WEBVTT 1 00:00:07.111 --> 00:00:11.311 This is CivicFM, with the week at Los Angeles City Hall. 2 00:00:11.991 --> 00:00:28.666 An LAPD license plate camera pilot goes ahead after a council veto falls one vote short, twice. A citywide ban on new oil drilling passes the council and goes to the mayor. And the council moves ahead on help for neighbors of June's Boyle Heights warehouse fire. 3 00:00:28.666 --> 00:00:34.791 This episode was produced with AI from the public recordings of the week's meetings. Links to the sources are in the show notes. 4 00:00:38.109 --> 00:01:00.144 Our top story this week is a police camera pilot the council had the power to stop, and didn't. On Tuesday the council voted on whether to veto the Police Commission's September twenty-second approval of an agreement with Axon Enterprise for what's called the Lightpost Test Pilot Program. Members discussed it as a license plate reader camera pilot. 5 00:01:00.144 --> 00:01:11.219 Three weeks ago we told you the council took jurisdiction over that approval. Last week it was put off to Tuesday, the last day the council could act. A veto needed ten votes. 6 00:01:11.219 --> 00:01:33.124 It got nine. It failed nine to six, with Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, President Pro Tempore Bob Blumenfield, and Councilmembers John Lee, Adrin Nazarian, Traci Park, and Monica Rodriguez voting no. The council reconsidered and voted again, and it came out nine to six a second time. So the commission's approval stands. 7 00:01:33.124 --> 00:01:52.064 Public comment ran more than two hours, and dozens of speakers urged a veto. The reasons they gave most often were fear that the data could reach immigration agents, reports of officers misusing plate-reader data, and how many police staff can search it. One speaker said police should have the technology they need to solve crimes. 8 00:01:52.064 --> 00:02:19.769 During the debate, a councilmember cited an inspector general audit that found over two hundred million scans in a two-month period. Councilmember Curren Price backed the veto and said authorizing what Price called unchecked AI on city infrastructure was not something Price was comfortable with. Another councilmember said the cameras use no AI or facial recognition, and that LAPD doesn't share the data with immigration agencies. 9 00:02:19.769 --> 00:02:45.569 Councilmember John Lee asked for a no vote, arguing the technology helps investigators solve cases. Lee formally asked the Police Commission to require an independent audit of the pilot, enforceable limits on which officers can reach the data, logging and review of every search, and a check against that audit before any expansion. The presiding officer backed those protections, put in place by the commission or by mayoral executive directive, whichever is faster. 10 00:02:45.569 --> 00:03:10.779 One councilmember backing the veto said the charter lets the council only veto or not veto, not attach conditions. Councilmember Ysabel Jurado called the veto the council's point of leverage, and the limited tool it has. One vote shifted during the debate. Councilmember Monica Rodriguez first said the veto had Rodriguez's support, later said Rodriguez would back the pilot, and is recorded voting no both times. 11 00:03:10.779 --> 00:03:30.229 A member said the pilot runs three months, and that the council's real leverage comes when expansion is decided. Asked by a councilmember how quickly those protections could be negotiated, an official the recording doesn't name said they would have to get back to the council, hopefully by the end of the year. 12 00:03:33.626 --> 00:03:54.001 Our next story is Wednesday's vote on oil drilling. At a special meeting, the council adopted an ordinance that bans new oil and gas extraction in every zone of the city and makes existing extraction what the zoning code calls a nonconforming use. It passed with thirteen votes and was sent right away to Mayor Karen Bass. 13 00:03:54.001 --> 00:04:19.791 About sixteen speakers urged a yes vote, citing asthma, cancer, and other health harms near drill sites. Several also asked the council to revoke permits at a site in Wilmington and one in South LA, to shorten what they called a twenty-year phase-out, and to make operators pay for cleanup. Neither members nor the agenda stated the ordinance's timeline. A few speakers opposed it, mostly citing gas prices. 14 00:04:19.791 --> 00:04:49.421 The same day, among the closed-session items on its agenda, the council voted to reject a settlement in Nasco Petroleum's federal lawsuit against the city's earlier oil ordinance, so that case goes on. Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said the City Attorney had reviewed the new ordinance as to form and legality, and that the city expects to be sued over it too. Yaroslavsky said the strengthened environmental record, with findings that rebut industry challenges line by line, shows the work was done. 15 00:04:49.421 --> 00:04:55.986 Another councilmember warned that more fights and attempts to undo the ordinance are still ahead. Now it's with the mayor. 16 00:04:59.464 --> 00:05:30.024 One more story: the Boyle Heights warehouse fire. On Wednesday the council adopted a report from its ad hoc committee on recovering from the June seventeenth fire at the Lineage Logistics cold storage facility. The report is about a fund for the fire's impacts. Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, whose Fourteenth District it's in, said the funding it advances is a milestone for the neighborhood's families and businesses. It passed with fourteen votes. No amount was given in the meeting or on the agenda. 17 00:05:30.024 --> 00:05:58.344 About a dozen speakers backed it, many from Boyle Heights and East LA community groups. They described smoke, odors, rats and flies, illness, missed work, and higher electric bills from running air filters. One group said it had handed out fifteen hundred air purifiers. Others asked for door-to-door outreach instead of only an online portal, and for eligibility that isn't limited to Boyle Heights or a one-mile radius. 18 00:05:58.344 --> 00:06:05.224 Jurado said the city's job now is to turn the money into help people can actually get, and to keep pressing for accountability. 19 00:06:08.621 --> 00:06:11.821 Now some shorter items from around City Hall. 20 00:06:11.821 --> 00:06:33.561 On Tuesday the council banned parking for vehicles over twenty-two feet long or over eighty-four inches tall. The ban covers five street segments in the Fifteenth District at all hours, and nineteen segments in the Second District from two to six in the morning. It passed twelve to three, with Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado, and Hugo Soto-Martínez voting no. 21 00:06:33.561 --> 00:06:57.366 Also on Tuesday, the council named six places in the Eleventh District for enforcement of the city's rule against sitting, lying, sleeping, or storing property in the public right of way. They include Temescal Canyon Park, the Dockweiler Beach dunes, and two tunnels under Pacific Coast Highway. It passed eleven to four, with Hernandez, Jurado, Soto-Martínez, and Councilmember Nithya Raman voting no. 22 00:06:57.366 --> 00:07:11.781 On Wednesday the council approved sixteen lawsuit settlements. As the clerk read them, the largest were up to seventeen and a half million dollars in one case, ten million in another case, and nine million in a third case. The recording doesn't make the tally clear. 23 00:07:11.781 --> 00:07:30.201 In a block vote with no tally announced, the council also approved the city's updated bed plan under its homelessness settlement with the LA Alliance for Human Rights. It asked the City Administrative Officer to report in sixty days on what it costs to keep all of the plan's housing and shelter running. 24 00:07:30.201 --> 00:07:51.076 On Tuesday the transportation department was told to report in ninety days on turning the NoHo DASH line into a direct link between North Hollywood Station and Hollywood Burbank Airport. The link would use the line's existing vehicles and service hours, and the report is to include a timeline for service by the twenty twenty-eight Games. That passed fifteen to nothing. 25 00:07:51.076 --> 00:08:05.211 On Wednesday, in the same vote as the oil ordinance, the council voted to require a conditional use permit for warehouse and storage uses over fifteen thousand square feet in the Cornfield Arroyo Seco plan area, in the First District. 26 00:08:05.211 --> 00:08:29.811 On Friday, the council accepted a six million dollar state grant for fuel reduction, habitat restoration, and reforestation in the Angeles National Forest, with contracts for TreePeople and North East Trees. It also approved paying the state about three million dollars to settle an audit of the city's sales and use taxes from twenty thirteen to twenty nineteen, with departments asked to pay back their shares. Each passed with ten votes. 27 00:08:29.811 --> 00:08:46.221 And on Tuesday the council voted fifteen to nothing for a no-fee permit for small micro-shoots, filming in public spaces. The Board of Public Works is to report in sixty days on a plan for the program, modeled on New York City's Letter in Lieu system. 28 00:08:49.539 --> 00:08:59.539 Before we go: Tuesday, November third, is Election Day. If you hear an error, there's a link on the episode's page to report it, and corrections are read on air. 29 00:08:59.539 --> 00:09:03.299 That's the news from City Hall. See you after the next meeting.