Mark Investments

Staff writers %26amp; Mayor%26rsquo;s media release
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has identified City departments running the largest deficits and directed them to rein in hiring costs.
%26ldquo;All City leaders must work together %26hellip; to mitigate this projected deficit by year-end,%26rdquo; Villaraigosa said in letters to all City departments.
%26ldquo;As part of these efforts, I immediately directed the CAO and [...]

By Ken Draper
Never place an order until you have asked how much it%26rsquo;s going to cost.
Over the past year of NC Review Commission hearings and workshops, neighborhood councils overwhelmingly agreed that it would be a good idea for LA%26rsquo;s City Clerk to relieve them of the much-loathed burden of running their own elections. But, [...]

By Marc B. Haefele
When you finally leave Los Angeles, there%26lsquo;s a welcome gap in the rising landscape. It%26rsquo;s right after the tangled I-5 -14 interchange. Here sprawl finally ends– at least until Santa Clarita picks up the slack a few miles over the mountain.
That empty spot%26rsquo;s exactly where Palmer Investments wants to [...]

By Greg Nelson
At the last Congress of Neighborhoods, DONE%26rsquo;s acting general manager asked the attendees whether or not they favored having the City Clerk run the neighborhood councils%26rsquo; elections. A lady shouted out, %26ldquo;How much will it cost?%26rdquo;
It was a good question, but there was no answer.
Since the idea was first floated, just before [...]

By Jim O%26rsquo;Sullivan
(Editor%26rsquo;s Note: On Monday, the Miracle Mile Residential Association sent a letter to LA Planning Director Gail Goldberg, the Mayor and LA Council members addressing the issue of the City%26rsquo;s not having completed an Annual Report on Growth and Infrastructure since 1998, which is mandated, we are told, in the General Plan Framework [...]

By David Lowell
Borrowing from a proposal made by NC/DWP Oversight Committee member, Jack Humphreville, back in June, Councilman Greig Smith introduced a motion Tuesday calling for a Citizens Oversight Committee to ensure that the proposed power rate increases go toward improving the City’s power infrastructure.
Humphreville, speaking to the LADWP Board, asked for %26ldquo;an independent [...]

A Report from Heinrich Keifer
The Friends of Southwest Museum Coalition has gotten stronger after persevering through four years of stalling, delay, misinformation, and deception by the management of the Autry National Center.
Late last month, the leaders from each of our member organizations received a %26ldquo;decision-already-made%26rdquo; email update from Councilmember Jose Huizar. This [...]

Now that LA Neighborhood Councils Congress has an Economic Development Committee, it’s been suggested that if the City of Los Angeles can’t create community sensitive economic development, how can the NC’s succeed?
The answer is City Hall does not have the local knowledge or the staff or the resources to create a healthy economy in [...]

I am pleased to advise you that 49 Neighborhood Councils support the
NC/DWP Oversight Committee%26rsquo;s DWP Letter of Resolution recommending
against the proposed DWP rate increases which will take place for the
next two and a half years. We ask the remaining 24 OSC Councils to sign on before the committee goes before the DWP Board, City [...]

It’s odd that in this day of easy Internet communication and web sites that the Los Angeles neighborhood councils have so much trouble reaching out to residents and to the city government.
That was one of the most interesting findings of the Neighborhood Council Study Commission report on ways of pumping life into bodies that are [...]