Save Your Community, Save the Date: Oct. 2, 7, 21, and 25
Don’t Let L.A. City Planning Define Your LA2040, the Re-Envisioning of L.A.
Text from PreserveLA:
After months of controversial, closed-door, non-transparent meetings, the L.A. Planning Dept. is finally holding four “Open Space Element” public meetings in October on the Westside, Valley, South L.A. and Hollywood.
Amidst widespread criticism, City Planning has relentlessly pursued its top-down old-school approach. Let’s show up, speak up and launch a do-over!
If we don’t push re-set, OurLA2040 becomes TheirLA2040.
California State Guidelines for 2017 say the General Plan "should start with a shared community vision that will help set priorities throughout the planning process."
Dates and locations below – attend in your area and invite your allies!
Westside: Monday, October 2, 2017 - 6:00 to 8:00pm
Location: Westwood Presbyterian Church, 10822 Wilshire Blvd.
Valley: Saturday, October 7, 2017 - 10:00am to noon
Location: Van Nuys Civic Center, Community Rms 1A & 1B, 14410 Sylvan St.
South LA: Saturday, October 21, 2017 - 10:00am to noon
Location: West Angeles Senior Villas, Community Room, 6030 Crenshaw Blvd.
Hollywood: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - 6:00 to 8:00pm
Location: Emerson College, Assembly Room, 5960 Sunset Blvd.
It’s serious folks. ICYMI, please read Coalition to Preserve LA’s press release:
Mayor Garcetti's Open-Space Plan and OurLA2040 are in Disarray
A prominent vow by Mayor Eric Garcetti that "residents would write" the first re-envisioning of L.A.'s shared dreams since 1970 — known as the General Plan — was in tatters this week after officials offered a glimpse of the non-transparent, invitation-only process that has gone into the OurLA2040 update.
City Planners speaking at the Neighborhood Congress at City Hall announced that in October they will unveil results of seven months of private debates — debates that were to be public. Instead, they were conducted behind closed doors, without public notice — and the only residents invited were hand-picked by L.A. city officials.
"L.A.'s General Plan effort is a Do-Over," said Jill Stewart, executive director of the Coalition to Preserve LA. "City planners this week told the Neighborhood Congress they plan to unveil a draft of the General Plan in October for residents to react to. This is wildly inappropriate and wrong-headedly top-down."
Mayor Garcetti said in his April 2017 State of the City Address: "These Updates won't be written by anonymous bureaucrats in backrooms, they will be written by and with the residents of Los Angeles."
In fact, the opposite is unfolding. The invitation-only debates have fueled controversy all year. The city excluded the Neighborhood Councils and other interested parties, but managed to invite in an "Open Space expert" who is a consultant to the Millennium Partners skyscraper mega-development.
Neighborhood Councils, the Los Angeles Tenants Union and Hillside Federation, all sent letters urging Garcetti, City Planner Vince Bertoni and City Council members to open the sessions, beginning with the Open Space Element — and all subsequent General Plan envisioning meetings.
Bertoni then reluctantly opened a single Open Space Work Group meeting, "then he shut the door again," said Stewart. "That June meeting was standing-room only. But City Planning never engaged with those concerned residents again."
California State Guidelines for 2017 say the General Plan "should start with a shared community vision that will help set priorities throughout the planning process."
The secrecy has created disarray and distrust. A rough draft Outline was recently leaked out to the Coalition to Preserve LA by concerned city officials.The Outline illegally counts paved plazas as "open space," lumps L.A.'s decimated urban tree canopy into a catch-all category with toxic waste, and reduces the Public Safety Element, Public Parks Element and other crucial Elements to lesser "chapters."
"In a diverse metropolis like Los Angeles, where sustainability and equity are the watchwords, all interested parties must be involved from Day One," said Stewart.
The city justifies its misbehavior by claiming that “Crafting a new vision for a diverse city of over four million people – one that spans nearly 470 miles – is an enormously complex task.”
If OurLA2040 is truly to be OurLA, not TheirLA, Mayor Garcetti and Planner Bertoni need to reverse this order, with full participatory community envisioning as of now— and not make the community a footnote to this plan come October.