Los Angeles City Council, Supplemental Agenda Tuesday, November 24, 2009 John Ferraro Council Chamber, Room 340, City Hall - 10 am
ITEM NO. (41) -
Motion Required
08-3237-S1
http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2008/08-3237-s1_mot_11-6-09.pdf
CD 15
CONTINUED CONSIDERATION OF MOTION (HAHN - LABONGE) relative to free holiday parking program for shopping districts located in Council District 15.
Recommendation for Council action:
INSTRUCT the Los Angeles Department of Transportation to take the necessary steps to implement a 2009 free holiday parking program from Monday, December 14, 2009 through Friday, January 1, 2010 in the San Pedro parking meter zone (No. 518), the City's parking lots in San Pedro (Lots Nos. 641, 647, 648, and 735) and the
Wilmington parking meter zone (No. 534).
Community Impact Statement: None submitted.
(Transportation Committee waived consideration of the above matter)
(Continued from Council meeting of November 20, 2009)"
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This is Janice Hahn's district, CD-15 and it makes sense to have some parking handy if you want customers to come by. The "problem" is only a problem because of the holiday season gift from the Council to the city from one year ago. That was the tripling and quadrupling of the parking meter rates and extension of hours past the usual 6 p.m. PLUS ending lots of free Sunday parking. So the usual 25-cents per hour rate jumped to a dollar an hour. Parking was already $1/hour in the downtown area, going up to $3 and $4 per hour.
They now have PAYMENT CENTERS that are computer credit card terminals set on posts along the streets WITH NO parking meters, only numbered SPACES that you match to your payment, all to make the money flow more quickly from you to the city. Try to skimp and you may get a parking ticket for your frugality.
Back to the Motion- it's to give shoppers a break here so they can shop and not be an obstacle for shoppers in deciding whether to visit the area so that merchants can have a better chance for customers to come by this holiday season..
Criticism (Of course), is that this would be entirely unnecessary IF the Council did not try to gouge the public with the huge rate change for parking meters. This was certainly no "motorist-friendly" action to begin with and Council discussions mentioned raising parking fees to discourage driving and make people use public transportation. Well, that's never going to happen in the near future. People with the BMWs and Lexuses among others will not be parking their cars to ride the bus or light rail voluntarily. Pubic transportation ridership will remain the realm primarily of those without another form of transportation available or a matter of immediate economic situations.
But IF this parking holiday passes, and why not, the other CMs should try to do something for their CD residents. And 'Why not?'"
MEDICAL MARIJUANA:
There is too much to include in this post but it's going to be something to see if the City Council relents in their pursuit of an ordinance that allows money for a "medical marijuana" product to be exchanged between strangers, something commonly know as a "sale." Whatever they call it, unless it does not resemble a "purchase" it is not going to work- so they have to make it complicated, I expect and that's something they do very regularly with city business.
The state law makes "sales" under the Compassionate Use Act, i.e., Prop. 215, but then dollar signs started to fill the eyes of CMs as the thought of collecting more sales tax here could help them out a little in the budget. They see ways around this detail and proponents of better access to marijuana were for anything that did not restrict the current wide open city handling of dispensing marijuana.
The City Attorney, Carmen Trutanich and District Attorney, Steve Cooley both have expressed their opinion that any "sales" would constitute a violation of state law in this area. (Federal law already makes marijuana an illegal substance and they just hold off prosecution in states where such "medical marijuana" legal provisions are in effect.) DA Cooley has said that he will prosecute any sales of marijuana since they are not permitted under the state law.
The STATE OF CALIFORNA's Attorney General Jerry Brown said, as reported in the news today, that sales of marijuana are not permitted under state law and can be prosecuted. A sort of 60s style commune organized for raising marijuana and distributing it to members of the commune is what the law envisions as a permissible set-up, and not a 7-11 open at all hours for anyone to show their "doctor's recommendation," pay some cash as if buying a pack of Marlboros, and then head on to another Medical Marijuana Dispensary for more of the herb.
The MMDs are raking in money now and there's no system in place to limit or even know the amounts of marijuana that any "qualified patient" or "Care givers" have obtained at any other MMD. The establishment of the MMD and how it can operate is currently the area that is not clear. But SALES that make them profitable businesses is not supposed to happen- it's almost like only the "expenses" can reimbused. And you know that's not what the operators have in mind in putting these things together, most done after the prohibition was made to stop new shops from opening. Just a small detail that all forget as they tell the CMs, "They have done everything legally and should be allowed to continue." Everything except opening without legal permission- but that's a technicality that all ignore.
The Council held off a vote on Wednesday and several "amendments" to the proposed ordinance were made, requiring another round of public comment there. A lot of proponents of "legalization" of the Medical Marijuana Dispensaries appear to be more interested in just getting the weed as recreational users more than alleviating physical symptoms due to "serious medical conditions" that the statute contemplated as a basis for its passage.
I expect the matter to continue past Tuesday and for some CMs to be a little more reflective on the situation that has the number of MMD applications reach almost a thousand. Too many shops opened up AFTER the "moratorium" on new facilities was enacted in 2007. No one from the city side of things acted to shut them down or to make a ruling on the applications.
"APPLICATIONS" for a "hardship exemptions" was taken by about all applicants to mean, "Start up your business." Most common meanings of "application" would have you expect that somebody FIRST has to make a decision to ALLOW YOU to start business.
In Los Angeles, the City Council acts in its own convoluted fashion and the APPLICATIONS were untouched until around MARCH 2009 when this came back into the public light.
So what you see now is what happened when no agency or department took any action to enforce anything to shut down non-compliant businesses from operating. Stand by for Tuesday's meeting.
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