OK, I’ll admit it. I’m going to miss Spencer Pratt.
I had never heard of the former reality TV star before he said God wanted him to be mayorof Los Angeles. And now that he’s out of the race, he’s still serving up lazy fastballs down the middle of the plate,calling the top two vote-getters — Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman — dummies and morons.
Quick question for Pratt: If you’re on record claiming that 9/11 was an inside job and the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, and you run for office in a deep blue city with President Trump’s backing but not much of a plan or even a clue as to what a mayor can or can’t do, should you be calling other people morons?
And yet the pouting Pratt pulled more than 200,000 votes. So sore loser or not, he tapped into a lack of faith in elected officials and simmering frustration with City Hall, which happen to be the essence of today’s column.
I have five questions for Bass and Raman. They’re somewhat inter-related and have to do with matters I hear about regularly from readers:
Infrastructure (sidewalks, streets, etc).
Homelessness (billions of dollars spent, and a long way to go).
Parks (L.A.’s national ranking for quality and accessibility just dropped again).
Trash and blight (no explanation needed, right?).
And focus. (Do the candidates have a clear set of goals and a plan for achieving them?)
We’ve got five months to visit and revisit these topics, and today I’m going to focus on the first, so here we go.
Infrastructure:
A few days ago, I met with Earl Ofari Hutchinson of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable. Hutchinson is a longtime community activist and commentator, and he had just launched a torpedo in the direction of City Hall.
“There are hundreds of busted, dangerous sidewalks in South L A that have gone unrepaired for years,” he wrote to his network of followers. “They cause hundreds of injuries, and have resulted in massive numbers of claims and payouts in settlements. LA City Officials must act now to jumpstart a crash program to fix these sidewalks.”
On my way to meet Hutchinson, I traveled west along Florence Avenue and saw dozens of typical rough patches on the street and sidewalks. But if there were a contest to identify the all-time worst sidewalks in Los Angeles, Hutchinson’s discovery of the one at 71st Street and 11th Avenue would be a Hall of Fame contender.
For starters, it’s got the classic uplift, and the villain is the usual suspect — ficus tree roots. A 20-foot slab of sidewalk is pitched sharply, as if designed by trip-and-fall lawsuit lawyers. Way back in 2014, in my early days on sidewalk patrol, I was able to crawl under a similarly ruptured sidewalk in West L.A., and I could’ve done the same at 71st and 11th.
But I thought better of it after Hutchinson peered into the opening and said it looked like a comfy home for rats and other vermin.
The homeowner, Sharon Kelly, can’t use her front gate because of the lopsided sidewalk. She let me borrow her tape measure, which revealed a 16-inch rise in the pavement.
“It keeps rising,” Kelly said. “But it was already lifted when we came here.”
That was in 1997. I asked if she’s called the city for help.
“Several times,” she said, and the only response was a slapdash temporary asphalt patch.
Hutchinson said residents have responded in force to his call for emergency sidewalks repairs, just as they did when he crusaded for a crackdown on widespread illegal dumping.
“Dozens of residents have come out of the woodwork, and here’s what they all say: ‘We have called our city council person and various city departments repeatedly, over and over again.’”
And the response?
“Nothing,” Hutchinson said.
While we were talking, two people with walkers steered clear of the worst spot near Kelly’s property. Charles McQuarn, 77, said traversing the neighborhood means zigzagging around all the hazards.
“I gotta come out into the streets, too,” he said.
When he was a teenager, McQuarn said, he worked for a community group that fixed sidewalks. I mentioned that Councilmember Monica Rodriguez has been using Conservation Corps youths to do the same, but it’s time to scale up that program and come up with other remedies to speed the process.
The city is fixing about 600 sidewalks each year, the backlog of requested repairs stands at about 30,000 and if you get onto the waiting list, you’re looking at about 10 years before help arrives.
When we were done on 71st Street, Hutchinson led me over to a nearby stretch of Florence where, for blocks and blocks, it appears as if there have been volcanic eruptions around the trees. Large chunks of cracked sidewalk form mounds, one after another. The Hutchinson Himalayas are a site to behold — a mile-long museum of municipal neglect.
And it’s been like this, Hutchinson said, “for years.”
The question for Bass and Raman: What will you do to speed the repairs?
Homelessness:
Voters have been generous when it comes to repeatedly taxing themselves more, and more, to address homelessness. There’s been Measure H, Measure A, Measure ULA and Proposition HHH.
Yet although billions of dollars have been spent and tens of thousands of people have been helped and housed, more than 40,000 people are homeless in the city and roughly 70,000 in the county. In her primary victory speech, Bass said families shouldn’t have to step around encampments, and Raman has said greater urgency is needed.
Questions for Bass and Raman: Why haven’t taxpayers gotten more for their money with the two of you at the helm, what are you going to do to speed progress and create more accountability, and what distinguishes you from each other?
Parks:
In the annual rankings by the National Trust for Public Lands, Los Angeles has dropped from 90th to a tie for 93rd in park investment and accessibility among the nation’s 100 most populous cities.
The City Council is about to consider a motion to increase park funding through charter reform (with dozens of community groups in support), and progress is ridiculously slow on an agreement to use schools as after-hours playgrounds.
Question for Bass and Raman: Do you support the charter reform, and what else are you going to do to address the sad state of the city’s parks?
Trash and blight:
In downtown L.A., vandalism, shuttered storefronts and post-COVID abandonment have crippled what was a vibrant, revenue-generating economy that benefited the whole city.
In Hollywood, a resident hired her housekeeper to help report illegal dumping of goods that are often used to construct more homeless encampments, leading to all sorts of problems.
On the south lawn of City Hall, a graffiti-tagged monument and fountain have been out of commission for most of the last six decades.
Question for Bass and Raman: At the very least, can you fix the fountain?
Focus:
Like any big city with great assets and unlimited challenges, many residents have a love-hate relationship with L.A. But years ago, someone told me he loves Los Angeles because it’s a messy, multi-cultural work in progress, set on a dramatic landscape between mountain and sea, trying to figure out what it wants to be.
Question for Bass and Raman: Whether in the realm of basic services or grand visions, what three or four primary objectives do you have over the next four years?
In other words, what do you want L.A. to be?
The post From the scene of South L.A.’s erupting sidewalks, 5 questions for Bass and Raman appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
