Okay, I'll admit it. I will miss Spencer Pratt.
I had never heard of the former TV star before he said God wanted him to be mayor of Los Angeles. And now that he's out of the race, he's still throwing lazy fastballs down the middle of the plate, calling the two top voters — Mayor Karen Bass and Council Member Nithya Raman — dummies and idiots.
Pratt's quick question: If you're on the record saying 9/11 was an inside job and the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, and you're running for office in a blue-chip city with the support of President Trump but not much of a plan or even a clue of what the mayor can or can't do, should you be calling other people bombers?
Yet Pratt's bow drew more than 200,000 votes. Big failure or not, he tapped into a lack of faith in elected officials and a deep frustration with City Hall, which is the focus of today's column.
I have five questions for Bass and Raman. They are somewhat related and relate to stories I often hear from students:
Infrastructure (sidewalks, roads, etc).
Homelessness (billions of dollars spent, and a long way to go).
Parks (LA's national ranking for quality and accessibility just dropped again).
Waste and damage (no explanation needed, right?).
And focus. (Does the candidate have a clear set of goals and a plan to achieve them?)
We have five months to visit and revisit these topics, and today I'm going to focus on the first one, so here we go.
Infrastructure:
A few days ago, I met with Earl Ofari Hutchinson of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable. Hutchinson has long been a community activist and commentator, and he had just launched a torpedo toward City Hall.
“There are hundreds of dangerous, dangerous roads in South LA that have not been repaired for years,” he wrote to his network of followers. “They have caused hundreds of injuries, and resulted in a high number of claims and settlements. LA City officials must act now to begin a crash program to repair these sidewalks.”
When I went to meet Hutchinson, I went west along Florence Avenue and saw a lot of rough spots on the road and sidewalks. But if there was a contest to identify the worst sidewalks in Los Angeles, Hutchinson's discovery of the one at 71st Street and 11th Avenue would be in the Hall of Fame.
First, it has an ancient height, and the villain is the usual suspect – the roots of the ficus tree. A 20-foot slab of pavement is mounted sharply, as if designed by trip-and-fall attorneys. Back in 2014, in my early days of street scouting, I was able to crawl under a similarly broken sidewalk in West LA, and I could do the same at 71st and 11th.
But I thought better of it after Hutchinson peered into the opening and said it looked like a cozy home for rats and other vermin.
Homeowner Sharon Kelly can't use her front gate because of the side street. He let me borrow a tape measure, which showed a 16-inch height on the pavement.
“It keeps going up,” Kelly said. “But it was already lifted by the time we got here.”
That was in 1997. I asked if he had called the city for help.
“Many times,” he said, and the only response was a momentary slapdash of the asphalt.
Hutchinson said residents responded strongly to his call for emergency road repairs, as he did when he tried to combat illegal dumping.
“Many residents have come off the wall, and here's what they're all saying: 'We've called our city council and various city departments over and over, over and over.'”
And the answer?
“Nothing,” Hutchinson said.
While we were talking, two pedestrians came out of a bad place near Kelly's house. Charles McQuarn, 77, said cutting through the area means navigating all the hazards.
“I also have to go out on the streets,” he said.
When he was younger, McQuarn said, he worked for a community group that repaired sidewalks. I mentioned that Council Member Monica Rodriguez has been using the youth of the Conservation Corps to do the same, but it is time to expand that program and come up with other solutions to speed up this process.
The city repairs about 600 sidewalks each year, the backlog of requested repairs stands at about 30,000 and if you get on the waiting list, you're looking at about 10 years before help arrives.
When we finished at 71st Street, Hutchinson led me to a neighborhood in Florence where, for blocks and blocks, it looked like there had been a volcanic eruption near the trees. Large pieces of cracked sidewalks form mounds, one after the other. Hutchinson Himalayas is a must-see – a kilometer long museum of municipal neglect.
And it has been, Hutchinson said, “for years.”
Bass and Raman's question: What will you do to speed up the repair?
Homelessness:
Voters have been generous when it comes to taxing themselves more often, and more, to address homelessness. There was Measure H, Measure A, Measure ULA and Proposition HHH.
Although billions of dollars have been spent and tens of thousands of people have been helped and housed, more than 40,000 people are homeless in the city and about 70,000 in the region. In his first victory speech, Bass said families shouldn't have to leave the compound, and Raman said more urgency was needed.
Questions from Bass and Raman: Why aren't taxpayers getting more for their money you two are in charge, what will you do to accelerate progress and create more accountability, and what separates you from each other?
Parks:
In the National Trust for Public Lands' annual rankings, Los Angeles dropped from 90th to 93rd in investment in parks and accessibility among the nation's 100 most populous cities.
The City Council is about to consider a proposal to increase parks funding through charter change (which has a number of community groups in support), and progress is ridiculously slow on an agreement to use schools as playgrounds.
Bass and Raman's question: Do you support the ordinance change, and what else will you do to address the sorry state of the city's parks?
Waste and damage:
In downtown LA, vandalism, shuttered stores and post-COVID abandonment have crippled what was once a vibrant, profitable economy that benefited the entire city.
In Hollywood, a resident hired his landlord to help report the illegal dumping of property that is often used to build camps for the homeless, leading to all kinds of problems.
On the south side of City Hall, a monument with graffiti and a fountain have been inactive for most of the past six decades.
Bass and Raman question: At least, can you fix the source?
Focus:
Like any big city with great assets and unlimited challenges, many residents have a love-hate relationship with LA. But years ago, someone told me that he loves Los Angeles because it is a dirty, multicultural work in progress, located in a remarkable place between the mountain and the sea, trying to find out what he wants to be.
Bass and Raman's question: Whether it's in the field of basic services or big ideas, what are your three or four main goals for the next four years?
In other words, what do you want LA to be?
