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The City of Los Angeles is proposing to adopt and implement an ordinance to ban single-use plastic carryout bags, charge a fee on paper bags, and promote the use of reusable bags at specified retailers in the City of Los Angeles.  The Final EIR is available at City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation, 1149 S. Broadway, 5^th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90015; at www.lacitysan.org under What’s New…; and at the following public libraries:

• Central Library, 630 W 5th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90071
• Van Nuys Branch Library, 6250 Sylmar Ave., Van Nuys, CA 91401
• West L. A. Regional Branch Library, 11360 Santa Monica Bl., Los Angeles, CA 90025
• San Pedro Regional Branch Library, 931 S. Gaffey Street, San Pedro, CA 90731
• Granada Hills Branch, 10640 Petit Avenue, Granada Hills, CA 91344

The post Final EIR of City’s Proposed Single-Use Carryout Bag Ordinance appeared first on Northridge East Neighborhood Council.

L.A. full of roads to ruin for cars

The city gives its road network an average grade of C. But a Times analysis finds wide disparities, and they’re not driven by wealth or political power.

Explore pavement quality ratings for each of the 68,000 street segments in L.A., graded from A to F.

From the L.A. Times, May 4, 2013

A drive along Angus Street in hilly Silver Lake requires navigating a gantlet of buckled concrete slabs and dirt-filled cracks.

But on South Seabluff Drive in Playa Vista the ride is smooth, the pavement is black and you can smell the fresh asphalt.

Despite the city’s best efforts to keep up with the constant flood of road repairs, Los Angeles is a city divided — by its potholes, cracks and ruts.

Interactive map: See your street’s grade

A Times analysis of street inspection data found wide disparities in road quality among the city’s 114 neighborhoods.

The streets in the newer development of Playa Vista, which the city’s database gives the highest ranking with an average grade of B, scored 80% higher than those in Silver Lake, which ranks among the worst with a D-minus average.

The differences are not driven by wealth or political power. In fact, some of the poorest parts of the city have some of the best roads.

The heart of the problem is aging streets, heavy traffic, undulating terrain and the sheer size of the network. The streets in the poorest shape tend to be in hillside neighborhoods, such as the Hollywood Hills, Mount Washington, Los Feliz and Bel-Air.

But layered on top of those problems is a street repair strategy that bypasses the worst streets in favor of preserving salvageable ones. Street officials have also made a political decision to bring the overall grade of roads in each City Council district to the same level.

For Angelenos waiting for their street to be rebuilt, abandon all hope: There is a 60-year backlog of failed streets — meaning residents might not see them fixed in their lifetimes.

“If you ask people ‘How many of you have been a victim of crime today?’ nobody will raise their hand,” said Rusty Millar, a Silver Lake Neighborhood Council representative. “If you ask ‘How many of you have been a victim of bad streets and traffic?,’ everybody will raise their hand.”

::

With its stately homes and manicured lawns, Hancock Park is one of the wealthiest areas in L.A. and considered one of the city’s historical gems. But that hasn’t helped get its mostly ancient concrete streets repaired: The neighborhood has an overall D-minus grade.

Hancock Park residents Michael and Ruth Steinberger live on Rimpau Boulevard, which was graded F when last inspected. They have complained to the city that their street has a severe rut at the intersection with 3rd Street that has scraped the undercarriage of their Mercedes countless times.

“It ruins every car,” Ruth Steinberger said. “And God forbid you don’t know about it and you are coming in at normal speeds — you can get hurt.”

After decades of neglect, Los Angeles is trying to play catch-up in places like Hancock Park.

It’s a Herculean task, given the size of L.A.’s street network — the largest municipal system in the country with 6,500 miles of paved roadway. Factor the number of lanes into the equation and there are enough miles of road in the city to build a 10-lane freeway from here to New York City.

The average grade of the city’s roads is a C. The network scores lower than all 10 of the most populous counties in the state, according to city and state data.

But the average grade tells only part of the story. More than one-third of the streets in the city have a score of D or worse, meaning they must be resurfaced or totally reconstructed.

“I not only sympathize with those residents, I also empathize,” said Nazario Sauceda, director of the city Bureau of Street Services. “I can tell you with a straight face that we are doing the best we can with the money we have.”

In some neighborhoods, such as Silver Lake and Hancock Park, more than half the streets are graded F, the Times analysis found. Those streets have foot-deep potholes and giant cracks that can flatten tires and ruin suspensions.

At the other end of the spectrum, nearly half of Winnetka’s streets and more than half of Playa Vista’s are graded A.

The city’s goal is to raise its entire street network to a B average, but that can’t be done without more than $2.6 billion in new money, according to the city.

This year, the aim is to work on roughly 800 miles of road. Most of that — about 70% — involves applying crack and slurry seal to preserve roads. The rest is the much more expensive work of resurfacing streets.

Even 20 years ago, the city employed what was called the “windshield method” to find problems — driving around the city and fixing whatever looked bad. At the time, the city adopted a “worst-first” strategy — fixing the broken streets before all others.

But that doesn’t work in the long run because of limited resources. Rebuilding a street is five to 10 times more expensive than patching one. If work crews just replaced the worst streets, hundreds of miles of passable streets would fall into disrepair sooner, city officials said.

In 1998, the city began using a computerized pavement management system to help plan street maintenance and repaving with a constrained budget. Using a state-of-the-art van equipped with cameras and lasers, workers created a database for the roughly 68,000 street segments. The vehicle is outfitted like an undercover FBI surveillance unit; employees inside gather photos and measurements to document pavement distress.

The first time city officials crunched street inspection data was in 2005, and they found big discrepancies in the average street quality ratings among the 15 council districts, ranging from B to D grades. Since then, the bureau has worked hard to narrow those gaps, Sauceda said.

“We don’t have enough money to improve the condition of the network,” he said. “My job is to distribute misery equally.”

The Times analysis found that disparities between council districts persist. Streets in CouncilmanTom LaBonge‘s Hollywood district have an overall grade of D-plus. By comparison, CouncilwomanJan Perry‘s South L.A. district ranks highest with a C-plus grade and an average street quality score that is 26% higher than LaBonge’s.

LaBonge said he isn’t surprised by the Times’ findings because of the age and geography of roads in his district. It includes some of the lowest-scoring hilly neighborhoods. Many of the those areas have hard concrete streets that were built more than 50 years ago and are well beyond their life expectancy, city officials said.

“If you go through Beverly Hills, there isn’t a pothole there,” LaBonge said. “Why? Because every tax dollar stays in Beverly Hills. But in Los Angeles it’s shared from San Pedro to Chatsworth. People in my district want to see improvement, but it’s also a shared city.”

That’s little consolation to homeowner Gregory Leskin, who lives on that treacherous stretch of Angus Street in Silver Lake.

Nearly three years ago, he got fed up with the severe cracking on his block, went online and submitted a request with the street services bureau to fix it. He’s still waiting.

“It’s dilapidated and in desperate need of repair,” said Leskin, a clinical psychologist at UCLA.

::

Earlier this year, Councilmen Joe Buscaino and Mitchell Englander proposed a $3-billion bond issue to fix streets graded D or F but put it on hold after other council members complained there was not enough public outreach. Since then, Buscaino, chairman of the Public Works Committee, has held meetings across the city to get public input on a similar measure that could go on the November 2014 ballot.

There is growing concern at City Hall that the pool of money available for roadwork will shrink dramatically. President Obama‘s federal stimulus package ran out last summer; and funding from Proposition 1B, a statewide measure that passed in 2006, expires in June after providing $87 million for roadwork in Los Angeles.

That money allowed the city to increase its street repair and maintenance spending to an all-time high of $105 million this fiscal year. At the same time, however, the city’s general fund has been contributing far less, down to $1.1 million this year from $32.2 million in 2007, budget officials said.

Additional funding is the only solution to saving the street system in the long run, said John Harvey, director of the University of California Pavement Research Center.

“If you continually under-fund it, there is no magic in pavement management,” Harvey said. “You can’t do it. You are going to continue to deteriorate.”

Times staff writer Ben Welsh contributed to this report.

*protected email*

Interactive map: See your street’s grade

How we reported this story

The city’s database of streets maintained by the Bureau of Street Services includes location, rating, street type and last inspection and repair.

The city scores each street segment on a 100-point scale called the pavement condition index. The Times mapped the data to neighborhood and council district boundaries.

Streets located along the borders of neighborhoods or districts were counted for all adjacent areas. The Times analysis took into account the street surface area, work history and pavement deterioration over time.

The pavement database is a snapshot in time from late April and may not reflect recent roadwork or inspections, according to the Street Services bureau.

How the city of L.A. grades streets

A streets: no cracking, no oxidation and no structural failure. No maintenance required.

B streets: minimal cracking, no oxidation and no structural failure. Slurry seal required.

C streets: minimal cracking, zero to 5% of structural failure. Blanketing (repaving) required.

D streets: some cracking, 6% to 35% of structural failure. Resurfacing required.

F streets: major or unsafe cracking, 36% to more than 50% of structural failure. Resurfacing or reconstruction required.

Source: Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services

The post Grading Los Angeles’ Streets appeared first on Northridge East Neighborhood Council.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa joined with the US Geological Survey and the Los Angeles/Long Beach Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) Approval Authority members to announce $5 million in federal funds for the region’s Earthquake Early Warning System.

“Our partners at the US Geological Survey and Caltech have been working on the development of a cutting-edge early warning system.” Mayor Villaraigosa said. “We’re proud to provide this additional funding to improve the system’s capacity and bring it to the level required to make earthquake early warning a reality in Southern California.”

The USGS, in partnership with CalTech, UC Berkeley, and the Southern California Earthquake Center, has been developing an Earthquake Early Warning system for Southern California since 2006.

The objective of earthquake early warning is to rapidly detect the initiation of an earthquake, estimate the level of ground shaking to be expected, and issue a warning before significant ground shaking starts. This can be done with sensors placed near active fault zones that detect the first energy waves to radiate from an earthquake.  Those first waves travel at the speed of sound but cause little damage.  The following waves, which bring the strong shaking that causes most of the damage, travel slower.  The greater the distance from the epicenter, the longer the warning time which can range from a few seconds to a few tens of seconds.

Those seconds could:

• allow people to drop, cover, and hold on and grant businesses time to shut down and move workers to safe locations,
• give medical professionals time to stop delicate procedures,
• protect travelers by providing time for trains to slow or stop, for elevator doors to open, for bridge traffic to clear, for slowing or stopping traffic, and even stopping landings and take-offs at airports, and
• enable emergency responders to prepare by opening fire station doors and starting generators.

When the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck Japan in March 2011, 50 million residents received warning in advance.  The country’s earthquake information systems gave people about 200 miles away in Tokyo up to 30 seconds or more to prepare before strong shaking from the epicenter reached them. People closer to the epicenter, which experienced the strongest shaking from this offshore event, received up to 5-10 seconds warning.

For further information, visit www.shakealert.org

The post Mayor Villaraigosa Announces $5 Million in Grants for Earthquake Early Warning System appeared first on Northridge East Neighborhood Council.

Click here for the questions with answers and the regional budget powerpoint results.

Additionally, the Citywide results are posted at budget.lacity.org.

The post Los Angeles Budget Challenge Results: North Valley & South Valley appeared first on Northridge East Neighborhood Council.

Los Angeles residents will be able to complain about graffiti, abandoned furniture, potholes, broken street lights and fallen trees using their iPhone and Android smartphones starting March 18.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa unveiled the My LA 311 mobile app and a redesigned website for the City of Los Angeles in a Google+ hangout with reporters Wednesday.

“Silicon Beach has raised the game,” Villaraigosa said, referring to the city’s coastal tech hub. “And the city of L.A. needed to raise ours. And we did.”

The new look for the website, which launched Wednesday, is the first refresh in 15 years. It delivers clearer portals for business owners and visitors to the city. It also brings better access to city TV channels, where people can watch live streams of city council meetings.

During the hangout, councilman Joe Buscaino said the city would be hiring a website content manager to make sure the website isn’t filled with outdated and useless information.

On the app, city residents can also pay their Department of Water and Power bill. There’s also an option to find nearby parks, libraries and police stations. By taking advantage of a smartphone’s GPS and camera, the app promises to make reporting complaints a simpler process. L.A. is one of the last big cities in the country to have a 311 app.

“My LA 311” comes alongside the first major re-launch of the city’s website in 15 years. The new LACity.org offers a smarter user experience with self-updating “Top 10 Service Requests”, “Top 10 City Council Files,” and a “Dynamic City Calendar.” The citizen-centric redesign features live streaming home screen video, centralized job opportunities, and easy to access City services. The site will also provide a more social user experience through “LA City Now,” a homepage ticker-tape of every City twitter feed.

Though city councilman Eric Garcetti unveiled a similar 311 app for his district three years ago, a citywide app had been unavailable.

The app’s likely to increase the number of complaints the city gets. Asked whether existing city staff could handle the influx of issues, he said it could.

“I think we’ll have the capacity to do what we need to going forward,” he said.

But he acknowledged there’s room to give residents faster service. Voters next month will consider Measure A, a sales tax increase that would boost the city’s budget. Villaraigosa hasn’t said whether he will endorse Measure A, but he could do so as early as next week.

“We’ve got to get into the 21st century in terms of being more efficient in running city operations,” he said.

A spokesman for the mayor was unable to immediately say how much the city spent to redesign the website and create the two native apps, though Villaraigosa said it wasn’t very expensive. The apps were designed by 3Di.

“We’re already thinking about the 2.0 version,” Villaraigosa said. “Paying parking fines is one of those things we’re looking at it.”

He added that the next one would likely be in multiple languages as well.

In the meantime, it would be interesting if the city could work with cell phone stores in the city and cell phone service providers, such as Verizon, AT&T and Boost, to promote the app.

The post City of Los Angeles Releases a 3-1-1 App and a Cleaner Website appeared first on Northridge East Neighborhood Council.

Councilmember Mitch Englander’s Council District 12 Staff is now taking reservations for community members to meet one-on-one with representatives of City Departments at their Community Service Center in Chatsworth. They will have regularly scheduled time slots for community members to meet with the Planning, Building and Safety, Police, Transportation (LADOT), Housing, Community Development and Neighborhood Empowerment Departments and the Bureau of Sanitation. This will offer community members a chance to get information and assistance in Chatsworth without having to travel all the way to Downtown.

The following Departments are currently taking appointments:

• Department of Building and Safety –  Tuesday, March 5
• Los Angeles Police Department – Tuesday, March 12

CD12 will announce in their newsletter the service hours of the remaining Departments once they have been established.

Scheduling is by appointment only on a first-come-first serve basis. To make an appointment, please call (818) 882-1212 or email *protected email*.

The post Sign Up Now for One-On-One Help With Representatives of City Departments at CD12′s Community Service Center appeared first on Northridge East Neighborhood Council.

In a city the size of Los Angeles, one of the fastest routes to City Hall is the internet. In the time it takes to find your car keys, you can be online and communicating with the Mayor and the City Council.

Effective Neighborhood Council advocates typically know three things; they know the issue, they know what they want, and they know who can help them.

Then they do something about it. Here are a few tips for effective email advocacy, followed by the email addresses of the Mayor and the City Council, complemented by a simple link that allows you to email the Mayor and the City Council with one click.

Identify yourself and your Neighborhood Council. Let them know that you are a voting resident or a taxpaying business owner or an active parent volunteer.

Be polite and professional. You can disagree, you can be firm and forceful, but always remember that you are creating a public document and your objective is to persuade.

Be clear and state your objective. You can complain all day long but if you don’t get to the point and ask for help, compliance, or support,  you won’t get what you want.

Look for common ground. We live in a great city and we’re all partners in making it even better. Let people know that you want to help them help you.

Encourage others to join you. There is strength in numbers and if you take to time to write a persuasive email, share it with others so that they can support you.

Be grateful. Take the time to write, even when you aren’t asking for something or opposed to something. Become the memorable constituent by noticing the good and by thanking your leadership when they get it right.

Contact the Mayor and City Council:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – *protected email*

Click HERE to determine your Council District and contact your councilman below.

Ed Reyes, CD 1 - *protected email*

Paul Krekorian, CD2 – *protected email*

Dennis P. Zine, CD 3 – *protected email*

Tom LaBonge, CD 4 - *protected email*

Paul Koretz, CD 5 – *protected email*

vacant, CD 6 – *protected email*

Richard Alarcon, CD 7 – *protected email*

Bernard Parks, CD 8 – *protected email*

Jan Perry, CD 9 – *protected email*

Herb J. Wesson, Jr. CD 10 – *protected email*

Bill Rosendahl, CD 11 – *protected email*

Mitch Englander, CD 12 – *protected email*

Eric Garcetti, CD 13 – *protected email*

Jose Huizar, CD 14 – *protected email*

Joe Buscaino, CD 15 – *protected email*

To contact the Mayor and ALL Councilmembers, email *protected email**protected email* which will forward your email to ALL emails above.

The post The Fastest Route to City Hall appeared first on Northridge East Neighborhood Council.

Bike rack (Photo by via the LAist Featured Photos pool)

It took a long time but the Los Angeles City Council has passed an ordinance that will dramatically increase the number of parking spaces for bikes in new developments.

The Bike Parking Ordinance will allow new developments—both residential and commercial—to swap some parking spots for bikes in lieu of parking spots for cars. There are also rules standardizing bike parking space to ensure that they’re safe, secure and accessible.

One car spot can be replaced by four bikes for up to 30 percent of the required number of spaces for commercial developments that are near transit lines. At other commercial buildings not near transit lines, the number is 20 percent. For buildings with less than 20 required car parking spaces, up to 4 parking spaces may be swapped for bike parking. Residential buildings can replace up to 10 percent of car spaces with bike parking.

All new developments with few exceptions will need to have at least 2 parking spaces for bikes, and that can include the city’s bike corrals. The ordinance also has rules about what can and cannot be considered a parking spot. Spaces should be well-lit and easily accessible from the street. Short-term parking should be outside the building and easy to spot before you even walk in. There should be signs directing people to long-term parking, if it’s not immediately obvious where it is.

For more information, you can read the full ordinance (h/t Curbed LA and Streetsblog).

The post City Council Allows Car Parking To Be Swapped For Bike Spaces appeared first on Northridge East Neighborhood Council.

From the L.A. Daily News, January 24, 2013

A recent fight over a proposed $3 billion bond issue for street repairs illustrated the growing influence of neighborhood councils in Los Angeles City government, as they exerted enough influence to keep the measure off the ballot for now.

The success in that case represents an evolution for the councils, which at their inception a dozen years ago were seen as potentially powerless because they held no real voting authority in city matters. But through wider participation and exerting a louder voice, observers say, they are now fulfilling the influential role envisioned for them when voters revised the City Charter in 1999.

“This is what it was meant to be,” said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute at California State University, Los Angeles, and who served as the top aide to the appointed Charter Reform Commission.

“They were meant to be a strong community voice and weigh in on major issues. It might be annoying (to the City Council, but the whole idea was to create a different form of review and allow the community to weigh in.”

The street bond proposal from Councilmen Mitch Englander and Joe Buscaino provided the perfect vehicle for neighborhood councils to weigh in.
Englander and Buscaino proposed on a Friday afternoon to have the council vote the following week to place the bond on the May 21 ballot, without any formal staff reports and only sketchy details on the cost for the public.

Neighborhood council groups, starting with the Los Angeles Alliance of Neighborhood Councils, and supported by the Valley Alliance and others, called for a 60-day delay to allow time for review of the proposal. City Council offices began receiving telephone calls of protest from homeowners. The public outcry forced the council to put off the bond until a future election.

“In truth, that’s the way it should work,” Sonenshein said. “It’s not giving the neighborhood council a veto power, but it is including them in the process.”

Englander acknowledged as much.

“Everyone I talk with says there is a need to fix the streets, but they were unhappy with the process,” Englander said.

The Board of Neighborhood Commissioners is planning a review of the role of the neighborhood councils in the future. A daylong discussion is scheduled for Jan. 26 to look back at the original intent of neighborhood councils as part as an overall plan for their future.

Greg Nelson, the first general manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, said he foresees a constant struggle between neighborhood councils and the city over early access to information and being heard.

“The City Charter requires an early notification system, but the problem is that regulations were adopted that were weak in this regard, so the City Council regularly ignores this part of the City Charter,” Nelson said.

BONC weighed in on the issue earlier this month, voting to send letters to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and City Council members reminding them of the City Charter provisions and asking that the neighborhood council role be included in future decisions.

The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, which oversees the councils, recently had a new general manager, Grayce Liu, confirmed.
Liu said she sees the neighborhood councils at a crossroads.

“They have increased their ability to access City Hall and are demanding to be part of the process,” Liu said. “I think we also need to deal with (city) departments to get the more aware of the neighborhood councils.

“Some general managers will call me and say they want the neighborhood councils to weigh in on an issue in a week. With 95, it’s just not possible to move that quickly. We tell them they have to do more outreach to make the neighborhood councils part of the process.”

Villaraigosa regularly turned to the neighborhood councils for help when he was first elected, winning their support to increase the trash fee with the promise the money would be used to expand the Los Angeles Police Department.

He also made strong appeals to win their support for his budget initiatives and even when he needed to reduce their annual budget from $50,000 to $45,000 because of the city’s financial problems. He still sends out an annual survey to the neighborhood councils on budget priorities.

BONC Commissioner Doug Epperhart said the problem is getting the City Council to listen.

“Some are very good in dealing with their neighborhood councils,” Epperhart said. “Some have this overriding sense that they are the elected representative and if they feel it’s important they know best how to handle it.

“What neighborhood councils have to realize is the game here is politics. It means more to fill up a room with 100 people wearing the same colored T-shirts to get something accomplished.”

BONC Vice President Len Shaffer said the neighborhood councils have begun to mature in learning how to get the city to respond to local needs.
But he also sees the establishment of more coalitions of neighborhood councils as being an effective voice on major issues.

“As the coalitions continue to form around the city, they hopefully will begin to act together on issues,” Shaffer said. “That’s a whole lot of people with the power to serve as an education force to tell people what’s going on.”

Liu said she sees the neighborhood councils at a crossroads.

“They have increased their ability to access City Hall and are demanding to be part of the process,” Liu said. “I think we also need to deal with (city) departments to get the more aware of the neighborhood councils.

“Some general managers will call me and say they want the neighborhood councils to weigh in on an issue in a week. With 95, it’s just not possible to move that quickly. We tell them they have to do more outreach to make the neighborhood councils part of the process.”

Villaraigosa regularly turned to the neighborhood councils for help when he was first elected, winning their support to increase the trash fee with the promise the money would be used to expand the Los Angeles Police Department.

He also made strong appeals to win their support for his budget initiatives and even when he needed to reduce their annual budget from $50,000 to $45,000 because of the city’s financial problems. He still sends out an annual survey to the neighborhood councils on budget priorities.

BONC Commissioner Doug Epperhart said the problem is getting the City Council to listen.

“Some are very good in dealing with their neighborhood councils,” Epperhart said. “Some have this overriding sense that they are the elected representative and if they feel it’s important they know best how to handle it.

“What neighborhood councils have to realize is the game here is politics. It means more to fill up a room with 100 people wearing the same colored T-shirts to get something accomplished.”

BONC Vice President Len Shaffer said the neighborhood councils have begun to mature in learning how to get the city to respond to local needs.
But he also sees the establishment of more coalitions of neighborhood councils as being an effective voice on major issues.

“As the coalitions continue to form around the city, they hopefully will begin to act together on issues,” Shaffer said. “That’s a whole lot of people with the power to serve as an education force to tell people what’s going on.”

“The city’s neighborhood council system results in hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours given to the city every year by NC board members.”
Candidate Emanuel Pleitez, a businessman, said he believes more authority should be given to the neighborhood councils.

“Specifically, he thinks they should have more input on the development and planning side of decisions made in or about their communities … because they know their communities best,” spokesman John Hill said.

Leave comments on this article here.

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