Gentle reader, This Friday morning, finally, disgraced Los Angeles City Councilmember Jose Huizar will be sentenced to prison for his confessed crimes of racketeering, conspiracy and tax evasion. The buzz around the courthouse is that he’ll get a sweetheart deal of about 11 years in Federal prison, and restitution to the City of Los Angeles of a scant portion of the unquantified millions in bribes he collected from developers and unknown others for land use votes that screwed up the city, cost taxpayers a
Thank you, and yes, we were at the hearing last week, and the Cultural Heritage Commission unanimously recommended that Marilyn Monroe's house be made a landmark. Now it has to go to City Council, but it is safe for now and we are hopeful.
One finally down, so many more to go. Now we have to deal with Mayor Bass and the LADCP gutting CEQA as their solution to the city-created so called housing shortage crisis. Check out Mayor Directive No 7 and LADCP efforts to revise their CEQA Threshold criteria. Are they revising the criteria to be more protective of human health? Of course not. They are gutting CEQA to circumvent the law and make it easier for LADCP to rubber stamp the application. And by all their other efforts to eliminate discretionary actions, projects will be "by right" and the city council will not be required to review or approve the application. This means you, the public, will not even have a say. And as they say, a fish starts to rot from the head, all of this BS is trickling down from Sacramento where every CEQA court victory is met with a new Senate Bill ruling that such impacts are "not significant by law."
I'm in the process of preparing comments on the change in CEQA Thresholds. Comments are due Feb 19th, after they pulled a stunt by releasing the reports early Dec and only giving till Dec 20 to respond. That really angered a few NCs (everyone was closed for the holidays) so comments were extended to Jan 19th but DCP didn't inform anyone. That led to the extension till Feb 19th. If you hate everything that's going on now, just wait. No more EIR's, significant impacts are dismissed as "not significant", thresholds are dropped so no project triggers the need for an EIR, no public comment and therefore, no subsequent lawsuits, and every question is meet with an answer that actions are based on "significant evidence" but they will never tell you what facts are being referenced. DCP just keeps repeating their opinion over and over and then states it represents significant evidence. Or that they are following CEQA guidelines, which happens to be a violation of CEQA. Each lead agency must adopt their own thresholds and guidelines that use the CEQA checklist as the minimum starting point. DCP is tossing out anything that goes beyond CEQA. Even when you point to specific sections of the law that shows they are wrong, they just counter that you don't understand the law.
Comments to the city don't inform the public, though, so hope you'll write something public-facing, too. Thanks for all your work parsing it. Sounds like it may need to be challenged in court.
I hope you can help save Marilyn Monroe home as a landmark.
Wow I am so proud of your efforts!!! Keep up the well done work.
Have you heard about what is happening with Marilyn Monroe House in Brentwood.
Cheers Babs
Thank you, and yes, we were at the hearing last week, and the Cultural Heritage Commission unanimously recommended that Marilyn Monroe's house be made a landmark. Now it has to go to City Council, but it is safe for now and we are hopeful.
One finally down, so many more to go. Now we have to deal with Mayor Bass and the LADCP gutting CEQA as their solution to the city-created so called housing shortage crisis. Check out Mayor Directive No 7 and LADCP efforts to revise their CEQA Threshold criteria. Are they revising the criteria to be more protective of human health? Of course not. They are gutting CEQA to circumvent the law and make it easier for LADCP to rubber stamp the application. And by all their other efforts to eliminate discretionary actions, projects will be "by right" and the city council will not be required to review or approve the application. This means you, the public, will not even have a say. And as they say, a fish starts to rot from the head, all of this BS is trickling down from Sacramento where every CEQA court victory is met with a new Senate Bill ruling that such impacts are "not significant by law."
Have you written anything about Mayor Directive No 7? Hope you will!
I'm in the process of preparing comments on the change in CEQA Thresholds. Comments are due Feb 19th, after they pulled a stunt by releasing the reports early Dec and only giving till Dec 20 to respond. That really angered a few NCs (everyone was closed for the holidays) so comments were extended to Jan 19th but DCP didn't inform anyone. That led to the extension till Feb 19th. If you hate everything that's going on now, just wait. No more EIR's, significant impacts are dismissed as "not significant", thresholds are dropped so no project triggers the need for an EIR, no public comment and therefore, no subsequent lawsuits, and every question is meet with an answer that actions are based on "significant evidence" but they will never tell you what facts are being referenced. DCP just keeps repeating their opinion over and over and then states it represents significant evidence. Or that they are following CEQA guidelines, which happens to be a violation of CEQA. Each lead agency must adopt their own thresholds and guidelines that use the CEQA checklist as the minimum starting point. DCP is tossing out anything that goes beyond CEQA. Even when you point to specific sections of the law that shows they are wrong, they just counter that you don't understand the law.
Comments to the city don't inform the public, though, so hope you'll write something public-facing, too. Thanks for all your work parsing it. Sounds like it may need to be challenged in court.
Your reports are incredibly informative. Thank you.
So glad you find them so!