Tag Archives: Venice Beach

Park Avenue Is A Venice Walk Street — Runs Between Speedway And Pacific — And In 2018 The Park Avenue Housedwellers Were Just Fed Up — They Were Feeling Really Overrun With Homeless And Bike Racks — And Their Homeless And Bike Problem Was On National TV! — And They Wrote To Bonin Venice Flunky-Boy Taylor Bazley — And Somehow Bonin Transpo Maven Alek Bartrosouf Got Involved! — Probably Cause Of The Bikes! — And Rec And Parks Boardwalk Hitler Bob Davis — And They Got Rid Of The Homeless! — And They Got Rid Of The Bikes! — And All The Park Avenue Housedwellers Were Happy For A Hot Second! — And Alek Bartrosouf Was All Like Now Get Planters! — And Here — Says Boutrosouf — Is Eric Garcetti’s Special Planter Catalog To Get Them From!

Well, dang! I already wrote the whole story in the title! Sorry! Except for one important bit, which is that it seems like there’s a little bit of evidence here that CD11 is actively encouraging housedwellers to put in planters to keep their neighbors away. Bonin’s transpo deputy, Alek Bartrosouf, spent months working with some housedwelling residents of Park Avenue getting rid of an encampment and, once it was gone, was all like “put in planters!” It’s not exactly conclusive but it is suggestive.

Here’s the background, part one. The other day I received a bunch of materials about homelessness from the Department of Recreation and Parks. The whole stack is up on Archive.Org. And here are links to some of the prominent items:

Emails between Bob Davis and CD11 folks — These are emails between Boardwalk Hitler Bob Davis of Rec and Parks and various minions at CD11.
Rec and Parks LAMC 63.44 Standard Operating Procedure — LAMC 63.44 is the equivalent of LAMC 56.11 for parks. This invaluable document explains RAP procedures for confiscating and destroying the property of homeless people located inside parks.
Park cleanup request flowchart — A one page decision guide for RAP personnel involved in property confiscation and destruction.
LAMC 63.44 — The text of the law.

And the background part two has to do with those appalling planters, placed illegally on sidewalks by housedwellers to prevent encampments from forming because they hate homeless people so much and have zero respect for the rule of law if it impedes the progress of their inhumanity. This is a huge problem in Venice and elsewhere around the City. And mostly, like I said, the planters are illegal.

And it’s obvious that the City of Los Angeles is aiding, abetting, and conspiring with the bloodthirsty housedwellers that install the damn things, but it has been pretty hard to find actual explicit evidence of the conspiracies,1 so we2 are forced to try to piece together proof of what’s going on. And in this email chain between Bonin’s Transportation Deputy, Alek Bartrosouf, and a bunch of housedwellers, there is just the tiniest bit, as I said, of evidence.

A great deal of the conversation is transcribed below, but the short version is that after months of helping the housedwellers get rid of the homeless encampment and some offensive bike racks, Bartrosouf emailed the ringleaders, one of whom is named Melba Levick (melbalevick@gmail.com), thus:

On Aug 27, 2018, at 18:24, Alek Bartrosouf <alek.bartrosouf@lacity.org> wrote:

Hi Melba,

I was happy to help, although it took a lot of people who contributed to making it happen seamlessly. I have spoken with Gail and Ira about how we can make that area even more beautiful with some landscaping ideas. It would be awesome to have some tree wells and planter boxes to ‘green’ the block but also create a welcoming environment for you, your neighbors, and guests of Venice. Hopefully something like that can be entertained in the near future, ideally with support and direction from the neighborhood council. It is outside my realm of work (I focus on transportation specifically) but happy to help however I can.

Have a great week!

Best,

Alek Bartrosouf

And a little later in the conversation Bartrosouf emailed a few other ringleaders with this charming little missive:

Lauren & Mark

I’ll just leave this here :)

http://peoplest-prod.azurewebsites.net/plaza/

The Kit of Parts is helpful and can be inspiring.

Best,

Alek

The Kit of Parts he mentions is this PDF, consisting of recommended outdoor furniture items for plazas in Los Angeles, including really heavy planters. It includes detailed information on how and where to buy them. Now, there’s a difference between this situation and most of the planters in Venice in that it’s not clear that Bartrosouf is recommending illegal placement. He seems to be recommending that the open space at the west end of Park Avenue between Speedway and the Boardwalk be somehow turned into a plaza and piled up legally with a bunch of junk to prevent re-encampment. But it’s what we have. Turn the page for a transcription of the months-long discussions between the City and the housedwellers that led to the planter-placement recommendation.
Continue reading Park Avenue Is A Venice Walk Street — Runs Between Speedway And Pacific — And In 2018 The Park Avenue Housedwellers Were Just Fed Up — They Were Feeling Really Overrun With Homeless And Bike Racks — And Their Homeless And Bike Problem Was On National TV! — And They Wrote To Bonin Venice Flunky-Boy Taylor Bazley — And Somehow Bonin Transpo Maven Alek Bartrosouf Got Involved! — Probably Cause Of The Bikes! — And Rec And Parks Boardwalk Hitler Bob Davis — And They Got Rid Of The Homeless! — And They Got Rid Of The Bikes! — And All The Park Avenue Housedwellers Were Happy For A Hot Second! — And Alek Bartrosouf Was All Like Now Get Planters! — And Here — Says Boutrosouf — Is Eric Garcetti’s Special Planter Catalog To Get Them From!

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Reefer Madness Is Alive And Well In The Hollywood Entertainment District BID! — Between 2016 and 2018 73% Of All Citations For Public Marijuana Use In the Entire City Of Los Angeles Were In the Hollywood BID — The Venice BID Is A Distant Second Place With 8% — Leaving A Mere 19% — Which Is Only 170 Citations — For The Entire Rest Of The City Of Los Angeles

Even though marijuana use in California was formally legalized recently, it’s still against the law to use it in public per the California Health and Safety Code at §11362.3. And apparently Lolita Lopez, investigative reporter at NBCLA, is doing a story on how this plays out in Los Angeles, because on February 2, 2019 she filed a CPRA request with the City for a list of citations under this law from 2016 to the present. Her request was successful, and a few days later the LAPD handed over this spreadsheet, organized by reporting district.1

And public marijuana use is one of those laws that’s custom-made for differential enforcement against homeless people. Thus it occurred to me to take a look at this data in conjuction with BIDs, which are one of the main engines of differential enforcement in Los Angeles. And the data revealed something really interesting. There were 887 citations in the two years covered by the data. Of these citations, 645 occurred in only 6 reporting districts, which precisely cover the Hollywood Entertainment District BID. Also 71 occurred in two others, which precisely cover the Venice Beach BID. The other 171 were spread out pretty evenly across the whole rest of the City.

This means that 72.7% of all citations for public marijuana use in the entire City of Los Angeles since 2016 were issued in the Hollywood Entertainment District BID. And 8% were issued in the Venice Beach BID. It doesn’t take any kind of fancy statistical analysis to prove that this is a really significant result, almost certainly linked to Kerry Morrison and her BID’s well-known tactic of arresting every homeless person that they can lay their hands on for the most trivial possible matters, such as drinking in public or urinating in public. Evidently now we can add smoking marijuana in public to this list of homeless-criminalizing tactics employed by the BID.

The HPOA BID Patrol is famous for its aggressive arrest policies. In 2013 they were responsible for more than 7% of the arrests of homeless people in the entire City of Los Angeles. Their arrest rate has dropped precipitously in the last few years, but it is still unbelievably high. But since 2016 they have refused to provide data on their individual arrests in response to CPRA requests, so it hasn’t been possible to tell who they were arresting and why.2

However, each arrest that the BID Patrol makes results in some kind of action by the LAPD. And given that the LAPD doesn’t seem to expend much effort in arresting anyone for public marijuana use outside the BID, it’s not unreasonable to assume that these figures are a proxy for the BID’s interest in the differential enforcement of this law. If they’re not making these arrests themselves then the arrests are the result of some BID policy.

The situation in Venice is a little less clear, as the Venice Beach BID only started its security work sometime in 2017, and the Boardwalk is a likely place for the LAPD to practice its own style of selective enforcement without needing a BID to encourage it. But the moral of the story is still very clear. It’s illegal to smoke marijuana in public in Los Angeles, but effectively it’s illegal only if you’re homeless and only if you’re in the Hollywood BID. Turn the page for maps and charts!
Continue reading Reefer Madness Is Alive And Well In The Hollywood Entertainment District BID! — Between 2016 and 2018 73% Of All Citations For Public Marijuana Use In the Entire City Of Los Angeles Were In the Hollywood BID — The Venice BID Is A Distant Second Place With 8% — Leaving A Mere 19% — Which Is Only 170 Citations — For The Entire Rest Of The City Of Los Angeles

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Venice Justice Committee Free Speech Lawsuit — City Of Los Angeles Settles — Agrees To Rewrite Beach Ordinance To Expressly Permit Leafletting, Petitioning, And So Forth On Boardwalk Until Midnight — And To Pay Carol Sobel $80,000 — When Will They Ever Learn?

Peggy Lee Kennedy and the Venice Justice Committee advocate for the rights of homeless people on the Venice Boardwalk. The LAPD has regularly threatened Kennedy with arrest for illegal vending in violation of the ordinance regulating such activities on the Boardwalk, that is to say, LAMC §42.15. Thus in February 2016 Carol Sobel filed suit in federal court on behalf of the activists. The suit survived a motion to dismiss after an August 2016 hearing in which not only did the City’s oral arguments seem pathetically pro forma but the judge, Dean Pregerson, seemed openly skeptical of the City’s position.

And that’s pretty much where things stood for over two years until yesterday, Wednesday, October 10, 2018, when the City of Los Angeles passed a motion agreeing to settle the case. The terms are excellent for the plaintiffs. The City agrees to rewrite the relevant section of LAMC 42.15 to explicitly state that activities protected by the First Amendment, including the use of a table, are expressly allowed on the Boardwalk until midnight. The City will also pay Carol Sobel’s office $80,000 for her excellent work on this matter. Turn the page for the full text of the motion. You can also read most of the pleadings here on Archive.Org.
Continue reading Venice Justice Committee Free Speech Lawsuit — City Of Los Angeles Settles — Agrees To Rewrite Beach Ordinance To Expressly Permit Leafletting, Petitioning, And So Forth On Boardwalk Until Midnight — And To Pay Carol Sobel $80,000 — When Will They Ever Learn?

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Venice Beach BID Public Records Are Pouring In Due To Our Writ Petition — Responses To Security RFP From Allied Universal, Street Plus, HELPER 2000 — AUS Proposal Has Incredibly Detailed Information On BID Patrol Training, Organization — Executed Contract Between BID And Allied — And If You Know The CPRA You Know That This Development Means They’ve Already Lost The Damn Case — And We, De Natch, Have Therefore Already Won It!

If you’ve been following my attempts to get public records out of the Venice Beach BID via the CPRA you’ll remember that Tara Devine’s sheer bloody-minded obstructionism led finally after more than a year of saint-like patience on my part to my being forced against my will to file a writ petition against the ornery BIDdies to compel compliance. Well, amazingly, it seems possible that the BIDdies aren’t going to litigate,1 and one of the major indicators is that they have already started handing over documents!2

And here’s what we have! First there’s the executed contract between Allied Universal and the BID for security services along with some flyers for their job fairs. Second, there are three proposals to provide BID security, found here on Archive.Org, from Streetplus, from HELPER 2000, and, of course, the successful proposal from Allied Universal.

This last item is absolutely the most important prize torn from the vaults of the zillionaire elite in this particular raid. It contains really detailed information about the operations of the Venice BID Patrol, their training, their hiring and retention practices, how they see their mission, what kinds of records they keep, their relations with property owners and the BID board and staff, and so on. It’s long, but it’s essential. Turn the page for some transcribed selections and commentary.
Continue reading Venice Beach BID Public Records Are Pouring In Due To Our Writ Petition — Responses To Security RFP From Allied Universal, Street Plus, HELPER 2000 — AUS Proposal Has Incredibly Detailed Information On BID Patrol Training, Organization — Executed Contract Between BID And Allied — And If You Know The CPRA You Know That This Development Means They’ve Already Lost The Damn Case — And We, De Natch, Have Therefore Already Won It!

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Beachslapped!! — Los Angeles City Clerk Holly Wolcott Wrote To Mark Sokol And Tara Devine On April 18, 2018 Stating That More Than $1.3 Million Of The Venice Beach BID’s Unused 2017 Assessments Will Be Refunded To Property Owners Starting In July 2018 — A Monumental Development Considering The City’s Extreme Reluctance To Get Involved With Overseeing BIDs At All

At their March 9, 2018 meeting the Venice Beach BID Board of Directors discussed refunding some or all of the $1.8 million collected from property owners in 2017, most of which is unspent because the BIDdies took so long to get moving. You can read the minutes here, and there’s a transcription of the salient item after the break.

It appears from the minutes that the BID only agreed to inquire of the City whether a refund was possible. However, when City Clerk Holly Wolcott responded to the BID’s inquiry in an April 18, 2018 letter, she wrote as if the refund was a done deal. And since her office controls the money, it seems that it is a done deal. Wolcott says that refunds will issue beginning in July 2018.

This strikes me as yet another vote of no confidence in the beleaguered Venice Beach BID as run by Mark Sokol, Tara Devine, and the rest of their horrow-show crew. Although it’s well-known that under Wolcott the City of Los Angeles has essentially been completely unwilling to police BID activity in any way, she seems to be coming around to the idea that there’s something really, really wrong in Venice. There are transcriptions of everything after the break.
Continue reading Beachslapped!! — Los Angeles City Clerk Holly Wolcott Wrote To Mark Sokol And Tara Devine On April 18, 2018 Stating That More Than $1.3 Million Of The Venice Beach BID’s Unused 2017 Assessments Will Be Refunded To Property Owners Starting In July 2018 — A Monumental Development Considering The City’s Extreme Reluctance To Get Involved With Overseeing BIDs At All

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Venice Activist Margaret Molloy’s Public Comment To The Coastal Commission On April 11 Led Commissioner Effie Turnbull Sanders To Ask Staff To Report Back On Whether The Activities Of The Venice Beach BID Constitute Coastal Development And Therefore Require A Permit From The Commission — Chief Counsel Chris Pederson Thinks It’s Possible That BID Activities Are Subject To Commission Review

The California Coastal Commission was created in 1972 by the California Coastal Act and charged with implementing and enforcing that monumental law, one of the main purposes of which is to “[m]aximize public access to and along the coast and maximize public recreational opportunities in the coastal zone.”1

A major way in which the Commission exercises this power is through the issuance of coastal development permits, about which the law states:2 … in addition to obtaining any other permit required by law from any local government or from any state, regional, or local agency, any person … wishing to perform or undertake any development in the coastal zone … shall obtain a coastal development permit.

The Act’s definition of “development,” found at §30106, is quite broad. It includes, e.g., “change in the density or intensity of use of land as well as “change in the intensity of use of water, or of access thereto.” It also requires at §30253(e) that new development “… protect special communities and neighborhoods that, because of their unique characteristics, are popular visitor destination points for recreational uses.”

Well, that last bit applies to Venice if it applies to any neighborhood in this state. Based on these requirements, therefore, anti-BID activists in Venice have been working out a very plausible theory that the establishment of the BID, and especially the BID’s private security force patrolling the public spaces adjacent to the beach, constitute development under the Coastal Act and that therefore they require a coastal development permit to be authorized.

And we can hope that such a permit would be unlikely to be authorized because whatever else BIDs may do, they certainly erode, attack, and destroy the unique characteristics of the neighborhoods they inhabit. This isn’t illegal in most parts of the City, but the Coastal Act preempts municipal law, so maybe BIDs are illegal in the Coastal Zone, or at least can be forced to severely limit their activities in order to obtain a coastal development permit.

And thanks to the persistence of this brave band of devoted activists, this idea gained a great deal of traction at the Coastal Commission’s meeting a couple weeks ago. Margaret Molloy gave a public comment outlining the theory and Commissioner Effie Turnbull Sanders,3 in direct response, asked Commission staff to research and report back on whether the Venice Beach BID or its activities constitute development.

Furthermore, Commission Chief Counsel Chris Pederson then stated:“I do not believe that the formation of the BID in and of itself qualifies as development. It may then engage in activities that qualify as development that would be subject to Coastal Commission review.” Audio of both of these parts of the meeting is available here and there are transcriptions (and a little more commentary) after the break.
Continue reading Venice Activist Margaret Molloy’s Public Comment To The Coastal Commission On April 11 Led Commissioner Effie Turnbull Sanders To Ask Staff To Report Back On Whether The Activities Of The Venice Beach BID Constitute Coastal Development And Therefore Require A Permit From The Commission — Chief Counsel Chris Pederson Thinks It’s Possible That BID Activities Are Subject To Commission Review

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So Many New Documents! CD13 and HPOA Emails, Arts District BID Shenanigans, Miranda Paster In The Ivory Tower, Carol Schatz’s Pet Baby BID Gets Audited, Venice Beach BID And The State Of California!!

Deputy Dan Halden thinking about breakfast with Kerry and the boys at the Brite Spot. If you don’t want to be depicted as a cartoon, stop acting like a cartoon. It’s that simple.
Good Lord, there’s too much to describe, but this is a rich, rich set of documents. I spent more than two hours at City Hall this morning scanning this nonsense, and here it is, in the rawest possible form. There are gems in that mine, friends, but until I have time, you’ll have to scratch them out your own self. For now they’re all up on our Archive.Org account. There’s stuff about the Venice Beach BID, and Carol Schatz‘s lil baby, the Downtown Center BID got audited in 2013, Daniel Halden and Kerry H. Morrison are up to their usual dimwitted antics, Miranda Paster collaborated on a grant with a bunch of longhair sociologists at TAMU, and the freaking Arts District freaking redux!! Here’s a list with links and brief descriptions:
Continue reading So Many New Documents! CD13 and HPOA Emails, Arts District BID Shenanigans, Miranda Paster In The Ivory Tower, Carol Schatz’s Pet Baby BID Gets Audited, Venice Beach BID And The State Of California!!

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There Is At Least One Substantial Way In Which Slavering Psychopath Mark Ryavec Is Not Like Donald Trump And That Is That We Have His Freaking Tax Returns

Something is happening and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?
This has nothing much at all to do with businesss improvement districts, but it’s Saturday night and I just felt like laying some Form 990s on you. These five beauties are from slavering psychopath Mark Ryavec’s agressively moronic Venice-based gang of subliterate meatheads, known to the mundane world as the Venice Stakeholders Association. They are available here on Archive.Org for your reading and researchical pleasure.

These items are interesting for any number of reasons. One is that they show that the VSA is not just a vision of sugar plums dancing ‘neath the fevered brow of Mark Ryavec, but that there are actual real-life other people involved:1 Michael King, Bonnie Felix, Anil Comelo, Robert Feist, Richard Myer(s).2 Had they appeared in another context I’d have been willing to bet that these names were merely selected from the myriad to be found in Ryavec’s floridly diverse collection of multiple personalities, but I don’t know many people, even the really, really, crazy ones, who have a lack of foresight sufficient to cause them to swear under penalty of perjury in a document submitted to the Federal government that the names of their imaginary friends represent real-life actual human beings.3

Another interesting thing is that the forms contain descriptions of accomplishments the VSA deems significant enough to brag about to the Federal government. These have the perhaps unintended effect of revealing both the breadth and the depth of the slavering psychopathy at work out there in the lorn, lost, lamented, former utopia west of Electric Avenue. Selected instances may be found after the break.
Continue reading There Is At Least One Substantial Way In Which Slavering Psychopath Mark Ryavec Is Not Like Donald Trump And That Is That We Have His Freaking Tax Returns

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Carl Lambert Donated The Legal Maximum of $1400 To Eric Garcetti Just One Week After Feuer Filed Complaint Against Him For Running An Illegal Hotel and Legal Max of $700 to Mike Bonin in the Midst of a Flurry of Pro-BID Activity By City Staff

At all times relevant hereto, Lambert was acting as the agent, assignee, partner, joint venturer, alter ego, representative, co-schemer, co-conspirator...and in committing the wrongful acts and omissions allege, was acting within the course and scope of that agency, assignment, partnership, joint venture, alter ego relationship, representation, scheme, conspiracy, or employment.
At all times relevant hereto, Lambert was acting as the agent, assignee, partner, joint venturer, alter ego, representative, co-schemer, co-conspirator…and in committing the wrongful acts and omissions allege, was acting within the course and scope of that agency, assignment, partnership, joint venture, alter ego relationship, representation, scheme, conspiracy, or employment.
CORRECTION: Carl Lambert’s donation to Garcetti was in June 2015 whereas the lawsuit was filed in June 2016. I’ve struck through any claims that relied on my inadvertent misreading of the relevant document and added a few words, which are underlined. We stand by our claims about the timing of Lambert’s donations to Bonin. Thanks to Gonzo Rock for pointing this out.

Carl Lambert is presently famous for two main reasons. First that Mike Feuer is suing the shit out of him because he’s a sneaky lying illegal hotel proprietor and second that he’s a vocal proponent of the Venice Beach Business Improvement District, which was approved in Council last week during a chaotic and emotional process, itself of dubious legality. Newly discovered evidence1 shows that Lambert has tried to ease his strait and narrow path through some of these thorny matters by…wait for it…giving money to politicians.

First of all, see the City Ethics Commission’s donation records for Lambert. Note that on June 24, 2015 he donated $1,400 to Eric Garcetti’s reelection campaign, which is the maximum donation allowed. Does the date sound familiar? It ought to. It was exactly one week before, on June 17, 2015, that Mike Feuer filed a complaint against Lambert for running an illegal hotel. It goes to show that good old F. Scott was on to something when he wrote about zillionaires that “They are different from you and me.” I don’t think that most non-zillionaires, on finding out that the City Attorney has just filed a damning complaint against them, would turn around and give $1,400 to the Mayor.

And it’s not just like Lambert did this all the time and the timing was coincidental. First of all, he also gave Garcetti money in 2013, when he was actually running, but he only gave him $200. Secondly, Lambert has only ever given $3,500 total to Los Angeles politicians in his life.2 This one-time, week-after-the-complaint-got-filed donation of $1,400 represents 40% of Lambert’s life-time donation total. Also note that Garcetti isn’t running for election again until 2017, so it’s not like he was actively fundraising in June of 2015.

And as if that wasn’t enough, on December 8, 2015, he turned around and gave $700 to Mike Bonin, also the legal maximum. That’s 20% of Lambert’s lifetime total right there, and Bonin also isn’t running until 2017. And as I’ve demonstrated recently, this was right in the midst of a flurry of VBBID activity, when having inspired $700 worth of warm fuzzies in Bonin’s heart couldn’t have hurt anything:
Continue reading Carl Lambert Donated The Legal Maximum of $1400 To Eric Garcetti Just One Week After Feuer Filed Complaint Against Him For Running An Illegal Hotel and Legal Max of $700 to Mike Bonin in the Midst of a Flurry of Pro-BID Activity By City Staff

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Chaos at Council Hearing on Venice Beach BID: In Response to Heckling, Bonin Accuses Venice Beach BID Detractors Of “Malignant Dangerous Defamation,” Compares Them To Trump

Mike Bonin speaking in favor of the Venice Beach BID in Council on August 23, 2016.  He's either misinformed, lying, or both.
Mike Bonin speaking in favor of the Venice Beach BID in Council on August 23, 2016, mere minutes before accusing BID detractors of “malignant dangerous defamation.”
Yesterday the Los Angeles City Council heard protests against the proposed Venice Beach Business Improvement District. You can watch the whole thing here. There were impassioned public comments and a lot of heckling. Also, on Monday Laura McLennan of CD11 gave me over a hundred pages of material on the VBBID, which is worth looking at. After the public comment, Mike Bonin gave a speech about why he supported the BID, which is my topic for today. You can jump directly to Bonin’s remarks in the video and as always, you can find a transcription at the end of the post. I’m just going to address a few of Bonin’s comments in detail:

Let me for a second or two correct some of the wide misperceptions about the BID and what process… the process for establishing a BID is established by state law.
Continue reading Chaos at Council Hearing on Venice Beach BID: In Response to Heckling, Bonin Accuses Venice Beach BID Detractors Of “Malignant Dangerous Defamation,” Compares Them To Trump

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