What’s happening today?
Super El Niño-fueled hurricanes on the minds of local leaders
Keep an eye on the sky, and the surfers, this Labor Day weekend, as Hurricane Marie and other storms hang around the Pacific Ocean amid a super El Niño season. Daniel Swain is one go-to scientist who is watching things closely and doing live commentary on YouTube about this exceptional weather. The LA Times’s Hayley Smith looks at what the science says about the link between the super El Niño and climate change.
As for what local government officials are doing, earlier this week, the LA County Board of Supervisors got a report about emergency preparations, and have a newsletter people can sign-up for to get tips for preparing for El Niño. And the LA City Council recently submitted several motions on the super El Niño. They include this one calling for a report on preparations, another that focuses on hillside property owners, and a third one on rainstorm recovery. Those motions are scheduled for next Tuesday’s Los Angeles City Council meeting.
Lineage fire committee to talk water quality and warehouse rebuild
The LA City Council’s committee dedicated to the topic of the Lineage warehouse fire in June is finally meeting today. The Ad Hoc Committee for Boyle Heights Fire Recovery should be getting an update from LA sanitation officials about the water quality testing they did on stormwater runoff after the Lineage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights. Two other motions on the agenda call for pausing the process on Lineage’s rebuild application and raising the penalties for violations and noncompliance of building regulations.
Hollywood Walk of Fame applications, El Pueblo and 2025 disrupted water service on LA City Council agenda
The LA City Council is voting on a process for getting stars installed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The council’s approval is no longer needed for placing the stars on the Walk of Fame, a local historic landmark, and the vote today is on a process for the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce that involves submitting applications to install the stars to the Board of Public Works for approval. These changes were proposed after questions were raised by an activist, Andrew Rudick, about the procedure used for placing stars, such as for Donald Trump, and after there was confusion over how stars could be removed.
There is an item on the maintenance and sustainability of El Pueblo de Los Angeles, a historic park that is considered the “birthplace” of the city, but is also where Olvera Street’s marketplace vendors have been struggling, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, and several of the multi-generational legacy businesses have closed shop.
The agenda also includes an after-action report completed last December on water service in Granada Hills and Porter Ranch getting disrupted or affected for about a week in August 2025, when a valve controlling water flow broke during repair work at a pump station connected to a 10 million gallon water tank called the Susana Tank.
Karen Bass campaign accepted improper donations from Bakewell and others
The LA Times’s David Zahniser has a story out today about Mayor Karen Bass needing to return $9,700 in improper donations to her re-election campaign from Danny Bakewell Sr. and others who had inked a $525,000 contract with her office. The City Ethics process does allow for some warning that certain people shouldn’t be donating to a campaign contract, and in this and likely the overwhelming majority of other cases, the contract package includes a form that specifically lists Bakewell and others as prohibited contributors who may not contribute to Bass’s campaign.
What just happened?
Mayoral forum offers a side-by-side on Bass and Raman’s environmental platforms
Mayor Karen Bass and Council member Nithya Raman shared their perspectives on the environment at Thursday evening’s educational mayoral forum at Los Angeles Trade Tech College.
Bass gave an update on the status of the climate mobilization bureau at City Hall, which has shrunk a bit after she had proposed cutting it entirely. Bass now says that she is trying to revamp it. She also indicated her reluctance to have data centers come into the city (even though data centers are already in Los Angeles). And she discussed her background in community organizing and said there needed to be more emphasis on environmental justice. Bass also said that the reason she had dismissed concerns about the air quality early on during the Lineage warehouse fire was because she was basing it off of information she got from air quality officials.
Raman also brought up the climate office, saying that Bass had defunded it and that an important “heat” officer position was only restored after outcry from activists. Raman noted that extreme heat is a phenomenon that has “quieter” effects, but affects more people. She said that one of the inequities people face in Los Angeles is very little tree coverage to offer shade in areas that are predominantly Black and Brown. One of the obstacles to getting more trees planted, Raman said, was the lack of funding for the city’s urban forestry departments. Raman also said that she wants to make sure that the four people she would get to appoint to the Metro board ride public transit regularly – and she noted that since the majority of transit riders actually take the bus, she would fight to increase bus frequency and important bus routes to be restored and maintained.
Ramen released an expanded climate platform on Thursday, ahead of the forum. Bass has some information about her accomplishments around the environment under the “Green L.A.” heading here, and her office touted a revamped Climate Action Plan earlier this year.
I think they need to have a debate about finances given the budget crunch of recent years.