What’s happening today?
A few quick things first…
Mayor Karen Bass unveils an endorsement by Texas congressmember Jasmine Crockett. LA City Attorney runoff candidates John McKinney and Marissa Roy, and mayoral candidate Nithya Raman’s husband, TV writer Vali Chandrasekaran, all have profiles about them in today’s LA Times. The LA County Ethics Commission is set to pick a short (relatively speaking) list of 12 to 16 candidates that they’ll then interview over the next couple of meetings to fill the four remaining seats on their brand new panel of corruption watchdogs. And three D Line stations – Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Cienega – will be closed today and over the weekend, Metro says. It’s for maintenance work at the La Brea stop that includes installing electrical equipment. They’re running bus shuttles instead, specifically Line 855.
A stroll through the rest of the day…
Will they or won’t they sue to gain control of homeless services? The Los Angeles City Council could go into closed session again today to discuss the possibility of suing to try to get control of homeless service delivery roles, as well as going their own way by applying for their own “continuum of care” status, which would mean the city would manage its own homeless services delivery, similar to what Long Beach, Pasadena and Glendale area does. Those roles have been recommended to LA County, but that’s not sitting right for LA city leaders who fear losing control over an issue of special political importance for them. These discussions are happening ahead of a Oct. 27 court hearing in front of Judge David O. Carter.
The LA city fund account with the misspelled street name: There’s $20,251.24 in the “Pico/Genesee Community Pocket Park Trust Fund,” according to an annual report by the City Clerk that’s on the LA City Council agenda today. The fund was set up to hold money for the “development of the Pico/Genessee Community Pocket Park (the “Park”) or beautification projects, which shall be located within a 1-mile radius of the Packard Drill Facility located at the intersection of Pico Boulevard and Genessee [sic] Avenue.” The council, if only procedurally, will also be taking up items related to the city’s parks needs assessment done in 2025, several personnel related items, an implementation plan in the event the sales tax to fund the fire department Measure FD passes in a couple of weeks, and a motion on creating a standardized process for the city to respond to fatal crashes (Seattle and Atlanta have something like this already in place).
Don’t throw the biosolids out with our 320 million gallons of wastewater! Some of the biosolids that have been “dewatered” out of the 320 million gallons of wastewater that get flushed to LA city’s water reclamation plants – such as Hyperion and Terminal Island – need to be transported to their eventual home at Green Acres Farm in Bakersfield, and it appears the city’s public works officials are getting ready to find a contractor to make that Kern County delivery. The Board of Public Works today is taking up an item related to the search for the right vendor for this job. The panel – made up of five mayoral appointed commissioners – are also supposed to be getting some updates on filming permits and major street resurfacing projects around L.A scheduled for this meeting.
LA council member Tim McOsker wants to know what’s up with a delayed training center project at our ports: wantsVan Nuys Airport and LAX leases are getting taken up at 1 p.m. by a City Council committee that focuses on trade, travel and tourism issues. There’s also an item related to the Goods Movement Training Campus, which had originally been a partnership between the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports. Los Angeles City Council member Tim McOsker is seeking some updates on “a potential shift from the previously proposed Wilmington location to the former U.S. Customs building on Terminal Island. Additionally, questions have arisen regarding the current status of POLB’s participation following POLB’s February 2026 notice of withdrawal… and whether the original agreement between the two Ports remains in effect.” McOsker’s motion also points to a $100 million state fund expiring and the “impacts” that would have on workers and the Harbor community.
A proposal to expand a college fund, and a youth council that’s more in keeping with the times: A Nithya Raman-chaired committee – focusing on civil rights, immigration, social services and neighborhoods – signed off on Opportunity L.A., a program that gives the parents of first graders a way to save for their children’s college education. Raman was recently assigned to chair this committee after she was booted from the higher-profile Housing and Homeless Committee (which Raman said was due to political reasons related to her run for mayor) by the council president. The 8:30 a.m. meeting lasted about 7 minutes. During the meeting, Raman thanked a neighborhood council member for making their way to the meeting early in the day to share a statement on one of the items, which was to adjust language around placing “one female and one male” on a youth council to “two young people,” making the motion gender neutral.
What just happened?
Who has more cash on hand in the LA mayor’s race, as of this past Saturday? Nithya Raman does, with $1.378 million. Her opponent, Mayor Karen Bass, reports less than half of that, with $632,333.03. These are from the latest election money reporting drop from yesterday, and they also include reports from LA City Attorney race, and the council races for the 3rd District in the west San Fernando Valley, and the 9th Council District in South Los Angeles.
James Queally of the LA Times explores the frequent invocation of George Gascon in the LA mayoral race, as well as runoff between Marissa Roy and John McKinney to fill the city attorney’s seat. Queally writes that “after suffering a crushing defeat in his bid for reelection in 2024, Gascón all but disappeared from public life. He routinely declines interview requests and has receded from the leading role he once held in the nationwide progressive prosecutor movement … With polls showing Roy and Raman favored to win their respective races, political observers say the attempt to make Gascón relevant again may be a sign of panic from their opponents.”
Los Angeles City Council member Adrin Nazarian shares an update on an effort to declare a Valley Glen property that caught fire a nuisance. The Board of Building and Safety Commissioners on Tuesday, Oct. 20., voted to designate the property a nuisance, reports City News Service, in a story picked up by NBCLA.
Mayor Karen Bass touted a plan to build affordable housing on public land, including Metro property. “Our goal here is to have a partnership between the city and Metro, LAUSD, community colleges as a way of building housing on publicly owned land,” Bass said in a clip shared by Spectrum News 1 SoCal taken at a news conference the mayor held in Koreatown and one of the potential sites.
Mayor Bass also touted the approval of two Metro board motions she helped author, one related to public safety on the trains and the other related to renaming Pershing Square station after Biddy Mason. You can read the public safety motion here, and the one on renaming Pershing Square station here.
Destiny Torres of LAist reports that Michael Young, founder of Culver City-based homeless services provider Home at Last, pleaded not guilty, at a hearing on Thursday ,to misappropriating public money. The story says “Young’s lawyers did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.”