Los Angeles City Councilman Traci Park passed through an auditorium filled with Pacific Palisade residents who had lost their homes, schools and churches.
The mid-January charity event was the first time many neighbors saw each other since they had escaped from the monster. They spoke with uneasy voices about toxic dirt and elderly parents. Some were wearing donated clothes.
Every few steps, Park stopped to offer hugs and advice.
“Don’t hurry up and sell,” she told one resident.
“I’m going to be with you at every stage,” she told another.
Los Angeles City Councilman Traci Park will be taking part in a Palisade Fire Victims Charity event on January 21st at the Collins & Katz Family YMCA.
(Ringo chiu / for the the the the alls
The Park, which represents the Parisades region, has emerged as an empathetic leader in the aftermath of the fire. This contrasts with her harsh image at City Hall, known for providing steely speeches from the council floor.
In her Venice Kitchen Instagram video, she supports residents while providing updates on tap water and power poles. At a community meeting, she alternates with locals, tears and dull stories.
“We’re government so we’re going to ruin it on the way,” she told the crowd at the Westside YMCA Charity Event.
As Palisade residents navigated the bureaucratic haze, the park became the face of many of their recovery. Meanwhile, Mayor Karen Bass was criticized for abandoning the role in the first few months, accusing the fire chief of protecting his overseas travel and not telling her about the dangers of the wind.
Frustration grows as Pacific Palisade residents attend Santa Monica College’s City Hall after the Palisade fire destroyed their homes on January 26th.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“There was a time when I could show empathy,” said Dermot Givens, a political consultant who doesn’t work at either the park or bass. “The park filled that vacuum.”
Park, 49, a former local government attorney who spoke with the prosecutor’s powerful emergency, was at the Pacific Coast Highway headquarters after the Palisade fire spread on January 7th.
A roller coaster of emotions continued, she recalled from “sadness to anger.” Anger is the size of the fire that destroyed more than 5,400 homes and killed 12 people.
“These are scars that are trying to bother me,” Park said in an interview. “They are going to haunt my community.”
Still, the popularity of the park could be at its expiration date. The slog of reconstruction takes years. She and other leaders are also faced with questions about whether cities can do more to reduce destruction.
LA City Councilman Traci Park will listen to Santa Monica College’s City Hall on Jan. 26th.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Park, the Democrat and the most conservative member of the city council, launched his campaign in 2022 due to his dissatisfaction with the homelessness in his Venice neighborhood. She had never run for public office before.
The park supported the city’s camping measures law. Some progressive groups view homeless people as cruel and ineffective as a way to get homeless people out of the streets. She promised community buy-in before building a homeless shelter. It’s the hot button issue after Mike Bonin, a counter member at the time, threw his weight behind an urban-run shelter in the heart of Venice, where many residents opposed.
The firefighters union supported the park for over $400,000, and the police union spent more than $1.7 million to support her.
Park grew up in Downey and Apple Valley, and after his parents divorced, he was raised primarily by his mother, a school secretary. She was the first person to go to college with her family, and later law school borrowed “every penny” for her education, she said. She became a partner for Burke, Williams and Sorensen, focusing on employment issues involving local government workers.
After she was elected, the park worked with Bass’ homeless team to demolish longtime Venice camps, moving more than 80 people to the motels and using anti-camp laws at his disposal, including near senior homes where noise from the camp awakened residents at night.
People living in RVs remain a controversial issue in the park’s district. But today, “Venice doesn’t have any major camps,” said Mark Leabeck, a longtime Venice resident who has repeatedly sued the city about homelessness by a group of neighbors. “I praise Traci Park for that.”
Homelessness and fire recovery could dominate the park’s reelection campaign next year. Already, Progressive highlights her opposition to the Venice del, which proposes an affordable housing development near the Venice Canal. The park is proposing another site that delays construction and irritates city council members.
Faiza Malik said the Palisade flame, a public counsel lawyer representing a group suing the city over the delays in the Venice Project, underscored the city’s housing crisis.
“We pay the same attention to affordable housing and protection to keep working-class residents home,” she said.
The LA “Sanoric City” Act is another issue that divides the park and most of her council colleagues.
Last year, she told KNX News that the law prohibiting city employees and resources from being involved in federal immigration enforcement was “in fact a mere act of symbolic resistance and could put federal funds at risk.
Citing LAPD’s long-standing policy on executives acting as immigration agents, Park told The Times that city employees have already been banned through immigration enforcement and through capacity orders.
“I didn’t think it was the right time and the right message,” she said.
President Trump has threatened to cut off money for sanctuary cities, and LA relies on millions of federal rebates to rebuild Pallisard’s urban infrastructure. Several of Park’s colleagues, including councillor Hugo Soto Martinez, are seeking additional steps to support undocumented immigrants, maintaining the council’s battle with the Trump administration.
Los Angeles City Councilman Traci Park will speak with Cantor Chayim Frenkel at a charity event at the Collins & Katz Family YMCA on January 21st.
(Ringo chiu / for the the the the alls
Parks often repeat the story of stone figurines. As one of the few people who entered the Palisade in the first few days after the fire, she regularly came across garden ornaments and trinkets that survived the flames.
“Personally, if you can see a clay pot or stone figurine and get to it, I’ll leave it where I think there’s your entrance,” Park said. “So when you come back, there’s not just a pile of ashes, but something familiar.”
Palisade resident Kay Steinsapil didn’t know much about the park by January 7th, but now he watches her Instagram videos and watches her at meetings.
“Even if Traci Park can’t do anything to solve someone’s problem at the moment, she’s reacting and interacting in such a way that people feel their pain and struggle have been seen by her,” Steinsapir said.
At a recent City Council Committee meeting, Park explained to the representatives of Hagerty Consulting, the city’s fire restoration contractor, what work he has done so far.
In dissatisfaction, Park ordered his representatives to meet with Palisade residents and listed the names of those present.
“She’s getting things done,” said Larry Bain, a Parisades resident who runs the nonprofit Paris. “She wants to see things get better. She really cares about people in her mind.”
LA City Councilman Traci Park, right, Santa Monica College’s debris removal city hall, accepts Santa Monica Mayor Lana Naegretto.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
While Park and Bass praise each other, the mayor is a “good allies” and Park called Park’s spokesman “fearless advocates” but councillors have repeatedly challenged the mayor’s decision since the fire.
She told the Times in February it was not clear who was in charge of the recovery. Bass replied: “Let me explain: The person in charge is here. Me.”
The park also surprised observers with a zoom call with Palisade residents. The next day, bass turned itself around.
After the bus rejected fire chief Christine Crowley, some argued that no one should be fired before official reports on the city’s flame handling end, as they declined to staff to additional firefighters ahead of extreme winds. She was one of two councillors who voted for Crawley’s return to work.
A Times investigation found that firefighters were able to deploy additional engines and personnel at the scene as wind predictions worsened before the fire. Crawley defended the flames and accused Bus of making “multiple false accusations.”
Even before January 7th, the park had issued warnings about the threat of wildfires. Often as the loudest voice of councils in support of fire department budget requests.
In December, she spoke before the Fire Committee, a bass appointee who oversees the fire department, to warn her of the dangers of the Oceanside area.
“The threat we face from wildfires gets worse every year, and the demands we place on the department only increase each year,” she said.
A few months ago, she claimed during a city budget hearing that the fire department handles wildfires, medical emergency and homelessness, but is “still close to being sworn-ups at a sustainable level to respond to emergencies.”
Chad Comey near the pool in his destroyed apartment complex after Palisade fires.
(Katie Mahony)
Chad Comey, 31, has lost a family apartment that he lived and cared for his disabled parents, hoping for answers from the park and others.
Why did the road from Palisade shake? Why couldn’t there be any more fire trucks? he asked.
“I blame the town and she’s part of it,” Comey said of the park. “Everyone should be fired – a burnt earth.”
Park told the Times that the “anger” residents felt was justified, and official reports repeatedly revealed negligence.
She was stuck with the longstanding position that the city needed more firefighters.
“More resources lead to better results,” she said.
Times staff writer David Zanizer contributed to this report.
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