LA Squawk Box for Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Flock cams still recording after contract with LAPD expired, Fairplex looking to revamp 487-acre ‘LA County Fair’ venue in Pomona, county considers $35M Securus ankle monitor contract, and more.

What’s happening today

Fairplex looking to revamp 487-acre ‘LA County Fair’ venue in Pomona

Going to the Los Angeles County Fair to try the the zany fried food offerings, watch farm animal races, check out the arts and crafts competition winners, and ride the carnival rides is a comforting and reliable annual staple of SoCal life. But there might be some changes envisioned for this century old institution, at least in terms of upgrades to the venue.

There have been plans to try to redevelop the 487-acre, LA County-owned Fairplex venue, which is operated by the LA County Fairplex Association. The venue, which includes not only the fair grounds, but also a convention area and a hotel, is located in Pomona, which means the Association, would primarily work with that city on their plans.

LA county officials were just in an “operations cluster” meeting discussing renewing a contract with the Fairplex Association that lays out the responsibilities of the association and the county, as they create a “specific plan” to upgrade the Fairplex and secure funding for it. The county and Fairplex Association actually already entered into a contract for this in 2024, but that expired in February after its two-year term was up.

This time around they’re lining up the contract with the end date for the Fairplex’s main contract with the county to run the fairground that lasts until 2042. The Fairplex is leading the charge on wanting to do this redevelopment, but county officials are also on board with it, saying a report that “because the Fairplex property is such an important entertainment, agricultural, educational, and commercial asset and has the potential of becoming an even greater public asset, the county should collaborate and work with the Fair Association on developing the specific plan.”

The Fairplex is within the 1st Supervisorial District, which is represented by Hilda Solis. Michael Rodriguez with the County CEO’s real estate team highlighted the terms of this arrangement with the Fairplex Association, including provisions that say the county isn’t obligated to put any funding into the redevelopment effort, and that any efforts to secure or apply for funding be referred to county officials for review and comment.

A tour of other things LA county officials were clustering about today…

In the community services cluster, they looked at projects to building new shade, HVAC and fitness facilities at Rimgrove Park in unincorporated Valinda, which is just south of West Covina, and replacing the roofing and play area at the tiny tots playground at Pamela Park in unincorporated Duarte. At the public safety cluster, they took up a $35 million contract with an electronic ankle monitor company, Securus, and also ran through a progress update on the closure of Men’s Central Jail, which is being sued for having inhumane conditions. Advocates who spoke at this meeting chastised public officials for the slow pace of the closure, especially in terms of funding being put toward shuttering the jail. In the health and mental health cluster, a staffer for County Supervisor Holly Mitchell gave an overview of a motion they have in the works that calls for executing contracts under the recently approved Measure ER, for the 45% of of the tax revenue that voters earmarked to nonprofits that provide no-cost or reduced-cost healthcare to low-income Los Angeles residents who don’t have insurance. And in the family services cluster, there was a brief discussion of a work order for a vendor that offers services to the children of incarcerated parents. This program is meant to “decrease the emotional trauma experienced by children resulting from their parents’ incarceration,” according the county report for the meeting. The program is also supposed to provide services to parents that help them address “underlying issues, and to support increased communication and attachment with children,” the report also said. The program is located at the Century Regional Detention Facility, and it provides services to incarcerated mothers, although a county officials noted at today’s cluster meeting that they are starting to provide the services at Men’s Central Jail. The funding for the program comes from a state bill from several decades ago called AB 2994 that pulls funds from a ‘$4 surcharge on birth certificates that are then placed in a “children’s trust fund” at the county.

What just happened?

LAPD officials told police commissioners Flock cameras are still recording, despite contract expiring

During their verbal presentation to the Board of Police Commissioners on Tuesday, LAPD officials said that after Flock’s contract expired a few days ago, they were cut off from accessing the cloud storage for the data being collected by Flock’s license-plat-reading cameras. But, those cameras should still be on, they assured. They framed this as a good thing, saying that once they do execute a new agreement with Flock, the footage and license plate data being collected during the period when the contract had lapsed, will be sitting there in the cloud, ready for them to use to go after any bad guys that are out there.

LAPD officials also told commissioners that they sent a draft agreement to Flock in early May, but have been left on read by Flock, since then. The new draft contract, they said, contained a few terms aimed at addressing data security, something that the inspector general (watchdog of the LAPD) said was lacking in the LAPD’s contracts with Flock and other camera surveillance companies.

And Police Chief Jim McDonnell gave a statement at the beginning of the meeting endorsing continued use of the automated license plate reader technology, saying he considers them a “very valuable investigative tool,” and that the “decision” to let the last contract lapse, “is not a rejection of technology.”

LA county’s 2026 property values, which local governments use to plan budgets, came in higher than anticipated

The county assessor says the assessed value of properties around LA County reached $2.272 trillion, which is up by $96 billion, or 4.42%, from the prior year. And that’s setting a record, he said. The assessed value has been growing every year, for the past 15 years and this is the 16th year of growth. The assessor says this will bring in $27 billion for local services, like public education, public safety, healthcare, libraries, parks and local government services. An overwhelming majority of the assessed property are real property parcels, but there are also business property, boats and aircrafts.

This was not something they were really expecting. LA County Assessor Jeffrey Prang presented in May to the Board of Supervisors about how this will be a tough year. His earlier forecast said it would be a 3.9% increase.

The biggest chunk of the $96 billion growth, $49 billion, came from property transfers, which is usually the biggest part of the pie. Prang assured that most property owners won’t see their property tax bills going up due to the assessments. Under Proposition 13, assessed values are mostly limited to a maximum inflation rate of 2%. Single-family home values were at $982,000. Last year was a peak for single-family home values, and the increase this year was more modest. There were big losses in the downtown office market though. Such properties lost more than 50% of their value when they were being sold.

And just after the property transfers, a CPI increase, the inflation adjustment rate, added $43 billion to the assessed value increase. GDP growth and consumer demand accounted for another $11 billion. And oil refineries, mining rights, water rights, water distribution systems, mobile homes and other interests accounted for $1 billion in additional value. About $9 billion was lost due to the relief given to wildfire victims (this is less than the previous year when the loss was $24 billion).

The report that the county assessor puts out breaks out the assessments by local municipalities. You can check out your own city and compare it to others here.

An AI data center, a future commercial center, and rich people’s homes drove property value growth in three cities

The assessor highlighted three cities that had especially big jumps in assessed property value. They include Vernon, which had a 13% increase in value due to investments from Lambda, Inc., a company that operates an AI data center at Prime Data Centers, and Irwindale, where The Park at Live Oak, an industrial, retail and commercial center, is being built on a 78-acre site. And there’s, Hidden Hills, a bastion of wealthy celebrities that frequently sits in the top few on the list because the many multimillion dollar real estate transactions happening there, including a newly built $30 million home at 24255 Bridle Trail Road. One city, Baldwin Hills, saw a decrease in assessed value, but assessor officials said that was due to a correction made, because in the prior year, they had included assessment for Kaiser Hospital that should not have been part of the assessment value.

Horvath introduces a motion to support states’ legal action against the Warner Bros.-Paramount merger.

LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath just authored motion, expected to be taken up next week, that calls for LA County to also step in on blocking a planned merger between two entertainment giants, Warner Bros. and Parmount, alleging anti-trust violations.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta led a dozen state attorney generals on Tuesday in a lawsuit to block the merger of Warner Bros and Paramount.

Horvath’s motion cites the stakes of the planned for LA County, described the region as “the global capital of the creative economy” that includes more than 312,000 workers, including 171,155 who work directly in the entertainment industry. The motion points to a prior merger when Skydance purchased Paramount last August for $8 billion as leading to layoffs.

A report that the county commissioned says that this merger puts at risk 2,500 jobs in the Greater Los Angeles area. The motion calls for the county’s lawyers to get involved in the litigation, including by submitting amicus briefs.

“The film and television industry is one of the largest and most vital economic sectors of our regional economy supporting jobs through direct, indirect and induced jobs,” the motion says. “The production of movies and television not only generates jobs such as actors, set designers, grips, and makeup artists, but also supports local businesses such as caterers, equipment rental companies, and prop houses.”

Bonta’s statement argues that the merger was unlawful, and that it would “lead to higher prices, lower quality, and less content for film and television, harming movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately, audiences on every sofa and movie theater seat in the U.S.” Meanwhile, a statement from Paramount said that blocking this merger would actually hurt entertainment workers. They pointed to technological disruptions in the industry as a reason for the merger.

David Folkenflick of NPR writes that this deal “would give a wealthy family that has taken pains to show its allegiance to President Trump the effective ownership of the companies’ competing movie studios, streamers (Paramount+ and HBO Max), sports programming (CBS Sports and Turner Sports) and news divisions (CBS News and CNN) as well as a suite of cable channels, such as Comedy Central, VH1, MTV, TNT, TBS, HGTV and Discovery, among others.disruptions affecting the entertainment industry.

“The president has repeatedly praised Larry and David Ellison, the digital titan and his son who are the controlling owners of Paramount. And he has publicly urged the sale of Warner’s CNN to new owners.”

In an interview with Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy Now!, Bonta emphasized that he believes the merger will result in “less viewpoints, less stories being told, fewer perspectives, less journalists truth-telling and truth-seeking and informing the American public about their world and their country, less reporters holding the powerful accountable and holding their feet to the fire and doing investigative journalism that reveals truth and tells the world what’s going on. You’ll have a less — smaller diversity of stories being told.”

A few more things…

The late Wallis Annenberg gets a day named after her. LA County officials named July 15, 2026 in Los Angeles County in honor of Annenberg. She led the Annenberg Foundation, and during her time there, the grants that Annenberg steered to public and community programs amounted to $1.5 billion. And maybe that’s why so many places are also named after her, or the family. They include the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, Wallis Annenberg GenSpace in Koreatown, the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in Agoura Hills, and Annenberg PetSpace in Playa Vista.

Metro ridership in June was up 9% from last year. People took 19,703,996 rides on Metro buses last month, up 6.8% from last June. And Metro rail ridership was up 21.8%, to 6,561,484 rides. In total, ridership rose 9% to 26,265,480 rides. Both weekday and weekend ridership was up, with Saturday ridership going up the most by 13%. There were various events happening in June that Metro said got people to ride the rail lines and buses. They include the World Cup with people going to fan zones, and the LA Pride Parade, the WeHo Pride, Hollywood Bowl concerns, and the Shakira and Ariana Grande concerts.

Nithya Raman’s mayoral campaign continues to post matching funds wins. In LA city’s mayoral election, City Council member Nithya Raman’s campaign just posted a $372,074 matching funds check. This is the first one cut for the general election for any of the city races. Raman forced a LA Mayor Karen Bass into a runoff in the primary last month, and the two will be facing off in November to be LA’s mayor. Making it to a runoff means that candidates automatically get an 1/5th of the maximum matching funds that they can receive, so the amount posted under Raman’s campaign should be made up mostly of that bonus amount. Maybe it’s like when someone in a reality TV competition wins a warm-up round at the start of the episode that they can then use toward getting a leg up in the elimination round?

LA Mayor Karen keeps losing communications staff. The latest is Kolby Lee, who was just speaking to the press this past weekend about a kerfuffle over another communications unpaid adviser, Yusef Robb, who was at the same time working for Lineage on crisis communication related to the fire at the Boyle Heights cold storage facility that the companies operates. Prior longtime comms staff that the mayor has lost in just the lasat year include Clara Karger and Zach Seidl, whose replacement, Amanda Crumley, also left after just three months on the job.

LA County already allowed online participation in public meetings, but still unveils some small tweaks, like additional screens and language access. While the new public meeting bill, AB 707, that requires remote participation was a bigger change for LA city, and not as much of a change for LA County, which never dumped the pandemic-era practice of providing a remote meeting option ala Zoom, there are still a couple of features they needed to incorporate. The bill has prompted the county to place digital screens in the foyer of the Board Meeting Room at the Hall of Administration for people to follow the meetings. There are also specific links for agendas in three of the top non-English languages used in the county, which are Spanish, Chinese and Tagalog. Those are called “threshold languages.”