Update on Public Records Request

Public Records Reveal Mayor’s Deputy Transportation Director Used City Time and Email Account to Pursue Personal Campaign Against Overnight Parking Districts

(Venice, CA/1-4-10) City records requested by the Venice Stakeholders Association (VSA) have revealed that Jim Bickhart, the Mayor’s Associate Director of Transportation, used City time and a City email account to pursue his own personal opposition to the implementation of Overnight Parking Districts (OPDs) in Venice, against the official position of the City and Councilman Bill Rosendahl in support of the districts. None of his actions were taken under his job description, which is limited to transportation issues at LAX and the zoo.

In late November the VSA sent a letter to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa calling for an investigation into claims on the website Yo!Venice! that Bickhart had repeatedly posted hostile and hateful comments on the website under a pseudonym in an effort to discredit Venice Stakeholders and those who support overnight restricted parking in Venice.

In December, the VSA followed up with a public records request concerning Bickhart, OPDs, VSA, and other topics. In reply, the Mayor’s Office released on Monday, January 3rd, several email communications between Bickhart and various City staff and members of the Venice community, including Venice Neighborhood Council president Linda Lucks, Council aides Laura Mclennan and Arturo Pina, and Department of Transportation officials Yadi Hashemi and Alan Willis. At the time, Hashemi and Willis were overseeing City negotiations with the California Coastal Commission regarding the City’s application for the Venice OPDs.

The emails date from November 12, 2008 up to May 4, 2010 and cover various requests for information from City departments, scheduling of meetings for Bickhart on City time on OPD issues with City employees, a letter of opposition to OPDs from Bickhart to City officials, and the details of negotiations between City representatives with Coastal Commission staff.

“The City has withheld other documents on the requested subjects in violation of the California Public Records Act,” said Mark Ryavec, the president of the VSA. “So, we don’t know yet whether the missing documents will confirm that Bickhart is the person who posted the hostile remarks and attributed them, in part, to the VSA.”

“What we do know is that Bickhart used time paid for by taxpayers and a City email account to pursue his personal campaign to scuttle OPDs in Venice,” Ryavec said.

“This is clearly not acceptable behavior for any City employee and we call upon the Mayor to require that Bickhart repay the City for the City time he used, that he be formally reprimanded for using City resources to oppose an official City position, and put on an unpaid leave for some appropriate period of time to make it clear that such actions are not tolerated in City service,” Ryavec said.

Please maintain additional police officers in Venice on a permanent basis

The Venice Stakeholders Association joins other Venice neighborhood groups in urging Mayor Villaraigosa, Councilman Rosendahl and Chief Beck to maintain additional police officers on a permanent basis.

Dear Mayor Villaraigosa, Councilman Rosendahl, Chief Beck and Captain Peters:

The Venice Community was very pleased to see that the City of Los Angeles committed 21 additional officers to the community policing effort starting in May of this year. Their presence has made a huge difference to the safety and security of both residents and visitors and we deeply value this increased police presence. However, apparently there is some consideration by the LAPD to transfer these officers out of the community starting in January. We strongly encourage you, Mayor Villaigosa, Councilman Rosendahl, Chief Beck and Captain Peters, to maintain their deployment in Venice on a permanent basis.

Our Community is deluged with visitors, transients and a high level of criminal activity all year long. While the number of tourists may decline in the winter, the number of transients and criminals does not. We understand that in past years that as the LAPD transferred the summer detail out in September crime increased. Without these extra officers, those already in our midst or within easy distance, who are inclined to commit crime, feel less restrained.

Venice produces a very large portion of property and sales tax revenue due to its attraction but bears the brunt of its popularity with intense problems. We are asking for additional permanent policing because clearly we need it and secondly because Venice is a significant source of tax revenue for the City. We believe it is only fair and reasonable that an area that competes with Disneyland as a popular regional destination and with downtown Los Angeles for complex transient problems should reasonably have adequate police support.

Please maintain this deployment so that the great progress that Captain Peters and his LAPD Pacific Division has made can be maintained for the benefit of the citizens of Venice and the many other Angelinos who enjoy visiting Venice.

Sincerely,

The Community Organizations of Venice and the Marina Peninsula

Marina Peninsula Neighborhood Association Inc. (Mark Winter)

Venice Stakeholders Association (Mark Ryavec)

Washington Retail and Restaurants (Clabe Hartley – The Cow)

Oxford Triangle (Steve Freedman)

The Venice Canals Association (Renee Kaplan)

Voice of the Canals (Darryl DuFay)

Presidents Row Neighborhood Association (Harris Levey)

Venice Chamber of Commerce (Alex Rosales)

Alleged Dirty Tricks by Mayoral Staffer

The Venice Stakeholders Association today sent a letter to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa calling for an investigation into claims on the website Yo!Venice! that the Mayor’s Associate Director of Transportation, Jim Bickhart, has repeatedly posted hostile and hateful comments on the website under a pseudonym in an effort to discredit Venice Stakeholders and those who support overnight restricted parking in Venice.

“By attributing these highly negative sentiments concerning those who live in vehicles to “the Stakeholders” these posts are a calculated attempt to paint us – and all of our supporters - as hateful and callous,” said Mark Ryavec, president of the VSA. Ryavec noted that he earlier co-chaired a community committee that recommended a “Vehicle to Housing” transition program to relocate vehicle dwellers to remote parking lots and to provide them services.

“Our group has never engaged in the type of hostile name calling that it appears Mr. Bickhart has attributed to us,” Ryavec said.

“This is an ugly escalation in the community debate on this issue,” Ryavec said, “and is inappropriate for any public official.”

The editor of Yo!Venice! has called on-line for Bickhart to claim or deny he indeed is the author of the posts. There has been no reply from Bickhart.

The VSA letter concludes:

“If these posts were indeed made by Mr. Bickhart, we question his suitability for a position of public trust. If he wrote it and believes what he wrote, in our opinion he does not belong in public service. If, on the other hand, he wrote it but does not believe what he wrote, and propagated these remarks to discredit our group (and Yo!Venice! and others who support overnight restricted parking), then his behavior amounts to a political dirty trick, which is intolerable in a public official.”

Attachment: Letter to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa

Oversize Vehicle Ordinance Advances

Residents on Over 60 Blocks Sign-Up for the 2 AM to 6 AM Parking Restrictions


View Larger Map

On Wednesday, November 17th, the Los Angeles City Council approved an ordinance to implement in Venice the City’s new Oversize Vehicle restrictions.

The ordinance allows residents to petition to erect signs on their block to ban vehicles over 22 feet long or 7 feet tall from the hours of 2 AM to 6 AM in the areas of Venice west of Lincoln Boulevard.

The VSA also announced that residents of over 60 blocks have turned in petitions, which have been approved by the council office. The petitions have been sent to the Department of Transportation for installation of the signs, pending the Mayor’s approval of the implementing ordinance. The street segments covered by the petitions are the most impacted areas in the Venice community. (See map above)

“We are pleased to finally see some progress on the implementation of this ordinance. It should free up parking for residents and remove these vehicles, which have a long history of dumping trash and human waste on our streets and into the storm drains,” said Mark Ryavec, the president of the VSA.

Ryavec noted that Venice Stakeholders asked over a year ago for the City to amend the language of the Oversize Vehicle Ordinance to change the word “and” to “or” so that it would capture large vehicles that are either over 22 feet long or over 7 feet tall.

Ryavec said that the new signs will only deal with part of the problem residents face with the over 250 vehicles used as living quarters in Venice. “Some of the vehicles are less than 7 feet tall, so they will be exempt. Also, the City Attorney has tentatively decided that those vehicles with handicapped placards or license plates may be exempt from the ordinance, so they are advising the LAPD not to cite them for the time being.”

“We still need to pursue our lawsuit against the Coastal Commission to win the right for overnight restricted parking for residents and we will need the LAPD to aggressively enforce the ban (LAMC 85.02) on using vehicles as living quarters,” Ryavec said.

The map above shows the status of Over-height Vehicle Overnight (OVO) parking restrictions petitions that we are aware. Completed street segments accepted by the council office are listed in red.

If you would like to know about a particular street segment send us a comment using the comment box on the lower right of this web page. We will try to hook people up who are interested in gathering petitions on a particular street segment. If you submitted your petition and do not see your street marked on our map, also please let us know.

NOTE: some segments may only cover one side of a street segment.

Finding Residences for a Street Segment

I've attached a picture with instructions for obtaining the legal address and number of units at properties along a street segment. This can help you know in advance the total count of residences for a street segment with some certainty. The county assessors web site is: http://maps.assessor.lacounty.gov/

Just download a blank OVO petition and you can get started collecting signatures. Please make a photo copy of your petition before submitting it to the city. You can also email us if you have questions about whether anyone else is gathering signatures for a given street.

Applause for City Attorney Carmen Trutanich for Defending Venice's Beach Curfew

Our City Attorney, Carmen Trutanich, has once again come to the aid of his Venice constituents.

As you will see from the attached letter from Trutanich's Office to the Coastal Commission, Trutanich has rejected the attempt by the Commission's staff to force the City Department of Recreation and Parks to apply for a Coastal Development Permit to continue the City's beach curfew in Venice, which would surely be rejected by the Commission.

The curfew was established at the request of the LAPD and local residents more than three decades ago. The curfew is a lawful exercise of the City's inherent police powers, in this instance to prevent and abate criminal and life-threatening behavior at nighttime along Venice Beach.

The City Attorney also suggests that the current investigation of the beach curfew has been instigated by the Commission in retaliation for the City's decision to join the VSA's lawsuit against the Commission for its rejection of overnight restricted parking for residents. The VSA agrees that this is the probable motivation for the Commission's "mission creep" into an area that is traditionally the prerogative of municipal government.

I would encourage you to send an email of support to Mr. Trutanich at ctrutanich@lacity.org, with a copy to his chief deputy, Jane Usher, at Jane.Usher@lacity.org, thanking him for rejecting the Commission's attempt to take jurisdiction for public safety along the beach away from the City and LAPD, which would invite more transients sleeping on the beach and more criminal activity.

Click Here to read the letter.

Prosecution of Culprits in Pacific/Fleet Sewage Dumping Incident

The City Attorney's Office has just provided us with this formal report on the result of the prosecution of the couple that was involved in the sewage dumping incident at Pacific and Fleet on the Venice Peninsula:

Both defendants were arrested on their warrants on Tuesday October 12, 2010. They appeared in court on Wednesday October 13, 2010 for arraignment. The defendants were charged with three counts each (Penal Code 370/372, LAMC 62.80(a), and Penal Code 182(a)(1)). Both defendants pled "Open to the Court" to the following sentence: 36 months of summary probation, Time Served in County Jail, 120 days of county jail suspended (which means that if the defendants violate the terms of their probation the Court will automatically impose 120 days of county jail each), restitution and a stay away (Imperial to the South, Navy to the North, Sepulveda to the East and the Pacific Ocean to the West). We will be having a restitution hearing on November 16, 2010 (to recover the costs of the clean up).

Pleading "open to the Court" means that the Court determines the sentence (after hearing from both our Office and the defense). When pleading "open to the Court" the defendants must plead Guilty or No Contest to ALL charges (in this case there were three charges filed against each defendant).

(This is from Claudia Martin, the Neighborhood Prosecutor assigned to Venice.)