WEBVTT 1 00:00:07.031 --> 00:00:13.591 This is LA Area in 5, from CivicFM: the week at the city halls and county boards we cover. 2 00:00:14.511 --> 00:00:28.796 Los Angeles's City Council passes a ban on new oil drilling, its veto of an LAPD license plate camera pilot falls one vote short, and LA County's Board of Supervisors clears a hundred and four homes in unincorporated Covina. 3 00:00:28.796 --> 00:00:36.671 This episode is made with AI from each government's own show, which reports from the public recordings of its meetings. Sources are in the show notes. 4 00:00:40.149 --> 00:01:00.934 Our top story: the Los Angeles City Council has passed a ban on new oil drilling. On Wednesday, it adopted an ordinance that bars new oil and gas extraction citywide and makes existing extraction a nonconforming use in every zone, phasing it out. It passed with thirteen votes and went straight to Mayor Karen Bass. 5 00:01:00.934 --> 00:01:12.069 About sixteen speakers urged a yes vote, citing asthma, cancer and other harms near drill sites, and several asked the council to go further and shorten the phase-out. 6 00:01:12.069 --> 00:01:24.429 The same day, the council rejected a settlement in an oil company's federal lawsuit over the city's earlier drilling ordinance, and Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said the city expects to be sued over this one too. 7 00:01:28.066 --> 00:01:45.361 Next, a close vote in Los Angeles. Three weeks ago we told you the City Council took over review of the Police Commission's approval of an LAPD pilot for license plate cameras. On Tuesday, the veto needed ten votes. It got nine, twice, so the commission's approval stands. 8 00:01:45.361 --> 00:01:58.926 About forty speakers urged a veto, many fearing the data could reach immigration agents. A councilmember said plate cameras in Council District 11 had helped catch a homicide suspect and find a missing child. 9 00:01:58.926 --> 00:02:09.666 Councilmember John Lee asked the commission to require an independent audit of the pilot and tighter limits on who can search the data. A member said the pilot runs three months, with a decision on expansion after that. 10 00:02:13.144 --> 00:02:31.969 Our third story: on Tuesday, LA County's Board of Supervisors denied neighbors' appeal of a hundred and four homes on a former elementary school site in unincorporated Covina. The vote was four to nothing, with one supervisor absent, so the homes can be built, sixteen of them sold as affordable. 11 00:02:31.969 --> 00:02:50.759 Neighbors said they conditionally supported it but wanted traffic and emergency-access fixes, citing rush-hour waits of ten to twelve minutes to get onto Lark Ellen Avenue. County staff said state housing law bars the Board from denying or shrinking the project without specific, measurable harm to health or safety. 12 00:02:50.759 --> 00:02:58.304 The Board asked county departments for a written report in two years on the project's benefits, nearby street work and local hiring. 13 00:03:01.621 --> 00:03:19.926 Now a quick trip around the area. LA County's Board of Supervisors also approved a sixty-nine and a half million dollar spending plan for the sixth year of Care First and Community Investment, which funds alternatives to jail, housing help and immigration legal services. 14 00:03:19.926 --> 00:03:34.111 In Pasadena, the City Council approved a federal grant of about thirty-nine thousand dollars to train more police drone operators. A councilmember said it wouldn't change the council's pending debate over drones as first responders. 15 00:03:34.111 --> 00:03:45.596 Pasadena's Finance Committee also approved taking two hundred sixty-five thousand dollars from L.A. Care for the mental health of up to twenty-four young children and families affected by the Eaton Fire. 16 00:03:45.596 --> 00:03:57.941 And Burbank's Planning Commission voted five to nothing to let a children's play center with trampolines and ball pits open on San Fernando Boulevard downtown, with hours until ten at night every day. 17 00:04:01.259 --> 00:04:05.059 That's the week around the LA area. See you next Sunday.