Tag Archives: Illegal Dumping

Los Angeles City Government, Los Angeles County Government

MK.Org Exclusive! — On June 7, 2019 Los Angeles County Health Officer Muntu Davis Wrote To The City Of Los Angeles Telling Them To Clean Up Their Damn Act With Respect To Illegal Dumping Of Trash And Sanitation Around Homeless Encampments — This Was Duly Reported In The Los Angeles Times On June 8 — But They Did Not Publish The Letter Itself — Because “The County Declined To Release” It — We, However, Have Obtained A Copy! — And It Is Available To You Right Here! — Dear Readers! — For Download!

June 15, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

No one reading this blog needs a recap of the City’s persistent homelessness crisis or the pain, suffering, torment, and disease caused by the City government’s inaction and worse, although this LA Times editorial lays out the basic facts well. And on June 7, 2019, as reported by the Times on June 8, the County of Los Angeles public health officer Muntu Davis wrote a scathing letter to the City memorializing a June 5 meeting about illegal trash dumping in Skid Row, homelessness, associated health dangers, and the City’s utter failure in dealing with these matters.

For as-yet-unknown reasons, the Times did not obtain a copy of the letter itself, offering nothing more by way of explanation than the laconic statement that “[t]he county’s Department of Public Health declined to release the letter”. Well, this aggression will not stand, man, so I asked the County to cough up this essential piece of our City’s history and, yesterday, surprisingly quickly, they actually did! You can get your own copy of the letter here, and there’s a transcription below. They also sent an unasked-for but nevertheless welcome letter from Davis to the City about typhus outbreaks, sent in March 2019, and you can get a copy of that one here.

The June 7 letter is an essential document. Davis essentially lambastes the City for their failure to provide basic tools of sanitation — toilets, sinks, showers, trash receptacles — to people living on the street. He also notes the City’s failure to deal with illegal trash dumping and also notes that encampments are often very wrongly blamed for this severe problem, a fact that I have never seen any evidence that anyone from the City understands.

I don’t know what if any role this letter played in the City’s very recent conversion to many of the essential principles espoused by the heroic Services Not Sweeps Coalition. I suspect that that’s been longer in coming and that relentless and unanswerable pressure from activists is more responsible, although I don’t know. The letter, anyway, certainly didn’t hurt. It’s well worth the time it will take you to read it.
Continue reading MK.Org Exclusive! — On June 7, 2019 Los Angeles County Health Officer Muntu Davis Wrote To The City Of Los Angeles Telling Them To Clean Up Their Damn Act With Respect To Illegal Dumping Of Trash And Sanitation Around Homeless Encampments — This Was Duly Reported In The Los Angeles Times On June 8 — But They Did Not Publish The Letter Itself — Because “The County Declined To Release” It — We, However, Have Obtained A Copy! — And It Is Available To You Right Here! — Dear Readers! — For Download! →

Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Government

In August 2016 Lorena Parker Of The San Pedro Historic Waterfront BID Interceded With Joe Buscaino’s Staff To Try To Fix Pending Criminal Charges Against Property Owners, Probably Including BID Board President Eric Eisenberg, Stemming From Ongoing Unsanitary Dumpster Conditions, Which Seems Not Only Unethical, But Also Like An Illegal Use Of Assessment Funds

June 26, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

In July 2016, San Pedro Historic Waterfront BID executive directrix Lorena Parker contacted CD15 staffers Ryan Ferguson and Jacob Haik¹ apparently in an attempt to have them fix pending citations and criminal charges against local property owners, possibly including BID board president Eric Eisenberg, stemming from sanitation violations involving dumpsters. You can read the details in this email chain (as always, there’s a transcription after the break).² This episode quite possibly involves the dumpster next to the Cabrillo Hotel, the filthy state of which has been obsessively³ chronicled by Bruce Ecker at The Renaissance Dump website.

We here at MK.Org have discussed at length the much-violated requirement that business improvement districts only spend their money on activities that are approved by the City Council at the time the BIDs are established.⁴ These preapproved activities are enshrined in the so-called Management District Plan. The San Pedro BID’s MDP can be found here (Careful — huge PDF download). You can read it over and over again and you will find no mention whatsoever of paying Lorena Parker a salary so that she can try to get Joe Buscaino’s staff to try to make criminal charges go away.

And why would anyone think this is OK? Aside from the fact that having Lorena Parker act as a fixer isn’t listed in the MDP, there’s the simple fact that if people have criminal charges pending against them based on the unsanitary state of their dumpsters, they ought not to be seeking intercession to halt the proceedings. Instead, they ought to clean up their damn dumpsters. This is citizenship 101.⁵ And the elected officials of the City ought to be enforcing the City’s laws for the benefit of its citizens, rather than meeting with zillionaires in an attempt to subvert them.
Continue reading In August 2016 Lorena Parker Of The San Pedro Historic Waterfront BID Interceded With Joe Buscaino’s Staff To Try To Fix Pending Criminal Charges Against Property Owners, Probably Including BID Board President Eric Eisenberg, Stemming From Ongoing Unsanitary Dumpster Conditions, Which Seems Not Only Unethical, But Also Like An Illegal Use Of Assessment Funds →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Zarcone Transferred from Hollywood to 77th Street Division, Late-Night BID Patrol Hours Torpedoed. Steve Seyler: “It Sort of Took us Off Our Mission…”

March 10, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Steve Seyler at the March 8, 2016 CHC Board meeting, announcing that there will be no late-night BID Patrol.

Recall that, at its Board meeting on February 18, 2016, the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance spent over 40 minutes discussing LAPD’s request to have the BID Patrol work until 4 a.m. on weekends. Andrews International VP Bill Farrar recounted a meeting with CD13 representative Mitch O’Farrell, claiming that the CM was eager to cover the costs. This led me to write to O’Farrell opposing this plan. Now, at the Central Hollywood Coalition Board meeting that took place on Tuesday, March 8, Steve Seyler and Kerry Morrison announced that, not only are the plans to extend the BID Patrol’s hours cancelled, but Peter Zarcone, formerly CO of LAPD’s Hollywood Division, has been transferred to 77th Street.
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