The start of the Palisades Fire was picked up by cameras in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Photo: ALERTCalifornia/UC San Diego
By JEREMY PADAWER
(This August 24 Blog Post by Jeremy Padawer PacificPalisades.com is reprinted with permission.)
Pacific Palisades pays more than $600 million in annual property taxes to L.A. County. For their money residents receive:
- 1 police car.
- Fire hydrants unchecked.
- 33% of firetrucks allegedly not operational.
- Dry brush not maintained.
- Reservoirs empty.
- Almost no fire prevention on the windiest day of the decade.
- No mayor in LA despite her Deputy Mayor of Public Safety sidelined for his own bomb threat.
The damage is done. The city is gone. Let’s keep politicians, builders, banks, insurance companies and all key stakeholders honest as we rebuild together. So that this NEVER happens in Los Angeles again.
Three crucial questions must be answered for Pacific Palisades to return to normalcy.
- What happened?
- What can politicians do to help us rebuild?
- How does this never happen again?
WHAT HAPPENED?
Why wasn’t their water in the reservoirs?
Where was the protocol, prevention and emergency response?
Why weren’t the hydrants checked?
Why did Mayor Bass leave town during a known threat when the deputy mayor of public safety was under arrest for calling a bomb threat at city hall: she left her emergency team in shambles!
Why wasn’t the brush attended to after a very wet season followed by a predictable dry season?
Why were 35% of our firetrucks and apparatus nonfunctional? –
What would have happened if this fire had started at midnight? We can’t choose the timing, we can only choose the response. Thousands of us wouldn’t be here. Next time a fire could start at midnight
WHAT CAN POLITICIANS DO TO HELP THE REBUILD?
Sponsor a sales tax holiday for building materials and labor for five years in the burn area for those rebuilding the city.
Have a Measure ULA holiday for five years for the burn area.
A comprehensive plan for insurance companies that shows that California will not let our cities burn in the future. Otherwise we are NOT getting insurance.
Stop with the bills, measure and ordinances that will fundamentally change the Palisades! Stop. This is diabolical behavior. The worst.
HOW DO WE MAKE SURE THIS NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN?
A Federal investigation is incoming. A mass tort lawsuit is incoming. A Fire Chief lawsuit is incoming. A class action lawsuit incoming. With all of this scrutiny incoming and underway you’d think that we’d get more than just gaslighting from our leadership.
The FACTS are rushing toward us like a hurricane wall. So, rather than gaslight residents, politicians need to focus on transparency, accountability and pragmatism. What I’m saying is this.
With NO discovery and just leaning in on California Public Record Act, attorneys like Robertson have uncovered purposeful acts: 1) LADWP purposefully changing times of electricity shutdown on poles from 7 p.m. to 1 p.m., 2) seven hours of missed flying time redirecting planes to Malibu to fetch water because of a $85,000 (that became $200,000) rip in a reservoir cover, 3) Quotes from Fire Chief in 1972 saying the reservoir is for fire relief not drinking water, 4) The January 1 Lachman Fire was never extinguished because proper and basic protocol was not followed, 5) Clear lies, exaggeration and gaslighting from our most known and critical leadership.
With NO DISCOVERY, and a deluge of legal activity coming, the absolute best our leaders could do (outside of stepping aside) is facilitating the rebuild, helping the burn community normalize in every way possible. We need a Mayor who will quickly ask these three questions without fear of the inevitable – liability. That’s coming absolutely no matter what. This is one of the biggest and most comprehensive mess ups of all time.
And these three questions…. I didn’t make them up. Rick Scott. Of all people. Florida Senator Rick Scott asked these three questions after speaking with Palisadian Spencer Pratt. And, then your local non-partisan toymaker (me) jumps in with posts like this.
…. As Seinfeld would say, “who are all of these people?!” Or, where are our fearless leaders willing to ask the right questions so that we can have normalcy? And that we can respect our elders who lost everything, those who passed as a result of all of this, and the lives destroyed? We owe them. I owe them. Most importantly, our leadership owes us. Literally.
During Traci Park’s update with LADWP on Wednesday, August 27th, although LADWP’s Powerpoint page said that the Santa Ynez reservoir was for drinking water, when asked, they admitted that it is for drinking water AND fire hydrants. This admission/declaration is post-fire. I have screen shots of the chat with LADWP, in case any of the attorneys needs it.
Rick Scott showing up was a publicity stunt. He does not care about Los Angeles.
Excellent, Jeremy. Excellent.
So well said.
While fires are inevitable, it takes a lot of things going wrong for there to be so much devastation. The City of Los Angeles is substantially disconnected from the business of providing basic public safety and services, a bureaucracy so out of control that it hires outside consultants to coordinate itself.
It’s time to break the City up and get it out of social issues and international politics, when it can’t even fix the sidewalks.
It appears that a lot of California politicians don’t care about Los Angeles, either
Well said, Rick Scott is an intelligent voice whether he cares about LA or not. Do we have intelligent leadership in this city, state ? It does not appear so.
Padawer’s piece is impassioned and I like that.
However, Padawer is way off base with his assertion that 90272 pays over $600 million in property taxes to the LA County Assessor.
Before the fire 90272 paid about $250 million in property taxes. After the fire 90272 will pay about $175 million in property taxes. That is a reduction of $75 million.
Prop 13 probably boosts the county’s annual tax revenues by about $400 million ($2.2 trillion of assessed value and about $20 billion of property taxes annually). So, losing $75 million and gaining $400 million (a net gain of $325 million) is not going to set off alarm bells at the city/county/state levels.
If 90272 produced $600 million of revenues it might be reasonable for the city/count/state to pander to the demands of 90272 residents.
But 90272 property tax revenues are only down 30% from a low initial level.
The reason the city/county/state ignore 90272 is that 90272 is a modest money maker and an insignificant source of votes.
I would add horrible police response times to 911 calls about industrial-strength fireworks being set off in our tinder dry canyons and trailheads. I always scoffed at succession but until we get service to match the taxes it seems like an option now.
Fire fighting 101 ‘Where is the most likely place we will have a fire when a catastrophic wind event is predicted?’ The answer is ‘ Where you had a fire four days earlier!!!
Didn’t anybody at LAFD ask that question? When there was a fire caused by a homeless encampment six years ago in Sepulveda pass, they had fire truck stationed on Sepulveda for almost 2 weeks. What happened to us?
We also pay documentary transfer tax to the county of Los Angeles and the city of Los Angeles on the sale of every property. The county of Los Angeles is paid $1.10 per thousand based on the sales price. The city of Los Angeles is paid $4.50 per thousand based on the sales price, in addition to the exorbitant ULA tax. All of these taxes are hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
LAPD, LAFD and Recs & Parks spent 4 years ignoring our pleas to address the nightly explosions set off in the park, throughout town and in the hillsides. We sent countless videos documenting the insanity to all of these entities, who only shrugged. We were told by local patrol that “fireworks are not a capitol offense”. Well guess what, Officer Espin? I guess they were. And if one of those fireworks set off in the park had ignited dry brush in the middle of the night, many of us would have been dead in our beds.
LAPD, LAFD and Recs & Parks (Jimmy Kim) spent 4 years ignoring our pleas to address the nightly explosions set off in the park, throughout town and in the hillsides. We sent countless videos documenting the insanity to all of these entities, who only shrugged. We were told by local patrol that “fireworks are not a capitol offense”. Well guess what, Officer Espin? I guess they were. And if one of those 2 am fireworks set off in the park had ignited dry brush when all of us were sleeping, many of us would have been dead in our beds.
Please raise your hand if you think the stupidest comment a DWP employee can make over & over again is “the Santa Ynez Reservoir was created for drinking water” as an excuse for it not having water in it ??
“The reason the city/county/state ignore 90272 is that 90272 is a modest money maker and an insignificant source of votes.”
BINGO!
Great blog post, Jeremy, but I hope you aren’t expecting any real answers to the stated questions. We all know that this is what will likely happen:
1. Attempts will be made to push the blame on state and Federal authorities.
2. More money/taxes will be demanded in order to “fix” the problems.
3. Large sums of money will be paid for “plans”, “experts”, consultants, NGO’s, etc.
4. No accountability will be accepted by any of the current politicians.
5. Karen Bass will turn on the charm and escape all of the consequences of her pathetic leadership.
The way out of this is to start electing intelligent, competent leaders rather than social media wannabe’s. This goes for the entire state of California – top to bottom.