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Six months after the flames destroyed Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, Mayor Karen Bass was preparing to mark the opportunity along with Gov. Gavin Newsom and other leaders.
However, instead of heading north for last week’s Pasadena press conference, the mayor’s Black SUV detoured to MacArthur Park. There, a cavalry of federal agents in tactical equipment descended into the heart of immigrants Los Angeles.
In a blue suit from Seafoam, the bass was able to hear in a live news feed that was muscular and spurted through the crowd, pushing agents to leave.
Eventually, she held an improvisation city hall press conference condemning the migrant attack, and eventually joined Newsom and US Senator Alex Padilla to discuss reconstruction and recovery of the fire.
This is what I’ve discovered in recent weeks that delicate dance bass has been doing its own. Recovering from one of the most expensive natural disasters in American history is a daily throw despite the new and urgent crisis calling for her attention.
The federal immigrant attacks on Los Angeles gave Base a second chance to guide her city through civil catastrophes. Her political image was severely damaged as a result of the fire, but she compensated within a series of historically good headlines.
The killings plummeted, and Los Angeles picked up the pace with a total of the lowest murders in nearly 60 years. Bass has also advanced the seemingly unruly homeless crisis for the second year in a row, with the number of people sleeping on the streets falling by nearly 8% in 2024.
Signing “Karenbus resignation” on Almarial Drive at Pacific Palisades on July 9th.
(Jason Armand/Los Angeles Times)
But between Palisades in the Pacific Ocean, there is a bay spreading between the rest of the city, where annihilation remains palpable as long as it is visible, and other issues are being noted. In her success, the mayor still faces harsh critics in the wealthy coastal enclave.
“The mayor has made it very clear that it is a long day for families to return home every day, and she will continue to take action to promote all aspects of her recovery efforts to bring them home,” said Bass spokesman Zach Seidl.
Bass was on a diplomatic trip to Ghana despite warnings of heavy winds when the fire broke out in early January. She was surprised upon her return, faced with public criticism from the fire chief, asking questions about her trip, and seemed out of sync with other leaders and her own Chief Recovery Officer.
These first days cast a long shadow on the city’s 43rd mayor, but Base has since regained some of her footing. She tried to make herself a Palisade fixture and pull the government lever to promote recovery, even when the community wasn’t always open-handed and not welcoming her. Her office also led regular community briefings with detailed Q&A sessions.
Bass issued executive orders to help with recovery, created a one-stop reconstruction centre, provided tax cuts to businesses affected by the fire, and promoted permits. According to the mayor’s office, the One-Stop Center serves more than 3,500 individuals.
Felipe Ortega will raise the California flag at Gladstones Malibu on July 2nd. After maintaining the damage caused by the fire, Gladstone reopened for business earlier this month.
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
Many restaurants and other amenities are also reopening nearby. Starbucks on Palisades Drive is scheduled to return later this month.
Bass does not provide a comparison between apples and apps in recent natural disasters, but it is often advertised Pallisard’s fire recovery as the fastest in modern California history.
Sue Pascoe, a resident of Palisades who lost his home at Via Bluffs Neighborhood and hells the Hyperlocal website called Sircing the News, said the mayor had made some break-in.
“I think she tried so hard to fix the relationship. She came out a lot there,” Pascoe said. “But to be honest with you, I don’t know if it’s working or not.”
When the bus visited Palisades, Mariam Zar, head of the Palisades Restoration Union, told her that residents weren’t doing enough to speed up the reconstruction.
“It always seems like she’s really moved by it,” Zar said. “She said to us, ‘Really? What am I not doing?’
In Pascoe’s view, this issue is more about the limitations of the office than the leadership of Bass. Inhabited by the loss of a home, furious by the broken insurance scheme and the troublesome reconstruction process, residents want to direct the mayor to swing their magic wands, cut the deficit in construction, and revive the full power of local governments to revive their neighborhoods.
However, Los Angeles has a relatively weak mayoral system compared to cities like New York and Chicago.
The mayor is not helpless, said Rafael Sonnenshain, executive director of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation and local government scholar. However, he or she shares authority with other entities, such as 15 city councils and five members to five county boards of supervisors.
“To get things going in Los Angeles, coupled with the cooperation, cooperation, cooperation, or hopefully not opposed by many powerful people in other offices, we always need the mayor’s leadership,” Sonnenshain said. “Even so, the mayor is still a recognized leader, so it’s a problem to align people’s expectations of leadership with the way they put together their work to get things done.”
Please take the issue of waiver of permit fees.
Construction workers will rebuild their homes on July 9th at Palisade, the Pacific Ocean.
(Jason Armand/Los Angeles Times)
In February, City Councilman Traci Park, who represents the fire prevention area, introduced a proposal to stop the collection of permit fees for rebuilding the Palisades home.
Pascoe and others cheered in late April when the mayor signed an executive order in support of the park’s plans.
But when Pascoe moved forward by rebuilding her longtime home, she was confused when her architect gave her for a signature that she told the city would pay back if the city council didn’t move forward with fee waiver.
As it turns out, the Bass’ order did not cancel the permit fees entirely, but the mayor suspends the collection, subject to the conditions that ultimately enact the council, as he cannot legally cancel the fees himself.
The park’s proposal is still progressing through the council’s approval process. Officials estimate that the fee waiver will cost around $86 million. This is particularly eye-opening amount given the city’s budget crisis and can be difficult to approve.
Apart from the limitations of her office, Bass has confused residents and made her own path more intense with a seemingly accidental approach to delegating authority.
Mayor Karen Bass will speak in discussions with local leaders and residents 100 days after La Wildfire began at Will Rogers State Beach on April 17th.
(Carlin Steel/Los Angeles Times)
Within a month of the flames, Bass announced the employment of Hagerty Consulting as a “world-class disaster recovery company” that coordinates “private and public institutions.” For many residents, the base appeared to be giving the company the enormous challenge of restoring the Pallisade.
The reality is that Hagerty is held as a consultant for the city’s small underfunded emergency management department, whose general manager, Carol Parks, is designated as the recovery coordinator by the city charter. Bass also took another former EMD chief, Jim Featherstone, out of retirement.
However, based on Bass’ official statement, many Angelenos thought the recovery would be led by the familiar face, Steve Soboroff.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and her disaster recovery city, Steve Soborov, spoke with the media at a press conference at the Parisades Recreation Centre held at Pacific Parisades on January 27th.
(Brian van der Bragg/Los Angeles Times)
Developer, civic leader and longtime Palisade resident, Soboroff signed a three-month stint as head of recovery for three months, initially being tasked with creating a comprehensive strategy for reconstruction. However, his role quickly reduced dramatically. When he left in mid-April, Soborov said he was essentially locked out of high-level plans from the start, and spoke openly about his issues with Hagerty.
The city brought in headhunters before Soboroff left, but that position is currently not filled longer than Soboroff’s 90-day tenure. (Seidl said Wednesday that the city will “be in the interview process and will thoroughly review eligible candidates,” but he did not set a timeline.)
In June, Bass shifted the course again by tapping on global engineering company Aecom, and developed a Master Recovery Plan, which includes logistics and public-private partnerships.
But Bass’ Office said it’s rare to clarify how AeCom works with Hagerty, and at a public meeting last month, both the emergency management leaders and they were in the dark about the scope of AECOM’s work.
“We don’t know much about AECOM other than our reputation as a company,” Featherstone told the city council’s ad hoc recovery committee.
Seidl said Wednesday that AECOM is working on “deep coordination” with Featherstone’s division, while managing the overall reconstruction process. He said the company is responsible for developing infrastructure rebuilding plans, logistics plans to work with local builders and suppliers, and master transport plans as rebuilding activities increase.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, left, US Sen. Alex Padira and California Governor Gavin Newsom Tour Tour Tour the Pacific Palisade Downtown Business District as the Palisade fire continues to burn in Los Angeles on January 8th.
(Eric Sayer/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Hagerty continues to work with EMD, claiming nearly $2 million in cities so far, Seidl said most of them are federally refundable.
Zar, head of the Parisades Restoration Union, said he was told to expect a meeting with AECOM over a month ago, but the meeting was delayed “every week or week, every week.”
“That organized recovery structure is not there. That void really creates spaces for the Parisadians to fight and divide with each other, horrifying,” Zar said. “We cannot allow our leaders and lawmakers to not come to the table with plans yet.”
Work awarded to Hagerty, Aecom and another company, IEM, is helping to reimburse the federal government, prompting councillor Monica Rodriguez to say in June that “we found a lot of money to pay a lot of contracts for the broken city.”
Bass ‘2022 mayor’s enemy, Rick Caruso, has been a frequent and very common antagonist from the fire, questioning the delays and taking other shots with the mayor.
Caruso’s Steadfast LA, a nonprofit he launched to help fire victims, sought an artificial intelligence tool that could quickly flag code violations in construction plans and trim processing times.
Staff Fast representatives received support from LA County. When they presented the tool to the Bass team, they said they encountered general support, but at the pace they fell into. Annoyed, Caruso reached out to Newsom. Newsom, according to Caruso, quickly defended the technology and urged the city to embrace it.
A Bass’ spokesman disputed the proposal for delays, saying the mayor’s team has been discussing innovation with Newsom’s office since February.
This week, LA County deployed a pilot program that allows fire survivors to use AI plan check tools. The city began beta testing of the tool on Wednesday.
This episode exemplifies Caruso why the recovery moved slowly.
“There’s no decision-making process that makes things come to fruition with a sense of urgency,” he said.
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