Tag Archives: Los Angeles Magazine

You Know Those Illegal Anti-Homeless Planters All Over Venice — And No One Knows Who Installed Them — Or Why The Cops Won’t Remove Them — Or Arrest Anyone — Well Here Is Proof That Venice Stakeholders Association Boss Mark Ryavec Worked With Mike Bonin Staffie Taylor Bazley — And LAPD Officers — And Bazley Worked With LA Sanitation — And Brian Freaking Buchner — To Coordinate Encampment Sweeps With Planter Installation — And Taylor Bazley Knew They Were Illegal — And Bazley Told Constituents That The Council Office Wasn’t Involved — And Taylor Bazley Is A Liar! — Of Course We Knew That But Now We Have Proof!

The anti-homeless planters placed all over Venice by hitherto unknown parties have received a great deal of media coverage in the last year, from the Hollywood Reporter to LA Magazine to Capital and Main to KFI radio to Venice Update. There’s no question that these planters are illegal. The Los Angeles Municipal Code at §62.118.2 requires revocable permits for any installations on public sidewalks. Los Angeles Magazine has reported that not only do these planters not have permits, but that the City’s Bureau of Engineering states that they would not issue permits for them.1

And although that Venice Update story names Venice Gauleiter Mark Ryavec as a funding source for the planters at Lincoln and Palms, the other stories are careful either to avoid saying who’s responsible for planter installation or else to state explicitly that no one knows who’s putting them in. It seems obvious that some factions in the City of Los Angeles have been involved in planter installation, though. LA Sanitation’s sweeps of encampments in places targeted for planters seem coordinated with installation, and the LAPD seems always to have representatives present when the sweeps are happening.

And if you’re familiar with the way the City of Los Angeles is run you know that it is actually not possible that projects like these can be implemented, that there could be any kind of coordination between departments, that illegal planters could persist, without at least the passive support of the local Councilmember. In the case of Venice, which is in CD11, that is Mike Bonin. And yet Bonin’s office has consistently denied that it is involved at all.

For instance, in November 2018, KFI reported that “A spokesman for Councilman Mike Bonin, who represents the area, said he was not aware of any city department’s involvement in the placing of the planter boxes.” In May 2018 Bonin staffie Taylor Bazley explicitly told a concerned resident, Adam Smith, that CD11 “certainly [is] not involved” in planter installation. Here you can watch Chief Michel Moore stating that the planters are not an area of LAPD responsibility.

However, an email conversation that I recently obtained from the City via the California Public Records Act shows conclusively that both Bonin’s unnamed spokesperson and his loyal staffie Taylor Bazley were lying when they said CD11 was not involved. Bazley was involved, Mark Ryavec was involved, and LAPD officers James Roberts, James Setzer, Javier Ramirez, and Kristan Delatori were involved.

Michel Moore may not have been lying when he said that LAPD wasn’t responsible for planters, but these emails show that he was at least misinformed or uninformed by his subordinates at Pacific Division. For instance, LAPD Captain James Roberts enlisted Mark Ryavec’s aid in asking Taylor Bazley to authorize LAPD to move homeless people away from an installation site.2 These emails are evidence, therefore, that multiple City offices are working together to violate the law in order to placate angry housedwellers and that at least Mike Bonin’s office is lying about it.

And there’s a lot of other important information here. For instance, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority is required by City protocol to participate in all encampment sweeps in the City. They’re widely touted as playing “a critical role in minimizing any negative health effects in our communities, while also offering our homeless neighbors access to a path out of homelessness.” Bazley, however, in an email to anti-homeless psychopath Mark Ryavec, describes their role quite differently: “LAHSA needs to attempt to demonstrate rendering of services by visiting the site 3 documented times”3 There’s a real contrast between “offering our homeless neighbors access to a path out of homelessness” and “attempt[ing] to demonstrate rendering of services.”

The emails also reveal the identities and email addresses of a number of NIMBY housedwellers from Venice besides Mark Ryavec who are involved in planter installations. Turn the page for a list of these haters as well as transcriptions of all the emails.
Continue reading You Know Those Illegal Anti-Homeless Planters All Over Venice — And No One Knows Who Installed Them — Or Why The Cops Won’t Remove Them — Or Arrest Anyone — Well Here Is Proof That Venice Stakeholders Association Boss Mark Ryavec Worked With Mike Bonin Staffie Taylor Bazley — And LAPD Officers — And Bazley Worked With LA Sanitation — And Brian Freaking Buchner — To Coordinate Encampment Sweeps With Planter Installation — And Taylor Bazley Knew They Were Illegal — And Bazley Told Constituents That The Council Office Wasn’t Involved — And Taylor Bazley Is A Liar! — Of Course We Knew That But Now We Have Proof!

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Judge Rozella Oliver Orders LAPD To Hand Over Michael Papayans’s Cell Phone For Forensic Analysis

For background take a look at this excellent article from the Times on this lawsuit. Also see here to download all pleadings in this case.

Maybe you recall that Lunada Bay Boy defendant Michael Papayans, buddy of Backstreet Boys and anger management dropout, has been unable to hand over his cell phone to the plaintiffs because the LAPD had it as evidence from when Michael Papayans and his mom got arrested for beating up a Mets fan in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium.

Well, all the parties asked Rozella Oliver to make the LAPD release it, and today she issued an order requiring them to do just that. They’re going to get his texts, his photos, his GPS records, every damn thing, including such deleted content as is still recoverable. This must be a horrifying prospect for the guy even though I have zero sympathy for him. He’s even got to pay for the data extraction.

There is, of course, a transcription of the PDF after the break. In other Lunada Bay Boys news, there’s a telephonic hearing with Judge Oliver scheduled for tomorrow at 10 a.m., so perhaps something interesting will come of that.
Continue reading Judge Rozella Oliver Orders LAPD To Hand Over Michael Papayans’s Cell Phone For Forensic Analysis

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The Fascinating Story Of How It Took Three Months And A Demand Letter From An Attorney To Get Rena Leddy To Disclose That The Fashion District BID Is Paying Steve Gibson Of Urban Place Consulting $215 Per Hour For BID Renewal Consulting, Which Is Less Than Larry Kosmont Gets But More Than Ed Henning

Late last year it occurred to me that BID consultants, who help BIDs with the City processes necessary to establish or renew a BID, are essentially engaging in lobbying activity as defined in the Municipal Lobbying Ordinance at LAMC §48.02 and yet none of them1 seemed to be registered with the Ethics Commission as required by LAMC §48.07(A).

I then spent months piecing together over 100 pages of evidence to show that BID consultant Tara Devine had violated this law. Subsequently it occurred to me that the contracts that the consultants sign with BIDs would provide essential evidence that they’d been acting as lobbyists, so I determined to request these from many renewing BIDs. This led me to the discovery, thanks to the incomparable Laurie Hughes of the Gateway to LA BID, that GTLA’s BID consultant, Larry Kosmont, actually was registered as a lobbyist and had disclosed his BID consultancy as lobbying in his required reporting. The San Pedro BID is also up for renewal, and has recently released a fairly complete set of BID renewal records.

This brings us to the Fashion District. On February 21, 2017 I emailed Rena Leddy to request, among other material:

… all records associated with the renewal process, including but not limited to communications between the BID and the consultant and/or the engineer, contracts with and invoices from the consultant or the engineer, materials prepared by the consultant or the engineer for the renewal process, databases and mailing lists prepared or used by the consultant or the engineer, and also any communications between the consultant and the engineer that aren’t already responsive to the first part of this request.

The story of what happened after that stretched out over three months and generated many many megabytes of discussion. Read on for a (far too) detailed and exceedingly well-documented narrative recounting, complete with a happy, happy ending!
Continue reading The Fascinating Story Of How It Took Three Months And A Demand Letter From An Attorney To Get Rena Leddy To Disclose That The Fashion District BID Is Paying Steve Gibson Of Urban Place Consulting $215 Per Hour For BID Renewal Consulting, Which Is Less Than Larry Kosmont Gets But More Than Ed Henning

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