Tag Archives: Suzanne Holley

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”!

September 7, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

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”! →

Announcements, Business Improvement Districts, Downtown Center BID, Fashion District BID

Sunday Morning Document Dump: Emails From Fashion District, Figueroa Corridor, North Hollywood, Downtown Center, Also Fashion District Transactions February Through April

May 14, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Greetings, friends! If you’ve been wondering what you were going to do this morning after finishing off the Times crossword¹ here are a bunch of new public records for your reading pleasure. There’s no single document here that’s mind-blowingly important, but, as I have mentioned many and many a time, we all are strong believers around here in the Mosaic Theory of Intelligence Gathering, and these are just more puzzle pieces, some of them quite important qua puzzle pieces!²

Assorted Fashion District Emails 2017 — These are emails to/from people at the Fashion District BID and various other correspondents. There are no real blockbusters here compared to, e.g., last month’s momentous release of Skid Row Neighborhood Council emails, but there is some interesting stuff. Perhaps most interesting is this set, which includes a bunch of conspiratorial nonsense from the Central City Association as well as a detailed report-out from the BID’s Board retreat in March. This latter document will certainly turn out to be essential in at least one project I’m pursuing in relation to lobbying by BIDs, a sadly and almost surely illegally unregulated activity.
Fashion District Transactions February through April 2017 — More transaction reports. These are essential in ways that are hard to predict in advance. The big surprise here is that the Fashion District has recently spent $1647³ consulting with downtown legal beagles Bradley & Gmelich, the same law firm that the criminal conspiracy known as the South Park BID seems recently to have hired to (mis)handle its CPRA affairs and practices.⁴

And turn the page for more emails: North Hollywood BID, Figueroa Corridor BID, and our old friends, the Downtown Center BID!
Continue reading Sunday Morning Document Dump: Emails From Fashion District, Figueroa Corridor, North Hollywood, Downtown Center, Also Fashion District Transactions February Through April →

Announcements, Downtown Center BID

November 2016 Email From Suzanne Holley To Officer Eugene Shin Confirms That The Downtown Center BID’s Security Guards Were Already Registered With The Police Commission, Proving Yet Again That Major Criminals Strictly Follow Minor Laws To Divert Attention Away From Their Serious Transgressions

April 29, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Here’s a brief summary of the background: Late last year, on the basis of my complaint to the Police Commission, the City of LA resumed enforcement of LAMC 52.34 against BID security forces.¹ Since then I’ve been tracking the progress of this massive project via various CPRA requests. In November 2016 the Police Commission informed all BIDs of the registration requirement. In December 2017 the Police Commission told the BIDs to quit whining and comply with the law.

Yesterday, after numerous failed attempts on her part,² Suzanne Holley of Carol Schatzie’s baby-doll of a Downtown Center BID, sent me a bunch of emails between her staff and the LAPD. You can get all of these at Archive.Org in various useful formats.³ Amongst these was yet another copy of Eugene Shin’s email to all BIDs directing them to get their security patrols registered with the Police Commission.

But much more interesting than that was DCBID Executive Directrix Suzanne Holley’s response, sent precisely 59 minutes later, informing Eugene Shin that…well, I’ll let Suzanne Holley tell you in her own words, right after the break!
Continue reading November 2016 Email From Suzanne Holley To Officer Eugene Shin Confirms That The Downtown Center BID’s Security Guards Were Already Registered With The Police Commission, Proving Yet Again That Major Criminals Strictly Follow Minor Laws To Divert Attention Away From Their Serious Transgressions →

Business Improvement Districts, Downtown Center BID, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy, Los Angeles City Council, Street Vending

The Actual Mechanism By Which Suzanne Holley And The Central City Association Strangled The Incipient Street Vending Ordinance In Its Cradle By Sneaking In Unilateral Councilmember Opt-Out On Behalf Of BIDs, The Role In This Debacle Played By Criminal Conspirators Jessica Borek and Matt Rodriguez, And How The Council Messaged It To BIDs

March 27, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

The Wicked Witch of the Southeast corner of Wilshire and Hope giving instructions to her flying monkeys.

Recall that I’ve been tracking the hysterical, irrational opposition of LA’s business improvement districts to the ongoing process of legalizing (some aspects of) street vending in the City since the Spring of 2015. A truly astonishing level of bitching and moaning in 2015 stalled out the whole process for most of 2016 because, I believe, everyone was too freaking sick of the whining and the carefully orchestrated lying on any number of occasions and the City just needed a rest.

A man arrested, transported, and handcuffed to a bench by the Andrews International BID Patrol in Hollywood for selling umbrellas on the street. At least it appears that this horror show is over, although I wouldn’t be surprised if there are even more loopholes and it’s not over at all.

Until the November election of Donald Trump and his subsequent threats to deport essentially anyone, U.S. citizen or not, who’d ever smiled while thinking of eating a taco spurred the Council into action on at least the small part (small but in no way insignificant) of the plan to decriminalize illegal street vending so that, no matter how much trouble the zillionaires might cause the heladeros, at least they wouldn’t be subject to arrest and subsequent deportation. That bit seemed urgent enough to pass Council outright, and even the anti-vending forces of the zillionaire elite seemed to realize that they were just going to be exposed as the nasty little mean creeps that they are if they fought back on this particular issue. However, the Council put off acting on an actual legalization framework until later.

But recall, as I reported in January, the instructions for the report-back were altered from the original, and quite sensible,¹ request for

A process to create special vending districts to be initiated by Council, the Board of Public Works, or petition (with signatures from 20 percent of property owners or businesses in the proposed district), based on legitimate public health, safety and welfare concerns that are unique to specific neighborhoods with special circumstances.

to a request for language

Providing the City Council the ability to opt out of certain streets by Council action.

At that time I didn’t understand yet how this had all taken place, but now I’ve accumulated enough documentary evidence that it’s possible to sketch out a picture. The short version is that in December 2016, Suzanne Holley, at that time acting Executive Director² of the Schatzian horror show known as the Central City Association of Los Angeles, wrote a letter to the City Council telling them to make the change. This was distributed to the BIDs via the BID Consortium. They all told their pet Councilmembers to change it. It got changed, and all the BIDs rejoiced, some of them quite publicly. The consequences of this are going to be horrific, and whatever street vending framework gets put in place will be DOA. Details and evidence after the break.
Continue reading The Actual Mechanism By Which Suzanne Holley And The Central City Association Strangled The Incipient Street Vending Ordinance In Its Cradle By Sneaking In Unilateral Councilmember Opt-Out On Behalf Of BIDs, The Role In This Debacle Played By Criminal Conspirators Jessica Borek and Matt Rodriguez, And How The Council Messaged It To BIDs →

Business Improvement Districts, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Pacific Palisades BID Poised To Spend Almost 3% Of 2017 Assessments Fighting My CPRA Requests. Is This Really The Best Use Of Property Owner’s Money?? Also, Rick Lemmo’s Vow To Thwart Me By Proceeding “According To The Strictest Rules Of Law” May Reveal Hitherto Unsuspected Paradox In CPRA!!

March 13, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

Another Rick in the wall, part 97: Rick Lemmo, who is Rick Caruso’s senior VP for some kind of nonsensical crap, explains the zillionaire’s view of law-abiding high finance.

For a brief moment this morning, I was worried that it’s a bad thing that my coverage of the Pacific Palisades BID, initiated mainly because of a confluence of my interest in CD11 and the fact that the criminal intransigence of Mike Bonin’s staff has made it essentially impossible for me to get records directly from them, is tending fairly unexpectedly towards the navel-gaze, self-reference, point-is-to-understand-the-world, nerdview rather than towards the outward-looking, the-point-is-to-change-it focus which is somewhat of an ideal around here. That anxiety took me about 35 seconds to get over, so we’re going meta again this morning sans apologia.¹

In any case, whatever her manifold faults as a CPRA client may be, Laurie Sale, executive directrix of the Palisades BID, is at least a reliable source of minutes and agendas. You may recall that she was previously kind enough to send me the PPBID’s 2016 minutes and agendas, and this weekend she sent me the 2017 minutes and agendas through February. There’s some interesting stuff in there, primarily about street vending, which I will write on quite soon. The minutes also suggest that CD11 field deputy Sharon Shapiro² is an actual member of the PPBID’s Board of Directors. I’ll be looking into this, not least because it’s reminiscent of Debbie Dyner Harris’s ill-fated attempt to nab a voting seat for CD11 on the Board of the Venice Beach Property Owners Association, which was slapped down ignominiously by City Attorney Mike Feuer as a conflict of interest.

But never mind that for now. The text for today’s sermon is this little slab of nonsense, found in the BID’s minutes for February 1, 2017:

BID received requests for public records – copies of meeting minutes, agenda, emails back and forth within the City, etc. from a gentleman who is requesting this from many BIDs. Elliot made a motion to retain attorney not to exceed $4,000. Rick seconded, all approved, motion carried. In the event that this person wants copies made, then we need to request payment. Rick motioned: “we don’t want to make it difficult for him, but to rather provide him every access to public records according to the strictest rules of law so that it doesn’t provide any financial detriment to the property owners of our business improvement district.” Susan seconded. Unanimously approved, motion carries.

Continue reading Pacific Palisades BID Poised To Spend Almost 3% Of 2017 Assessments Fighting My CPRA Requests. Is This Really The Best Use Of Property Owner’s Money?? Also, Rick Lemmo’s Vow To Thwart Me By Proceeding “According To The Strictest Rules Of Law” May Reveal Hitherto Unsuspected Paradox In CPRA!! →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Public Records Act Pragmatics

The Year-Long Saga Of How It Is My Fault That Devin Strecker Was Forced By Kerry Morrison’s Scorched-Earth Anti-CPRA Policies To Tell Lisa Schechter That The Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Did Not Use Dropbox Even Though Everyone Else In The Entire Freaking Universe Uses It

January 7, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

It is all my fault that Devin Strecker is no longer allowed to use Dropbox at work!

Oh dear friends, what a long story I have to tell you this afternoon! And I hope it will repay (or more than) your attention.¹ It’s all about how Kerry Morrison is willing to make her job and the jobs of her minions progressively more impossible for absolutely no better reason than to thwart my research. I’ve written about various stages in this process before, and here’s a brief timeline:

March 2016 — Kerry Morrison amends HPOA document retention policy to require destruction of emails after 90 days unless intentionally kept, unilaterally, retroactively, and illegally redefines emails as not subject to CPRA.
June 2016 — Kerry Morrison rewrites contract with Andrews International so that A/I work product is no longer the property of the HPOA and therefore, she wrongly thinks, is no longer subject to CPRA.

And I just recently acquired an October 2016 email from Devin Strecker to Lisa Schechter of the Media District BID² which shows yet another dimension of this phenomenon: Devin Strecker has to tell Lisa Schechter that he is not allowed to click on a link because the HPOA does not use freaking Dropbox.

A demonstration of the HPOA’s forthcoming records retention policy: everything that can’t be stored in human memory will be recorded in the form of knotted strings, presently unreadable by anyone on earth. Take *that*, CPRA users!

Of course, he is not allowed to use Dropbox because of yet another policy instituted by Kerry Morrison to thwart my inquiries, although it’s really not clear what effect this is supposed to have.³ If this trend continues, she will eventually have all HPOA communication carried out by trained mnemonists who will memorize her messages and recite them in person to the recipients to avoid creating disclosable records. If data must be recorded in tangible form she will only record it by quipu, using the original Inca encoding methods which, conveniently, no one alive today is able to understand. The history of this no-Dropbox policy commences in November 2015, and you can read all about it after the break in excruciating detail, amply documented.
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Announcements, CD13, Downtown Center BID, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Dan Halden and Mitch O’Farrell’s Staff are Among the Readers of this Blog and Other News from a Batch of Highly Assorted Emails from CD13

July 17, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Dan Halden of CD13 forwards links to MK.org around to his colleagues and tells them not to reply. What's up with THAT, we wonder, although we could certainly make a guess! — Dan Halden of CD13 forwards links to MK.org around to his colleagues and tells them not to reply. What’s up with THAT, we wonder, although we could certainly make a guess!

Last Wednesday our faithful correspondent and a small contingent of other MK.org staffers hit the 704 Eastbound on SMB to the Echo Park Office of Hollywood’s own Mitch O’Farrell, where he had an appointment with Hollywood Field Deputy Daniel Halden to look at both oodles and scads of very highly miscellaneous emails and other goodies.

It was our intention to follow our traditional course of conduct after such missions and hit up the loveliest Brite Spot at the corner of Sunset and Park, but ’twas not to be. For some reason known only to them and their accountant they’re closing at 4 pm throughout the Summer. One can only hope and pray that they’ll get back to normal hours later. But we digress.

The Brite Spot in May 2016. This is your brain on diners.

Here is a link to the raw scans, which we’ve barely had time to sift through. Some are renamed, but most are not. Extraneous blank pages have mostly not yet been stripped. If you’re interested in reading hundreds of pages of emails from her highness, Queen Laurie Goldman about random multi-use monstrosities in Hollywood and why Robert Silverstein is pretty much Satan incarnate we’ll hook you up! There’s even a letter from Silverstein to someone about something in there somewhere. We got a few emails about recent anti-nightclub conspiracies between Mitch O’Farrell and the cops (recall that we reported on this a lot last year). But the real gems (that’s sarcasm, of a sort) we’ll reveal below the fold!
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Announcements, Downtown Center BID, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance

Huge Document Dump: HPOA Quarterly Reports, DCBID Emails, Central Crime Control Documents

April 26, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

We're out here having fun in the warm California sun! — We’re out here having fun in the warm California sun!

It’s been a while since I’ve announced a pure, old-fashioned document dump, but the records just keep pouring in, and I have loads of them to lay on you this evening. First, from our friends at the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, we have pretty much all their Quarterly Reports, even going back to the 1990s. I also put these on the Archive:

BIDs are required to send these reports to the City Clerk, who keeps them on file. They contain detailed narratives of the BIDs’ activities and are invaluable for understanding what’s going on. I have a ton of these from other BIDs as well, but they’re not quite ready for prime time. If there’s something you need urgently, though, drop me a line and I will try to fix you up.

Also, courtesy of the much-more-helpful-lately-than-she-has-been-in-the-past Suzanne Holley of the Downtown Center BID we have a massive pile of Central Area Crime Control stuff from the LAPD. This is valuable because getting it out of the LAPD would be practically impossible, and yet here it is. See what Compstat output looks like and much else of interest.

Finally, I have a bunch of emails, and there are details after the break:
Continue reading Huge Document Dump: HPOA Quarterly Reports, DCBID Emails, Central Crime Control Documents →

Announcements

New Documents, Mostly Routine, although Assistant LAPD Chief Jorge Villegas Explicitly Acknowledges Limitations of Arrests as a Tool for Addressing Homelessness

January 3, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Assistant Chief Jorge Villegas, LAPD: "As you know [homelessness] is an extremely complex issue to address. It is not as simple as simply making an arrest. As you know, we cannot arrest [our] way out of this complex social issue." — Assistant Chief Jorge Villegas, LAPD: “As you know [homelessness] is an extremely complex issue to address. It is not as simple as simply making an arrest. As you know, we cannot arrest [our] way out of this complex social issue.”

Today I uploaded documents from the DCBID, the Fashion District, and some emails from Raquel Beard to the Mayor’s office. The DCBID’s Operations Committee agendas are here, and according to Suzanne Holley this is all of them for which there are electronic copies. They don’t meet very often, it seems. Next up we have 2015 minutes and agendas for the Fashion District BID Board of Directors. There’s some interesting stuff here, although I haven’t had time to read them carefully. For instance, on February 26, 2015, the Board heard about the Central City Association’s plot to hire Rodriguez Strategies to fight the legalization of street vending in LA. The new information here is that Carol Schatz evidently pegged the cost at $60,000 and Kent Smith of the FDBID asked and received from the Board approval to donate $10,000. I think that, given how the original initiative expanded, including the hiring of subordinate publicists, that original estimate must have ended up to be quite low. In March Kent asked for and received from the board $5,000 to oppose Carol Liu’s Right to Rest Act. I really do wonder if this kind of political activism is a legal use of BID money, since it’s supposed to be used to provide services in the district above and beyond what the City provides. How, I wonder, is taking positions on state laws consistent with this charge? A question for another day, I guess. And finally, after the break, we have some emails from Raquel Beard of the CCEA to Eric Garcetti’s office.
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Downtown Center BID

The Discreet Fascism of the Bourgeoisie, DTLA Edition: Featuring DCBID and CCA Führerin Carol Schatz and LAPD Kahuna Charlie Beck Sticking His Tongue Someplace Where, in a Free Society, it Don’t Belong

November 7, 2015 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Carol Schatz talking authoritatively at some point in time about some topic from some location for some reason, her pearls at the ready in case they need clutching.

Amongst the vast array of documents sent over yesterday by our faithful correspondent, we found a few revealing, upsetting, disgusting little servings of reprehensibility in the Board of Directors Minutes.

We’ll write about most of them later, but for today, consider the minutes of March 4, 2015. In fact, look on page 3, where we find some jive-ass nonsense labeled “President’s Report.” The President is DCBID and Central City Association Führerin Carol Schatz. The first section of her report is labeled “On the CCA Side.” CCA, of course, is the Central City Association, a private group which claims explicitly that the “work we do lobbying government and advancing policy is shaping the future of Los Angeles business.” That’s not something BIDs are allowed to be involved with, and yet, here they are, being involved with it. Fascism, as we’ve stated repeatedly, thrives on this kind of blurring-of-the-lines between private groups like the CCA and public city agencies¹ like the BIDs. BIDs aren’t allowed to lobby on matters that don’t affect stuff within their boundaries. But that’s an argument for another day. Let’s look at what Carol had to say:

Charlie Beck talking authoritatively at some point in time about some topic from some location for some reason, his sidearm at the ready in case it need brandishing.

Carol had a meeting with Chief Charlie Beck and other BIDS regarding street vending and increase in crime Downtown. The biggest concern is that legalizing street vending will result in streets becoming uncontrollable. The fashion district is a prime example of the effects of street vending. These street vendors are being referred to as micro-entrepreneurs.Chief Beck advised that he would speak to Councilmember Price and Wesson to make it clear that he does not have the resources to manage street vending and it will be very damaging to what has been accomplished in Downtown.

See the problem? Read on!
Continue reading →