I find it suspicious as well. Nowadays it is really hard to elect a person because we can see our economy’s status these past few years.
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Measure J Transit Tax -- Too Soon?
'Temporary' hike would last to 2068, after most current voters are dead
When Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa leaves office in July, his legacy will be spotty, at best, marked by unfulfilled promises, political failures such as the attempted takeover of the Los Angeles Unified School District, a freebie-ticket scandal and excessive absenteeism from L.A. — not to mention the little matter of an affair with a TV reporter and a messy divorce.
But even a broken clock is right twice a day, and there's one area in which Villaraigosa is lauded — getting funding for public transit in Los Angeles.
Big, Los Angeles–centric transit projects have been launched under the outgoing mayor, who sits on the powerful regional Metro transportation board and appoints three of its members. Forty billion dollars in tax revenue is flowing gradually to Metro, thanks to Measure R, a 2008 sales-tax hike approved by Los Angeles County voters.
"Measure R is going to turn out to be one of the mayor's principal legacies," says Raphael Sonenshein of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute for Public Affairs.
The tax, voted in with a bare supermajority, raised the L.A. County sales tax by one-half percent to 8.75 percent for 30 years.
Most of the billions being generated have been earmarked for 12 public transit projects. But Metro's and Villaraigosa's emphasis on complex and pricey rail and subway lines means taxpayers won't see some of them up and running until 2030 and well beyond.
In a bid to cut the nearly three-decade wait to 10 years, Villaraigosa repeatedly traveled to Washington, D.C. He wanted Congress to give Los Angeles up-front, low-interest federal loans, using as collateral the future $40 billion collected from taxpayers across L.A. County.
Not many people realize just how new an idea this was — D.C. usually gives cities grants or loans for a single bridge or tunnel. Villaraigosa was essentially asking for a line of credit. Sonenshein calls it a "remarkable innovation in intergovernmental relations."
Despite mostly glowing press coverage of his Washington trips by the Los Angeles Times and others, however, Villaraigosa never did get the billions in up-front loans he sought in 2010 and 2011 for his so-called 30/10 program, aimed at building rail and subway projects in 10 instead of 30 years.
In 2011, he abandoned 30/10, embracing a plan called America Fast Forward, which was aimed at putting construction workers on the job in L.A. and other cities via huge transit projects — and again, it required billions in federal loans. Fast Forward fell far short. The Crenshaw Line did get a $546 million loan, and Congress is thinking of borrowing $3.3 billion for other Metro projects — a fraction what Villaraigosa wanted in order to complete L.A.'s big rail projects in a decade.
So Villaraigosa and transit promoters are dramatically shifting gears. They want Los Angeles County voters, not the feds, to provide the leverage to borrow billions of dollars up-front, by extending the 2008 sales tax hike from 30 to 60 years.
Villaraigosa's team argues that this virtually permanent tax — most current voters will be dead by 2068 — will let Metro nail down low-interest loans, with terms locked in for up to 35 years.
One key backer of Measure J, Denny Zane, executive director of Move L.A., says, "We need jobs now, traffic relief now, and we can take advantage of historically low interest rates."
But their scheme has attracted critics with a wide range of concerns.
Some find it suspicious that public officials would ask for an extension 26 years before the tax expires. "Wouldn't it be a good idea to make sure that Metro spends the $40 billion we've already authorized, before we go out and give them another check?" asks budget advocate Jack Humphreville.
"Can you trust these guys with that much money?" asks Damien Goodmon of the Crenshaw Subway Coalition. "Hell, no!"
Goodmon favors transit spending but hates the way Metro has gone about it. He's pissed off about the gobs of money being lavished on the Purple Line Westside Extension, which will run under Wilshire Boulevard.
The $6.3 billion to $9 billion Westside Extension will suck up a hefty chunk of the sales tax collected from consumers countywide, yet it falls miles short of the "subway to the sea" once promised, and it won't be completed until 2035.
Meanwhile, the planned Crenshaw Line in South L.A., serving mostly black and Latino riders, will be built on the cheap, at ground level. Goodmon has pleaded with Metro to address safety concerns at points where the line will intersect with streets.
Other black leaders were outraged when Metro's board chose not to build a Crenshaw Line transit stop at Leimert Park, which, in the eyes of many, is the business and shopping heart of black Los Angeles.
Goodmon says the Metro board's unfairly tilted votes on where to spend Measure R taxes amount to "basic economics: We're getting jacked."
He's part of a ragtag coalition, including the Bus Riders Union, the Beverly Hills School District and the No 710 Action Committee, which opposes Measure J. The Bus Riders Union says light rail and subways are being lavished with funds while bus service — used by four times as many people in the region served by Metro — is being cut.
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What makes a great city?
A great city, is its healthy citizens? Plenty of jobs? A well-educated population? Or is it beautiful parks, a low-crime rate, and affordable transportation?
A great city is some, any, or all of those things and more. Cities are every one unique. So what constitutes a great city depends entirely on the city in question and the values of its residents. And that’s why many of the participants of Global Innovation Outlook deep dive in Los Angeles advocated starting from the bottom and working up when going about building smarter cities.
“The questions that each city has to answer are these: How does leadership and management tap into the values of their communities? Do they have the systems and structures needed to translate those values into metrics that represent what people want? And are they able to then measure their progress towards those goals?” said S, a Senior Managing Director at Tech, a non-profit organization that provides young teachers in disadvantaged school districts.
Taylor was not alone in this approach. The discussion featured experts in everything from urban planning and management to health care. It included futurists, urbanites, and journalists; academics, educators, and technologists. And many of them agreed on the need for some kind of system for urban change that is adaptable, specific to each particular city, and informed by the residents of that city.
Here are a few salient quotes from the day around this idea:
“You have to go back down to the bottom,” said one participant. “You have to be able to tailor your solutions, because what’s good for one city might be catastrophic to another. And the system must govern toward that vision, but be designed for rapid, incremental change and response to things we cannot possibly predict.”
And:
“We are trying to plan a quality of life and an urban experience for people that we don’t even know yet, our future generations,” said M, Director of Industry. “Already my kids interact with each other and their schools in ways that I don’t understand.”
And finally:
“We know that more planning does not necessarily help you succeed,” said another participant. “In fact, the more you plan, the greater the cost of failure. So let’s have a thousand little failures that make up a collective, long-term success.”
Throughout the day, much of this thinking was directed towards the subject of education. There was little disagreement among those in the room that urban schools are part of the foundation of a smarter city. And the philosophies above have direct relevance in how to approach improvement of city schools.
“You can define and measure an educated city in a number of ways,” said T. “Maybe it is narrowing the gaps between the best and worst education level. Or maybe it’s the percentage of people that go to an Ivy League school. But you have to be careful which metrics you choose, because those two things are very, very different. So where you start from shapes what information you’re going to gather and what you will do with it.”
At least one metric that most people in the room felt was important was the level of integration city schools had with their communities. For example, Oakland’s school system has its students addressing climate change by going out into the community and performing energy audits around the city. This is just one example of how educational curriculum can intersect with other urban systems, in this case energy and utilities, and make the school system a more integral part of a community. This enables the schools to improve the community, and makes the community more inclined to support the schools.
While it may be true that no two cities are alike, there are plenty of lessons to be learned from examples like these. And when the values of the community are taken into account, a vision is created, and progress is measured, smarter cities are possible, one small step at a time.
I am voting no on Measure J and for very good reasons. Measure J would only mean more money that Metro will use to support its own greed, self interest and financial gain. Metro has a history of doing that and even after they made promises to the voters the last time, Metro went and turned their backs on them. We have already given Metro a blank check because of Measure R. We have not seen the advances in transportation since then, and there is no reason to think that Metro will keep its word and focus on doing what is right. Wake up and look at Metro for what it is and the progress it has not made. The only tunnels and roads that Metro is interested in are the ones that lead to the bank. Believe me, Metro is not interested in your community or you. To give them even more money and another 30 years to 2069 would be insane and is the same as putting a rope around our own necks. Think about that. We all know what Metro wants to do in Beverly Hills, Pasadena and other places. Do you really want to support their efforts and agendas both now and in the future? That is exactly what you will do if you vote yes on Measure J. I care about the future of Los Angeles. I also care and worry about what our children and grandchildren will have to deal with in the years to come. The years leading to 2069 are too far ahead for us to be spending money on something that others will eventually have to pay for. That would be unfair and wrong. Don't act the way Metro wants you to. Do the right thing. Vote no on Measure J.
George Vreeland Hill
Beverly Hills
The Congress of Racial Equality of California (CORE-CA) started the joning of these communities and organizations coming together about 1.5 years ago. It originally started with the Crenshaw Community, East L.A., Boyle Heights, and in the San Fernando Valley. Working with the Crenshaw Subway Coalition we studied both the "Crenshaw Corridor" and the "Subway to the Sea" EIR. There is no problem completing the "Crenshaw Corridor" underground as the ground there, according to their own EIR, is clean with no problems. The same is not true for the "Subway to the Sea." The methane is 1,000 times more than they have dealt with before, according to their EIR. There is the very dangerous hydreogen sulfide (H2S). H2S turns to sulphuric acid when exposed to water. As a result of this there are necessary changes which are not in the budget but are in the EIR which will make for a $10 billion overrun on the "Subway to the Sea." This has been verified to us in private by three L.A. City Council people. If they know all the players know.
Also, they are bribing other communities who will receive no service but pay the "PERMATAX" with minor funds for their streets and other transportation projects. Who knows what the needs will be until 2069? There will be no ability in the future to build other projects as all the money will already be taken.
Why not more clean busses whose routes can be easily modified concerning the actual needs at the time. The people who really need this transportation are those who will not be served as they are in the inner city areas. The "Bus Riders Union" was absolutely correct when they opposed "Measure R" as their prediction on what would happen to bus service has cone true. So what is the sense of cutting back dramatically on bus service and raising fares? Just a big scam on the public again.
When we saw, at MTA, Beverly Hills being told where to go we knew that MTA did not care about anyone except their wealthy devoluper friends. as a result of this the newly organizing coalition finished forming. You can only beat the devil by joining together against the common enemy. that common enemy to the people is MTA. The regular citizen will pay and the 1/10 of 1% will profit handsomely. Has this not become the common theme lately? think about the robbery by Wall street in the financial crash. The people lose and the "Banksters" win again. Here they go again.
THIS MUST STOP. VOTE NO ON MEASURE J.
Want to see what come out of the Measure J piñata? hint* ITS NOT CANDY -http://youtu.be/MuEmoiOLGEo
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