Tag Archives: Lorena Parker

Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Council

Buscaino Staffer And Erstwhile CD9 Candidate David Anthony Roberts Doesn’t Just Expedite The Usual City Permits And Similar Chump-Change Jive For His San Pedro Zillionaire BID Buddies, He Also Sends Them His Resume And Hits Them Up For A Job Using His Official City of Los Angeles Email Address, All While Running An Eponymous Freaking Lobbying Firm As A Side Gig

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In the high and far off times, O best beloved, there was a candidate for Los Angeles City Council District 9, endorsed by the L.A. Times in 2013 and a favorite of both Bernard Parks and Jan Perry. Well, nothing works out like one expects in this mean old world and in these latter days our hero, whose name, by the way, is David Anthony Roberts, rather than having his own council district to do with as he might please, is instead some kind of high mückety-mücklischer poo-bah type guy in Joe Buscaino‘s employ over at CD 15.

And of course, if you’re going to be on Joe Buscaino’s staff you’re going to spend a lot of time working with the San Pedro Historic Waterfront BID. It goes with the territory. If the BID or its constituent conspirators need to get criminal trash-dumping charges fixed or maybe if they need to get criminal dog-grooming charges fixed or, I don’t know, need some bodies weighted down and dumped into the deeps off Terminal 26 or something, CD15 staff are gonna get a call or an email from Lorena Parker, San Pedro BIDdie extraordinaire. And, just because it goes with the job and stuff, sometimes the staffie under the gun is going to be David Anthony Roberts.
Continue reading Buscaino Staffer And Erstwhile CD9 Candidate David Anthony Roberts Doesn’t Just Expedite The Usual City Permits And Similar Chump-Change Jive For His San Pedro Zillionaire BID Buddies, He Also Sends Them His Resume And Hits Them Up For A Job Using His Official City of Los Angeles Email Address, All While Running An Eponymous Freaking Lobbying Firm As A Side Gig →

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Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Government

Department Of Deja Voodoo: In August 2017 Lorena Parker Interceded On Behalf Of San Pedro Property Owner Linda Jackson To Avert Massive Fine For Illegal Use Of Property As Pet Grooming Facility — And 700 MB Of Other San Pedro BID Emails!

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The main thing here is to announce the publication of about 1500 emails between the City of LA and the San Pedro BID. These run through January 25, 2018, and I’m not exactly sure where they start. There is some overlap here with earlier sets I’ve published. There is a lot of interesting stuff here, and I’ll be writing about a few episodes from time to time, starting today.

Perhaps you recall, dear reader, that in August 2016, San Pedro BID Executive Directrix Lorena Parker interceded with Joe Buscaino’s office on behalf of a member of her Board of Directors who was being criminally charged with not keeping his damn dumpsters clean. Now, normal people, like you, like I, tend to assume that it’s easier to not commit crimes than it is to commit them and then later try to fix them with our Council office, but, as the hallowed F. Scott Fitzgerald once noted:1
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves.

And that, quite evidently, has something to do with the fact that the thing with the criminal dumpsters was not a one-off event. Evidently interceding on behalf of the law-flouting zillionaires of San Pedro with CD15 repster Joe Buscaino’s office is something Lorena Parker is called upon to do regularly and often. Turn the page for the details of another episode, this one from August 2017, involving property owner Linda Jackson and some illegal pet-groomers.
Continue reading Department Of Deja Voodoo: In August 2017 Lorena Parker Interceded On Behalf Of San Pedro Property Owner Linda Jackson To Avert Massive Fine For Illegal Use Of Property As Pet Grooming Facility — And 700 MB Of Other San Pedro BID Emails! →

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Business Improvement Districts, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Public Records Act Pragmatics

How Kerry Freaking Morrison And A Bunch Of Other Bad BIDdies Helped Gut AB-1479, An Essential Improvement To The California Public Records Act, And It Seems, If You Believe Them (Although Why Would You, Really?), To Be All My Freaking Fault For Being So Freaking Mean To Them On The Freaking Internet And Being “Intent On Bringing [Their Freaking] Organization To Its [Freaking] Demise”!

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In February 2017, California State Assemblymember Rob Bonta of Oakland introduced AB-1479, which would have amended the California Public Records Act to allow judges to assess civil penalties of between $1,000 and $5,000 to punish flagrant CPRA violations. The bill sailed through the Assembly and almost made it through the Senate until a shitstorm of opposition, including from many Los Angeles BIDs, some of whom cited this blog as part of their parade of horribles, hired high-powered lobbyists Gonzalez, Hunter, Quintana, & Cruz and thereby sank the most important part of the bill, leaving only a tragic and fairly useless husk.

According to a staffer of Bonta’s who is in charge of this bill it’s essentially irredeemable this term, but they’re going to try again next year. Also, she was kind enough to send me a huge selection of letters received, pro and con, including a bunch from many of our Los Angeles BID friends. If we can’t beat them, well, at least we can publish their ravings and then mock them, right? The whole collection is available on Archive.Org. You should definitely read through it if you’re interested. The support letters are fabulous, but I don’t have time to discuss them here.

And turn the page for a more comprehensive description of exactly what happened, of how the BIDs, as usual, missed the whole point, and an exceedingly, painstakingly, obsessively, mockingly detailed analysis of this characteristically delusional, narcissistic, crackle-pated nonsense from our own Ms. Kerry Morrison.1 Continue reading How Kerry Freaking Morrison And A Bunch Of Other Bad BIDdies Helped Gut AB-1479, An Essential Improvement To The California Public Records Act, And It Seems, If You Believe Them (Although Why Would You, Really?), To Be All My Freaking Fault For Being So Freaking Mean To Them On The Freaking Internet And Being “Intent On Bringing [Their Freaking] Organization To Its [Freaking] Demise”! →

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Announcements, Business Improvement Districts

Ten Years Of San Pedro BID Minutes And Agendas Now Available

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Yesterday San Pedro BID Executive Directrix Lorena Parker was kind enough to send me minutes and agendas of the BID’s Board of Directors and its Marketing Committee from 2008 through the present. These are now available on Archive.Org to pique and sate your prurient and scholarly interest. These are mostly available as both MS Word documents and as PDFs. There is a ton of duplication for whatever reason, and I didn’t try to eliminate it. Also, I changed all the filenames by prepending the year to force rational sorting. I did not do the same for the months. Anyway, happy reading!
Continue reading Ten Years Of San Pedro BID Minutes And Agendas Now Available →

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Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Government

Apparently The City Attorney Of Los Angeles Has Opined That Business Improvement Districts Can’t Spend Money On Things That Aren’t In Their Management District Plans Unless The Plans Are Amended — At Least That’s What Shadowy BID Consultant Tara Devine Said In 2012 And Why Would She Lie About That?

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When business improvement districts in California are created, it’s required by the Property and Business Improvement District Act of 1994 at §36622 to file a so-called management district plan (MDP) with the City. This is meant to describe exactly what the BID is going to spend its money on, and it’s incorporated into the City’s Ordinance of Establishment, by which means the BID is created. It must be approved by the City Council, and the City has the power to revise it at will. The law makes it pretty clear that BIDs are actually forbidden from spending money on activities that aren’t in the MDP, although this facet of the law is generally ignored by the City.

And I’m presently working on a project that requires a close reading of invoices submitted by Tara Devine1 to the South Park BID over the years, which I obtained last month as the fruit of a CPRA request.2 Although 2012 is outside the timeline I’m working on, I was fascinated to note that Tara Devine seems to have been engaged by the South Park BID to actually write that year’s annual planning report3 for them. One of the things that she billed for in the course of performing her contract to do so Tara Devine billed for was a conversation with accounting firm RBZ, since merged with Armanino, and the subject of that conversation was wholly new to me:
Continue reading Apparently The City Attorney Of Los Angeles Has Opined That Business Improvement Districts Can’t Spend Money On Things That Aren’t In Their Management District Plans Unless The Plans Are Amended — At Least That’s What Shadowy BID Consultant Tara Devine Said In 2012 And Why Would She Lie About That? →

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Business Improvement Districts

San Pedro BID Renewal Petition Drive Materials Available Including Blank Petitions And Information Sheets

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This is just a quick note to announce the availability of a first batch of renewal materials from the San Pedro Historic Waterfront BID. They’re available here on Archive.Org. These are from the petition phase, where property owners holding $1 more than 50% of the total assessed value have to petition City Council to renew their BID. I’m collecting material like this as part of a long-term project to send out countermailings when BIDs send out mailings in favor of establishment or renewal. They uniformly send blank petitions on which the only choice is to vote yes. See this sample, for instance.1

I think it would be reasonable, effective, and entertaining to send out petitions on which the only choice was no. Of course, the way the petition phase of BID renewal/establishment is structured, not voting is the same as voting no, but nevertheless, it would be politically valuable to see that property owners have a choice. In order to carry out this plan, it will also be necessary to have quick access to natively formatted copies of the mailing lists that the BIDs use. They have historically been exceedingly reluctant to give up this information.

You may, e.g., recall the fact that it took me five months of nagging Miranda Paster at the City Clerk’s office to get her to give me the mailing list for Venice Beach.2 In that case as in every other case where I’ve actually managed to obtain mailing lists, it came too late to be useful. But at some point, and this is the main reason this is a long term project, I will have convinced the BIDdies3 that they have to hand over mailing lists promptly so that they’re still politically useful.

Naturally, when sending out alt-petition forms, it will be necessary to send out alt-propaganda. Just take a look at the San Pedro BID’s info sheet that they sent out along with the petitions. Count the lies. Imagine an alt-petition that not only invites property owners to vote no on the BID but also informs them what their money’s really being spent for like, e.g., to to keep criminals from getting arrested because they can’t put out their own damn dumpster fires!

Every BID wastes its money on exactly that kind of nonsense, never publicized. This kind of campaign probably won’t stop any BIDs, but it may well increase the protest rate, which would be interesting indeed! And turn the page for links to all the items with a little bit of commentary.
Continue reading San Pedro BID Renewal Petition Drive Materials Available Including Blank Petitions And Information Sheets →

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Announcements, Business Improvement Districts

More Than A Gigabyte Of Emails Between The San Pedro BID, The Port Of Los Angeles, And Some Other Random Seeming Parties!

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This is just a short note to announce the availability of 1.3 GB of emails between the San Pedro BID and the Port of LA. Because the Port has a seat on the BID’s Board of Directors this request picked up a ton of intra-Board emails, which are fascinating. Here’s a link to the goodies on Archive.Org:

This is a rich, rich release, and you’ll be hearing about details of it for many posts to come. But for now, turn the page to read some inconsequential silliness about the nonsense in Board President Jonathan Williams’s mouth in the cartoon at the head of this post.
Continue reading More Than A Gigabyte Of Emails Between The San Pedro BID, The Port Of Los Angeles, And Some Other Random Seeming Parties! →

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Business Improvement Districts

Business Improvement Districts Are Not Small Businesses According To The Small Business Administration, So Why Did Executive Directrix Lorena Parker Swear Under Penalty Of Perjury That The San Pedro BID Meets The Criteria?

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So it seems that the Port of Los Angeles has something called a small business enterprise program, in which they “provide additional opportunities for small businesses to participate in professional service and construction contracts … in a manner that reflects the diversity of the City of Los Angeles.” (see this PDF for details).

And it also seems that the San Pedro BID contracts with the Port every summer to run trolleys around downtown San Pedro. And as part of the contract, the Port requires the BID to complete an Affadavit of Company Status. And part of the status is whether the contractor is a small business or not. As you can see from the PDF or from the image that appears somewhere near this sentence, the San Pedro BID1 claims to be a “Very Small Business Enterprise” (“VSBE”) which is an extra-small form of Small Business Enterprise (“SBE”).

Screenshot of the San Pedro BID’s contractor status affadavit showing their claim to be a “very small business enterprise.”
Of course, with all such programs it’s important to have clear definitions, and the Port of LA has laid theirs out for all to see in the cover sheet of this certification form, which all contractors are required to fill out and submit with a notarized signature under penalty of perjury. The relevant bit for our purposes is:

The Harbor Department defines a SBE as an independently owned and operated business that is not dominant in its field and meets criteria set forth by the Small Business Administration in Title 13, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 121.

Continue reading Business Improvement Districts Are Not Small Businesses According To The Small Business Administration, So Why Did Executive Directrix Lorena Parker Swear Under Penalty Of Perjury That The San Pedro BID Meets The Criteria? →

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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

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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 →

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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.

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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. →

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