Okay, I admit it. I'm going to miss Spencer Pratt.
I had never heard of the former reality 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 up the middle of the plate, calling the two top vote-getters: Mayor Karen Bass and Councilwoman Nithya Raman, fools and morons.
Quick question for Pratt: If you're officially claiming that 9/11 was an inside job and that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, and you're running for office in a deep blue city with the backing of President Trump, but without much of a plan or even a clue as to what a mayor can or can't do, should you call other people idiots?
And yet the sulking Pratt got more than 200,000 votes. Bad loser or not, he took advantage of the lack of faith in elected officials and the latent frustration with City Hall, which turns out to be the essence of today's column.
I have five questions for Bass and Raman. They are somewhat interrelated and have to do with issues I hear regularly from readers:
Infrastructure (sidewalks, streets, etc.).
Homelessness (billions of dollars spent and a long road ahead).
Parks (Los Angeles' national quality and accessibility ranking just dropped again.)
Rubbish and ruin (no explanation needed, right?).
And concentrate. (Do candidates have a clear set of goals and a plan to achieve them?)
We have five months to visit and review 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 is a veteran community activist and commentator and had just launched a torpedo in the direction of City Hall.
“There are hundreds of broken and dangerous sidewalks in South Los Angeles that have not been repaired for years,” he wrote to his network of followers. “They cause hundreds of injuries and have led to a large number of claims and settlement payments. Los Angeles city officials must act now to launch a crash program to fix these sidewalks.”
On my way to meet Hutchinson, I traveled west on Florence Avenue and saw dozens of typical rough patches on the street and sidewalks. But if there were a contest to identify the worst sidewalks of all time in Los Angeles, Hutchinson's discovery of the one at 71st Street and 11th Avenue would be a Hall of Fame candidate.
For starters, it's classic style and the villain is the usual suspect: ficus tree roots. A 20-foot slab of sidewalk has a steep slope, as if designed by lawyers who sue trip and fall cases. Back in 2014, in my early days of sidewalk patrol, I was able to crawl under a similar broken sidewalk in West Los Angeles, and I could have done the same on 71st and 11th streets.
But I thought better of it after Hutchinson peered into the opening and said it looked like a comfortable home for rats and other vermin.
The homeowner, Sharon Kelly, cannot use the front door because of the crooked sidewalk. He lent me his tape measure, which revealed a 16-inch rise in the pavement.
“It just keeps going up,” Kelly said. “But he was already up when we got here.”
That was in 1997. I asked him if he had called the city for help.
“Several times,” he said, and the only response was a sloppy patch of temporary asphalt.
Hutchinson said residents have responded strongly to his call for emergency sidewalk repairs, just as they did when he campaigned to crack down on widespread illegal dumping.
“Dozens of residents have come out of the woodwork, and this is what they're all saying: 'We've called our city councilman and various city departments repeatedly, over and over again.'”
And the answer?
“Nothing,” Hutchinson said.
As we talked, two people with walkers walked away from the worst spot near Kelly's property. Charles McQuarn, 77, said getting through the neighborhood means weaving around all the dangers.
“I also have to go out into the street,” he said.
As a teenager, McQuarn said, he worked for a community group that fixed sidewalks. I mentioned that Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez has been using Conservation Corps youth to do the same, but it's time to expand that program and find other solutions to speed up the process.
The city is fixing about 600 sidewalks each year, the backlog of requested repairs is about 30,000, and if you get on the waiting list, you'll have to wait about 10 years before help arrives.
When we ended up on 71st Street, Hutchinson took me to a nearby stretch of Florence where, for blocks and blocks, it looks as if there have been volcanic eruptions around the trees. Large chunks of cracked sidewalk form mounds, one after another. The Hutchinson Himalayas are a site to behold: a mile-long museum of municipal neglect.
And it has been that way, Hutchinson said, “for years.”
The question for Bass and Raman: What will they do to speed up repairs?
Homeless people:
Voters have been generous in imposing increasing taxes on themselves to address homelessness. There has been Measure H, Measure A, Measure ULA and Proposition HHH.
However, 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 approximately 70,000 in the county. In his primary victory speech, Bass said families should not have to go through the camps, and Raman said greater urgency is needed.
Questions for Bass and Raman: Why haven't taxpayers gotten more for their money with you two at the helm? What are you going to do to accelerate progress and create more accountability and what sets you apart from each other?
Parks:
In the National Trust for Public Lands' annual rankings, Los Angeles has fallen from 90th to 93rd in park investment and accessibility among the nation's 100 most populous cities.
The City Council is about to consider a motion to increase parks funding through a charter amendment (with support from dozens of community groups), and progress is ridiculously slow on an agreement to use schools as after-hours playgrounds.
Question for Bass and Raman: Do you support charter reform and what else are you going to do to address the sad state of the city's parks?
Garbage and pest:
In downtown Los Angeles, vandalism, boarded-up storefronts, and post-COVID neglect have crippled what was a vibrant, revenue-generating economy that benefited the entire city.
In Hollywood, one resident hired her housekeeper to help her report the illegal dumping of goods that are often used to build more homeless encampments, causing all kinds of problems.
On the south lawn of City Hall, a graffiti-covered monument and fountain have been out of service for most of the past six decades.
Question for Bass and Raman: At least can you fix the fountain?
Focus:
Like any big city with great assets and unlimited challenges, many residents have a love-hate relationship with Los Angeles. But years ago, someone told me that they love Los Angeles because it's a messy, multicultural work in progress, nestled in a spectacular landscape between the mountains and the sea, trying to figure out what it wants to be.
Question for Bass and Raman: Whether it's basic services or big visions, what three or four main goals do you have for the next four years?
In other words, what do you want Los Angeles to be?
