Tag Archives: Laura Aflalo

How BIDological Freakshow Specimen Donald R. Duckworth Wrote A Bunch Of Letters Of Support For The Melrose BID — And Then The Property Owners Revolted When It Was Time To Renew The BID — So El Duckworth Told Them That The Letters Were Written By Paul Koretz And LAPD Captain Anthony Oddo And BID President Deny Weintraub — And Tried To Make Them Feel As If Hating The BID Meant Hating The City — And Hating The Cops — Which Might Be Standard Practice But It Is Still Sketchy As Hell

I know my readers eagerly await, nay, hunger, crave even, more news about Donald R. Duckworth,1 the Melrose BID‘s hatchet-faced goblin2 of an executive director. But you will recall that El Duckie essentially shut down my CPRA requests recently, to the point where I had to literally sue the literal freaking pants off the guy. And he knew he done wrong, so his BIDdie employers had to pay beaucoup de bucks for the error of his ways.

And because I am basically a naive optimistic believer in the good faith, honesty, and sense of fair play of my fellow human beings, I neglected to pin down this sclerotic old crow3 in the settlement with a CPRA response time-table. Which is why, even after his principals had to pay $13K to settle up his misdeeds, did he start right in again with his CPRA-flouting ways. Thus it was only yesterday, five months after I first made the request,4 that I finally received a significant stack of goodies from the Melrose BID.5 And thus the mockery of Donald R. Duckworth can finally recommence!

Now, back in January of last year, the Melrose BID was beginning its renewal process. And as part of the process, El Duckie was putting together a brochure to convince property owners to sign renewal petitions. And as part of the brochure assembly process Donald Duckworth solicited a letter of support from CD5 repster Paul Koretz and another letter from LAPD Wilshire Division CO Anthony Oddo. But he didn’t just solicit letters from these worthies, he actually wrote the letters for them.6

And, you know, I understand that this isn’t sketchy in and of itself, and it happens even in much more consequential circumstances. E.g. lawyers often submit proposed orders to judges, who have the option of signing them, editing them, or ignoring them. But cast your mind back to the golden days of last summer, when the Melrose BID was in open revolt against all manner of Duckwortharian shenanigans, like paying himself a damn fortune to do pretty much nothing, and spending $10K per month on the BID’s hilariously self-parodying blog, and so on.

And hostile anti-BID letters were flying this way, that way, and yonder way! Anat Escher wrote a letter! And Laura Aflalo wrote a letter! And Richard Jebejian wrote a letter! And this was all while the BIDdies were trying to collect enough petitions to move the renewal process to the next phase! And man, were they ever worried! About the petitions, that is, cause if these rebels had their way, the BID might not even be renewed!

So Duckworth wrote a response letter to the rebels! And then BID board president Deny Weintraub pretended that he wrote the letter that Duckworth wrote. Which is a not-unheard-of phenomenon amongst BID Board presidents! And in the letter that Duckworth wrote that Deny Weintraub pretended that he wrote, Duckworth cited the letter that Duckworth wrote that Paul Koretz pretended he wrote and also the letter that Duckworth wrote that Anthony Oddo pretended that he wrote. And he said to the rebels essentially that the cops loved the BID and Koretz loved the BID so who were they to not love the BID?!

But really he himself wrote all the love letters to the BID. So basically the whole thing was a really vigorous conversation between Donald Duckworth and his stable of sockpuppets! And at the end of it Melrose Avenue had their damn BID renewed for another ten years! Anyway, turn the page for some excerpts from this pernicious sockpuppetry and some metadata showing that El Duckie really did write everything!
Continue reading How BIDological Freakshow Specimen Donald R. Duckworth Wrote A Bunch Of Letters Of Support For The Melrose BID — And Then The Property Owners Revolted When It Was Time To Renew The BID — So El Duckworth Told Them That The Letters Were Written By Paul Koretz And LAPD Captain Anthony Oddo And BID President Deny Weintraub — And Tried To Make Them Feel As If Hating The BID Meant Hating The City — And Hating The Cops — Which Might Be Standard Practice But It Is Still Sketchy As Hell

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Open Rebellion In The Melrose BID! Duckworth On The Defensive!! Refuses To Give Board Email Addresses To Property Owners!!! Even Though He Already Gave Them To Me!!!! And Don’t Forget He And He Alone Got The Damn BID Sued!!!!! And For This They Are Paying Him $72,000 Per Year To Work 20 Hours Per Week???!?

Sadly, for he is one of the most satirogenic figures in all of BIDlandia, we have not heard much from pirate king Donald Duckworth around these parts lately except, of course, for the fact that he, complacently steeped in his outlaw ways, forced me to file a pair of writ petitions against two of his baby BIDs because he, complacently steeped in his unhinged arrogance, flat-out and unaccountably refuses to comply with his statutory obligations under the California Public Records Act1 even though, if the past is prologue,2 it’s very likely to cost his BIDs a lot of damn money that they can probably ill afford to waste.

But regardless of Cap’n Donald’s law-flouting noncompliance it is occasionally possible to obtain records, or at least emails, involving him by the simple expedient of getting them from the other side of the correspondence.3 And recently a friend of this blog got a small pile of emails between Mr. Don Duckworth and Los Angeles City Clerk staff, and you can read the whole set here on Archive.Org.4 And there’s pretty much interesting stuff in there, but tonight I’m focusing on just three items.

June 9, 2018 email from Don Duckworth to Laura Aflalo about record inspection — Melrose property owners Laura Aflalo and Richard Jebejian want to come inspect records. Don Duckworth says sure you can but why would you want to, isn’t it a waste of your time?

June 9, 2018 emails between Duckworth and Aflalo about her questions about BID operation — Like why do the BID bylaws violate the Brown Act? And why can’t she have the Board members’ email addresses? And why won’t Don Duckworth just answer the damn questions?!

June 9, 2018 Duckworth to Aflalo with a detailed breakdown of how he spends the BID’s money — It’s detailed and evasive at the same time, a Duckworthian superpower, evidently.

And turn the page for some commentary, some mockery, and some highly selected transcriptions of at least the first two items. The third is going to have to wait till another time because it’s getting late around here!
Continue reading Open Rebellion In The Melrose BID! Duckworth On The Defensive!! Refuses To Give Board Email Addresses To Property Owners!!! Even Though He Already Gave Them To Me!!!! And Don’t Forget He And He Alone Got The Damn BID Sued!!!!! And For This They Are Paying Him $72,000 Per Year To Work 20 Hours Per Week???!?

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