeless residents of Hollywood every year.

And these arrests were¹⁴ ugly affairs. They involve harmless people, like ice-cream vendors, being handcuffed, forced into SUVs, and chained to a bench, sometimes for hours. There were 2,682 such arrests in 2007, a number of such shocking incomprehensibility that I published a four volume set of photographs of these victims in order to provide some means of visceralizing the sheer incredible magnitude.

So it was a welcome discovery indeed to find out that in 2015, almost certainly as a result of my scrutiny, BID patrol arrests dropped 70%, from 1,057 to 313. Circumstances beyond my control have, maybe you’ve noticed, limited my ability to write about the HPOA, but I recently obtained arrest rate statistics for 2016 and 2017, and they show an even more precipitous drop in arrests in the two HPOA BIDs, with only 152 custodial arrests in 2016 and only 131 in 2017.

Thus from 2015 to 2016 there was a more than 50% reduction, which was an 85.6% reduction from 2014, their last unscrutinized year. This trend continued in 2017. Of course, this huge reduction in arrests did not lead to any corresponding reduction in costs. The HPOA paid roughly the same in 2017¹⁵ to have 131 homeless people arrested as it did in 2014 to have 1,057 homeless people arrested. I have no doubt whatsoever that this is due to my scrutiny, and I am about as proud of saving these multiple thousands of people the pain, humiliation, and legal troubles consequent on these chickenshit arrests as I am of anything I’ve ever done.
Continue reading Final BID Patrol Arrest Rates For 2016 And 2017 Show Close To 90% Drop From 2014, Which Was Their Last Unscrutinized Year — This Precipitous, Unexplained Decrease Leads Hollywood BIDs To Consider Using Unarmed Security In 2018 Or 2019 →

Announcements, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

MK.Org Power Activate!! Our Alexa Rank Is Zooming Like A Rocket Across The Lovely Skies Of Los Angeles Leaving Those Adversarious Evil Twinsies From HPOA And DLANC In The Darned Old Dust!

October 19, 2017 Trina Leave a comment

Good evening, Los Angeles!! When last I wrote to you about all things Alexaic, the evil twins at the Hollywood Property Owners Conspiracy were Alexically more than 400,000 behind your heroes here at the MK.Org secret headquarters. Well, I have come out of my closet this evening to announce unto you that as of right now we are pretty much seven eighths of a million higher than those snively lil losers! That is right, check it!

Alexa rank for MichaelKohlhaas.Org — is presently 3,473,069. Here is a screenshot.
Alexa rank for OnlyInHollywood.Org — is way down at the bottom of the well at 4,347,998. Here is a screenshot.
Alexa rank for DLANC.Org — is only 3,490,268. So we are even beating those dangerous downtown development dupes! I can hear them screaming REEEEEEEEEEE all the way in Hollywood, friends! I almost forgot but then I did not — Here is a screenshot.

Continue reading MK.Org Power Activate!! Our Alexa Rank Is Zooming Like A Rocket Across The Lovely Skies Of Los Angeles Leaving Those Adversarious Evil Twinsies From HPOA And DLANC In The Darned Old Dust! →

Business Improvement Districts, The Race Card

First The San Pedro BID Hated The Car Show. Then The San Pedro BID Loved The Car Show. Then The San Pedro BID Lobbied The City On The Car Show’s Behalf. But To Keep The BID’s Love The Car Show Had To Agree To Typically Coded Typically Racist Cultural Conditions: No Hip Hop. No Rap Music.

June 22, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Once upon a time in 2016 an organization called Hot Import Nights was going to host a car show in Downtown San Pedro. This would seem to be a natural fit, since San Pedro is nestled between such motorhead meccas as Torrance and Gardena and Carson and Long Beach, famed hot spots of both formal and informal Southern California car culture due not in small part to the feverish and innovative automotive, aerospace, and marine manufacturing activities centered in the subregion for more than a century at this point.

But if there’s a BID in the woodpile they’re going to have an opinion, either puritanical, stupid, or both, on any proposed activities within their jurisdiction, whether it’s any of their concern or not. And it’s well-known to those who know it well that Downtown San Pedro is cursed by being chronically subject to the tender mercies of the San Pedro Historic Waterfront BID. And thus it is no surprise that the BID weighed in on the car show. And it’s no surprise that they hated it. It’s exactly the kind of thing that knee-jerk puritanical real estate minions will hate.

But what is a surprise is that they changed their little minds and came to love it. They loved it so darn much that they signed an MOU with it and agreed to lobby the City on its behalf. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch and white supremacy will exact payment for any favors it bestows. In exchange for the BID’s aid and comfort, the car show had to agree not to play any rap music or hip hop at their event, and a bunch of other, as weird but possibly less racist, conditions as well.

This unreasoned, or at least publicly unreasoned, hatred for all things insufficiently caucasian, is for whatever reason, a signature element of BIDolatry in the City of Los Angeles. Over the years we’ve uncovered, e.g., the fact that the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance really, really hates Chicano-associated art genres as well as music that attracts dark-skinned patrons. The freaking HPOA even hates Peruvians if they seem like they’re getting too comfy in Hollywood.

These weird, crypto-racist attitudes are not just the province of our frenemies at the HPOA. They are evidently shared by BIDs all over the City. Thus it’s really no surprise to find that the San Pedro BIDdies are a bunch of cultural crypto-racists as well. But, as always, it’s still surprising, still disconcerting, to see the details figured plain as though upon a lighted screen. Turn the page for the story in detail with extensive documentation!
Continue reading First The San Pedro BID Hated The Car Show. Then The San Pedro BID Loved The Car Show. Then The San Pedro BID Lobbied The City On The Car Show’s Behalf. But To Keep The BID’s Love The Car Show Had To Agree To Typically Coded Typically Racist Cultural Conditions: No Hip Hop. No Rap Music. →

Announcements, Business Improvement Districts, Hollywood BID Patrol

New Documents! East Hollywood BID Quarterly Reports, Media District BID Emails, Media District BID Materials About Andrews International Security Switcheroo Including Emails, Draft Contracts, Price Matrices, And So On!

June 16, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Yesterday I received a bunch of new records from Hollywood BIDboy attorney Jeffrey Charles Briggs, acting on behalf of the East Hollywood BID and also the Media District BID. Some of the stuff had to do with the Media District’s early renewal, which I wrote about yesterday, and today I’m mostly just announcing the balance of the material, which is available from our Archive.Org collections. In particular, we have:

East Hollywood BID quarterly reports 2012-2016 — BIDs are required by their contracts with the City to submit quarterly reports with updates on how they’ve been spending their money.¹⁶ These are useful to have on hand for reference. There’s nothing in these that stands out right now, but I haven’t read them carefully yet nor even looked at all of them.
Media District emails with the City of LA — And also a few from the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance folks, although nothing substantial. Again, it’s essential to have this material on hand for reference. There doesn’t seem to be much of special interest here, although there’s a lot more evidence of Rita Moreno’s uncharacteristically activist style as a BID analyst with the Clerk’s office, which is abstractly a good thing, although certainly she’s not going to be an activist if it upsets the BIDs too much.
Media District emails about Andrews International Security contract — The Media District BID is in the process of hiring infamous private security monolith Andrews International as its security provider, to begin July 1. These are some emails about the process. The most interesting things here are the attachments, which include A/I’s standard contract as well as proposed pricing matrices and so on. Andrews International famously runs the infernal Hollywood BID Patrol for the even-more-infernal Hollwood Property Owners Alliance just North of the Media District, so everything about them is interesting. There is much more material to come regarding this matter, and I will write about it in detail as it comes in, but it’s essential enough that I thought I’d better publish what I had immediately.

So that’s the new stuff, all except for one little email which didn’t exactly fit into any of those categories. It appears to constitute attorney/client communications, and perhaps it was handed over in error. But legally handed over it was, so I’m publishing it, and you can see a copy and read all about it after the break!
Continue reading New Documents! East Hollywood BID Quarterly Reports, Media District BID Emails, Media District BID Materials About Andrews International Security Switcheroo Including Emails, Draft Contracts, Price Matrices, And So On! →

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, 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 →