What’s happening today?
Nithya Raman is courting LA’s Latino voters today with a “Latinos con Nithya” rally at La Cita, in downtown Los Angeles, where she is sharing her plans around housing, small business, and immigration. She also announced an endorsement by LAUSD Board member Rocio Rivas, who was just re-elected to serve LAUSD families in the 2nd district, which covers several Eastside Los Angeles neighborhoods like El Sereno, Boyle Heights, Echo Park and Highland Park.
The Los Angeles City Council is holding its regular 10 a.m. Friday meeting. Those usually start with some presentations, which can push the official agenda back a bit. Their main business today includes voting on whether to confirm Mayor Karen Bass’s reappointments of people to the commissions for the El Pueblo and Cultural Affairs departments, and to the House LA Citizens Oversight Committee, which oversees Measure ULA dollars. An item on a major issue today is a motion on setting aside funding for City Council offices to expand a program that moves people from RV encampments. Council member Monica Rodriguez’s motion on her RV to Home program, which was piloted in her district in the northeast San Fernando Valley, says that Rodriguez’s council office “moved 198 people to permanent supportive housing, an additional 202 into interim housing,” and that they “removed 192 RVs from the street.” Another item on an important issue is a motion by Council member Tim McOsker that asks about what can be disclosed about a feasibility study related to the Jones Chemicals plant in the Harbor Gateway Area that has been the subject of concern for people living nearby. The agenda also includes a motion by Council member Adrin Nazarian to get regular verbal reports on film permitting, a critical topic for many people’s livelihoods in Los Angeles. A couple of historic landmark applications are also up today, including one for an apartment named after and owned by a popular in her day (and some say, she ought to be better known today) silent film star, Norma Talmadge.
A few LA City Council members will be sticking around at City Hall this afternoon. Some will take part in the Jobs Committee at 2 p.m., where they’re taking up a healthy neighborhood market program in Council member Tim McOsker’s 15th District, a program to help legacy businesses such as small restaurants survive, and a couple items on how the Hollywood Walk of Fame Public Amenities Program is monitored. The motion on the legacy business protection efforts points to a study by UCLA and KIWA that says challenges faced by small restaurants include “high operating costs, limited access to business resources, and unfair labor practices like low wages, tip theft, and wage violations. These structural barriers restrict economic mobility and make it difficult for small business owners to offer competitive wages or remain in operation.
There is also an ad hoc committee meeting on the Lineage fire in Boyle Heights, at 2 p.m., that includes the creation of an environmental justice commission, “bulky item pick up, street sweeping and power washing, and dead animal removal in the public right of way” in Boyle Heights, and proposed policy to suspend sweeps of homeless encampments during emergencies that are done under the CARE+ program. On the last issue, the Bureau of Sanitation (also known as LA Sanitation), sent back a report this week explaining that City Council offices, on a case-by-case level, have always had the ability to suspend sweeps. Sanitation officials said that they could add language to make suspending sweeps during environmental emergencies more automatic.
They explained that there is an existing process in use since 2019 for City Council offices to “adjust CARE+ services, including, but not limited to, suspending, downgrading, postponing, or rescheduling CARE+ operations at the direction of the respective Council Office,” which offers flexibility to respond to “environmental emergencies, disasters, extreme weather events, or other emergency conditions affecting a specific area, Council District (CD), or the City as a whole.” Council offices can make changes up to the day of the operation, the report also says. Sanitation officials also note that “this operational flexibility provides each CD with full authority to modify its respective schedule as local conditions change or dictate.”
Gustavo Arellano of the Los Angeles Times has a column out today that wades into a touchy conflict that centers around the Barrio Run Club announcing a 5K run through Leimert Park that uses the words “taking over” in their promotion of the event. The 5K was later relocated, but Arellano goes into how the shifting demographics in South Los Angeles, and the divisive politics this can generate, might cause strong reactions. “This is a city where neighborhood displacement — whether by gentrification, government or natural disaster — is as commonplace and messy as the bloom of jacarandas. Few communities have weathered those forces more than Black L.A.,” Arellano writes.
What just happened?
Mayor Karen Bass points to her efforts to stand up to Trump’s ICE raids with a new re-election campaign video out this week about how she responded to immigration officials conducting a raid at MacArthur Park. In the short and succinct video, Bass says, “When someone comes after your family, you don’t hesitate. You stand up. You fight. So when Trump sent ICE to MacArthur Park, I met them there, looked them in the eye, and told them to get out. And they did.” Los Angeles has been seen as a testing ground for the Trump Administration, and in January, Bass was featured in Nation magazine as one of the political figures who was fighting back against Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.
Mayor Karen Bass has some catching up to do on matching funds. Since her challenger, Council member Nithya Raman broke $1 million in matching funds a few weeks back, Mayor Karen Bass appears to finally have gotten in some progress on that front. Bass recently posted $303,072 in additional matching funds, to reach a total of $978,440. Bass’s team appears to have been hard at work to get in those small dollar donations, including posting a video last month. But Bass’s team has to be sweating a bit. Raman’s team happens to include a very proficient compliance person on matching funds. Given the nearly three weeks that has passed since the last posting of matching funds for Raman, there’s potentially more loaded up by now that will boost her matching fund total soon enough. One of the things about matching small dollar donations is that it’s supposed to encourage candidates to ALSO care about the little guys – so while it might seem to some as not being a good use of public dollars, it’s a way for the average person’s donations, which might not seem much compared to the people (or companies and groups) with deeper pockets, to figure a bit more prominently on the minds of anyone who’s potentially headed into powerful elected offices.
Some pedestrian safety, immigration and e-bike safety policy items hit the council files this week. LA city’s Department of Transportation just submitted a ”report-back” on a 2023 motion by Bob Blumenfield, Nithya Raman and Eunisses Hernandez calling for the city to improve pedestrian safety when they’re crossing the street, including looking into giving pedestrians more of a head start when crossing the street. The report recommends that the City Council instruct staff “to update its guidelines for signal operations, Leading Pedestrian Intervals, scramble crosswalks, and No Turn on Red restrictions and report back once these guidelines are updated.” The LA City Attorney’s Office just submitted an ordinance related to ED17, which aims to protect immigrants amid the Trump Administration’s raids, and the city’s Chief Legislation Analyst has sent back a report on legislation related to ebike etc safety.
A couple of commission appointments were withdrawn this week, both after people in the public spoke up about those appointees. They include Mayor Karen Bass’s appointment of Pacific Crest Realty owner Daniel Tenenbaum, to the Housing Authority for the City of Los Angeles. Mitch Kamin, who is Bass’s chief of staff, submitted a brief letter notifying the council they were withdrawing Tenenbaum from further consideration. The group, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE), had sent a letter in late August raising “serious concerns” and citing among other issues, Tenenbaum’s “longstanding leadership role within the California Apartment Association.”
The other withdrawal was of City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto’s appointment of Dena Bloom to the City Ethics Commission. This came after a City Hall watchdog, Rob Quan of Unrig LA, spoke in public comment at Tuesday’s City Council meeting about Bloom being listed as a “major donor” in a state disclosure, which would make her ineligible for the position, under the 2024 voter-approved Charter Amendment ER. Less than an hour after the comment, the Council President announced they were postponing the item for a week, but that might not be necessary. Just two days later, the City Attorney’s Office forwarded the City Council a letter from Bloom herself, saying that while it was an “honor” to have been appointed, that she was withdrawing her name for consideration. Interestingly, Feldstein Soto had personally spoken at a committee meeting just before Tuesday’s City Council vote on Bloom’s appointment to lend extra support for her nominee for the Ethics role.
