What’s happening today?
The City Council signed off on bans of a couple of bad-for-you items. One was an effort to stop nitrous oxide from being sold and distributed at cannabis and tobacco shops. That ban has been championed by Imelda Padilla. The other ban that moved forward would prohibit the manufacture and installation of imitation stone products that contain tiny crystalline silica particles that cause silicosis, an incurable lung disease, and this ban has been championed by Council member Eunisses Hernandez.
The Transportation Committee this morning also sent ahead a proposal to change the duties of the Board of Transportation Commissioners, which recently has been entangled in a legal case related to the long-stalled Venice Dell affordable housing project. While the proposal may appear Venice Dell-coded, the author of it, Eunisses Hernandez, said that she wanted the changes – which would remove the ability of the Transportation Commission to advise on city parking lots that are being used for homeless housing and shelter – because a couple of her own affordable housing projects, namely the Marigold and Grace Villas, were inexplicably blocked from being taken up at the commission.
There were a couple of LA City Council committee meetings this afternoon, one on the city’s committee that focuses on city arts programs, its parks and other such amenities. The arts and parks panel’s meeting at 2 pm had on its agenda grant funding for subsidized preschool services at the city’s parks facilities; a proposed rock garden project at Lafayette Park in the MacArthur Park area; a preschool program agreement at Cheviot Hills Recreation Center; and an animal intervention services agreement at the North Central Animal Services Center that may include financial help with vet services, spay and neutering, boarding, training, emotional support animal assessments.
The panel was also looking to dive into Recreation and Parks’ 700-page 2025 Park Needs Assessment, which gives an overview of the condition and inventory of the city’s parks resources, and offers some ideas for further investment. City Council members have also seemed preoccupied with hardening the closure of parks facilities, especially at night, and at this meeting, the panel was set to discuss a motion that would essentially close Branford Park in Arleta at sunset, hours earlier than the default closing time of 10:30 p.m.. And there’s a motion that calls for solidifying the city’s park closure program, which has waxed and mostly waned depending on the availability of staffing.
Also of note is a report from Recreation and Parks that relates to what officials in that department hope to do about public art works at parks facilities that were installed “without RAP’s permission and/or Board approval” over the years, outside of the usual formal process. Sometimes this happens when groups that lease city park facilities install artwork. FYI, the Board of Recreation and Parks Commissioners adopted a “public art policy” in 2024 that lays out the process for approving temporary public art installations, and some artworks made have been put in before that.
At the LA City Council’s Housing Housing Committee’s meeting at 2 p.m. ,the agenda included the appointment of Antonio Gallo, a divorce attorney and owner of Boyle Heights restaurant Casa Fina, to the Rent Adjustment Commission; loan agreements for affordable housing projects Strong Residence and Harmony Place Apartments; and a motion that’s seeking a look into the Measure ULA’s exemption of nonprofits from the so-called ‘mansion’ transfer tax, specifically around including nonprofits created to purchase to purchase property in that carve-out.
There’s also a motion by Katy Yaroslavsky that proposes to hold off on charging developers the community impact fees until later, as a way to encourage developers to build condos rather than rental housing. Yaroslavsky’s motion says developers may shy away from building condos because it tends to cost more than rental housing, and one thing that drives up costs, she says, are municipal benefit fees (think the affordable housing linkage fee, and the Quimby, park and the subdivision mapping fees). And why is it better to build more condos? She says condos give people an opportunity to own property, which renting does not. The motion proposes timing the payment of those fees to when the certificate of occupancy is issued, which is after the project is completed. The files for this motion includes a letter from Abundant Housing LA stating support for this type of policy change, with the group’s executive director, Azeen Khanmalek writing that “Councilmember Yaroslavsky has highlighted the unfair disparity between the high costs developers pay to build a for-sale project compared to those associated with building a rental one.”
Also, because it’s Clean Air Day, local transportation agencies, including Metro and LADOT, are providing free rides.
What just happened?
LAMC 41.18 a humiliation tool used on the unhoused community, or a tool for engagement?
A proposal to expand the city’s anti-camping law, LAMC 41.18, did not make it past the Public Safety Committee, at least for now. The meeting room at City Hall’s fourth floor committee meeting room was packed as numerous people, many involved with LACAN, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and other groups showed up to oppose the proposal, which calls for no longer requiring council approval to create anti-camping zones, as well as to automatically prohibit homeless encampments around fire stations, post offices, and police stations by designating those areas as “sensitive” zones, much like schools and daycares.
Several of the people who spoke at public comment were formerly unhoused and have been the target of such laws as LAMC 41.18, which is by no means the only law used around the city of LA. One of the speakers, who identified themselves as Matthew, told the panel that “nearly all homeless people want housing as long as it’s safe, habitable and dignified.” He added that “expanding LAMC 41.18 will not help anyone find housing.” Rather, he said, “we have seen these laws used and abused to humiliate us.”
Sonja Verdugo, an organizer with Ground Game LA who is formerly unhoused, raised the point that people like her are rarely if ever consulted when such laws are implemented. “How can you make decisions for people you haven’t even spoken to?” she asked the committee.
Three people – Nithya Raman, Hugo Soto-Martinez and Curren Price – on the five-person panel led and backed motions that put the proposal on pause, saying the issue needed more study. Council member Traci Park urged for advancing the motion, though, saying there was no need to study it any further. She was joined by John Lee, in voting against delaying the proposal.
Lee appeared to open up about his personal life amid Tuesday’s discussion on the matter. He said that he and his wife have had trouble getting a relative to respond to their entreaties to be housed. Lee represents one of the more conservative districts in the city of Los Angeles (where the role of police tends to be seen in a more positive “tough love” kind of light — although, as always, not by everyone there), and he said that he views this law enforcement approach as a “tool for engagement.”
Although the law, and others like it, have been wielded in Lee’s district, including with the help of funding from the council’s discretionary funds — possibly in an effort to “save lives” as Lee framed it on Tuesday — not a few of the people who stopped to be interviewed by The LA Reporter over the years, even while they endured encampment sweeps or were ordered to move along by law enforcement, have nevertheless died.
And finally…
Some news broke (reported by Noah Goldberg of the LA Times) on Tuesday that the police officers union, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, was planning to formally oppose Measure FD, which is a sales tax that would raise money for the Los Angeles city fire department.