A debate between the City Attorney candidates sponsored by Neighborhood Council Valley Village, The Valley Village Homeowners Association and Mid-Town North Hollywood Neighborhood Council will be held this Wednesday, April 17, at Colfax Charter School. The school is located at the corner of Colfax and Addison in Valley Village.
The moderator will be Dave Bryan of KCAL9 News.
Carmen Trutanich has done some good. He aggressively tackled the blight created by supergraphic billboards and the danger they posed to public safety. He has been diligent in defending the city against lawsuits.
He recently announced he would require the removal of 100 digital billboards around the city.
He also came out against the mayor’s proposal to cut Neighborhood Council budgets, stating it would violate the City Charter. That’s good, but where has he been the last few years as the budgets have been steadily reduced?
On the other hand, he broke his pledge to the voters about not running for another office and embarrassed the city and himself with his threat to arrest a city council member. He did not help his image with his bluster about possible criminal charges against AEG over the Michael Jackson memorial service at the Staples Center. Although his intent in the latter issue was to recoup the city’s costs of providing services for the event, his antics were anything but professional.
As a career legislator and attorney, Mike Feuer knows the law, but he has no court room experience. Whether that is important to the effective management of the city’s equivalent of a law firm could be controversial. It is reasonable to assume it is important when it comes to assigning resources, prioritizing caseloads and evaluating risk. Presumably, though, he would have staff to assist him in those decisions.
Unfortunately, Feuer has been a member of one of the most inept legislatures in the state’s history. He has supported every unbalanced budget passed in Sacramento. His support of Proposition 25 made it even easier to pass unsustainable budgets. The only teeth to the proposition – the provision of no balanced budget, no pay for the legislators – were pulled soon after State Controller John Chiang blocked their pay for passing a bogus budget.
To make matters worse, Feuer informed the Neighborhood Council Valley Village that he did not object to a lawsuit by his colleagues to sue Controller Chiang for enforcing the no pay provision.
As a board member of NCVV, I have submitted a question about a recent topic – whether Greuel’s threat of a lawsuit against the Los Cerritos Community Newspaper is worth the time and effort of the City Attorney’s office to pursue. For that matter, does it defeat the objective of public transparency?
It should be an interesting evening in Valley Village.
Ask Carmen Trutankich why he has not written the modification to LAMC 56.08 to implement Greig Smith’s Motion 07-0699 that was unanimously passed by City Council SIX years ago! LAMC 56.08 is the ordinance requiring owners (or those with control of) parkways and sidewalks to keep those areas cleared of weeds, debris, and vegetation. This includes many parkways that are behind the owners’ homes such as along Tampa Avenue north of Northridge Fashion Center; many owners of “blind parkways” are not aware they are responsible.
Greig Smith got Motion 07-0699 passed to fine the sidewalk & parkway violators. The violator would receive notice giving them 2 weeks to clean their messes. If not cleaned, they are fined $50, then $100, then $150. This is the best, and probably the only viable, solution to our blight problems all around LA City, but strangely Mr. Trutanich has not written the modification to LAMC 56.08 to add fines. This has been in his “In Box” for SIX years!
Meanwhile, us volunteers in Northridge have been cleaning up our violating neighbors’ parkways & sidewalks every Thursday 8 to noon for THREE years now. Our volunteers feel strongly that if fines were imposed, the violators would stop violating. We wrote emails to Mr. Trutanich asking him when this legislation will be written, but we have not received any replies.
Please ask both candidates if they will implement Motion 07-0699.
Thank you!
Jo Phillips Northridge Clean Sweep…Volunteers cleaning up our violating neighbors’ parkways every Thursday for 3 years… Also…cleaning up the City’s street gutters and storm drains because LA City reduced street sweeping on “open routes” from every 4 weeks to every 20 weeks and only 3 men are assigned to clean out all of SFV’s clogged storm drains and because LA City places providing lavish union pensions above providing services. Disgraceful.
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Here is link to Motion 07-0699 so you can see that this unanimously passed motion has been lingering at City Attorney’s office for 6 years: http://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa=ccfi.viewrecord&cfnumber=07-0699
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Here is Motion 07-0699; please read it. We need the City Attorney to write this legislation asap!
http://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa=ccfi.viewrecord&cfnumber=07-0699
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