Parts of Universal's backlot, including "Wisteria Lane," above, would be moved under home plan. Photo: AP/ABC

NBC/Universal should drop plans to build nearly 3,000 housing units on its backlot, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said this week in a strongly-worded letter to studio chief Ron Meyer.

While Yaroslavsky has previously criticized the scale of the Evolution Plan, this is the first time he has pushed the studio to drop the housing component altogether. Doing so, he said, would better position Universal for a future in which it remains a strong entertainment industry contributor to the L.A. economy.

“Abandoning that portion of your plan would make long-term economic sense for this region by ensuring that Universal will remain a full-service motion picture and television production campus and a major contributor to our regional economy,” Yaroslavsky said in his letter.

Building some 2,900 condos, lofts, townhouses and apartments on 124 acres of Universal’s property would cut into the studio’s backlot and require relocation of its famed “Psycho” house.  It also would mean uprooting Wisteria Lane, the setting for “Desperate Housewives,” now in its final season, and Falls Lake, where movies including “Jaws” were shot.

Even without the housing element, the 20-year Evolution Plan remains a large-scale blueprint for how the studio proposes to grow on its 391-acre Universal City site.

The Entertainment Evolution portion of the plan calls for an improved studio tour, a 500-room hotel for CityWalk, upgraded movie theaters, restaurants and stores, and new theme park attractions. (Even as the Evolution Plan has been moving through the system, at least one big new attraction, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, has been announced, although it is not expected to open for several years.)

Meanwhile, the Studio District Evolution component of the plan includes more than 308,000 square feet of new production space, 437,000 square feet devoted to new production support facilities and nearly 500,000 square feet of new office space.

In his letter, Yaroslavsky said that those new elements, along with current operations, would create more than 34,000 permanent new jobs, whereas just building homes would yield only 2,600. And construction and construction-related jobs, he said, would still number about 15,000 without the housing component.

“In short, the expansion of the studio’s production facilities and related entertainment uses will produce far more economic benefit to our region than the apartments and condominiums that are proposed to be built under the Evolution Plan,” Yaroslavsky said.

In fact, he said, establishing a large new residential neighborhood just feet from an active entertainment studio and theme park would only worsen complaints about noise, and, in time, could force the studio to cut back on production. That, in turn, could lead to a loss of entertainment industry jobs: “None of us could possibly want such a result,” Yaroslavsky said.

The company said in a statement it would consider Yaroslavsky’s comments, along with those of community members, as part of the ongoing environmental review process. A final environmental impact report is now being prepared. That report, along with other permits, must be approved at multiple levels of city and county government before the Evolution Plan can move into action.

Richard Bogy, executive vice president of Communities United for Smart Growth, a coalition of neighborhood and business groups affected by the Universal plan, said Yaroslavsky’s letter to Meyer “really says everything that we agree with.”

Using Universal’s land to grow its entertainment businesses makes more sense than allowing it to be used for housing, Bogy said: “It’s valuable land to the entertainment industry.”

While questions remain about the overall project’s impact on infrastructure, transportation and traffic, Bogy said, dropping the home-building plan would go a long way toward assuaging his group’s concerns.

“The one really big stumbling block in the plan,” he said, “has been the housing.”

Posted 2/1/12

Camellias, magnolias, orchids and daffodils are in bloom, just in time for Valentine's Day.

Sick of dropping sixty bucks on a few measly roses? This year, treat your valentine to tens of thousands of live flowers on a romantic stroll through one of the breathtaking public gardens of Los Angeles County.

Love certainly won’t be the only thing blooming at Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Gardens. Magnolias, the largest flower outside of the tropics, will be in full blossom. The gardens have more than 60 varieties. Magnolias have been cultivated for more than 1,400 years in China, where monks arranged them in temples to represent the female yin, purity and truthfulness. Orchids will also be showcased. Three thousand of the best ones will be brought in for display among the waterfalls of the tropical greenhouse.

The grounds at the arboretum are a big part of the attraction, from the ornate Queen Anne Cottage to the community garden. Resident peacocks, egrets and other wildlife will keep you company as you explore the lush environment.

If you plan on celebrating early—and if your valentine is a fungi fancier—the arboretum will host the popular Wild Mushroom Fair on Sunday, February 12. There will be displays, growing lessons and cooking demonstrations, along with mushroom-relevant books, collectibles and art for sale. For $10 per person, guests can attend a lecture from mushroom guru Gary Lincoff. Proceeds benefit the Los Angeles Mycological Society.

Over at Descanso Gardens, the camellia will take center stage. Descanso boasts the largest collection of camellias in North America, and the blossoms are at their very best during February. Cherry trees, magnolias and daffodils are also blooming.

Descanso has special activities planned for Valentines Day. For $25 a couple, a “Tram Tour of Love” will take lovebirds to all the best spots. You can reserve seats for a 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. excursion. That evening, a three course holiday dinner will be served in the Boddy House, a 22-room hilltop mansion with a panoramic view of the San Gabriel Mountains. Reservations are $78 per person.

If you’re looking for something a bit smaller-scale, the Italian terrace at Virginia Robinson Gardens will have camellias, pansies, violas and pink rock roses, all in bloom. The gardens are located on the historic estate in

Beverly Hills, built in 1911. Tours are by appointment only; call (310) 550-2087 to make a reservation.

Walking tours of gardens are a healthy and inexpensive alternative to the traditional consumerism of Valentine’s Day. But if the money you save still burns a hole in your pocket, consider showing some love to the Arboretum to help it fully recover from damage done by a strong Santa Ana windstorm in December.

Posted 2/8/12

Los Angeles County has the goods, and sometimes they're free.

Whether you overspent this holiday season or just made a New Year’s resolution to be thriftier, have we got some deals for you.

Looking for a free supply of nicotine patches?

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has you covered, as part of its L.A. Quits program to help smokers kick the habit. (Call 1-800 NO BUTTS to get a one-month supply, gratis.)

Public Health also offers a wealth of other freebies, ranging from “Germbuster Activity Books” for kids to in-home tests for sexually transmitted diseases. HIV tests are free, too. And so is a remarkably comprehensive library of downloadable educational brochures, on topics from antibiotics and bed bugs to West Nile virus and whooping cough.

Cultural bargain-seekers are in luck as well. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is offering free admission on Monday, January 16, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. LACMA’s “Andell Family Sundays” program resumes on January 8, with a free-with-admission art-making project called “Circle of Animals.”

More free art-making and performances are offered through “World City at the Music Center.” Next up: Khac Chi Ensemble & Korean Classical Music and Dance Company on Saturday, January 15.

Another source of potential giveaways is the Department of Public Works, which has been known to hand out free sandbags at fire stations during the rainy season as well as other freebies ranging from free oil filters to reusable shopping bags (every shopper’s must-have accessory to keep up with the county’s plastic bag ban.) Check the department’s Clean LA website to learn about upcoming events featuring giveaways in your area—as well as recycling programs for tires and motor oil and hazardous waste and electronics roundups.

But wait, there’s more! Some lucky gardeners will have a chance to win a free composting bin at one of Public Works’ upcoming Smart Gardening workshops. (Look for the green-starred events on this list.) And the county’s Waterworks Districts also give out conservation-minded freebies such as low-flow showerheads and high efficiency water nozzles; check here for more information, and download a colorful brochure on drought-tolerant plants while you’re at it.

There’s more than simple generosity behind all this county largess. The giveaways are intended to influence behavior—for the greater good.

As Public Works spokesman Michael Kaspar put it: “We’re encouraging people to integrate sustainable, environmental practices into their everyday lives.”

Posted 12/29/11

"The Works" helps consumers report potholes and other nuisances on the road ahead.

If you’ve ever wished you could zap a pothole or wipe out some graffiti, the county Department of Public Works has a message for you: the power’s in your hands.

Or, to be precise, on your iPhone.

The department’s new “The Works” app offers a point-and-shoot approach to cleaning up quality of life nuisances in county territory, including illegal dumping and street sweeping issues.

Once the free app is downloaded, you can use the camera on your iPhone to send Public Works an instant image of the problem, get a ticket number and keep tabs on how the issue is resolved. (It’s also possible to send a message about the problem without including a photo.) If the location is not within the county’s jurisdiction, the app detects that and directs the customer to the appropriate agency. Jesse Juarros, the department’s chief information officer, said the “end game” is eventually to get all cities within L.A.County to join up so that reports can be forwarded seamlessly to the right place.

Since it was launched Oct. 18, the app has been downloaded 700 times—with more than 330 service requests received, including referrals to other cities.

“Most of them are for potholes, as you’d expect,” Juarros said. “The other one that ranked up there was illegal dumping.”

The new app is “definitely” contributing to quicker graffiti removal, Juarros said, because notifications go directly to clean-up contractors, who can take action right away.

Droid or Blackberry users can take advantage of the same services through the department’s mobile site. And they’re available to all via the regular DPW website.

Posted 11/9/11

Tree slams into house in El Segundo. Photo by PacificCoastNews.com

The monster winds have blown out of town but now Los Angeles County residents are facing a massive clean-up operation. If your property suffered any kind of damage in the windstorm, the county Office of Emergency Management wants to hear from you.

They’re hoping to receive information from everyone who sustained damage, regardless of which city or part of the county they live in. In addition to information about what was damaged, they also want to know whether you have insurance to cover all or part of the losses.

The information will help the county complete an initial damage estimate—information which could help it to qualify for state and federal assistance, such as low-interest loans to property owners.

Residents and business owners from the 3^rd District, as well as other parts of the county such as the hard-hit San Gabriel Valley, are encouraged to report their wind damages as soon as they can. Those with internet access can fill out a simple wind damage form here. Reports can also be made by calling 211, or the county’s disaster hotline, 1-800-980-4990.

The winds, which gusted at speeds approaching 100 miles per hour, toppled hundreds of trees, closed roads and schools and left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity. A county state of emergency has been in effect since Dec. 1. In the aftermath of the windstorm, those who want to prepare for whatever the next disaster will bring can check out an array of county resources here.

Posted 12/7/11

No matter how much we reduce, reuse and recycle, sometimes the dumpster is our only choice.

Most garbage can be tossed out normally, but hazardous materials require special treatment, and bulky items like furniture usually are collected by appointment. Los Angeles County Department of Public Works (DPW) offers assistance, but hazardous materials still end up in landfills.

“The number one reason people dispose of hazardous waste improperly is because they don’t know they are hazardous.” said Natalie Jimenez, Household Hazardous Waste program manager. “The main thing we want people to do is look at the label.”

According to the department website, “any product labeled toxic, poison, corrosive, flammable, combustible or irritant” is hazardous. There’s also electronic waste, or “e-waste,” which includes everything from computers to hair dryers, and “Universal wastes,” like batteries and fluorescent tubes, which contain corrosive chemicals and mercury. Home medical wastes including “sharps” and unused or expired medication are also considered hazardous.

These wastes cause serious problems when tossed in the trash or poured down drains. They injure sanitation workers, contaminate groundwater and disrupt biological processes used to treat wastewater before it goes to the ocean.

Of course, the hazardous materials themselves also end up in oceans and waterways, contributing to unsafe beaches and polluted ecosystems. Fines for improper disposal can be as high as $10,000.

If you need to dispose of hazardous wastes, use permanent disposal facilities in Los Angeles City or take advantage of the mobile collection events organized by the county. Public Works recommends listing unwanted but working electronic items on the Los Angeles County Materials Exchange, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff offers convenient drop-off locations for sharps and expired medication.

Of course, the best way to ease impacts of hazardous waste is to reduce how much of it you discard. Click here to learn how.

Large household items—furniture, fridges and other appliances—are not accepted by hazardous waste collections and must be disposed as “bulky items” by contacting your local trash collection agency. To find out who that is, use this online tool.

On Saturday, November 5, unincorporated parts of the San Fernando Valley can get rid of bulky items for free—no appointment needed. Sunshine Valley Landfill is hosting a Free Disposal Day from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Residents can drop off up to a ton of household refuse free of charge. Accepted items include furniture, appliances and mud debris. The landfill will not accept business waste or hazardous waste.

To take advantage of the opportunity, residents must bring proof of residency (a driver’s license, for instance) or a copy of the flyer that was mailed recently throughout the area. To determine whether your home is in the eligible service area, see page 2 of the flyer. Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Michael Antonovich are sponsoring the event.

As always, before trashing items, see if someone else can use them. Charitable organizations and thrift stores take large items on a donation basis. Your trash could be someone else’s treasure, and you’ll lessen the load on landfills in the process.

Posted 10/25/11

Abandoned boats have become a vexing problem in the past several years as owners unable to sell or maintain their vessels give up and walk away from them, sinking them in local harbors, ignoring them until they break from their moorings or allowing them to rot in their slips.

“People get into boating thinking it’s going to be inexpensive,” says Deputy Bryan White of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department’s marine operations division. “But nothing about boating is inexpensive.”

And abandoning a boat just passes on the costs to the public at large.

“We have to move it out of harm’s way so that it’s not a public nuisance, then we have to store it, then we have to go through a long process to find the owner and do a lien sale auction if the owner doesn’t’ show up,” says county Director of Beaches and Harbors Santos H. Kreimann.

If the boat has been sunk, as many are—usually after being stripped of identification—there’s the cost of retrieval and environmental mitigation. Most of the time, he says, the boats are in such bad shape by the time they’re found that they’re simply stripped and crushed, again at public expense.

Meanwhile, each boat represents four to six months or more of work for public employees. The typical abandoned boat costs taxpayers about $5,000 in staff work and another $2,000 to process the lien sale, Kreimann says.

“It’s become a worsening problem,” he says. Last year, according to the Sheriff’s Department, the county disposed of 24 abandoned boats that had been left in the marina, sunk in local waters or allowed to wash up on county beaches, but authorities expect that number to rise to 30 or more this year.

For some time, the county has underwritten the cost of the problem with grants from a state fund earmarked for the abatement of abandoned recreational watercraft. This year, however, the county is also tapping into a second state program to encourage owners to voluntarily turn in their vessels before they reach the point of abandonment.

The pilot Vessel Turn-In Program, or “VTIP”, allows owners to surrender unwanted boats without any penalty if they’re thinking of walking away, says Denise Peterson, boating law enforcement manager for the state Department of Boating and Waterways, which administers both programs.

The idea, she says, is to save money on the boat disposal by retrieving more boats from slips, rather than from underwater or public beaches, where the retrieval and storage can be up to ten times more costly and much more complex.

“The marinas usually know who’s delinquent on slip fees, or soon-to-be delinquent,” she says. “This program allows them to reach out to these owners and say, ‘Don’t worry, you’re free and clear, let us take care of it. It saves a lot in administrative costs.”

This week, the Board of Supervisors approved a $1,700 county match requirement for a $17,000 grant that will allow Los Angeles County to launch a VTIP program this year. A second vote enabled the county to access some $50,000 in state funds for the disposal of at least ten boats that have already been abandoned, a substantial increase from the county’s state grant last year.

White, who administers the abandoned watercraft grants out of the sheriff’s Marina Del Rey station, says the department plans to contact dock masters to “to see who’s in distress and trying to get rid of their boats”.

Members of the public who are considering boat abandonment also are invited to contact the department about the program at (310) 482-6033.

Posted 10/20/11

State law authorizes counties to keep excess tax payments if no one claims them for four years. So every year about this time—as tax bills go out to millions of Southern Californians—the Treasurer and Tax Collector’s Office reluctantly deposits another pile of money from over-payers who couldn’t be located.

This year’s unclaimed refunds, from 2005-06, were only a tiny fraction of the more than $11 billion collected in the county that tax year. Many were for modest amounts ($1.59 was the smallest), but someone out there also failed to claim a refund worth $26,234.

Los Angeles County Assistant Treasurer and Tax Collector Nai-len W. Ishikawa says the county tries hard to track down recipients of refunds, and gets better at it every year; unclaimed overpayments have steadily declined for the past three years, even though collections rose during the tax periods involved.

But sometimes, the trail just goes cold, she says.

“Sometimes the property owner has passed away,” says Ishikawa. “Sometimes there’s been a change in ownership and we don’t have the person’s address.”

Typically, she says, overpayments occur when a tax bill has been inadvertently double-paid by spouses or a mortgage company and the county lacks sufficient information to generate an automatic refund. This, she added, can happen when the overpayment has been made via cash, a money order or an unaddressed check.

In other cases, the county gets a payment, but can’t apply it because the taxpayer forgot to include the bill stub or to write the parcel number on the check or wrote an invalid number, she says.

Although the vast majority of unclaimed refunds this year—about 5,500 items totaling about $1.43 million—were for overpayments, checks with missing parcel numbers or bill stubs hardly amounted to pocket change. In all, there were 942 of them, totaling about $880,000. The largest was $17,412.

Ishikawa says the county cannot issue a refund without documentation of an overpayment. But, she added, taxpayers can claim their money even after the 4-year deadline if the documentation shows that the county has made a mistake.

Donna Doss, the assistant treasurer and tax collector whose staff processes payments, says unclaimed refunds automatically go into a special file. Staffers in her office then begin the arduous process of finding and notifying the recipient before the 4-year deadline.

“We check our records to see if they own additional property in the county,” Doss says. “We look for any address on file within the county and send letters. We contact the title company.”

About 99% of the overpayments are cleared up, she says: “Often, we are able to locate people and they’re happy to receive their refund.”

But, she adds, staff is limited and searches can’t last forever. Each year, the county generates and processes about 2.3 million property tax bills. Less than one-hundredth of one percent of payments end up with unclaimed refunds.

“Our main mission is to collect taxes, after all,” Doss says. “At some point, you hit diminishing returns.”

Posted 10/13/11

Los Angeles County buys lots of stuff— everything from architectural services and badges to windshield wipers and welding goggles, according to this directory.

If you’re a local small business seeking a piece of the action, a new county ordinance is designed to give you a better shot at landing one of those contracts.

Los Angeles County Supervisors on Tuesday voted to increase from 5% to 8% the price preference given to small local businesses seeking county contracts. That means those businesses could come in with a price 8% higher than other bids and still seal the deal, all other variables being equal.

An analysis by the county’s Internal Services Division found that granting a price preference to small local firms has cost the county very little in the years since the initial policy was enacted in 2002. In the past three years, for example, it cost the county a total of $70,648.

“The preference is a small price to pay to help the local economy and keep jobs here,” said Internal Services director Tom Tindall. Raising it to 8% probably would cost very little more over the same period—likely $100,000 or less, he said. And it could pay rich dividends if it helped boost participation by small local firms.

“What we hope it will do is encourage more local small businesses to try” for a county contract, Tindall said.

As it stands now, local small businesses got just $184 million of the $14.9 billion in contracts and purchase orders put out by the county in the past three years. Interestingly, virtually all of them won their contracts as the low bidder, without needing any price preference at all.

Still, the hope is that sweetening the deal for the home team couldn’t hurt and might spur broader economic benefits.

“The City of Los Angeles recently implemented an 8% preference program after a USC analysis concluded that the heightened economic activity and jobs created by the program would generate new revenue that would offset any incremental costs,” Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Michael D. Antonovich said in their motion pushing for the county to make the change.

Tindall said the new ordinance, set to go into effect Nov. 1, is just one of the ways in which the county is trying to become friendlier to small local firms. He said the county has a prompt payment program in which vendors are paid within 15 days of submitting an approved invoice—a boon especially for smaller business in which cash flow is a constant concern. And he noted that certified local small businesses can land sole-source contracts of up to $5,000 from some county departments.

The Los Angeles County Office of Small Business has tips for getting certified, along with other information. It also has a toll-free phone number, (855) 230-6430.

Posted 9/13/11

But as dispiriting as the economic news has been lately, the county has resources to help you get back to work. And, if you’re an employer, it can offer significant assistance as well—including recruiting, screening and training workers, and, in some cases, even helping to subsidize part of new hires’ salaries.

With Labor Day approaching, we took a look at some programs and initiatives aimed at making a dent in L.A. County’s high unemployment rate, currently 12.4%. Some are targeted at specific groups, such as veterans or workers 55 and older. Others focus exclusively on very low-income welfare and general relief recipients. And one upcoming program will turn its attention on those who’ve been laid off just in the past year or so.

“Everybody can use a hand. Everybody needs help,” said Richard Verches, executive director of the Los Angeles County Workforce Investment Board, one of a network of such board throughout the county. “The county has resources to help its residents.”

The Los Angeles County Workforce Investment Board recently released a report marking its 10 years of operation and spotlighting success stories over the past decade. But it was as much an occasion for “intense reflection” as for celebration, Chairman Dennis Neder said in a statement. “We are in a critical time of rebuilding our economy as L.A. County has over 600,000 unemployed, and businesses are still skeptical of hiring in this ‘wait and see’ economy.”

Some of the statistics in the report offer an unfiltered snapshot of a difficult decade, noting, for instance, that unemployment in the county more than doubled, from 5.7% in January, 2000, to 12.4% in December, 2009.

Even so, there have been some encouraging developments along the way. The county’s “Transitional Subsidized Employment Program,” geared to helping welfare-to-work clients, used federal stimulus funds to help place more than 11,000 people in subsidized jobs.

“It was the largest program in the country and probably the most successful,” said Jan Vogel, executive director of the South Bay Workforce Investment Board, which worked with the Department of Public Social Services on the initiative. “A lot of people were put to work.”

Luther Evans, DPSS division chief in charge of welfare-to-work policy, said that since the stimulus funding ran out, a new, much smaller scale initiative has been crafted in which employers soon will be offered stipends between $350 and $500 a month to offset their costs of hiring new workers from very low income families.

Another glimmer of hope is on the horizon for recently laid-off workers. Officials soon will launch a $5.7 million on-the-job training program in one or more local industries that have experienced layoffs, Verches said; a similar $2 million grant to the city of Los Angeles is expected to help laid-off teachers and other employees of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Military veterans, meanwhile, can take advantage of a new county-funded veterans employment project, coordinated by Goodwill Industries. The program has served 380 clients since April, with 20 completing training and 17 being placed in jobs so far.

Information on all these specialized programs—and more—is available through the county’s network of “WorkSource” centers, where job-seekers of every background and experience level can get training, resume-writing help, interview coaching and other services.

“These are services that are available for job-seekers and employers,” Verches said. And, given the state of the economy, the price is right: free.

Posted 8/30/11