Friday, May 18, 2012
New FIRESTAT-LA data system urged to track fire department response time.
COUNCILMEMBER ENGLANDER'S E-NEWS May 18, 2012 Support for Our FIRESTAT-LA Proposal in Response to Problems with Fire Department Response Times... As Chairman of the Public Safety Committee, I have been highly concerned about the recent news that the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) reported faster response times than it actually was achieving. The response times are the most crucial measure of the City's ability to ensure public safety. A statistics specialist appointed by the Mayor released a report about the LAFD response times on Monday, May 14 that supports my proposal to create FIRESTAT-LA, a system for the Fire Department based on the LAPD's highly successful COMPSTAT system. The report calls for LAFD to end the use of its flawed …
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Councilman Bill Rosendahl, Los Angeles' first openly gay elected city official, called Obama's support for same-sex marriage a "beautiful, great moment for all of us."
Editor's Note: Please scroll to the bottom for the poll. President Barack Obama's announcement that he supports same-sex marriage was quickly hailed Wednesday by Southland advocates of gay and lesbian weddings as a historic turning point in the fight for marriage equality. "Today is a proud day for all Americans," said Theodore B. Olson, one of the attorneys in a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage. "The bedrock American principles of freedom and human dignity are central to the political and legal convictions of Republicans, Democrats, liberals and conservatives alike. "President Obama's words remind us that marriage and equality are universal values that unite us all. They remind us …
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Councilman Paul Koretz says his plan aims to reduce the number of dispensaries to about 100.
The City Council today diverted a plan that would ban medical marijuana dispensaries but relax enforcement of rule-abiding pot shops and allow some to stay open. The council voted in closed session to send a motion by Councilman Paul Koretz back to two council committees, though it had already been fast-tracked through the committee process. Instead, the council agreed to give precedence to a plan by City Councilman Jose Huizar to ban dispensaries but allow for cultivation and direct distribution of cannabis by licensed caregivers or patients, dubbed a "gentle ban" by the City Attorney's Office. The City Council agreed several weeks ago during a closed-door discussion to advance the "gentle ban" supported by Huizar, who called Koretz's …
See Los Angeles City Council member and mayoral candidate Jan Perry in conversation before a live audience at Cal-State Northridge.
- ELECTIONS
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Wednesday, May 16
(If video window doesn't appear, refresh the page.) Los Angeles City Council member Jan Perry cruised through a list of issues at Cal State Northridge Tuesday in the second of the "Talking About Los Angeles" series of interviews with mayoral candidates. Moderator Christine Essel, the CEO for the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, started off the event by saying that she had known Perry for 20 years. Questioned by Essel, Perry touched on redevelopment, jobs, housing, transit, education, pensions and the city's budget deficit. Patch is a co-sponsor of the series, which was organized by the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, a Latino voter participation organization; and Cerrell Associates, a Los Angeles political …
"While we want to try to protect jobs ... our first goal is restoring services, not protecting jobs for their own sake," said Committee Charman Paul Krekorian.
The City Council Budget and Finance Committee Tuesday approved a plan to delay layoffs of more than 200 city workers until Jan. 1, after budget officials found an extra approximately $16 million in revenues and through additional cuts to city departments. The budget proposal approved unanimously by the committee recommends the city use half of the money to defer the layoffs while the City Council decides how best to use the funds. "While we want to try to protect jobs ... our first goal is restoring services, not protecting jobs for their own sake," said City Councilman Paul Krekorian, who chairs the budget committee. The money to delay the layoffs came from a variety of sources, including about $6.6 million in one-time revenues, $2.4 …
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
The redesigned ladwp.com offers a new layout, self-service capabilities
and 24/7 service and information.
- GOVERNMENT
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Tuesday, May 15
[News release from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.] The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) Monday announced the launch of its new and improved official website, www.LADWP.com. The English/Spanish bilingual site is more user-friendly and features a modern, updated design with streamlined navigation and improved self-service capabilities. Residential and commercial water and power customers can now access improved bill view and payment options, online applications for rebates and low income discounts, view electric and water consumption charts and graphs to understand their usage trends, view past bills and track service requests. The website also features real-time neighborhood power outage maps and information…
Statistics expert recommends adopting a plan modeled on the police COMPSTAT system to record response times.
Austin Beutner may have dropped out of the Los Angeles mayoral race, but his campaign clearly revealed the disparity between reported fire department response times and actual response times. And Councilman Mitch Englander, chairman of the city's Public Safety Committee, has been critical of the inaccuracy in reported LAFD response times. Englander, a reserve police officer, has introduced a motion calling for the fire department to adopt FIRESTAT LA, a computerized system similar to the police department's trusted COMPSTAT data system. This morning, the Los Angeles Times reports on an audit that calls on the LAFD to stop using its flawed data software until the problem is fixed. It also recommends an overhaul of the unit that analyzes …
The city councilwoman will be the second mayoral candidate interviewed in the Talking About Los Angeles series. Questions from Patch readers will be presented to Perry.
A series of conversations with Los Angeles mayoral candidates continues Tuesday evening with an interview of Councilwoman Jan Perry that will be shown via a live video stream you can watch on this Patch site. The interview, the second in the "Talking About Los Angeles" series, begins at 5:30 p.m. before an audience in The Grand Salon of California State University, Northridge, 18111 Nordhoff St. (See attached PDF map.) If you would like to attend the event, you can register on the Talking About Los Angeles website. The moderator for the event will be Christine Essel, the CEO for Los Angeles’ Community Redevelopment Agency. She’s a former senior vice president of government and community affairs for Paramount Pictures and had been an …
34.2355
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18111 Nordhoff St, Northridge, CA
Grand Salon at Cal State Northridge
/articles/do-you-have-a-question-for-jan-perry
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Monday, May 14, 2012
Englander urges all of the city's Neighborhood Councils to take a position on the Community Care ordinance.
- GOVERNMENT
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Monday, May 14
By Mitchell Englander, Councilmember, Twelfth District The peace and safety of your neighborhood is the single most important measure of quality of life in our community, and my top priority is to help preserve and protect it. The City’s proposed Community Care Facility Ordinance has the singular purpose of preserving peace and safety in our neighborhoods. After numerous public hearings in the L.A. City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee (PLUM), long deliberations, and dozens of hours of public comment from a range of interested groups and community members, the Community Care Facilities Ordinance was sent on to the full City Council for consideration. I urge every Neighborhood Council in the City to vote on a …
Sunday, May 13, 2012
BongHwan Kim to face a crowded field of potential candidates seeking to replace Councilman Eric Garcetti, who is running for mayor.
The general manager of the embattled Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) filed Friday to run for the 13th District City Council seat. It was not immediately clear whether BongHwan Kim would step down from his city job in order to run. He was appointed to the post by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. DONE, also known as Empower LA, in partnership with the current 95 Neighborhood Councils, last year fought back a City Council attempt to merge it into the Department of Community Development. On Wednesday, DONE wrested from the City Clerk the authority to run Neighborhood Council elections. The City Council has yet to allocate funds for those elections. Among the Neighborhood Councils supervised by DONE in Valley Patch communities are: …
John
12:44 pm on Friday, May 18, 2012
Religious mind-sets change from generation to generation, not really abiding by the written words. There were hundreds of people that were killed for witchcraft. Long ago, white people could only mary other whites and they claimed religion to be the reason why. Same old story. There is nothing new under the sun. more ›