L.A. City Council Acts to Finance Playa Vista

Carolanne Sudderth

Mirror Staff Writer

   In a move that seemed to counter her recent avowal to acquire all the wetlands wets of Lincoln, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter spearheaded the Council’s August 11 decision to subsidize the controversial Playa Vista Development with nearly half a billion dollars of tax-free funding.
   “Save the Wetlands” partisans were outraged by the action and further outraged when only four of the nearly eighty individuals who showed up at the Council meeting were allowed to speak. 
   According to Playa Vista opponent Kathy Knight, “ L.A. City Council President [Ferraro] told them to ‘elect a spokesperson to represent you’ (as if we all belonged to one group) and then allowed four people to speak and no more.”
   Knight is a member of the Spirit of the Sage Council as well as president of Santa Monica’s Friends of Sunset Park. 
   She said she was amazed that “the Los Angeles City Council is allowed to spend huge amounts of taxpayer subsidies like this for the corporate giants .. without allowing citizens to speak.” 
   A Los Angeles City Council spokesperson said that the five-minute rule was also applied to the developers who had brought along nearly 100 of the at-risk youth allegedly being given jobs on the project.
   According to a city staff report, the Mello-Roos Act permits the $428 million to be used for the “construction and/or acquisition of public infrastructure. For example, storm drains, roads sidewalks, streetlights traffic signals and street trees are eligible.” 
   Everything but the commercial buildings, activist Rex Frankel told the Mirror, though he suggested that the funds could also cover the cost of wetlands restoration, mandated as part of the development project and assumed by some to be a pro bono gesture coming out of project profits. 
   The funds will presumably come back to the City in the form of increased property taxes. 
   Two Santa Monica City Council members added their signatures to a letter questioning the action. 
   “Santa Monica has much to lose from the proposed development of Playa Vista on coastal wetlands and little to gain,” Council member Kevin McKeown told the Mirror. “Our Council recently directed staff to further study impacts on traffic, pollution, our airport and Santa Monica Bay. We residents of Santa Monica can only be hurt by L.A.’s rushing through this questionable financing scheme.”
Neither Galanter nor Playa Vista Vice President David Herbst was available for comment.