Dantona says the station would create "faster response times." Battalion Chief Curt Klafta says it would help crews respond "without affecting businesses."
But as L.A. Weekly reported Aug. 8 in its investigation "Mission Creep at the Fire Department," LAFD's famously poor response times have far more to do with its outdated practice of using $200,000-per-year firefighters to handle low-end 911 calls and non-emergency tasks, dispersing firefighters into non-essential duties and thereby badly slowing response times.
The firehouse battle also illustrates how quickly a pro-neighborhood rabble-rouser can turn tin-ear City Hall insider.
PHOTO BY PATRICK RANGE MCDONALD
Lori Lynn, left, Tom Olsen, Jeff Lynn, Jacob Lynn, Robina Suwol and Mary Beth Schwartzenberger
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Attorney Kevin James backed Eric Garcetti in the mayoral runoff, and Garcetti has awarded James a plum $130,000 job on the little-known Board of Public Works. Last month, James, the board's president, voted for the fire station. "We gave [the community] time to organize, and they did," insists James, who delayed the board's hearing. "They brought very valid questions to the city, and the city adequately responded."
Jeff Lynn, who is an attorney, declares: "Kevin James is full of shit."
Lynn and neighbor Tom Olsen were forced into a mad scramble to organize neighbors and hire an expert. "We've been completely let down" by James, Olsen says.
That expert, Matt Hagemann, a former senior adviser for the Environmental Protection Agency, describes the negative declaration in almost laughable terms, saying city officials, unwatched by the public, didn't even bother to include in their report a basic "inspection" of the site or routine interviews as to its historic use. He says that if firefighters live on-site, they could be at "potential risk" from long-term "vapor intrusion" if old soils laden with chemicals are dug up during excavation for the firehouse.
The City Council has a penchant for lawbreaking when it wants to build things:
Last month, California's State Geologist fired off a letter warning the City Council not to approve the Millennium skyscraper, whose Hollywood site is believed to straddle a "rupture" fault, which — unlike L.A.'s common "shaking" faults — can open the earth and split buildings. By state law, L.A. must map the rupture fault and never build atop it, to avoid massive loss of life. The City Council ignored the law and approved the Millennium.
In 2012, in a highly unusual dressing-down, Superior Court Judge Ann I. Jones ruled that the City Council had violated the due process rights of L.A. residents by approving a skyscraper at Hollywood Boulevard and Gower Street without having a clue about its parking effects after holding sham public hearings and approving a doctored parking study.
In 2009, a Superior Court judge ruled that the council had broken the law by voting in 2006 to exempt CBS Outdoor and Clear Channel from L.A.'s ban on new billboards. The council handed the billboard giants a sweetheart deal worth billions to erect 877 digital billboards citywide without public hearings. Every council member had taken money from billboard firms.
Regarding the firehouse, Jeff Lynn says, "We're hoping to get some redress without a lawsuit. But we're not going to sit still and take it."
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