Tag Archives: Romaine Street

CD13

A Detailed Analysis Of The Cash Flowing In And Out Of Mitch O’Farrell’s Public Benefits Slush Fund — Developers Pay Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars For The Privilege Of Building Out-Of-Code Projects — O’Farrell Spends The Money On Projects That Please His Political Supporters — It Seems Unlikely That There’s Any Net Benefit To Anyone But Zillionaires — This Is No Way To Run A City

January 15, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

A developer wants to build a building that’s taller than the local zoning allows, or has less parking than required. Maybe there are pesky historical structures on the proposed site or the new building will attract enough additional traffic to gridlock the streets around it. There are any number of reasons why a given building might not be allowed. It’ll still get built, though.

The developer will just have to pay hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars to the appropriate councilmember to get it approved. And these payments are inextricably integrated into our City’s building approval process. One might even suspect, and not without reason, that the ultimate purpose of zoning codes in Los Angeles is to induce developers to pay for exceptions to them.

And it’s not bribery, at least not the illegal kind. The CM doesn’t get to pocket the money. Instead it goes into one of the dozens of City trust funds set up specifically for receiving such monies. Just for instance, Mitch O’Farrell, CD13 repster, has one called the “Council District 13 Public Benefits Trust Fund.” It’s authorized by the Los Angeles Administrative Code at §5.414 ” for the receipt, retention and disbursement of gifts, contributions and bequests for the support of police and community activities within Council District 13.”

The fees are imposed on developers by the City Council at the behest of the relevant CM. To see an example of how this works take a look at CF 07-1379, wherein some developers sought permission to build another mixed-use monstrosity in Hollywood, this one at 1540 N. Vine Street.¹ The developers got what they came for, which was Ordinance Number 178,836, authorizing construction. And in there, buried among other conditions, will be found paragraphs 26 and 27, stating how much money they’re going to give to Mitch O’Farrell in exchange for their zoning changes:
Continue reading A Detailed Analysis Of The Cash Flowing In And Out Of Mitch O’Farrell’s Public Benefits Slush Fund — Developers Pay Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars For The Privilege Of Building Out-Of-Code Projects — O’Farrell Spends The Money On Projects That Please His Political Supporters — It Seems Unlikely That There’s Any Net Benefit To Anyone But Zillionaires — This Is No Way To Run A City →

Business Improvement Districts

Newly Obtained Media District Security Logs Show Anti-Food-Coalition Hysteria To Be Even More Utterly Unfounded Than Previously Suspected

August 8, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

A 2014 surveillance photo of the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition feeding at Sycamore and Romaine.

I recently obtained about 140 hand-written daily logs prepared by the Hollywood Media District BID’s security guards. These are also available via Archive.Org, which has the advantage that the whole set can be downloaded using BitTorrent. The set is not complete, and it mostly comprises swing shift logs, but I didn’t select these at all. I just scanned them in the order in which they were provided to me.

It’s been known for a while now that Universal Protection Service has carried out a years-long surveillance operation against the Media District’s perennial bête noire, the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition, looking for any evidence whatsoever to use in the NIMBY neighbors, the City government, and the BID’s crazed campaign against them, their byzantine conspiracies with the LAPD and others in City Government, their allies’ unavailing 2011 lawsuit against the Food Coalition, and so on. These logs are interesting because they expose some contextually surprising results of this surveillance, namely that the intersection of Sycamore and Romaine seems to be the safest area in the entire Media District BID. Despite the intense, hours-long nightly surveillance, nothing illegal ever seems to happen there. Some samples follow. Note that these are also unselected. They comprise all swing shift logs from February 2016 that mention the Coalition’s food truck at all. They’re representative, too, in the sense that the pattern holds across all the logs I looked at:
Continue reading Newly Obtained Media District Security Logs Show Anti-Food-Coalition Hysteria To Be Even More Utterly Unfounded Than Previously Suspected →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition Trials Relocation to Hollywood and Bronson, Kerry Morrison Initiates Covert Back-Channel Campaign to Subvert, Undermine, and Thwart Efforts

May 22, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Kerry Morrison at the May 18, 2016 meeting of the Board of Directors of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, describing to her zillionaire overlords how she will use every last drippy little droplet of her political juice to thwart the GWHFC in every possible way.

At the HPOA Board Meeting on Thursday, May 18, 2016, Kerry Morrison had a lot to say about the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition. In particular, the Food Coalition, which reportedly had been considering a move from its long-time feeding site at the corner of Sycamore and Romaine in Southwest Hollywood, has been, according to Kerry, trying out feeding people at the Salvation Army facility at Hollywood and Bronson. If you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing efforts by the zillionaire elite of Los Angeles to torpedo the GWHFC by any means necessary it will come as no surprise to you that Kerry’s little speech about this was filled with misrepresentations and promises to stop this development if it’s at all possible to do so. We will run through her account one piece at a time, and you can watch and listen along here. As always, a complete transcription of Kerry’s remarks may be found at the end of the post.
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Hollywood BID Patrol

BID Patrol Wakeup Call at Sunset and Vine Captured on Video this Morning

February 27, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

BID Patrol officer Mike Ayala (badge #107), prompted by a complaint from Starbucks, encourages a homeless woman to leave the corner of Sunset and Vine.

This morning at about 8:00 a.m. BID Patrol officer Mike Ayala (badge #107) and his partner, whose name we don’t yet know, told a woman camped out at the Southeast corner of Sunset and Vine that she’d have to move on because the management of the Starbucks there had complained. Our correspondent happened to be walking by and caught the last nine minutes of the incident on video. Naturally, not much happened. Even the BID Patrol is going to think twice about arresting someone on a nonsense LAMC 41.18(d) charge while on camera. There were two interesting things about the episode, though.
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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition Planning Move to Hollywood and Gower; HPOA Security on Alert

February 11, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

The Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition Kitchen at 1106 N. Cahuenga Boulevard.

Yesterday, while perusing the agenda of the January HPOA meeting, which I wasn’t able to attend, I noticed the interesting statement that the “Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition [is] seeking new location within Hollywood Entertainment District BID.” This was in the Security Subcommittee report, because the GWHFC in the eyes of the HPOA comprises (to paraphrase Ted Landreth) “enemies of the people.” Well, I hadn’t heard about this, and made a note to look into it. And, as it happens, I was over at the CD4 Hollywood Field Office this morning scanning some emails for a whole different project¹ when I came across this email chain between Ted Landreth of the GWHFC, Sarah Dusseault (CM Ryu’s Chief of Staff), Nikki Ezhari (CD4 Hollywood Field Deputy), and others, announcing the Food Coalition’s planned move to a location near Hollywood and Gower! They’re raising funds to buy property (give generously here) and are more than 25% of the way to their goal. Details on their plans for the property and some other comments after the break.
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Business Improvement Districts, Hypocrisy

Senior Lead Hollywood Cop Julie Nony on the Psychology of Homelessness and its Discontents: “The homeless are a lot like kids in a way” and LAPD Interactions with them “might seem strange and ugly at first.”

December 29, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Julie Nony and Andrews International security boss Steve Seyler during happier times.

Those are actual quotes in the headline. They come from this email chain between bunches of people in the Media District BID, LAPD Hollywood Division Senior Lead Officer Julie Nony, and Dan Halden of CD13. Here’s more of the context, but you’ll have to read the whole thing to believe it. Chie Kobayashi, of yet another incomprehensible new media post-production outfit on Lillian Way between Santa Monica Blvd. and Melrose, wrote to Julie to complain in detail about homeless people. Julie wrote back:

We really need to get every business on the same page so this doesn’t continue to happen. It might seem strange and ugly at first but if you are new to the area and don’t know how things operate, this can get really out of hand. I will be out for the rest of the week, so I can not personally be there. Please call our front desk number if you should need to have a police unit come out (213-972-2971/2972/2973).

And of course call the B.I.D. first to see if they can handle it. The homeless are a lot like kids in a way. If we warn them and there is no follow through (like we did with the encampment) then they will test us and do what they can get away with. I would like to have a meeting with you, Vince Clothing, Red Studios, Milk, School PD, B.I.D., Vine Street Elementary and your neighbors just north of you. And whoever else you can think of. Lets [sic] all get together and share in the responsibility of keeping this area clean. Thank you!

Julie

We’re not sure where to start with this. We might note that it’s probably true that if kids get warned and there’s no follow through then they’ll test limits. But it’s not true because they’re kids, it’s true because they’re human. The instinct for testing limits is responsible for all human progress and is necessary for human survival.¹ We might note that if your methods seem “strange and ugly at first…if you are new to the area” then there’s a reasonable chance that they are in fact strange and ugly. And their methods are very strange and very ugly. We’re not even new to the area and we think they’re strange and ugly. Some of us have grandparents who moved to Hollywood in 1908. Some of us have spent more than half a century in and around Hollywood. And yet we think the methods Julie’s talking about are strange and ugly.

The email reproduced above was in response to the following from Chie Kobayashi:
Continue reading Senior Lead Hollywood Cop Julie Nony on the Psychology of Homelessness and its Discontents: “The homeless are a lot like kids in a way” and LAPD Interactions with them “might seem strange and ugly at first.” →

Business Improvement Districts

In Rare Conflict with BID LAPD Deputy Chief Beatrice Girmala Exercises Totalitarian Veto Power over Private Real Estate Transactions in Hollywood, Insinuates that Protecting, Serving Homeless is Waste of LAPD Time

August 28, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Exceedingly powerful LAPD officer Bea Girmala, pictured here with sidelong-glancing former Inglewood PD guy Steve Seyler who, we gotta admit, has nothing to do with this story, but here he is in the picture anyway.

OK, listen up! Long-time readers¹ of this blog will recall that in 2010 and 2011 the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition, the Media District BID, some LAPD folks, and some random neighborhood residents all engaged in a “mediation process” of some type, mostly aimed at getting the food coalition to move its nightly feeding program out of the BID. The whole document is well worth reading, stunning as it is vis–à–vis its truly astonishing level of crazy, but we’re focusing on just one episode. Let us now lay out the dramatis personæ.

First we have facilitator Peter Robinson, now at Pepperdine. We don’t have much to say about him except that, according to his Pepperdine bio, he’s got an excellent sense of humor. He’d have to have, wouldn’t he?

Official LAPD photo of Deputy Chief Girmala, cop extraordinaire and interferer-by-proxy in the private real estate dealings of citizens of Hollywood.

Second, we have then Hollywood Patrol Commanding Officer (now Deputy Chief) Beatrice Girmala,² who, although not actually present at the moment about which we write, was nevertheless in control of everything that transpired in a way in which we, free citizens of a constitutional republic, do not expect to be associated with our police. We are certainly pragmatists, though, and understand that once the police can gun us down on the streets with impunity they can a fortiori randomly interfere in our lawful business dealings as well. Read on for the real crazy!
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Business Improvement Districts

Some 2014 Emails Between Universal Pro and Media District Now Available

July 3, 2015 Mike Leave a comment

Covert photo of Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition food service at Sycamore and Romaine, evidently taken from a Universal Pro covert mobile intelligence base — Covert 2014 photo of Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition food service at Sycamore and Romaine, evidently taken from a Universal Pro top seekrit mobile intelligence base

I am pleased to announce the availability of a highly random selection of emails from 2014 between the Media District BID and their security provider, Universal Protection Service. The emails, which don’t seem to be organized either chronologically or topically, can be found in three PDFs here, and also through the menus in the navigation bar above (leading to here). Right now not much of this material seems that interesting, although it does reveal the previously-only-suspected fact that the HMD BID spends actual money having UPS spy on the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition. On the other hand, I just finished reading Barry Siegel’s fine book Claim of privilege : a mysterious plane crash, a landmark Supreme Court case and the rise of state secrets, in which government lawyers patiently spend half a century explaining, lying when they must, to various courts that even routine, superficially innocuous-seeming facts can actually be top-seekrit (even if they’ve already been published to the world) because knowledgeable people can piece them into a “mosaic” which reveals EVERYTHING!!! I’m not at that point yet with these emails but when I get there you all will be the first to know.