Tag Archives: Neighborhood Councils

David Ryu Introduces Motion In Council This Morning Seeking To Completely Reform Neighborhood Council Subdivision Process — Only Three Subdivision Elections Would Be Allowed Every Four Years — Starting In 2022 — Ten Thousand Minimum Stakeholders Per Subdivided NC — Failed Subdivisions Could Only Try Again After A Minimum Twelve Year Wait And Retry Is Not Guaranteed — Some Proposed Subdivisions May Never Get An Election Just Because Others Are Larger — Mandatory Pre-Subdivision Mediation With DONE — ICK!

After yesterday’s debacle at the Budget and Finance committee where Jose Huizar and David Ryu’s turd1 of a motion funding an online voting pilot in neighborhood council elections next year passed even though all four members present said explicitly and at great length that they hated it2 I guess I wasn’t expecting any kind of sanity to prevail in the fraught arena of neighborhood council politics.

And this morning’s crop of email much more than confirmed that dark prediction. Included there in the usual packet of motions filed in Council, there amongst the usual inconsequential nonsense like attempts to outlaw parking RVs on another two blocks in Venice and whatnot appeared this tyrannical slab of class warfare by formerly sane3 councilmember David Ryu.

This motion is memorialized in CF 12-1681-S3 if you want to follow it, and you should.There’s a complete transcription after the break, and here are a few of the more egregious proposals:

✰ Subdivision elections would be held only every four years starting in 2022.

✰ There would only be three subdivision elections allowed in each cycle.

✰ If more than three apply in a given election year only the three largest by population would have elections. This means that as long as there are three larger every four years, some neighborhoods could never hold an election whether or not they met all the other criteria.

✰ Required mediation with existing neighborhood councils before a subdivision election could proceed.

Oh, and for the record, the reason David Ryu thinks we need this putatively reformist crapola is because the five subdivision elections already held ” have generated unnecessary discord in neighborhoods.” The fact that he thinks this is a bad thing is very revealing. What are we, children who must be kept calm by our parents? Is it ever a bad time to quote Fredrick Douglass?4

It’s no coincidence that any one of the proposals would have killed the Skid Row Neighborhood Council Subdivision in its cradle before it even got to an election. Of course the city’s zillionaires would have greatly preferred this because it would have prevented their exposure as evil puppetmasters. Almost every law we have has been adjusted, tweaked, and refined to give zillionaires full control over everyone else without having to expose themselves.

The SRNC debacle was a rare exception, not in the sense that the zillionaires lost the battle. At least for now they won it. But because they had to expose the ways in which they wield their power and win every battle. If this motion Ryu’s proposing takes effect that’ll never happen again.5 Turn the page for a transcription.
Continue reading David Ryu Introduces Motion In Council This Morning Seeking To Completely Reform Neighborhood Council Subdivision Process — Only Three Subdivision Elections Would Be Allowed Every Four Years — Starting In 2022 — Ten Thousand Minimum Stakeholders Per Subdivided NC — Failed Subdivisions Could Only Try Again After A Minimum Twelve Year Wait And Retry Is Not Guaranteed — Some Proposed Subdivisions May Never Get An Election Just Because Others Are Larger — Mandatory Pre-Subdivision Mediation With DONE — ICK!

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Jose Huizar, David Ryu, and Paul Koretz Introduce Motion In Council Ordering City Clerk To Report Back On How To Hire Everyone Counts To Run Online Voting Pilot In Ten Neighborhood Council Elections In 2019

Background: You can read my previous stories on the Skid Row Neighborhood Council formation effort and also see Jason McGahan’s article in the Weekly and Gale Holland’s article in the Times for more mainstream perspectives.

This is the very shortest of notes to announce that on Thursday esteemed councilcreeps Huizar, Ryu, and Koretz introduced a motion in Council ordering the City Clerk to report back in 60 days about the feasibility of hiring discredited election software vendor Everyone Counts to run an online voting pilot program in 2019 to be used in ten neighborhood council elections. The associated council file is CF 1022-S3.

Of course you will recall how the morally bankrupt Jose Huizar forced through a last-minute ordinance allowing online voting to be used in last year’s Skid Row Neighborhood Council subdivision election for the sole purpose of stealing the election. This is famously now the subject of a monumental lawsuit.

Since then responsibility for administering NC elections has been removed from the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment and given to the Clerk’s office. The Clerk, famously, has way higher standards for election security than DONE, so it’s disconcerting to see City Council ordering them to continue to deal with the shady and discredited Everyone Counts. Anyway, turn the page for the complete text of the motion. This one definitely bears watching.
Continue reading Jose Huizar, David Ryu, and Paul Koretz Introduce Motion In Council Ordering City Clerk To Report Back On How To Hire Everyone Counts To Run Online Voting Pilot In Ten Neighborhood Council Elections In 2019

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Video Of First Interested Persons Meeting Now Available — See John Howland And Bill Delvac Discuss Whether Neighborhood Council Assent Is Necessary For Development Projects (TL,DR: Yes). This Revelation Makes BID Control Of DLANC Seem Even More Unsavory Than It Already Did

Yesterday afternoon the Ethics Commission held the first in a series of three meetings to gather even more input from interested parties concerning proposed revisions to the Municipal Lobbying Ordinance. I recorded the whole thing for posterity and you can watch it here:

I’ll be commenting on this and the next meeting1 from time to time, and today I just want to point out an interesting response from seasoned Los Angeles lobbyists John Howland and Bill Delvac2 to an interesting question from Ethics Commission ED Heather Holt. One of the proposals on the table is a requirement that lobbyists report attempts to influence neighborhood councils in addition to the other City agencies they’re already required to disclose information about. In the context of this discussion, Holt asked the lobbyists:

Just out of curiosity, for development projects, is there a general sense that you need a neighborhood council buy-in for it to go anywhere?

In response to this, über-düber lobbyist John Howland smirked and emitted an inarticulate snort, seemingly in disbelief that the boss of the Ethics Commission could ask such a silly question, before saying “yes.” This response was echoed by Bill Delvac, with Howland interjecting the occasional assent:

BD: We’re happy when we get to neutral.
JH: Yeah. Well, yeah.
BD:
[Unintelligible] … the Charter and the Code, they’re really not binding. But it matters more to some Councilmen [sic] than it does to others and often [unintelligible] you wanna get their support. I wouldn’t have written the Charter that way, but …

This interchange certainly supports the Ethics Commission’s proposal to subject lobbying directed at neighborhood councils to disclosure, and, interestingly, there didn’t seem to be any actual opposition to this proposal from the lobbyists. So maybe, no matter what gets compromised out of the rest of the proposals, this one will make it through the gauntlet, which is a good thing.3

And turn the page for a discussion of some potential implications, possibly as-yet unconsidered, of this proposal having to do with the fact that, probably uniquely among NCs, the DLANC has a ton of BID staffers on its board of directors.
Continue reading Video Of First Interested Persons Meeting Now Available — See John Howland And Bill Delvac Discuss Whether Neighborhood Council Assent Is Necessary For Development Projects (TL,DR: Yes). This Revelation Makes BID Control Of DLANC Seem Even More Unsavory Than It Already Did

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In Defense Of Counting Neighborhood Councils As City Agencies In The Context Of The Municipal Lobbying Ordinance

As you may well know, the City Ethics Commission is in the process of revising the Municipal Lobbying Ordinance. The CEC’s policy staff, led by heroic and long-suffering director Arman Tarzi, has compiled a fantastically useful report on the proposals, and a series of three interested persons meetings are scheduled starting tomorrow to gather even more input.

Right now it looks like at least four of five Commissioners are leaning towards giving the lobbyists whatever random nonsense they request, so your comments and input are essential to the future of the City at this point. Whether or not you can attend any of the meetings, I hope you will be able to send comments to ethics.policy@lacity.org, probably before October 17, which is when the Commission is scheduled to discuss the matter. And I’m also writing posts on particular parts of the proposal which seem important. This one, on including neighborhood councils as City agencies for lobbying disclosure purposes, is the third in the series, and the other two are:

And read on for a description of the proposal and reasons to support it!
Continue reading In Defense Of Counting Neighborhood Councils As City Agencies In The Context Of The Municipal Lobbying Ordinance

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Tales From The BONC-Side Part 1: In Which Scott Gray And Debbie Welsch Of Capital Foresight Reveal Themselves As Whiny Ignorant Little Liars And John Howland, Formerly Of The Central City Association, Reveals That He May Be Whiny, He May Be Ignorant, He May Be Little, But He’s Not A Liar, At Least Not When He Would Violate LAMC §48.04(B) By Lying

Background: You can read my previous stories on the Skid Row Neighborhood Council formation effort and also see Gale Holland’s article in the Times for a more balanced perspective.

As you may recall, I’ve been tracking the illegal lobbying carried out by and on behalf of various shady downtown zillionaires with the support and connivance of the staff of various downtown business improvement districts in opposition to the Skid Row Neighborhood Council formation effort. As part of their creepy conspiracy, the usual motley crew of zillionaires and zillionaire-identified-groupies showed up at the March 20, 2017 meeting of the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (affectionately known as BONC) to speak what passes for their minds in zillionairelandia.

In the ordinary course of events, BONC posts audio of their meetings on the open internet, but, for whatever reason, when I took a look a few weeks ago, the March 20 meeting did not appear. After a few weeks worth of pleasant emails with various City employees, though, the audio has now been posted. I also published it on Archive.Org along with a copy of the minutes so you can follow along if you wish.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff in there, some of it inspiring, most of it horrifying in that special spine-tingly manner that glimpses into the seething caucasian-hot liquid id-core of the local politics of resentment are wont to horrify. I plan to write occasionally on episodes from this meeting, as the mood strikes, and today’s story concerns comments by Scott Gray and Debbie Welsch of shadowy zillionaire real estate conspiracy Capital Foresight,1 and shadowy lobbyist-to-the-zillionaires, John Howland.2

The gist of the matter is this, though. Debbie Welsch and Scott Gray told lie after lie, some of them beyond surreal in their fundamental disconnect with reality. On the other hand, John Howland, who at the time of the meeting was employed as a registered lobbyist with CCA, mostly, although he is quite an evil fellow indeed, told the truth. This is arguably less due to his inherent honesty than it is to the fact that registered lobbyists are required to sign a form upon registration acknowledging that they are aware of LAMC §48.04(B), which states that:

No lobbyist or lobbying firm subject to the requirements of the Article shall…[f]raudulently deceive or attempt to deceive any City official with regard to any material fact pertinent to any pending or proposed municipal legislation.

Anyway, after the break you will find embedded audio and transcriptions of the comments of all three of these dimwits, along with as much detailed mockery as I was able to type before I had to run off to the loo to eat lunch backwards​.
Continue reading Tales From The BONC-Side Part 1: In Which Scott Gray And Debbie Welsch Of Capital Foresight Reveal Themselves As Whiny Ignorant Little Liars And John Howland, Formerly Of The Central City Association, Reveals That He May Be Whiny, He May Be Ignorant, He May Be Little, But He’s Not A Liar, At Least Not When He Would Violate LAMC §48.04(B) By Lying

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The Paranoid Prophecies of Downtown Russell Brown, July 2010 Edition

Downtown Russell Brown stumping for Jose Huizar.
Downtown Russell Brown stumping for Jose Huizar.
Our fateful faithful correspondent recently completed a magnanimously opalesque tour de farce of historicalisticism concerning a wildly successful 2010 plot by a bunch of bitchy BIDsies along with then-councildude Eric Garcetti, le petit ami chéri de toutes les dames mignonnes des BIDs, to ruthlessly destroy a perfectly reasonable proposal from the City Ethics Commission to make it easier to figure out who’s supposed to register as a lobbyist. Well, as part of his research he ended up transcribing not just the nonsense spewed by best-BIDdie-buddies Garcetti and Morrison, but a bunch of other tangential nonsense as well. Some of it’s fascinating in its own right, and we’re planning to write about it from time to time, starting this evening with a pluperfect portion of paranoia from Downtown L.A.’s own pallidly prophetic Russ Brown himself!

Historically-minded observers of the Downtown Los Angeles politico-sociologico-ethnomethodologico-cultural scene will remember Mr. Brown as the erstwhile boss-boy of the Historic Downtown BID, ignominiously forced out of his BIDship by the Board for reasons that surely aren’t being stated, and then ignominiously reinstalled two weeks later when Jose Huizar pitched a fit for reasons that surely also aren’t being stated and then… well, you get the idea. These days he’s doing something with neighborhood councils and remains the subject of artful advocacy blog Step Down Russ Brown which, though currently dormant, may any day rise, like Lazarus, from its pallet to scourge yet again the corridors and crannies of Downtown zillionaire-dom. Enough of that, though. Turn the page for the quotes!
Continue reading The Paranoid Prophecies of Downtown Russell Brown, July 2010 Edition

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