Lost! Special Edition: Gail "GPS" Goldberg
JM, One needed a map to get there, 1.17.08
Joseph Mailander a guy in la • elsewhere • email
Nuestro pueblo's Planning jefe, Gail "GPS" Goldberg was in Los Feliz last night, with Ken Bernstein in tow.
She warmed up the crowd by telling them mobility was a problem in LA. She said it took her forty-five minutes to get from downtown to Los Feliz last night.
She also said her mapping program said it was eight miles (btw---it's not, it's more like 4.5).
So what did she do---take Wilshire? But more intriguingly:
Why does THE PLANNING DIRECTOR of the CITY OF LOS ANGELES need DIRECTIONS to get from Downtown to the corner of Hillhurst and Franklin?
~~~
A concerned citizen asked GPS Goldberg what the City is doing about density.
It's doing nothing but increasing it and rearranging the increases around transit hubs. Which we already knew.
Then the citizen asked her why her answer presumed that growth was inevitable, even though LA was already more dense than New York City.
We've heard the same answer since she arrived from San Diego: that there are three contributors to growth---immigration, copulation, and domestic arrivals---and that you can't really control any of them at the Planning level.
She added somewhat snippily that people come here for jobs, and she didn't know of a single person who was for cutting back jobs or the economy.
A delicious non sequitur, that. The people coming here for jobs---sure, some slip into million-one-five condos, some into Taco Bell Tuscan lofts, but mostly---aren't they the ones who largely stand out in front of Home Depots or on street corners with fruit at their feet? Surely this is the largest segment of people who come here for jobs?
Yet the City isn't permitting a damn thing for these kinds of job seekers. Even so, the message is always the same: growth is inevitable, that's why we've got to build more units for people from Seoul, Madison, and Irvine (rather than for renters of every ethnicity who are already here, but who can't afford flipped houses and milion-one-five condos and would rather not live in Taco Bell Tuscans).
~~~
More interesting stuff: the Planning Department since GPS Goldberg arrived has dedicated two planners to handle rewriting the community master plans. And she seemed proud of the number.
You know how many people she's put in the Historic Resources Division? Six.
Repeating: Planning has six Historic Resources staffers, but only two dedicated to those among us writing new community plans. And despite the fact that the City already has a Cultural Heritage Commission, and there is an allegedly not-for-profit LA Conservancy that earlier this month got four million dollars richer at the expense of the LAUSD.
Sudden thought: couldn't the Conservancy volunteer with the extorted Ambassador largesse to do some of the survey work that Gail GPS Goldberg's Planning Department is doing? Or would that detract too much from its mandate to squander resources on shaking down orgs like the LAUSD and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, so that it can continue its litigious efforts for another largely fruitless and stationery decade?
Labels: a guy in la, gail goldberg, planning
Posted by Joseph F. Mailander @ 1/18/2008 08:03:00 AM
20 Comments:
JM,
Thanks for correcting
"Nuestra pueblo's" to
NUESTRO PUEBLO's (o is masculine).
(-:
JM,
The 8:41 prompted me to add this...
After Bill Clintons second win for the presidency, he was visited by the emperor of Japan and his wife. The emperor, upon arriving at the White House leaned over to Bill Clintons ear and said "congratulations on your election." Because many Asians pronounce their L's as R's, President Clinton heard: "CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR ERECTION." Remember, this was when the Monica Samille Lewinsky scandal was bubbling up almost daily on the national news. Caveat lector: This story was told to a friend of a friend, of a friend of mine. (-;
So, are developers investing in projects supposed to build projects for people who can't afford to even rent and are most likely illegal? The real estate mess now is only from lenient real estate brokers and bankers, what if there were a glut of unsaleable condos? The economy would be screwed. Developers develop when there is a need($), not due to socialistic leaning to minimize profits for the good of the illegsal masses (sorry, Karl Marx, things have changed).
Also , you'll find most out of towners hired for key jobs can't find their way around the block, whlile having now idea of the flavor of each community. Most out of towners hired as GMs are doomed because they come from small cities, and frankly, it would take a lifetime to learn LA (which is why it would be a wiser choice to appoint local to avoid the geographic, community learning curve)..Sordid realitiy.
Mayor Sam you need to use the delete button on that buffoon of Santiago who keeps posting so many damn useless comments on this blog. And people thought Zuma was a pest.
It should be "nuestra ciudad". We are not a small pueblo!!
JM, interesting insight into Goldberg (the mouthpiece) and our "planning commission".
Is there in actuality "a master plan" for LA or is there one "Master Plan" for us regular people and another "master plan" for the "movers and shakers" of LA?
ergo, Broad, Riordan, Mahoney, O'Melveny & Meyers,and the other equivocator's who are juiced in.
Will the real master plan for LA be to follow the lead of a San Francisco or Manhattan where the older version of a vibrant urban landscape with a working class presence and ethnic enclaves that give a city it's identity and charm, is replaced by a scenario where working people are displaced and removed by gentrification and high taxes with the city finally becoming a safe, antiseptic, expensive, soulless, parody of what it once was?
Funny how history has a way of repeating itself. LA for example, where in the early 20th century the wealthy merchant class was situated in downtown and the surrounding area, and the working class was to found in Lincoln Hts, City Terrace, Highland Park, etc;
Then after WW2 and the emergence of freeways and cheap affordable "track homes" (including cheap land for industry) the downtown and central LA areas were abandoned for greener and more lucrative pastures in the "Burbs".
Now that much of suburbia has deteriorated (Anaheim,Pomona, Paramount, among many other examples), and people have to drive further and further away to find a decent suburbia,(Victorville, Corona,Ventura etc),and the typical family suffers from dysfunction and stress from the hours of freeway commuting and high fuel prices going back and forth to work, now we see the powers that be who bought up the cheap central city real estate when it was considered dilapidated putting the real master plan into effect, but without the "dangers" of a vibrant alive cityscape with a working class, but only a Las Vegas style parody of the city's former self, but without any "raison d'etre" except an empty false existence (but safe!).
The planning commission motto could be "Let Them Eat Cake".
Regards
dq
Is there in actuality "a master plan" for LA or is there one "Master Plan" for us regular people and another "master plan" for the "movers and shakers" of LA?
There are actually about thirty-six of them. The Planning Department is taking on about twelve of them at a time every three years.
None of them are used much for guidance. There are leaflets in every council office instructing developers how to apply for a zoning change.
"Historic Preservation" is mollification language to keep homeowners focused on their own residential streets and off of their neighborhood's commercial strips, where the real political battles unfold.
To get from Downtown to Los Feliz speedily, TAKE THE DAMN SUBWAY.
Who is the best person to query about the development called Wyverstone or Wyvenstone?
The answer lady replies,
Thank you dear lady, I kiss your feet as your humble servant.
""There are actually about thirty-six of them. The Planning Department is taking on about twelve of them at a time every three years.
None of them are used much for guidance. There are leaflets in every council office instructing developers how to apply for a zoning change.
"Historic Preservation" is mollification language to keep homeowners focused on their own residential streets and off of their neighborhood's commercial strips, where the real political battles unfold.""
............................
Very astute observation answer lady!
The old divide and conquer, confuse the peons with royal decrees ploy, that's as old as history and is still used successfully on us subjects of the royal highborn Brahman class.
Thirty six master plans indeed, but again I ask is there a "master" master plan for our own juiced in "Masters of the Universe" ?
I suspect so, and would the 36 others be referred to as "Mini pads, er Plans", and the one for their eyes only be called The "Maxi plan"?
It wouldn't be a new thing here in LA where we've seen "the shape of things to come" before. (mass transit demolished and freeways and land speculation schemes that made fortunes for members only.
Fight The Power!
dq
Toxic Politics
Lead-Paint Cleanup Stalled in Boyle Heights
D.A. Garcetti can't get the lead out at vast housing complex
By Chip Jacobs
The Wyvernwood Garden Apartments, one of the biggest privately owned housing complexes this side of Chicago, has a chemical problem that just won't go away.
In 1993, four children contracted lead poising there, and ever since, the county's health bureaucracy, anti-lead activist and a cadre of attorneys have all trained their eye on the far-flung Boyle Heights housing complex. a city-within-the-inner-city, Wyvernwood is home to more than 10,000 people, the majority of them low-income Hispanics.
The exhausive cleanup intended to shield them from lead hazards, though, hasn't materilized. Instead, civil prosecution aimed at forcing renovation, has become the focus of legal and political maneuvers involving District Attorney Gil Garcetti, Eastside Councilman Richard Alatorre and a cast of lessor-known players. Both Alatorre and officials with the District Attorney's Office say they only want to get the lead out at a major housing complex, but critics see a case of influence peddling marshaled by Wyverwood millionaire landlord, Sammuel Mevorach.
Manuel Bernal, director of the non-profit East Los Angeles Community Corporation, which at one point joined a group attempting to buy the project, said he is concerned that Wyvernwood residints are getting lost in a shuffle fraught with "backdoor poliitcs" and "economics." "It's time for results, " Bernal said. "This is a big Piece of Boyle Heights."
Councilman Alatorre, government sources said, was rebuffed when he initially lobbied the District Attorney's Offie for leniecy against Mevorach, whose project sits in his ditrict. But when the prospect of a sale arose this fall, Alatorre won an audience with Garcetti and asked him not to file a toxic-hazard abatement complaint that could stymie the transaction.
In a recent interview, Alatorre staunchly denied he went to bat for Mevorach in his get-together with Garcetti, arguing that his only goal is to get the property renovated under new ownership. " I don't give a damn about Mervorach." Alatorre said, " I want there to be a sale to get a responsible buyer." But with the withdrawl of a potential $30 million -range buyer this fall, it remains doubtful that Wyvernwood will change hands at all.
Mevorach took other paths to reach Garcetti. In July 1995, a month before Mervoarch commenced negotiations with the District Attorney's Office over the pending civil complaint against him, the property owner gave Garcetti a $350 campaign contribution at a fund-raiser, according to the county Registar-Recorder's Office Apart from that, Mevorach's atrtorney is Sheldon Sloan, a well-connected Westside Lawyer, persident fo the county's Bar Association, state appointee to the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission and confident of Mayor Richard Riordan. Sloan is a Garcetti backer and campaign fund-raiser who played an active role in the district a ttorney's hard fought re-election victory this fall. On September 4, during negotiatioons over Wyvernwood that Garcetti himself attended, Sloan co-hosted a Beverly Hills fund-raiser that netted "about 410,000" for the candidate, according to Charley Dobbs, fund-raising director for the Garcetti Campaign.
Sloan also co-hosted a Garcetti fund-raiser the previous
In 1997, this reporter wrote a lengthy story in the L.A. Weekly about Alatorre’s connections to Samuel Mevorach, an Arcadia-based real estate operator who’d bedeviled L.A. housing officials with his dilapidated properties. Among Mevorach’s holdings was the Wyvernwood apartments, a sprawling, once-tidy Boyle Heights complex that had degenerated into blistered, crime-infested units coated with dangerous flaking lead paint; a number of children were poisoned from it. Feeling the heat from inspectors, Mevorach needed Alatorre’s sway to grease a $91-million, city-subsidized sale of the property.
Alatorre unluckily needed Mevorach just as much as the slumlord needed him.
"Who is the best person to query about the development called Wyverstone or Wyvenstone?"
Villariagosa, Huizar, Garcetti, Alatorre, Griego
This really pisses me off !!!!
The anti immigration, "illegal alien" hunter, so called voice of the American people sick of the Mexican invasion of the USA, "Lou Dobbs" announced that he will have his own nationally syndicated radio show like the other right wingers Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
Dobbs daughter was outed recently for hiring "illegal aliens" to clean the stables at her "Riding Academy" but Dobbs said that was just more proof of the Mexican Invasion of AMerica.
With Dobbs new job is the proof that "illegal aliens" are not taking jobs from Americans but creating jobs for Americans.
If not for the so called Mexican invasion of America, that horse that Dobbs has been riding for years (hmmm does he hire illegals to clean his stables like his daughter does?), poor old Lou Dobbs would still be doing the traffic report in someplace like Bangor Maine.
This next election campaign is gonna be funny, which Republican will "out Mexican" the others and prove his toughness to the USA public.
Just as long as she blows off Mike Woo and his simpleminded disciples like Ed Reyes, who are claiming that our parking problems will be solved by building highrises without parking. This is so idiotic on the face of it, you gotta wonder...
No, people won't take public transport until it actually goes somewhere.
There's an article in CityWatch today with a link to a really cool YouTube video of an elevated system of individual electric cars -- looks like out of a futuristic movie like Terminator 3, but it's operative at London Heathrow by this fall. Check it out, awesome.
It could start from LAX to the current/ dead end rail line.
And WHY is it accepted as a fact etched in stone that the subway to the sea would have to cost $6.5 billion? Spain put in a 25-mile subway system for $2.5 million just a few years ago. Are we being held hostage again by the unions?
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lou Dobbs is married to a Mexican woman, you morons!
I just enjoy gloating over the fact that CA, and L.A. in particular, is choking on it's new third world population!
And I'm gloating over the fact that the corrupt career politicians in Sac. and LA are bilking all of you out of your minds.
And I'm gloating over the fact that all of you marxist sympathysers are getting your just dues.
And I am gloating over that fact that in just 17 days, Fabian Nunez, Gil Cedillo, Don Perata and forty more corrupt "career" politicians will be OUT ON THEIR ASSES!!!
Vote NO on Prop 93!
I hope L.A. and CA has learned it's lesson! Gray Davis must really gloat as he watches this state falling into the Pacific!
It's the Bonfire of the Vanities: Part II.....
Cheers to all of you illegal lovers! Enjoy the new Third World and your Mexican criminales! I told you so!!!1
"Taco Bell Tuscans"!!!!!! I LOve it!!!
Have been searching for the perfect description of this hideous facades that have become the trademark of all that cheap, illegal construction! Perfect...Taco Bell Tuscans!
Also, MS...can you please change the headline banner at the top of this website to read"
"LA IS THE ENVY OF THE (THIRD) WORLD! Thank you....I believe in accuracy of reporting!
Anonymouse/don culo hysterically posts?
""Lou Dobbs is married to a Mexican you morons!""
??? Yea so what are we to do with this piece of useless info?
Stop gloating it doesn't become you, and take your meds Barf.
California and LA are still the greatest and if you don't think so maybe you should move to North Dakota and start a goat cheese operation with no ethnic's to bother you any more.
So Cal is a tough place to live sometimes but the positives far outweigh the negatives in my humble opinion.
I love the ethnic cultures and foods available here in LA .
In fact today I may go down to Pt Fermin and visit the Korean Peace site overlooking the Pacific, ring the bell, look at the port of LA and Catalina Is., then go down to Ports of Call to Fishermans Village and buy some fish and shellfish, have it cooked on there grill, get a schooner of beer and some bread, sit down in back and watch the ships coming up the channel from all over the world while listening to the mariachis and enjoying the families having fun, families from all over the globe.
Just a day in LA try the same in Phoenix or Little Rock.
With L.A. harbor, Long beach harbor, San Pedro harbor, San Diego Harbor...With L.A., Van Nuys, Ontario, Burbank, John Wayne airports...With Silicone Valley...With the Bank Centers of S.F. and L.A....With it's citrus and agricultural commerce...Cal tech, Stanford, Berkley, Scripps, Mudd, Chapman, UCLA, USC...yes little boy the sky is falling. your mind seems beleaguered...if you had a thimble full of acumen in your bucket, your mind wouldn't be amorphous and murky. You have no perspicuity, and when challenged, you have no repartee but come out with acrimonious and splenetic rubbish. Come on Barf, can't hold it together?
Thank you for the info on Wyvernwood.
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