CITYWATCH TODAY—When it comes to protecting LA’s neighborhoods, there’s a new sheriff in town. For some while, the strategy was to get the city’s voices on the same page, crank up the volume and see if you could turn LA’s electeds into LA’s listeners. As a matter of fact, former LA City Councilman Joel Wachs created neighborhood councils because, he said, ‘nobody at City Hall is listening to the people.’ And, we all know how that worked out.
So, as CityWatch has been reminding you for some months now, there’s a new plan cookin’ … a new way to get the attention of LA’s electeds … take ‘em to court, or … generate a little citizen legislation … crank out a ballot initiative. Either process appears to be more effective and more efficient. And the people already have some important wins notched into their legal ‘gun’ belt.
Damien Goodmon writes about one of the latest People vs. City Hall law suit shootouts. A mega-developer wants to plant a 30-story mixed use skyscraper in a South LA Jefferson-at-La Cienega community and they think the way to do that is to cozy up to City Hall and ignore the folks whose neighborhood they want to invade. Goodmon’s Crenshaw Coalition and Jill Stewart’s Preserve LA movement teamed up and filed a lawsuit and invited themselves to the planning table. There’s a new sheriff in town and Damien explains it all in Today’s CityWatch.
Check it out. Let us know what you think.
Ken Draper-Editor, CityWatch
