In a sign of bad faith, the Coastal Commission at its hearing on Thursday,
June 13
th, refused to allow several pro-OPD speakers to make their
remarks, ignored steadfast support for OPDs from its own staff, and added late
requirements, which were impossible for City representatives to meet during the
hearing.
This included a late demand for
an up-dated parking availability study.
If the Commission had been operating in good faith, the Commission would
have requested the study before it agreed to the settlement.
In the end, the Commission gave into
representatives of social service agencies, the Peace and Freedom party, Occupy
Venice and homeless advocates.
The prospects for OPD were hampered going into the hearing by several
developments.
The first was that the City of Los
Angeles, including City Councilman Bill Rosendahl,
more or less abandoned defense of its own permit application. Some of
this was just unlucky circumstances, some of this was bad faith by city
officials, including Rosendahl.
Over the last three years the City lost two knowledgeable Transportation
Department officials, Alan Willis and Yadi Hashemi, to early retirement.
Their replacement was at a lower experience level and was not able to
forcefully present the permit application to the Commission.
Next, there was a pissing match between Bill Rosendahl and City Attorney
Trutanich over who was going to present the City application to the
Commission. Bill expected the City Attorney's Office to take the lead,
since it was a settlement of the City's (and VSA's) lawsuit against the
Commission, while Trutanich, miffed that Rosendahl had supported Mike Feuer in
the City Attorney's race, refused. So, Bill deputized his staff attorney,
Norm Kulla, to make the presentation. We offered to brief Kulla, but he
said he knew everything he needed to know. However, in front of the
Commission, he asked for little time to make the City's presentation, told the
Commission that Bill supported OPD on the grounds of equity, and then pitched
the presentation to our attorney John Henning, underscoring the City's lukewarm
support for OPD.
John Henning did his
best, but because Norm asked for so little time, neither John nor I could
finish our presentations.
The fact is that Bill R. took a dive, too. While maintaining that he
strongly supported OPD, he made no effort to either change his medical
appointments on the hearing date so he could attend in person or to ask the Commission
staff to move the hearing back one day so he could attend.
Trutanich sent an attorney to the hearing, Jerry Sato, but not the right
attorney. He sent the litigator in his office who would prosecute the
case against the Commission instead of the attorney who has worked on the issue
for the last four years, Valerie Flores. And he did not allow Sato make
any remarks in support of the settlement or to answer questions.
In short, the City completely abandoned the residents who have shown
majority support for OPD since the 59% vote at the library in 2009.
One also has to acknowledge that OPD opponents did their best organizing
effort ever and generally avoided the shrill and venomous presentation of
previous years. And our side, well, too many of our adherents were no
shows. Too many OPD supporters gave a priority to work and child care
commitments and failed to attend.
There were only 80 anti-OPD speakers, but in contrast, our side only fielded
about 10 speakers in support. Our presence was also unfairly limited by
an unpublished Commission rule that once the hearing starts no more speaker
cards are accepted. We had been informed that it was unlikely that the
OPD item would be heard before 10:30, but the hearing got started about 9:30,
so some of our key supporters, including Harris Levey, president of the
Presidents Row Neighborhood Association, and Reta Moser, a well known activist
and publisher of the Triangle Update, were not allowed to speak. There were
several others in this category, including Marie Hammond of the Rose Avenue
Working Group.
I could go into the specious nature of the concerns that appeared to drive
Commissioners "no" vote, but more important to this analysis is that
the Commission's procedures do not allow anyone other than the City’s
representatives to answer any concerns or questions posed by commissioners
after the public comment period is closed. So, while I or John Henning
could have answered their concerns, we were precluded from answering and the
City reps either didn't care or were not prepared to answer (again, City staff
simply stood silent).
Of course, if the commission was comprised of professional men and women of
integrity they would have read the settlement terms in advance of agreeing to
it and raised their questions in a timely manner
before they even agreed
to the settlement. Springing a request for a new study of early morning
parking availability at the end of the hearing was, of course, unfair to the
residents and the City. But this has been the Commission's behavior all
along, to keep setting the hurdle higher after the City has already met the
Commission staff's expectations for adequate parking mitigation for early
morning beach access and a settlement has been reached. It's called
"re-negotiating a done deal," and reflects a lack of professionalism
and integrity, but the Commission is largely composed of small town council
members who are not really “ready for prime time." Usually they
recognize this and support recommendations of staff, but in this case they
allowed themselves to be influenced by "the mob" and ignored the
well-substantiated recommendations from their own staff.
So, where to now? Clearly, there is no reason to discuss settlement
with the Commission again. It has shown itself to be an untrustworthy
negotiating partner. The only avenue is to litigate the underlying
lawsuit. This is dependent on funding. If enough Venice residents
are outraged at being treated by the Commission as second class citizens,
undeserving of the same rights to control their streets at night that the
Commission allows most other coastal cities, and provide the donations, then
the VSA will litigate this matter.
I'd like to thank everyone who contributed dollars, letters, emails,
postcards, etc., to our effort.
Mark Ryavec
