Residents Sue OverCrumbling L.A.
City Council ignorant about state of infrastructure
When the Los Angeles City Council approves new condos, office towers and other forms of growth, should it know whether the city's troubled, aging infrastructure can take that extra load? And should city planners make those potentially troubling facts public by combining them all in a single report to the City Council each year?
Those are the questions before a California court, where L.A. environmental lawyers sued city leaders on behalf of more than a dozen community groups that say the City Council, bent on creating a far denser Los Angeles, is approving developers' projects in the dark.
The community groups lost an initial legal round early last year, and the case now is on appeal, with a decision expected this year.
But in some ways, it is already too late for Los Angeles' ancient infrastructure of decaying pipes, circa 1910, and roadways that in some areas have fallen behind on routine paving by 70 years.
"Every one of the hundreds of commercial and residential developments in the past 10 years has been approved by the City Council with no clear way for them to know if our infrastructure can handle them," says Lucille Saunders of La Brea–Willoughby Coalition, the first group of L.A. residents to sue the city in 2008.
Several community groups and their lawyers say the City Charter — L.A.'s municipal constitution — requires the city planning department to create a comprehensive annual report on the state of the infrastructure for the City Council and, by extension, for the public.
And until 2000, that's the way it was, thanks to a long-ago fight by neighborhood and community groups that sought a single go-to report on the state of the city's water pipes, sewage lines, power grid and roadways. Their efforts eventually required the city planning department to provide the annual report as part of a so-called Framework Element, a set of laws that oversees growth and development.
Some would say the planning department in Los Angeles — infamous for overriding existing zoning to serve land speculators and politically connected developers — is an oxymoron.
Hundreds of developments have been green-lighted under Hahn and Mayor Villaraigosa without the annual report.
Its suit calls for a moratorium on all new development until the planning department resumes the public infrastructure reports.
The lawsuit alleges that the city's failure to provide annual reports also violates a core requirement of the California Environmental Quality Act.
City Attorney Carmen Trutanich argues that the annual report requirement is a suggestion, not a mandate, and that infrastructure information can somehow be gleaned from hundreds of city website pages — should anybody try hard enough to dig out that data.
He claims that a clause in the Framework Element of the City Charter, which says the report's publication is "contingent on the availability of adequate funding," means the report is not required. [FOR A GUY WHO CAMPAIGNED AGAINST EVERYTHING YOU ARE DEFENDING...YOU SURE HAD YOUR NUTZ SNIPPED BY ANTONIO, DIDN'T YOU, MR. BIG TOUGH, STAND UP GUY? (Stand up COMEDIAN, maybe. Let's get the campaign transcripts.)]
Trutanich argues — ludicrously, to some — that since 2000 the huge city planning department hasn't had enough money to produce annual infrastructure reports. [OH NO...CALL 9-1-1!!! I'M FINALLY GONNA DROP FROM CHOKING SO HARD, FROM LAUGHTER! HE REALLY IS A CLOWN! HE MAKES PEOPLE LAUGH!!!! HELP!]
Read FULL article HERE. (This was just a little excerpt.)
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