ConnectingCalifornia.org

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Lawsuit Attacks L.A. City Growth Plans

"Victory (in this lawsuit) would mean all new projects would be halted indefinitely and officials would be forced to sit down at the table of power with the people and figure out what kind of city this is and how the quality of life can be improved for all. Officials also would have to conduct 10 years of studies on traffic and other infrastructure issues and show that each new project
"enhances rather than degrades" the urban environment, as the city general plan requires."

excerpted from http://ronkayela.com/2008/07/crime-against-the-people-how-c.html

July 22, 2008

...What Saunders has found is that City Hall is violating state law and the city's own general plan for development -- and the violations have been going on for a decade.

Saunders and the La Brea-Willoughby Coalition she leads sued the city last month with the help of attorneys Sabrina Venskus and Emilee Moeller. They don't want money, only for the city to obey the law.

Here is the suit, click on the link to download: http://ronkayela.com/labrea.pdf

"We will not be diverted from what we're asking. We will not be co-opted," Saunders told me."There's audits and procedures required by law that must be done before any land use changes can be approved and the city hasn't followed the rules since 1998."

If Saunders wins, we ought to build a statue to her on the South Lawn of City Hall.

Victory would mean all new projects would be halted indefinitely and officials would be forced to sit down at the table of power with the people and figure out what kind of city this is and how the quality of life can be improved for all. Officials also would have to conduct 10 years of studies
on traffic and other infrastructure issues and show that each new project "enhances rather than degrades" the urban environment, as the city general plan requires.

The single most important issue today is development. Our elected officials are selling of the city to developers. That's how they raise millions for their campaigns for office and ballot measures and it's how they keep cash flowing into the city treasury to keep from being exposed as the incompetent managers of the city they are and betrayers of the public trust.

Don't hold your breath but if the mayor and the City Council had an ounce of integrity and concern for the city, they would not bother to meet Wednesday's deadline for filing a response to Saunders suit.

Millions of building permits have been issued during the last 10 years in violation of the law. The population has grown. Traffic has gotten more congested. The environment has been degraded. The quality of our lives and our neighborhoods has gotten worse.

"The city's failure to perform the required monitoring and reporting while still continuing to approve massive development at break-neck speed, threatens the health, safety and welfare of the residents, workers and business owners of Los Angeles," says the lawsuit.

"Without the required monitoring and reporting, City decisionmakers cannot know whether the population growth facilitated by the sheer enormity of development approved within the last 10 years and continuing, is overburdening or will likely overburden current infrastructure capacity and services delivery...whether planned infrastructure capacity and services delivery will come online in time to accommodate the near-term increase in population that will result from development already approved but not yet built."

In other words, city officials don't or care what the impact of development is on the city. They have flagrantly violated the law. Worse yet they have replaced the rule of law with the rule of money, the cash from developers, contractors and the political apparatus that keeps them in office, selling out the city and its people for their own benefit.