City Council candidates discuss the issues in South LA
March 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment
A team of reporters from Intersections South LA and Annenberg Radio News talked with the candidates for Los Angeles City Council Districts 8 and 10 in an attempt to get to the heart of what matters most to the politicians and residents of the South Los Angeles community.
Tenth District write-in candidate Gavin Glynn prioritizes education on March ballot
City Council candidate Jabari Jumaane calls for more community involvement
Write-in candidate Armenak Nouridjanian discusses taxes, jobs and drugs
Candidate Chris Brown hopes to create more jobs in his district
Candidate Andrew Kim says he’s all for businesses
Candidate Forescee Hogan-Rowles focuses on job creation
Incumbent Bernard Parks talks about his achievements
The City Council election for Districts 8 and 10 takes place on March 8. Find the polling place near you.
More election coverage:
L.A. City Council District 8 debate gets heated
Tenants in District 10 want a break from rising rents
South LA officials and community members push to save libraries
L.A. City Council 8th District debate gets heated
February 13, 2011 By 3 Comments
By LaMonica Peters
During a Park Mesa Heights Community Council-sponsored event Saturday, Los Angeles 8th District City Councilmember contenders Forescee Hogan-Rowles and Jabari Jumaane and incumbent Bernard Parks engaged in a heated debate about each other’s records and the issues facing the district’s residents.
The debate was held at the Angeles Mesa Elementary School.
The 8th District includes the communities of Baldwin Hills, Crenshaw, Leimert Park, West Adams, Jefferson Park, Chesterfield Square and other South Los Angeles areas. Questions posed during the debate were submitted in advance and came directly from the 8th District community.
Residents wanted to know how the candidates would deal with issues regarding the city budget crisis and quality of life issues like affordability, fighting crime, working with the police force, the number of liquor stores in the area and repairing pot holes in the streets.
The lone female candidate, Hogan-Rowles threw the first punch in her opening when she told the audience that their community had suffered long enough, referring to the eight years Parks had held the Council seat.
Hogan-Rowles is currently the president and CEO of Community Financial Resource Center, a California non-profit corporation certified by The U.S. Department of the Treasury as a Community Development Financial Institution.
She also accused Parks of “double-dipping” from the city.
Parks is currently receiving his pension for serving as a police officer and chief but is also earning pay as 8th District Councilmember, which combined totals over $400,000 per year.
It was clear that many of Parks supporters were in attendance, as loud applause followed his responses.
Parks took his own shot at Hogan-Rowles when he pointed out that she should have plenty of knowledge on why utility rates had increased so much over the years since she was a former Commissioner of the Department of Water and Power.
Parks made a point to defend his record and accomplishments in the 8th District and emphasized his long service to the Los Angeles community, noting that he was the only candidate who truly understood the inner workings of the city government.
While Parks and Hogan-Rowles continued to attack one another’s record, Jabari Jumaane, a former L.A. City fire firefighter and founder of the African Firefighters in Benevolent Association (AFIBA), told the audience that he represented the average person who wanted to see improvement in the 8th District. He pledged real transparency and accountability in city government and touted his past achievements working with the community through his organization, AFIBA.
Watch the opening remarks:
For more information on the candidates, go to www.smartvoter.org.
OPINION: Making public safety a priority
February 2, 2011 By 5 Comments
By Althea Rae Shaw (left), Candidate for Los Angeles City Council District 10
“The man who loves other countries as much as his own, stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.” – Theodore Roosevelt
In Los Angeles, public safety should be priority, but it’s not. Did you know that the City of Los Angeles is a “sanctuary city”? Sanctuary cities are commonly defined as those that restrict law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration laws. Basically, a sanctuary city is a pathway to lawlessness.
On March 8, 2011, we have the power to change the face of the Los Angeles City Council. There are seven city council seats opened. We can vote out all incumbents who support sanctuary cities and vote in me and other like-minded candidates who support public safety.
According to Judge Susan Bolton, a federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, sanctuary cities are actually against the law. Did you know that? However, many elected officials are silent regarding this and local media is not known for covering this. So, we must vote to fix this.
When order goes out the window, there goes the neighborhood. When billions of dollars are spent on funding sanctuary cities, there goes the budget. When a large number of people enter America illegally and law enforcement leaders turn a blind eye, there goes justice.
With our vote in hand, we must make our representatives focus on public safety. Look around the world, isn’t it time to make public safety priority in America? If not now, when? Our borders are not secure and many of our cities are a safe haven for foreigners living in America illegally. This is not how we win the future.
If we begin to take local elections just as serious as we take presidential elections and get a high voter turnout, good things will happen locally. When public safety is priority and the American people are united, good things will happen. Property value will go up and crime will go out. Companies will return to investing in America and small businesses will be able to operate in Los Angeles. This is the beginning to winning the future.
Let’s not just imagine a life where public safety is a priority; let’s make it a reality. You can vote by mail starting on February 7, 2011, or you can go to your local polling place and vote on March 8, 2011!
For more information about Althea Rae Shaw, visit her website at altheashaw.com.
Tom LaBonge says he wants to save the city’s arts programs
November 23, 2010 By 3 Comments
Listen to the audio story:
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The chair of the committee, Councilman Tom LaBonge, said the committee will save the city and programs about $2 million.
Madeleine Scinto: $2 million?
Tom LaBonge: But compared to no dollars, meaning the dollars are being erased because of the difficult times that we’re in. And so we need to reach to partners in order to keep these places open.
Scinto: Is there any fear that if you contracted out or leased out these programs that these partnerships won’t be able to execute these programs as well as the city has been doing?
LaBonge: Well, I think they can do… they’re seen around the country, these relationships that have grown and even in other cities and other countries as well, where there’s this relationship that enhances it, blossoms it. It makes things more creative, so I’m not afraid of this opportunity.
Scinto: Would this be the first public-private partnership in Los Angeles, if this went through?
LaBonge: In the early 90s, the cultural affairs partnered out with community groups to do the public-private partnership. But there were public-private partnerships from a long, long time ago. The Grand Theatre in San Pedro is a public-private partnership for many years.
Scinto: What kind of organizations would you foresee coming in to participate in this?
LaBonge: People who have a love of arts, a love of people and a skill to raise revenue.
Scinto: But you don’t have any specific organizations in mind?
LaBonge: No, I don’t know. That’s up to those who choose to bid on it. I hope people step up who have a value and a love for the city’s opportunity to continue art-community programs.
New legislation means a fair break for low-wage workers
November 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Listen to the audio story:
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Blanca Moran’s eyes filled with tears. It was hard to look back on her years as a janitor with the cleaning company KBM. She spoke through a translator.
“She worked from 7 p.m to 6 a.m. in the morning. She didn’t get any rest breaks, no lunch period, she actually became sick with anemia because she didn’t have a time to eat.”
Today, Moran joined other janitors, taxi drivers, car washers and day laborers on the steps of City Hall to stand up for low-wage workers who are not getting paid enough for their work. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles report 654,000 low-wage workers lose more than $26 million each week in Los Angeles through unfair labor practices.
Businesses guilty of worker exploitation are not just hurting poor families, said UCLA’s Kent Wong.
“It means that they’re getting an unfair advantage over other businesses that are doing the right thing and are honoring labor laws and paying their workers a living wage,” Wong added.
Hope for workers comes in the form of a city council ordinance that is being drafted now and is expected to pass early next year. The ordinance would allow laborers to report abuse to police and the city attorney and would make it a crime to cheat workers.
Councilmember Richard Alarcon is championing the new regulation.
“It’s not okay to cheat people out of their wages, it’s just like stealing,” Alarcon said.
In a city with a high foreign population, it is easier to get away with abuse because immigrants do not always know their rights. Car washes in particular have a bad track record in this city, said organizer Isabel Rojas.
“People are told to show up like at 8 in the morning, and they don’t start getting paid until the first cars roll in, so sometimes that means that they don’t get clocked in until like 11 or 12,” Rojas said. “On days that they get sent home early because there’s no work, they don’t get paid for that waiting time.”
The Clean Car Wash Campaign has helped workers take matters into their own hands. At the Wilshire Car Wash, workers were fired for fighting for better treatment, but with the campaign’s help, they got their jobs back.
Even before the new ordinance becomes a law, Alarcon and labor groups are urging businesses to start playing fair on their own. Stealing wages increases levels of poverty and in the end hurts us all, Alarcon said.
Los Angeles Police Department officers work civilian jobs
November 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Listen to the audio story:
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Los Angeles’ citywide hiring freeze is causing staffing problems in the police department. The Los Angeles Police Department cannot hire enough non-officers for support jobs. Instead, officers are being taken off the streets to do jobs formerly held by civilians, including everything from typing reports to maintaining vehicles.
Since police officers earn higher salaries than civilians, this ends up costing the city more. It would seem like an obvious solution to stop the freeze and hire more non-officers. But in city politics, nothing is that simple.
As council president Eric Garcetti explains, unfreezing those jobs means hiring fewer police officers.
“If you’re saying one is cheaper than the other, you have to get rid of the ones that are more expensive,” Garcetti said. “So that means reducing the overall police department force in order to hire those civilians.”
Cutting police officers goes against one of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s top priorities, maintaining Los Angeles’ police force at 9,963 members. But council member Tony Cardenas questions whether the focus on that number was hurting the department.
“To just claim a particular number of sworn officers is one thing,” Cardenas said. “And perhaps for the campaign trail, that’s something appropriate. But when it comes to budgeting, we’re going to be lying to the public by saying we have 10,000 officers, but the public doesn’t have 10,000 officers on the streets of Los Angeles.”
Rosendahl agrees.
“The reality is, we have to deal with the sacred number of 9,963,” Rosendahl said. “If it’s so sacred, why are we putting full-time able-bodied officers into civilian jobs? So let’s deal with reality where the rubber is now hitting the road.”
For council members, that could mean unpopular steps like voting against new police officers.
“The key is, whether you have the will to do it, and we’ve ignored it each and every time it comes up,” said council member Bernard Parks. “Every time there’s a class to be hired, we hire it and we go blindly through and we keep cutting civilians and you’re going to have the full level of sworn personnel, but not enough civilian support to cause them to be effective.”
The council voted unanimously to refer the issue to the public safety and budget committees.
Council votes to turn over discretionary funds
February 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Click here to listen
In a brief special city council meeting, members voted unanimously to find money in their district’s discretionary accounts to help lower the city’s debt.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had called on the council to turn over $40 million, but it voted to raise only $12 million, or $800,000 per district.
Repurposing the funds is tricky because some have federal sources.
City officials had originally called for the council to give up all the money from so-called AB 1290 funds. These come from property taxes paid by residents in areas slated for redevelopment; typically the poorest neighborhoods in the city.
Instead, the council decided that each member will have until March 11 to figure out how to come up with the money in their own districts.
Council member Herb Wesson says today’s action will make the process more fair, and council member Jan Perry said each member needed to take a realistic look at the projects in their districts. In her case, Perry knows that will mean tough choices.
The council will consider more budget proposals on Friday.
City Council extends gang intervention contracts
October 21, 2009 By Leave a Comment
The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to extend existing contracts with 18 gang intervention and prevention agencies. The contracts, which were extended by nine months, are worth $5.9 million dollars. All of the contracts are due to expire on June 30, 2010. An independent monitor and the mayor’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development will monitor the performance of the contractors to ensure they are using the city funds appropriately. The City Council also approved a new contractor to replace Unity T.W.O. A Los Angeles Times report in August, 2009 detailed a pattern of financial discrepancies, overdrawn bank account and missing payrolls at Unity T.W.O
City Council approves ambitious anti-graffiti ordinance
September 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment
The Los Angeles City Council tries again to cut down on graffiti. This time by passing an ordinance to foil taggers. Listen to an audio report by Timothy Beck Werth of Annenberg Radio News.
