Protecting LA's waterways

Street gutter screen
Originally uploaded by CD-13

This morning, Councilmember Jan Perry and I joined others in announcing that Los Angeles waterways are now protected with the installment of screen covers and inserts at more than 20,000 street gutter “catch basins.” These covers and inserts have already diverted more than 1,500 tons of trash from reaching the ocean and polluting Los Angeles waterways and beaches. The street gutter catch basin covers and inserts were funded by Proposition O, the clean water bond that Los Angeles voters overwhelmingly approved in 2004.

Trash or chemicals such as paint or oil dumped into storm drains end up in our waterways -- so don't dump them down there! If you're unsure how to dispose of any item safely, you can call 3-1-1 to ask for help.

New Urban Canvasses

Los Angeles Garment & Citizen has an article on the project our office has embarked upon to beautify our local utility boxes, which are those grey, anonymous boxes sprinkled throughout the Los Angeles streetscape. We have worked with AT&T and our community partners, Central City Action Committee and the Hollywood Beautification Team, to engage local artists and youth in painting these boxes. The Garment & Citizen article highlights the Carlos Callejo piece shown on the left, which Carlos painted with the help of youth in Echo Park. If you have an idea for a good box to paint, contact Kabira Stokes-Hochberg, our CD13 arts deputy.

A Day Without a Bag

Councilmember Greig Smith and I joined with Heal the Bay Director of Programs, Meredith McCarthy yesterday in City Council to proclaim December 20th as "A Day Without a Bag" in Los Angeles. Each year, Angelenos consume some 6 billion plastic bags, almost 600 bags per person per year! Only 5% of these bags get recycled (and it is important to know that we have made it possible for you to recycle plastic bags by putting them in your blue bins--here is a helpful list of what you can put in the blue bin), so the rest wind up in landfills, the Los Angeles River, Echo Park Lake, Santa Monica Bay, and our streets.

On December 20th, we are encouraging Angelenos to use reusable bags and get into the habit of using these bags for our shopping needs. We have only been using plastic bags since around 1977, so the habit shouldn't be a tough one to break, but we hope the blogosphere will help do its part to spread the word. If we can begin to live without consuming the amount of plastic bags we currently do, we can save landfill space, clean up our waterways, and reduce the amount of oil consumed and global greenhouse gases emitted in the manufacture of these bags.

Who's Number 1? We're Number 1!

Via our friends at Curbed LA, Los Angeles is the national leader in green development, ownership, and occupancy. While our friends around the country in cities like New York and Chicago have often enjoyed good press about their laudable green building efforts, we have more than twice as many green projects as New York and more than four times more than Chicago. This underscores that our early leadership (or LEEDership, as the case may be) is yielding results and helping lay a foundation in the public and private sector for buildings that will help us live more sustainably in Los Angeles. Considering that less than two years ago, we were seen as lagging but quickly catching up with our peer cities, this is great news for our city.

Older links on green building in LA:

• City Unveils Green Building Proposal (press release)
  
• LA Planning Commission Approves Ambitious Green Building Plan (Los Angeles Times)
• A New Green Era of Building in Los Angeles (CD13 Blog)
  
• Officials Add Incentives for Environmental Construction (LA Business Journal)
• Habitat for Humanity Jimmy Carter Work Project in LA Goes Green (Habitat for Humanity)
• MTV's Real World Goes Green (Green Girls Global)
• Silver Lake Library Strives for LEED Gold (CD13 Blog)
• Leading the Way on LEED (CD13 Blog)
• Produce Green Buildings (CD13 Blog)
  
• Going Private: LA and SF Race to Make Private Buildings LEED Compliant (The Architect's Newspaper)
  
• Los Angeles Sets Green Standard for Urban Living (interview in Verde Xchange)
  
• First LEED Platinum Home Built (KNBC)
• Building Green with Los Angeles: Enterprise and the City Award Grants to Developers (Enterprise) (also detailed here)
  
• UCLA Student Wins Bond Companies’ University Challenge Green-Building Grand Prize (press release)

Huge Crowd for the Atwater Village Tree Lighting Ceremony

Atwater Village Tree Lighting ceremony
Originally uploaded by CD-13

More than 500 people came out to help light the community Christmas tree in Atwater Village. Despite the cool temperature, the crowd enjoyed the students who sang and danced, Christmas carolers, and tasty treats. There was even a special appearance by Santa Claus, who arrived just in time to deliver the switch that turned on the Christmas tree lights.

The Atwater Village neighborhood, and particularly the Chamber of Commerce which sponsors the ceremony, have created a truly wonderful annual event that gets bigger and better every year.

Hollywood Pizazz and Midnight Ridazz

This morning, I helped to unveil plans for a newly-proposed office building above the Pantages Theater in Hollywood that was originally approved by the city in 1929 but never built. The Los Angeles Times had a preview from Roger Vincent of the As I said in the article: "How often do we get the chance to bring history back?"

In Hollywood, we are working to balance jobs and housing in Hollywood and we are having success in building badly-needed housing alongside high-paying entertainment jobs in our most famous neighborhood. When people can live close to where they work, it is good for the entire city, by relieving traffic and creating a neighborhood that residents, visitors, and employees alike can enjoy.

Thanks to the community leaders from our neighborhood councils, business associations, and historical preservation groups that have embraced this project moving forward.

Also in The Los Angeles Times is a piece by Liam Gowing on the phenomenon of bicyclists in our city known as Midnight Ridazz.

Finally, don't miss Kerry Cavanaugh's excellent story in the Daily News on one of our very own city employees, City Planner Simon Pistucha, who ditched his car two years ago and now enjoys a better quality of life as an Angeleno (actually Pasadenan) who traverses the city on foot, bus, train, taxi, and occasional shared car.

Making streets safer

New traffic signal on Temple
Originally uploaded by CD-13

Students from Rosemont Elementary School helped me dedicate a new traffic signal on Temple Street at Rosemont Avenue. More than 22,000 cars pass through this intersection every day and the new signal will make it safer for the 1,200 students who attend Rosemont and nearby Lake Street Primary Center. The community has been advocating for a traffic light here for years. It was great to be able to help them bring this much needed addition to their neighborhood.

City Hall at your Fingertips

This morning, our great new General Manager of the city's Information Technology Agency, Randi Levin (who came to us after heading up IT for NBC/Universal), invited me to address the employees of the department and to share some of my vision for using technology to improve the lives of Angelenos.

I thanked ITA for all that they have done to innovate and to provide services to our city. From our early leadership with e-permits (we have given out more on-line e-permits than any other local government in the country) to our new archived video coverage of the City Council meetings, ITA has proven itself.

For the second half of my talk, I pointed out some of the areas I have been exploring to help use technology to serve our city's residents, from the 12 to 2 project I am undertaking to reduce the amount of bureaucracy new businesses face in getting opened to 911 camera phone technology. I also highlighted some of my favorite on-line innovations from governments around the world:

• A virtual police station in Italy
• Wellington (New Zealand) City Council's Public Input pages
• One-stop permitting from Utah and Holland
• The City of Windsor (Canada) and its reverse 311 system

Earlier this year, I was proud to be honored by Government Technology as one of the nation's "Top 25 Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers" working on technology in government today and I was pleased to accept the award from the Center for Digital Government for one of the nation's top three local government web sites on behalf of the city in 2005. I have been able to help use technology to connect Angelenos to the city services they need because of the great personnel we have at our Information Technology Agency. If you have any good ideas for us, please let us know, so we can keep moving Los Angeles forward.

Santa on Hollywood Boulevard

Thanks to everyone who came out to a super parade on Sunday! We had a wonderful crowd--police estimated that at least 120,000 parade-goers lined Hollywood Blvd., Vine St., and Sunset Blvd. to watch the parade and to continue the tradition. The celebrities who were so generous with their time, the bands who performed beautifully, and the city staff (especially my Deputy Chief of Staff Ana Guerrero) and Santa Parade, LLC folks that helped pull this off with only three months all deserve many thanks. Special thanks, too, to Greg Durfee, who visited City Council as Santa many months ago and asked us to save the parade. He was a great help and it was very nice to see him at the parade (pictured left).

The Daily News wrote an editorial this morning about the parade that captured the civic spirit of this parade, which I call the people's parade. You could see the holiday excitement it in the eyes of the kids along the route when Santa finally appeared. We will certainly build on this year's experience to continue to keep the tradition alive and improve the parade each year, but congratulations to the community and thanks to everyone for stepping up to keep the parade alive!

The Lollipop Guild

On Monday night, we welcomed hundreds of kids and kids at heart to the Chinese Theatre, where the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Community Foundation and Hollywood Heritage put together an unforgettable evening that brought together Hollywood's unforgettable past with its living present with a screening of a restored print of the Wizard of Oz. Joining us for this special screening were seven of the last nine surviving actors who played the Munchkins in this timeless classic.

The Wizard of Oz first premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theater on August 15, 1939, and being in the original theatre made the night very special. The actors that played the Munchkins spoke on a panel that preceded the screening. In one of my favorite moments, Meinhardt Raabe, who played the Coroner, re-affirmed about the Wicked Witch of the West that the "As Coroner, I must aver, I thoroughly examined her, And she's not only MERELY dead, She's really most SINCERELY dead." I gave each of them a resolution on behalf of the city and had a wonderful time at the movie.

The next day, the Munchkins came back to the Chinese by horse-drawn carriage as the Walk of Fame was transformed into the Yellow Brick Road and on behalf of all 124 Munchkins, they accepted the newest Star on the Walk of Fame.