WEBVTT 1 00:00:06.950 --> 00:00:22.470 On this week's episode: the City Council takes jurisdiction over a three-month LAPD test of license-plate cameras, adopts a ban on nitrous oxide sales at smoke shops, and sends a hillside home on Stanley Hills Drive back for a fire-safety study. 2 00:00:25.814 --> 00:00:33.254 Fifteen council members, nearly four million Angelenos. Here's your weekly debrief on the L.A. City Council. 3 00:00:33.854 --> 00:00:52.672 After the roll call and a single vote on four routine items, Friday's meeting turned to recognitions. Councilmember John Lee marked Hangul Day, which honors the Korean alphabet. Lee said this year is the five hundred eightieth anniversary of the alphabet's proclamation, and the hundredth anniversary of Hangul Day itself. 4 00:00:52.672 --> 00:01:04.715 Then came Indigenous Peoples' Day. Representatives of the Gabrieleño San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians gave a land acknowledgment. Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez formally recognized this Monday, October twelfth, as Indigenous Peoples' Day. 5 00:01:04.715 --> 00:01:15.254 The council has been marking the day for a while. In August 2017 it voted fourteen to one to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day. 6 00:01:15.254 --> 00:01:23.534 This episode was produced with AI from the public recording of the meeting. Links to the source are in the show notes. 7 00:01:26.877 --> 00:01:42.716 Our top story this week: on Tuesday, the council voted ten to four to take jurisdiction over the Police Commission's approval of a three-month LAPD pilot of automated license plate reader cameras from the company Axon. The pilot now goes to committee. 8 00:01:42.716 --> 00:01:45.294 So what does taking jurisdiction actually do? 9 00:01:45.294 --> 00:02:00.765 It puts the commission's September twenty-second approval under the council's review. Supporters wanted written rules on data sharing, access and audits before any cameras go up. Opponents said the delay holds up cameras that communities have asked for and paid for. 10 00:02:00.765 --> 00:02:18.813 Councilmember Bob Blumenfield of the Third District made that case. He said the motion he brought over a year ago, along with funding the council approved, was meant to get cameras up in his district. He stressed that the pilot is a three-month test, not the privacy policy. 11 00:02:18.813 --> 00:02:32.810 LAPD staff said the cameras capture vehicle images and plate data, but no facial recognition, biometrics or audio. They said the proposed policy would limit searches to ninety days, or up to twelve months with command-level approval. 12 00:02:32.810 --> 00:02:53.437 A councilmember pointed out that this summer the Inspector General recommended the department suspend new plate-reader cameras and contracts until the public could weigh in and its vendors and data practices were reassessed. Here's Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez of the First District, pressing staff on how outside agencies with access to the data would be audited. 13 00:02:54.087 --> 00:02:57.527 And is that policy you're saying what's gonna happen after the MOU is signed? 14 00:02:59.437 --> 00:03:02.887 Yes. That will be implemented as we implement the MOU. 15 00:03:02.887 --> 00:03:03.357 Exactly. 16 00:03:03.677 --> 00:03:16.207 Thank you. And see, this is my point colleagues and council member Bloomfield. You're about to unleash this program for three months when we don't even have the policy on how we're gonna audit and regulate the other jurisdictions that will have access to this data. 17 00:03:17.007 --> 00:03:34.172 Earlier, Hernandez had cited more than two hundred documented cases of officers and deputies using plate-reader data to stalk people. Councilmember Monica Rodriguez called instead for one citywide data and privacy policy covering every department's technology, rather than singling out the LAPD. 18 00:03:34.172 --> 00:03:55.727 About seven public speakers opposed the pilot, several of them citing data sharing with federal immigration authorities. The motion passed ten to four. Blumenfield, John Lee, Traci Park and Rodriguez voted no. The presiding member told Lee, as Public Safety chair, that the pilot must be back before the council by October twenty-third. 19 00:03:59.071 --> 00:04:03.155 On to Wednesday, and an ordinance aimed at sales of nitrous oxide. 20 00:04:03.155 --> 00:04:04.517 What does it do? 21 00:04:04.517 --> 00:04:27.662 It bars tobacco and cannabis retailers from selling or distributing nitrous oxide. About ten people spoke for it in person, most of them high school students. Several described finding discarded tanks near their schools, and one said students had found at least fourteen near theirs. A nonprofit staffer said seventy-three percent of city schools are within a thousand feet of a smoke shop. Phone callers were split. 22 00:04:27.662 --> 00:04:50.126 The councilmember leading the effort said she had spent two years on it. She said a new state law bars smoke shops, tobacco retailers and convenience stores from selling it, and also lets cities go further. Her amendment asks the City Attorney to extend the ban to every retailer that sells nitrous oxide without a legitimate use. She also told shops still selling it to stop. 23 00:04:50.126 --> 00:04:55.231 Just before the vote, the chair reflected on the students who had come to testify. 24 00:04:55.881 --> 00:05:10.221 But I do have to say, it's a shame that we have to do this, that children have to come to the government and say, keep poison away from my school, that some adults are somewhere making money off of. 25 00:05:11.081 --> 00:05:23.921 The ordinance and the amendment were both adopted, though the clerk announced no tally. The ordinance now goes to the Mayor for approval, and the City Attorney is to draft the broader version. 26 00:05:27.265 --> 00:05:34.939 Also on Wednesday, the council granted neighbors' appeal against a new hillside home on Stanley Hills Drive, in Council District Four. 27 00:05:34.939 --> 00:05:36.035 What's being built? 28 00:05:36.035 --> 00:06:10.753 A two-story home of about two thousand three hundred thirty-eight square feet, with a pool, a spa, a rooftop deck, and two retaining walls up to ten feet tall. A group called Concerned Citizens of Stanley Hills Drive appealed its environmental clearance. Granting the appeal overturns that clearance and sends the project back to the Central Los Angeles Area Planning Commission. First, City Planning has to get a study of whether the home complies with state and local fire regulations. The appeal passed with ten votes, grouped with four other items, without discussion. 29 00:06:10.753 --> 00:06:13.311 Public comment heard from both sides, though. 30 00:06:13.311 --> 00:06:53.145 The applicant asked the council to deny the appeal. He argued that a seventy-five-day deadline ran out on September fourteenth without his consent, so the council no longer had jurisdiction. He also said the Fire Department had since approved the plan. No official responded to that on the record. About four residents pointed to narrow canyon streets, a recent house fire that blocked the road, and about fifteen hundred residents with limited ways out. The appellants' representative argued that fire-safety compliance should be checked during planning review, and said the Fire Department's review covered only the city fire code, not the state's minimum fire-safe regulations. 31 00:06:56.488 --> 00:06:59.888 Now a few shorter items from around City Hall. 32 00:06:59.888 --> 00:07:28.219 On Tuesday, the council extended its citywide pause on permits for RV parks approved as public benefit projects by another year. The resolution calls it the second and last one-year extension while permanent rules are written. Supporters described RV parks in Wilmington as unsafe and out of reach for police, fire and paramedics. It passed thirteen to one. Councilmember Nithya Raman voted no, saying she was frustrated with how long City Planning is taking. 33 00:07:28.219 --> 00:07:47.106 Also on Tuesday, a block of items passed twelve to nothing. One lets cannabis businesses that would have qualified for the city's twenty twenty-seven tax amnesty program renew their licenses, even if they're behind on city taxes. Six speakers, most of them social equity cannabis operators, backed the renewals. 34 00:07:47.106 --> 00:08:06.748 On Wednesday, the council voted on a resolution supporting state rules to ban artificial stone with more than one percent crystalline silica. Workers who cut these countertop materials have been getting silicosis. A councilmember said ninety-eight percent of California workers diagnosed with it are Latino men in their twenties to forties. 35 00:08:06.748 --> 00:08:27.902 Also on Wednesday, the council voted fourteen to nothing to call on Los Angeles County to keep its commitments under the LA Alliance agreement. That means helping people with severe mental illness move from city-funded interim housing into county care. A councilmember said three thousand beds the county is supposed to make available haven't materialized. 36 00:08:27.902 --> 00:08:54.721 On Friday, a councilmember reported that a Continuum of Care board meeting that morning had been shut down. The board was set to vote on the county taking over from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, but about fifteen hundred people tried to log on, and capacity was a thousand. The councilmember said city offices and the Mayor's office had mobilized people to attend, and the board now has to reschedule. 37 00:08:54.721 --> 00:09:13.608 Also on Friday, a councilmember spoke about a large law enforcement operation in Skid Row the day before. She described dozens of officers, residents kept from returning to their tents, and fears of an immigration raid. She argued that Skid Row is the whole city's responsibility, not just her district's. 38 00:09:16.952 --> 00:09:41.985 Before we go, here's what's on next week's agendas. Next Tuesday, October thirteenth, the council is scheduled to take up a new fee schedule for the city's Shared Mobility Device Permit Program. Also on the agenda: a call for recommendations on expanding the Legacy Business Program and drafting a citywide restaurant protection ordinance, and a requested review of the World Cup watch parties and fan festivals. 39 00:09:41.985 --> 00:10:15.361 On Wednesday, October fourteenth, the proposals include a five-year contract with CGI, worth up to seventy-eight point two million dollars, with an option to extend it five more years, to support the city's financial management system. Also proposed: a twenty-million-dollar transfer to cover a projected deficit in Fire Department sworn overtime, and about six hundred ten thousand dollars for emergency repairs in Pacific Palisades ahead of El Niño rains in the forecast. And there's an appeal over a new wastewater pumping plant in Venice. 40 00:10:15.361 --> 00:10:30.912 And on Friday, October sixteenth, a proposed preferential parking district in Mid-City Heights, in Council District Ten, plus requests for reports on first and last mile projects around rail stations, and on traffic safety at 60th Street and 10th Avenue. 41 00:10:34.256 --> 00:10:40.936 Hear something we got wrong? There's a link on this episode's page to report it, and corrections are read on air. 42 00:10:40.936 --> 00:10:44.696 That's the news from City Hall. See you after the next meeting.