Mayor Sam's Hotsheet for Monday

Monday is both Cesar Chavez Day as well as the LA County Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day.  With no disrespect to Mr. Chavez (who would actually be rolling over in his grave over some of today's politics) you can imagine where all the politicians will be and where the parades are.  Still a small but dedicated group of volunteers held a picnic in honor of Vietnam Veterans in North Hollywood Sunday.

Video Louis recaps parking meters in NoHo over at Downtown NoHo Times .  Politicians who have raised parking fees in Los Angeles might want to note that when the same thing was done in Chicago residents smashed the meters (not that we suggest this at all in Los Angeles).  Also, if you park at anMTA parking lot to patronize local businesses, you better buy a bus or train ticket.

Saturday I opined about the folly of "Earth Hour" yet another emotional sans reason effort to perpetuate environmental based malarkey.  Though the lights were out at my house (as they usually are while I am blogging) it appears that even though the media declared a major success , it was actually a failure across LA (despite Mayor V showing up for a photo op at LA Live) according to both the LA Times and Daily News .  Even the lights stayed on at Al Gore's house.  Maybe the media will learn this type of propagandizing is why no one buys newspapers any longer.

Richard Riordan is a RINO Republican who endorsed Barack Obama and has been a big booster of the Kennedy Republican.  Despite that, the former Mayor is opposing the shady state budget ballot measures going to voters in May.

As the race for Governor heats up next year, Republican candidates plan to run away from and not to Governor Schwarzenegger according to the LA Times. Media strategist Don Sipple tells the paper "People think the Schwarzenegger experience didn't work out so well, and they're going to be looking for something very different."

This would never happen in LA but in New York a group of hawt women have dressed up in vintage costumes to travel the subways and offer transit information.  However, the New York Transit Authority wants to put the kibosh on the girls' service claiming "copyright infringement."

Do You Hear That Train A-Comin'?

Mayor Villaraigosa isn't too pleased with the MTA's recent projections as to when his long hoped for "Subway to the Sea" will be built. If the calculations are correct, the Mayor will be 78 when this line takes on it's first passenger.

The MTA also listed completion dates for a number of other hoped for projects including the Expo light rail line to Santa Monica and a we could use it now light rail line along the 405 from the Valley to the Westside.

For fans of that service, you're looking at a long way out. That train will first roll in 2038 when Villaraigosa hits his 85th birthday, Gen X actor Elijah Wood will be a few years away from Social Security and Hannah Montana's 16 year old Miley Cyrus will be pushing 50.

Antonio's Faustian Transit Deal

So what kind of faustian deal is Mayor Villaraigosa doing to get LA County residents to pass a new sales tax for transportation boondoggles? Well the Feds are requiring that LA County implement toll roads in order to get transit funding.  The original plan was to place those toll roads on the 210 freeway through cities in the San Gabriel Valley. 



Antonio wants pols in San Gabriel Valley to support the sales tax scam.  Electeds in the Foothills don't want the toll roads so Villar is pushing to have the toll roads moved to the 110 Freeway in Los Angeles to placate folks in Azusa, Monorovia, Pasadena, etc.



So not only will you be taxed more for transit you won't use, you'll  have to pay to use the freeways you do.

Notes from the pressure cooker

Leave it to the grown-ups in Los Angeles’ most congested neighborhoods to stall an inexpensive, sensible congestion remedy on Pico and Olympic Boulevards. L.A. is in perpetual internal conflict. In the end—decades from now—it’ll make for fascinating reading.

Southern California: where the wealthy and educated lost paradise, clinging to a belief that everyone else on the block would eschew Lexus luxury for mass transit.

I passed by the Archstone Del Mar Station apartments in Pasadena yesterday—an ochre monstrosity I watched rise from the dead over the dusty northwest corner of Arroyo Parkway and Del Mar Blvd. Archstone is among a growing number of Gold Line “transit villages,” and features massive faux pillars, a bell tower, and kitschy transit theme—perfect for the über-hip, carless, young professional who works downtown and finds his sense of place in something resembling Legoland. Never will he make a spontaneous day trip to Redondo Beach or drop in at IKEA, just because he’s in the neighborhood. Life is so clean and manipulatable on government letterhead.

A few miles down the Arroyo, the Highland Park Transit Village is coming. A four story, multi-block, all-but-certainty, residents are told. Minor details yet to be worked out include: a) what it will look like, b) whether or not it will include retail, and c) whether or not it will supplant all existing public parking spaces and provide adequate parking for the new residential units. Oh—and, what will become of the “market-priced” units when the market fails to deliver. One thing is certain: 75% “affordable” means developers Kevin McCormack, Richard Baron, and Tony Salazar will sleep soundly—far from Avenue 56 and Figueroa.

I’m still searching for the young, professional Angeleno who invests $750,000 in a condo with only one parking space, among majority affordable units in a marginal neighborhood, and commutes to her six-figure job via rail and bus transfer.

Should it surprise anyone that the same geniuses who failed to notice an 800-pound sub-prime gorilla savaging the city budget in slow motion also believe they can fabricate markets, complete with consumers lining up to make bad investments? Make believe is so easy when you’re spending someone else’s money.

Meanwhile, an urgent sandwich board outside Archstone Del Mar Station reads: FLEXIBLE LEASE OPTIONS.

Mayor Sam's Hotsheet for Wednesday

Planning Commission President Jane Usher may find her services may no longer be needed. The attorney and Villaraigosa appointee is drawing fire for sending an email to neighborhood activists that recent rules enacted by the City Council allowing developers to build bigger projects if they include some level of "affordable housing" (see why this is a crock here) are probably in violation of state law. Some Council Members feel that Usher's remarks could be an encouragement to NIMBYs to sue with the perceived imprintaur of the leading civilian planning official.

Speaking of NIMBYs, I wonder if some day in the future, when Los Angeles is struggling greatly for jobs and housing, our general emotional overreaction against and disdain for development will be viewed much in the same way many of us view the shortsightedness of previous generations of Anglenos who rejected mass transit plans for the region decades ago.

The Daily News slams the Clowncil and the Mayor for not selling surplus City property when they could have; now that the city is in a budget crunch.

Here's an interesting bit of City history from Bob Timmerman: Proposition B, on the June 3, 1958 ballot which sealed the deal to give Chavez Ravine to the Dodgers in their move from Brooklyn. Interesting that some of the argument was about real estate development back then. Also interesting in the image of Prop B on the ballot is Prop C, a $12 million bond for police construction. I guess the City went on borrowing binges even back in the day.

Want an Elliot Spitzer scandal t-shirt? You can get one here.