What’s happening today?
They are calling it the Great Debate. Will it live up to that promise? Mayor Karen Bass and City Council member Nithya Raman are back for another rumble tonight on the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association’s debate stage. The last time, there were fireworks.
This Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association debate, which starts at 7 p.m., is co-sponsored by the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council and the Sherman Oaks/Encino Chamber of Commerce. The in-person reservations are sold out, and they are recommending people arrive early to get good seats. Doors are set to open at 6 p.m. You can also view the debate through a Zoom stream or listen in via LAist. And you can catch up on the debate later on their YouTube page, which also features an trove of past interviews with elected officials and debates.
What just happened?
More than four years later, a progressive makes good on his campaign promise to rescind 41.18 anti-encampment zones
Council member Hugo Soto-Martinez has finally fulfilled a campaign promise to get rid of the 41.18 anti-encampment zones that his predecessor, Mitch O’Farrell, set up back in 2021, in the 13th council district. Even though it took some time for things to get to this point, Soto-Martinez ended up getting pretty easy support for rescinding those zones — although the attitude from many of his colleagues appeared to be along the lines of, “Be my guest, it’s your district, and your problem.”
All of the council members present – except for Imelda Padilla, Monica Rodriguez and Traci Park – voted to support Soto-Martinez’s motion. Bob Blumenfield, a West Valley council member, voted in favor, but he had also made a point of saying that doesn’t mean he opposes 41.18.
Some council members rely on the prohibition to address encampments, which can have the effect of then pushing unhoused people to other areas. But other council members have actually opted to avoid using the law enforcement tool to address encampments. For example, Nithya Raman has not set up any 41.18 zones, and she is now touting a 54% drop in homelessness in her district. Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson also hasn’t set up any such zones in his South Los Angeles district. He said on Tuesday that this was “because of the particularity of my community.”
“Sending the police to give people tickets in my community almost always makes the thing worse,” Harris-Dawson said. “Whether it’s drugs or speeding or whatever – it just has never worked, and so for me, it doesn’t make any sense. In other parts of the city, I’ve seen it work and work in a way that’s effective.”
Tuesday’ meeting ended up offering up one of the more substantive conversations on 41.18 that the council has had in a while, even though the body has had several progressives on it for quite some time now. The progressive bloc does consistently, though quietly, vote against 41.18 zone resolutions by colleagues. With Tuesday’s vote, Soto-Martinez spoke at length about his stance against using the 41.18 enforcement tool.
Although rarely commented on by city leaders, 41.18 zones have drawn plenty of public comment, usually in opposition to them. A recent vote by Raman against Council member Traci Park’s motion to set up 41.18 zones impressed an activist enough that she shouted out, “Nithya, you got my vote!”
Now the pressure is on from a coalition of mutual aid groups to get other progressives to remove 41.18 zones. They’re hoping to get Council member Eunisses Hernandez to remove zones set up by Gil Cedillo, the previous council member that she ousted, and to get Council member Ysabel Jurado to remove the zones set up by Kevin de Leon.
Be sure to read Phoenix Tso’s complete report on Tuesday’s vote at LA Public Press.
Nithya Raman accuses mayoral candidate opponent of halting needed street safety project in Griffith Park
Nithya Raman on Tuesday accused Mayor Karen Bass of taking the extraordinary step of intervening to stop a street safety project on Forest Lawn Drive that had been three years in the making and set to start construction in June.
“Normally, mayors defer to the council members for these types of projects in their district, so this intervention was unusual,” Raman said at a news conference on Tuesday that she held almost a week after a fatal car crash on Forest Lawn Drive. Spectrum News 1 posted up two clips from the news conference. Mayor Karen Bass’s campaign gave Spectrum News 1 a statement that points to opposition to the street safety project from “ local businesses, faith leaders, and community members.”
The project first came about primarily due to concerns over earlier car crashes, including another fatal crash in 2022, according to Streets for All, a transportation advocacy group that has endorsed Raman and runs a political action arm that is working to elect Raman. Streets for All’s write-up in May on the history of the project offers links to the April letter that Mayor Bass sent to state legislators, and a memo the mayor issued on May 7 to LADOT telling staff to stop work on the project.
A few more things…
What’s the harm of an unreliable poll? USC political science professor Christian Grose tells LA Times reporter Ben Wieder that polling can drive election outcomes, and “favorable polls lead to more fundraising. There’s a bandwagon effect.” After a poll on the LA mayor’s race turned out to be fake, LA Times’s Ben Wieder puts a wider lens on the challenges faced by pollsters that might affect how accurate they are. Wieder points to a 2024 Pew report that says polling of people under 30 and Latino adults may not accurately capture their attitudes. Wieder also speaks to experts who say when an incentive is offered, such as cash, to get people to participate in surveys, that can also lead to unreliable results. And pollsters are still struggling with changes in how people communicate. With few people answering their phones, pollsters have to find people to respond via email and text messaging. And with new polling companies, it can be hard to tell if what is put out is reliable.
Parriva has rolled out a series of articles on LA city’s 9th District race that includes profiles of each of the two candidates, Jose Ugarte and Estuardo Mazariegos, who are facing off in the runoff race. The profiles are by Reynoldo Mena, who was previously editorial director at several Spanish-language publications in Southern California, including Excelsior, Hoy and La Opinión.
LA Council member Curren Price says he just got done leading his last jobs committee meeting, after serving as chair of various versions of the committee for 13 years. Price was recently reassigned to chair the Government Efficiency, Innovation and Audits instead, as he finishes out the last few months before his final term ends in December. And he’s now passing the torch onto Council member Hugo Soto-Martinez, who is set to be the committee’s new chair at the end of the month. This last meeting included a hearing on a proposal to expand worker protections, and in the past the committee has worked on issues such as raising the minimum wage, a guaranteed basic income, the Olympics wage, the hotel living wage and measure called “ban the box” that prohibits employers from asking about a job candidate’s criminal history.
Alejandra Molina at Boyle Heights Beat details a St. John’s Community Health report that says serious health problems they found among people who went to their health clinic in recent weeks can be connected to exposure to toxic smoke and chemicals. Molina had previously written about community and South Coast AQMD testing that found ammonia was in the air weeks after the fire. And Capital and Main’s Robin Urevich recently dug into fire department logs to learn more about the presence of ammonia in Boyle Heights after the fire.
Lineage announced on Tuesday that they are nearly finished with removing bulk food waste from their burned Boyle Heights warehouse, and they’re starting on a more complicated phase to remove food waste in harder-to-reach areas of their warehouse. They explained that they’re going to need to remove “loose food waste” stored in 40 miles of shelving that are arranged six stories high. Workers will be climbing up the shelves to remove the waste, they said, because heavy equipment won’t be able to get to much of it. You can read their latest Aug. 18 update here.
Raman should take it to court.