Antonio Villaraigosa reflects on eight years

Plans on a run for governor

 

 http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_23519791/antonio-villaraigosa-reflects-eight-years

 

By Rick Orlov, June 22, 2013

 

 

 

 

 Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa discusses his 8 years as mayor of Los Angeles June 12, 2013.

 

 

After eight years as America's celebrity mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa says he has mixed feelings about leaving.

"I do think for a mayor of a big city, or a governor or president, two terms is enough," Villaraigosa said in his third floor City Hall office where aides are beginning to pack up the papers and memorabilia of his time in public service. 

"But I am leaving here with a smile on my face. I am incredibly grateful to have had this job. No matter what else happens to me, I can always say I was mayor of Los Angeles."

It has not always been easy for the 60-year-old Villaraigosa, who was subject to increasingly critical scrutiny, much of it deemed unfair by supporters.

"When you are mayor of Los Angeles, a city where the entertainment industry is so strong, a mayor has to be an advocate for film and music, the creative industry," Villaraigosa said. "Just as the mayor of New York has to be an advocate for Wall Street."

His drive to promote the entertainment industry stirred criticism that he sought the spotlight too often and attended too many free events, including the Oscars and Emmy awards and Lakers and Dodgers games. His divorce and subsequent involvement with TV reporters only fueled the criticism.

"Mayors, wherever they are, get hit," Villaraigosa said. "That's why it's hard for them to go on to other (political) jobs. Particularly, mayors of big cities rarely move up to jobs like governor."

Ever since his election in 2005 when speculation about other political aspirations would surface, Villaraigosa would repeatedly say he had no plans to leave his job as mayor. 

"I said I would serve a full eight years and I have," Villaraigosa said. "Early on, there was talk about me running for governor, but if

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa discusses his 8 years as mayor of Los Angeles June 12, 2013. 

 

anyone had looked at my schedule, they would have seen that was not the case. I made only two trips to San Francisco and no others around the state. That's not a campaign for governor."

Last week, he sparked new speculation about his future plans when he said in an interview with Larry Mantle on KPCC that he wants to run for governor -- some day.

"In fact, I fully expect I will," Villaraigosa said.

But, Villaraigosa said he has no timeline and would not run against Gov. Jerry Brown.

He also has talked about writing a book on the state of modern politics or of working for a university or a think tank.

"There is no rush," Villaraigosa said, who leaves office on July 1. "I'm going to take my time to decide."

He is looking for a new residence -- his ex-wife has their Mount Washington home -- and he has been living at Getty House, the city's mayoral residence. His most likely relocation spot is the Venice area because of its proximity to Los Angeles International Airport, he said. When he retires, Villaraigosa will be eligible for an annual pension of $122,489.

Cites many successes:

Villaraigosa said the political speculation regarding his future has minimized his administration's accomplishments in public safety, transportation, the environment, education, pension reform and city services -- all during the nation's worst economic climate since the Great Depression

.

One of the his most significant accomplishments was passage of Measure R, the half-cent sales tax approved by more than two-thirds of the voters in the county to fund transportation projects just as the recession was being felt.

"That was not an easy thing to even get on the ballot," Villaraigosa said. "We had a lot of opposition on the MTA board and from the other cities who didn't want to sign on."

Villaraigosa was able to use the concept of leveraging the $30 billion to be raised from the tax into his 30-10 plan to get federal loans against the money to be raised. That later became the America Fast Forward national plan where localities agreeing to tax themselves were able to get the federal government to advance them money.

Most of his tenure was marked by the economic problems confronting the nation.

"If you would have said to me: 'Mayor, are you prepared to furlough, lay off or reduce the workforce by one third?' I would have said, 'Are you crazy?' Yet, I led the effort to cut the numbers of workers.

"People were saying we would have to declare bankruptcy and I said, not on my watch. And we didn't."

To mark his time as mayor, his staff put together a 60-page book, titled "Straight from the Heart of L.A." that details his accomplishments over the past eight years.

Among the accomplishments: 20 percent of energy coming from renewable sources; 75 percent increase in recycling; adding 669 acres of open space; installing LED streetlights; reducing port emissions; adding 1,549 miles of bikeways; reducing violent crime by 50 percent; and reducing gang crime by 43 percent while expanding the LAPD to 10,000 officers.

Despite his many accomplishments, even longtime supporters said it was the right time for him to move on.

"To me, he was the best mayor since Tom Bradley, but that isn't saying a whole lot," said Jaime Regalado, former director of the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State, L.A. "What we had in between was mediocrity. Dick Riordan couldn't get along with the City Council and Jim Hahn was busy fighting secession. Hahn did get rid of Bernard Parks as police chief and did bring in (Bill) Bratton, which was absolutely the right thing to do.

"The problem for Villaraigosa was the economy."

Villaraigosa kept Bratton in charge for a time, and oversaw the expansion of the Los Angeles Police Department to 10,000 officers, a move that dramatically reduced crime.

"I thought he did a good job on transportation but he got bogged down with the schools," Regalado said. "He wanted to be like (New York Mayor Michael) Bloomberg or (Chicago Mayor Rahm) Emanuel, but he couldn't get control of the schools."

Villaraigosa said he tried to take over the schools, winning passage of a state law that was later overturned by the courts.

Like Riordan, Villaraigosa changed his tactics from trying to take control to helping seat a new Los Angeles Unified Board of Education that agreed with his views on educational reform. He also took direct control of 22 poorly performing schools, which he said have turned around.

Also, his added focus on graduating students helped the district reverse its drop out rate, he said.

"In 2005, there were only 48 percent of kids graduating," Villaraigosa said. "Last year, it was 64 percent. Almost two-thirds of the students."

More critical of Villaraigosa's eight years is Joel Kotkin, professor of urban development and a fellow at Chapman University in Orange.

"You show me what has improved," Kotkin said. "L.A.'s unemployment is the highest in the county and state. Does anyone think Los Angeles is in a stronger position now than it was 10 years ago?

"I travel all over the country and what I see is cities like Austin and New Orleans, and I can see L.A.'s diminishing footprint. At one time, this city was leading the way for all other cities."

Kotkin does credit Villaraigosa with convincing Bratton to remain as chief of police, but questions the value of the transportation program being developed or the cost of environmental gains.

"They are looking to spend all this money on solar when we have natural gas that will be less expensive," Kotkin said. "We are building a subway system that is marginally effective and takes a huge public investment."

He also faults the mayor and other city leaders for failing to prepare for the economic downturn.

"There are circumstances beyond what a mayor can do," Kotkin acknowledged. "But, neither he nor other leaders recognized at the start just how bad the situation was."

Richard Close, founder of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association and an early Villaraigosa supporter, said the economy doomed the administration.

"He is a man of great promise, but had limited results," Close said. "He did try to improve transit, but we have more gridlocked streets than ever before. He did a small amount of pension reform, but we still see a drop in city services.

"The economy gave him only limited resources and he had more ideas than results. As you look at cities across the country, they are innovating, using more technology. What we get are more left-turn lanes and LED lights."

Whatever his legacy may be, Villaraigosa said he is ready to move on, and he believes he was right to defer on efforts to change the law that would have allowed him to serve a third. 

 "Six years ago, I had an opportunity to extend term limits for this job and I decided not to," Villaraigosa said. "I believe two terms is about right. Mayors do their best work in two terms and then it's time to move on."

Songs About LA Number Nearly 200, Says Pop Music Historian Josh Kun

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/22/songs-about-la_n_3483074.html?utm_hp_ref=los-angeles

By John Rogers, June 22, 2013

 

 

 

LOS ANGELES -- For a city that has argued for decades over what its official song ought to be, Los Angeles has never lacked for serious contenders.

Anyone who has spent time here knows the city already has at least one unofficial tune: Randy Newman's "I Love LA" is played after every home game the Los Angeles Lakers or Dodgers win.
But have you heard Bing Crosby warble about how he once planned to "settle down and nevermore roam, and make the San Fernando Valley my home?" Or songwriter George G.W. Morgan's tuneful boast in 1876 that if you really wanted great wine, forget the fancy European stuff, just open a bottle of LA's best and drink up.

Crosby's "San Fernando Valley," a hit in 1943, and Morgan's "The Wines of Los Angeles County" are just two of nearly 200 songs that promote, mystify, glamorize and, let's be honest, often exaggerate the value of living in Los Angeles and its scores of suburbs.

And those are just the songs written between 1849 and 1959 that pop music historian Josh Kun came across while combing through the archives of the Los Angeles Public Library. The result is "Songs in the Key of LA," an ambitious summer-long project that kicked off earlier this month with the publication of a colorful, coffee-table book.

Next month a large, free-to-the-public exhibition of LA's music history opens at the downtown library. Throughout much of the rest of the summer, such prominent LA musicians as Van Dyke Parks, Quetzal and Ozomatli will be bringing the songs themselves to life in a series of public performances and recordings.

The works range from waltzes to Sousa-style marches, include cumbias representing the city's Latino influences and jazz styles carried west from New Orleans. But one unifying lyrical theme they all contain is pretty much this: Los Angeles is a sunnier, prettier, better place to live than wherever you are, and you'd be crazy not to want to be here instead.

As songwriters Jay Livingston and Ray Evans proclaim in "Angeltown" – which actually is LA's official song – "Once you wander through its byways, then you never can depart. In a thousand sweet and sly ways, it will win your heart!"

There is a reason for such unmitigated musical cheerleading, said Kun, a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Almost from the day it ostentatiously named itself the City of the Angels, LA has been portrayed as a fantasyland of palm trees, orange groves, beaches and beautiful people.

"Unlike with other cities, songs in early LA were often treated as instruments of boosterism," Kun said. "An industry was in place to help support song production that added to the sunshine-hype machine."

Livingston and Evans, for example, were movie songwriters who won Academy Awards for the pop classics `'Que Será, Será," "Mona Lisa" and "Buttons and Bows." They were talked into writing "Angeltown" in 1959 by Los Angeles Times columnist Gene Sherman who wanted his hometown to have an official song. Apparently he didn't think tunes like "Los Angeles Hurrah! The Place For You and Me," which was written in 1918, or 1920's "Los Angeles The Beautiful," made the cut.

"Angeltown" apparently didn't either. Although it became the official city song in 1966, it didn't merit a mention in the Los Angeles Times obituaries for either man.

Meanwhile, people have pretty much been arguing ever since that LA needs a better song. Following in his predecessor's footsteps, Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez nominated local musician Justin Chart's "Los Angeles the Song" as a serious contender earlier this year.

He acknowledged in a blog post a few days later, however, that many readers weren't buying that; they preferred Newman's "I Love LA." Still others suggested the Doors' "LA Woman" or the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge."

None of those are in "Songs in the Key of LA" because Kun wanted to focus on the period between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries, when sales of sheet music truly defined whether a song was a hit. It also gave him a chance to publish the elaborate, colorful sheet music covers that were truly the album covers and concert posters of their day.

To really bring the project to life, however, he knew he needed to have modern-day musicians record and perform some of the songs.

Grammy-nominated LA fusion band La Santa Cecilia took on "Chiapanecas," a song not only performed by Lupe Velez in the 1939 Hollywood film "The Girl From Mexico" but also a longtime staple of mariachi groups along the city's historic Olvera Street. The group modernized it a bit, adding a Tejano melody and a rock beat.

The veteran alt-country contingent I See Hawks in LA left "In The Valley of the San Joaquin" pretty much unchanged. There was a good reason for that, said lead singer Rob Waller. With its old-timey references to orange groves and "fields of yellow corn, where the quail sing every morn," it sounded like a song they might have written last week.

In fact, the San Joaquin Valley, 100 miles to the north, remains much the agricultural hub it once was when the song was written in 1904, while LA has planted subdivisions in its fields and paved its once-abundant orange groves.

But the California dream that was and is LA endures.

"You get here and you realize the dream you had isn't what living here is exactly like. But you still want the dream, and so you still write the songs," he said with a laugh. "It's still your muse, and you're still celebrating the idea of infinite possibility – which is what LA is."

HuffPost LA presents a Spotify playlist with 99 songs about Los Angeles. And, for good measure, we even left a spot for "Under The Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which shockingly wasn't on Spotify. 

 The link (you have to sign up for Spotify):

 http://open.spotify.com/user/1222748714/playlist/0kiBf6iUBKWeg8un5VmPiy

Tunnel Impact on Outside Air Quality

(Peggy Drouet: Note--I am having trouble getting on the link below in this post and also the following link: http://tunnels.piarc.org/en/environmental-issues/outside-air-quality.htm. However, I am being told that other people can access these links, so there could be some kind of block on my computer not allowing me access to these sites. Part of the study has been printed below.)

In the field of road tunnels, air quality is traditionally considered in relation to the level of concentrations of vehicle exhaust inside a tunnel. However, the concentrations of pollutants outside a tunnel can be harmful or annoying to people. Such pollutant concentrations rapidly reduce from a portal or exhaust shaft to the surrounding environment according complex mechanisms such as the speed and direction of the wind and the neighbouring topography. Consequently, it is recognized that air quality in the vicinity of tunnel portals or other exhaust points is of interest when the traffic intensity increases and when tunnels are constructed in an urban environment.

Above a tunnel, the air quality is expected to be better than if an open air road section was situated at the same location. However at the portals and shafts, polluted air is set free, when a longitudinal or transverse airflow is discharged by the piston effect of traffic and/or by ventilation systems. Depending upon background concentrations and other sources localized close to a tunnel portal or shaft, the concentration levels of pollutants can exceed the maximum levels set by authorities. In that case measures must be taken to improve the air quality in the vicinity of the tunnel. Measures may include civil or mechanical works, planning of the land use around the tunnel, etc. Most often it may be possible reduce the pollution concentrations based on operational measures such as changes in the ventilation regime.

PIARC has published the Technical Report 2008 R04 "Road Tunnels: A Guide to Optimizing the Air Quality Impact upon the Environment", which focuses on outside air quality related to tunnels and it is a guide to enhancing the urban environment by altering the emissions from vehicles and changing their spatial distribution within the space surrounding a tunnel. The guide considers a wide range of design and operation opportunities to mitigate the impact of tunnels on outside air: from the selection of the most optimum location of a tunnel, to gradients, ventilation type, air discharge management, traffic management, tunnel maintenance and finally (if still useful) contaminant removal techniques.

 Also, from the study:  A 30 ton diesel truck produces 75 times as much nitrogen dioxide and more than 500 times as much particulate pollution as does a gasoline powered car.

Affected community groups argue that any possible benefit to the many from reducing overall emissions is bought at the cost of the few who are exposed to the emissions from the stack and that this is intolerable in our society.

The City of Alhambra Must Be This Real Burning Hotbed of Support for the 710 Tunnel, Right?

The City of Alhambra Must Be This Real Burning Hotbed of Support for the 710 Tunnel, Right?

 http://sierramadretattler.blogspot.com/

June 22, 2013

 

 Judging by all that you can read in the press and online, the City of Alhambra must be a happening hotbed of support for the 710 Tunnel. The city on the far side of what they call "The Gap" has been synonymous with municipal support of the $14 billion dollar boondoggle.

The current Mayor there, Steve "Meatloaf" Placido, has often spoken strongly about his support for the tunnel. In a May 14th article in the Pasadena Star News titled "Alhambra announces support for 710 extension amid protesters" (link), here is what that often talkative toxic tunnel touter had to say about the keen support of his town for this project:

The city launched a two-year "Close the Gap" campaign Tuesday in support of the Long Beach (710) Freeway extension to Pasadena, amid protests from a handful of freeway fighters.

The city also declared July 7 as "710 Day" in Alhambra, aimed at raising awareness about the proposed freeway project. The move, announced in a press conference at City Hall, comes after months of forums and protests against the 4.5 mile freeway extension by residents and politicians from cities including Pasadena, South Pasadena and La Canada Flintridge.

Mayor Steven Placido said he thinks it is important to encourage those who support the long fought-over freeway proposal. "For 50 years the freeway has not been completed and we in the city want to raise awareness that now is the time it can actually happen," Placido said.

Another notable local pol, former Alhambra Mayor and current SGVCOG President Barbara Messina, has been equally bold with her many pronouncements of support for the project. In an article titled "710-gap solution: a tunnel or trains, bikes, and more?" (link), Barbara declared her opposition to anything but just that very tunnel.

Alhambra Councilwoman Barbara Messina responded that these proposals won't solve the congestion problem, citing "several reports, including one in 1993 by the California Department of Transportation, Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), and Metro, which found that the multi-modal, or low-build approach proposed by South Pasadena was impractical and inefficient."

“It’s about time,” Messina, who has been in office for 28 years, told NBC. “The freeway system is like an octopus, and all the parts need to be able to work together to operate at its maximum capacity. This missing link affects the whole system.”

But what really seems to seal the deal on Alhambra's tunnel love affair more than anything else is that they are going to hold a big old community party in support of it. This about "710 Day" from the Los Angeles Times (link):

The city of Alhambra last week reaffirmed its support for a controversial tunnel that would connect the 710 and 210 freeways, proclaiming July 10 as “710 Day” in the city.

“We as a city want to raise awareness that now is the time [the 710 freeway] can be completed,” Alhambra Mayor Steve Placido said at a news conference at City Hall Tuesday.

But here is the problem. If Alhambra is such a huge supporter of the 710 Tunnel, then how do you explain the following article from the local newspaper there, the Alhambra Source (link)?

Readers Oppose "710 Day" - Alhambra officials have proclaimed July 10 "710 Day," a celebration of their efforts to close the gap between the 710 and 210 freeways. The city will hold a family festival that day from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. at the arch park at Fremont Avenue and Valley Boulevard, including informational booths, activities, and live entertainment. 

Alhambra Source asked readers: How do you plan to spend July 10, 2013? Out of 243 votes, 14 percent were in favor of the celebration and "710 Day," compared with 76 percent in opposition to the festival and the city's attempts to close the gap. In comments on our poll, stories, and Facebook page, many readers also disagreed with the city's position that a tunnel between the freeways will improve congestion, safety, and the environment.

You'd think that if the City of Alhambra was going to throw a free party, the townsfolk there would be pretty happy about it no matter what the topic might be. But apparently 76% of the good people of Alhambra want absolutely nothing to do with any of it.

So can it be that perhaps Alhambra's much celebrated support for the 710 Tunnel doesn't really go much beyond the lip service being freely offered by its current and previous Mayors? And that rather than speaking for the people of Alhambra as claimed, Placido and Messina have instead been merely carrying water for the usual shady transportation bureaucracies and those international special interests they are actually working for here?

Here's a question. July 10 falls on a Wednesday this year. So why would the government agency of the City of Alhambra be holding its festive "710 Day" community party right in the middle of a work day? Can it be that they really don't want their residents attending the party? Maybe out of fear for what they might hear? Preferring instead to trot out more reliable elements?

You know how City government types can be about having to hear the opinions of actual residents. Especially when they are aware of what those residents really think.

Sounds like that could be it to me.

The Alhambra Source poll on "710 Day" can be found here.