Tag Archives: José Huizar

Fashion District BID, Los Angeles City Council

Video Of Fashion District BID May 24, 2018 Annual Meeting Now Available Featuring Special Guest Stars Miguel Santiago, José Huizar, And Bryan Eck — Introduced By Chunk-Headed Yobbo Zillionaire And Em Freaking Cee Mark Chatoff — The Crap These People Say When They Think They’re Surrounded By Friends Is — Well, Just Watch It If You Have The Stomach

May 24, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

Look, kids, I know you appreciate what I do to provide you all with the freshest possible news about our fair City’s business improvement districts, but I don’t think anyone who doesn’t go to meetings with me really truly understands the pain involved.¹ Or at least that’s how I felt after sixty freaking five minutes² of the Fashion District BID‘s annual stakeholder extravaganza this morning. But I made it out alive and now you can watch the whole thing on YouTube or here on Archive.Org if you prefer.

José Huizar was the headliner, but there was a surprise appearance by Assemblymember Miguel Santiago which was very revealing, and a long spiel from City planner Bryan Eck, which was too technical for me to follow, but I am sure is of great interest to those who’re interested in that stuff. Huizar’s talk was loaded with his usual weirdo revelations, and I’m going to have to wait till Saturday to write about it because I surely don’t have time right now.

Miguel Santiago had a lot to say about the legislature’s current BID-endorsed effort to gut protections against the abuse of conservatorship, which BIDdies all over the state are salivating over as it will make it so everybody with a uniform, up to and including parking enforcement officers, will be able to take homeless people into custody and lock them up somewhere far, far away from here, for e.g. smelling funny or scaring the nice shiny customers or whatever. Of course, the City Council is all over this issue as well.

He had the nerve to thank the freaking Fashion District BID for their “advocacy around the issue of homelessness..”³ He also mentioned offhandedly that, as part of last year’s BID-induced gutting of AB-1479, which would have amended the California Public Records Act in a number of excellent ways, the Fashion District BID had phoned his office for help and he had helped them. Which is despicable in any number of ways, although not surprising.

As I said, I don’t have time to do justice to most of this material tonight, but if you turn the page, you’ll find links to the various speakers and a transcription of Miguel Santiago’s reprehensible little spiel.
Continue reading Video Of Fashion District BID May 24, 2018 Annual Meeting Now Available Featuring Special Guest Stars Miguel Santiago, José Huizar, And Bryan Eck — Introduced By Chunk-Headed Yobbo Zillionaire And Em Freaking Cee Mark Chatoff — The Crap These People Say When They Think They’re Surrounded By Friends Is — Well, Just Watch It If You Have The Stomach →

Street Vending

Zillion Dollar Woman Carol Schatz Tells California State Senate That The Downtown Center BID Has Been Working For Years To Help Street Vendors And That Senator Lara’s SB-946 Is Going To Make Things Worse For Everybody — Thirty Eight New Support/Oppose Letters Regarding Lara’s Bill Now Available

May 8, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

Last month I published five letters to the State Senate supporting Senator Ricardo Lara’s SB-946, the Sanity in Street Vending Bill which, by the way, cleared the Senate last week and is awaiting consideration by the Assembly. And yesterday I received 38 more support/oppose letters, and I’ve updated the Archive.Org page with copies of these.

The letters supporting Lara’s bill are excellent reading, of course,⁴ but, as usual, it’s the letters opposing it that really crack open the seething skulls of the zillionaire elites of this City⁵ and let the fevered fragments of their sociopathic ids spill out for all to see. And, of course, that’s what this blog is all about!

For whatever reason these letters, both in support and in opposition, borrow a lot from one another. And an interesting theme running through the opposition letters from Los Angeles is the idea that somehow our City’s various zillionaire-serving institutions have been working hard to help our City Council craft laws that help street vendors and that Lara’s bill would interfere with all this putative good will.

For instance, see this letter from Carol Schatz at the Downtown Center BID, of which there’s a transcription after the break:

Over the past several years, we have joined a broad coalition of organizations working with the Los Angeles City Council to create a sidewalk vending program that balances the needs of brick-and-mortar establishments with the needs of vendors.

Or check this little slab of puckey from the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, with contact person none other than former Huizar staffer Diana Yedoyan, evidently now shilling for the man out on Bixel Street:
Continue reading Zillion Dollar Woman Carol Schatz Tells California State Senate That The Downtown Center BID Has Been Working For Years To Help Street Vendors And That Senator Lara’s SB-946 Is Going To Make Things Worse For Everybody — Thirty Eight New Support/Oppose Letters Regarding Lara’s Bill Now Available →

Business Improvement Districts

How I Finally Had To Report The South Park BID To The District Attorney For Violating The Brown Act Even Though Board Member, Working Class Hero, And Self-Proclaimed Schmuck Paul Keller, The Finest Legal Mind Of His Generation, Screamed At Me In The Lobby That They Didn’t Actually Violate It

April 27, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

As you know well if you follow this blog, the South Park BID is severely challenged when it comes to Brown Act compliance. First, in February, they had deficient agenda descriptions, although they fixed that in response to my advice. Then last week they had a deficient teleconferencing option, which again they fixed in response to my advice. However, yesterday’s board meeting was held in a building where signing in as a condition of entry was mandatory. This is a clear violation of the Brown Act at §54953.3, which states unequivocally that:

A member of the public shall not be required, as a condition to attendance at a meeting of a legislative body of a local agency, to register his or her name, to provide other information, to complete a questionnaire, or otherwise to fulfill any condition precedent to his or her attendance.

Based on a previous visit to the building I suspected that they might require visitors to sign in, so I recorded the whole scene. I also determined to offer them a chance to avoid the violation by discussing it with the BIDdies if signing in was in fact required, which it was. The security guard didn’t have the BID’s phone number, so that was out.⁶

Anyway, while I was talking about it with the guard, South Park BID board member and self-proclaimed schmuck Paul Keller, the finest legal mind of his generation, came in and yelled at me for pressing the issue. His theory is that the law wasn’t violated because a signature was required to enter the building rather than the BID meeting. Maybe he wasn’t aware that his executive director, Ellen Salome Riotto,⁷ relies implicitly on my legal advice, with respect to the Brown Act anyway.

Far be it from me to say why he thinks this, him being the finest legal mind and all. Perhaps he’s basing it on the popular zillionaire legal maxim that any law that inconveniences even a single zillionaire must be unconstitutional. This is true, of course, at least $99\frac{44}{100}\%$ of the time, but not this particular time. On the other hand his rant suggests that the sign-in requirement wasn’t just another oversight, but actually constitutes BID policy.

Whatever was going on, I feel like they’ve had enough chances to mend their ways and have shown no interest in doing so. Hence I filed a complaint against them with the Public Integrity Division of the Los Angeles County District Attorney. Turn the page for a transcription, and stay tuned for details!
Continue reading How I Finally Had To Report The South Park BID To The District Attorney For Violating The Brown Act Even Though Board Member, Working Class Hero, And Self-Proclaimed Schmuck Paul Keller, The Finest Legal Mind Of His Generation, Screamed At Me In The Lobby That They Didn’t Actually Violate It →

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!

April 26, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

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:

YouTube: Part I • Part II
Archive.Org

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! →

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

April 13, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

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,⁸ 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 →

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!

April 11, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

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,⁹ 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! →

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!

March 4, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

The other day we wrote about Thursday’s fun-filled¹⁰ meeting of the Fashion District BID‘s most funnest committee ever, which is to say, the Marketing Committee.¹¹ Today I have a couple more interesting episodes to present to you!

First, Chardonnay-swilling scarf monster¹² Rena Leddy began a little discussion with her gang of half-witted henchwomen, notably Laurie Sale, Laurie Rosen, Linda Becker,¹³ Mark Levy,¹⁴ 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! →

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

February 1, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

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,¹⁵ 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,¹⁶ but at least they got José Huizar in all his freaking Councilmanic¹⁷ glory.

Of course I taped the whole damn thing, and you can watch it here.¹⁸ 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.¹⁹

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 Act²⁰ amended so that the the definition of “gravely disabled”²¹ includes refusing medical services. The whole mess can be found in CF 18-0002-S11.²² 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 →

Los Angeles City Council

Wesson, Cedillo, and Martinez Introduce Motion Instructing City Attorney To Write A Civil Rights Law Prohibiting Various Kinds Of Discrimination And Establishing A Commission To Enforce It — Demonstrating Yet Again How Our City Council Members Are Liars Even When Every Word Out Of Their Mendacious Mouths Is True

January 26, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

This is just a quick note to call attention to this motion, introduced in Council this morning by Herb Wesson, Gil Cedillo, and Nury Martinez (there’s a transcription of the PDF after the break). The motion, which has been assigned CF 18-0086, instructs the City Attorney with assistance from some other offices to draft a new civil rights law. The proposed law has two main parts.

First, it would prohibit “discrimination, prejudice, intolerance and bigotry that results in denial of equal treatment of any individual” and would do this by banning discrimination based on:

race
color
ethnicity
creed
age
national origin
citizenship status or perceived status
gender
gender identity or expression
sexual orientation or perceived orientation
disability
marital status
partnership status
employment status
source of income

in the areas of

employment
housing
medical services
businesses
other establishments²³

Second, it would establish a new commission, to be called the Civil and Human Rights Commission, which would enforce the law. Now, I am completely opposed to all these kinds of discrimination, and, as you might have guessed, I’m completely in favor of establishing any kind of new venue for me to complain about BIDs to.²⁴ However, as is so often the case with our City Council, things are probably not exactly what they seem to be on the surface.
Continue reading Wesson, Cedillo, and Martinez Introduce Motion Instructing City Attorney To Write A Civil Rights Law Prohibiting Various Kinds Of Discrimination And Establishing A Commission To Enforce It — Demonstrating Yet Again How Our City Council Members Are Liars Even When Every Word Out Of Their Mendacious Mouths Is True →

Lawsuits

City Of Los Angeles Poised To Spend $150,000 To Settle Street Vending Lawsuit Over Englander’s Opposition, Pending Only Garcetti’s Signature, Which It Seems Will Settle It For The Fashion District BID As Well

December 6, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

You can read up on the background in this 2015 LA times story and also in our multiple stories on the subject. Most of the paper filed in the case is available here.

Towards the end of September the parties to this monumental lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles and the Fashion District BID filed papers with the court announcing that a settlement was in the works and asking that the calendar be put on hold.

Today and yesterday a few things happened with respect to this process. Today the parties filed a status report with the court announcing that the settlement process was on track but they needed until December 30 to work out the details. This was closely followed by an order from Judge André Birotte extending the time as requested.

More interestingly, though, yesterday the City Council went into closed session to discuss the terms of the settlement.²⁵ They passed this motion authorizing the expenditure of $150,000 to fund the settlement, at least some of which is going, with good cause, straight to Carol Sobel. Interestingly, and the reason’s not clear, Mitch Englander voted against the motion.

It’s also interesting that the motion was put forth by Paul Krekorian and seconded by Paul Koretz. It’s my unscientific impression that in the ordinary course of events this would have been moved by José Huizar, since the events which precipitated the case happened in his district. Who knows what’s going on? Maybe it’s because Krekorian and Koretz are on the committee which gave its preliminary approval to the motion? Anyway, the whole matter is in Garcetti’s hands now, and he has until December 18 to sign off. There’s a transcription of the motion after the break.
Continue reading City Of Los Angeles Poised To Spend $150,000 To Settle Street Vending Lawsuit Over Englander’s Opposition, Pending Only Garcetti’s Signature, Which It Seems Will Settle It For The Fashion District BID As Well →