<p>Mark Ruffalo and Orlando Bloom For Global Green USA, June 4 2011 Santa Monica from Greening Hollywood on Vimeo.</p><p>"Be The Change" - Ghandi : This past weekend Orlando Bloom, Mark Ruffalo, Ed Begley Jr., Adrian Grenier, Mary Leslie (LABC), Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin and Mrs. Bacon, and many more turned out for the 2011 Global Green USA Millennium Awards in Santa Monica this June in support of environmental efforts.</p>
By Joel Epstein
The conference, hosted by the Los Angeles Business Council (LABC) and now in its ninth year, brought together a well-spoken group of leaders from the real estate, transportation, government, finance and planning communities. With a strong lineup of panelists and the show ably MC'ed by City Controller Wendy Greuel, I found myself busily scribbling away as speaker after speaker described successes and the many challenges they face in working to build sustainable housing and mixed use developments in LA County and elsewhere. http://joelepstein.com/
Sustainable Housing, 30/10 and Public Transit in LA
With last week's epiphany on how the unions should be investors in LA's 30/10 Initiative going nowhere, I was free to attend Wednesday's Mayoral Sustainable Housing and Transportation Summit.
30/10 is an innovative idea for accelerating construction of 12 critical voter-approved transportation construction projects in 10 years instead of 30. The conference, hosted by the Los Angeles Business Council (LABC) and now in its ninth year, brought together a well-spoken group of leaders from the real estate, transportation, government, finance and planning communities. With a strong lineup of panelists and the show ably MC'ed by City Controller Wendy Greuel, I found myself busily scribbling away as speaker after speaker described successes and the many challenges they face in working to build sustainable housing and mixed use developments in LA County and elsewhere.
LA remains one of the least affordable residential markets in the country and the conference effectively underscored the importance of removing obstacles to building in the city so that working people can find affordable, sustainable housing in safe neighborhoods with good schools within easy commuting distance of their jobs. Yes, that's a lot of modifiers.
The three panels that made up the generally well-paced program explored [different] definitions of sustainable communities, resources to support a sustainable community, and best practices for sustainable community development.
In the second panel discussion Larry Parks of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco captured the challenge explaining that affordable housing developers and transit-oriented development (TOD) advocates need to do a better job of conveying to the media and policy makers that TOD reduces the amount of household income residents must spend on transportation from 25 percent to 9 percent.
Given my bias toward transit-oriented development and sustainable communities with a strong public transit component, my favorite comments came from Metro's Art Leahy, Senior Deputy Dan Rosenfeld from Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas' office and John Huskey, CEO of Meta Housing.
I am paraphrasing, but here is what I heard them say and/or why their comments rang true.
In his comments Leahy forcefully drove home how Metro's extensive and costly building program supported by revenue from voter-approved Measure R will create a true transit system out of our already extensive collection of bus and rail lines. This will mean a significantly more transit-oriented LA, conducive to greater mobility for those smart enough, or with no choice but, to ride Metro. Unlike some others in this town who advocate for greater mass transit but don't themselves take Metro, Leahy earns our respect in part because he is a customer, as well as Metro's CEO, who uses the system as often as he can.
Rosenfeld focused on the need to rally around greater density at Metro stations and to implement changes that make land acquisition and development around the stations easier. He bemoaned the fact that South LA, from Wilshire Blvd south to Long Beach has seen no transit oriented development around its rail stations even though the area has long had the Metro Blue and Green Lines.
Huskey of Meta Housing captured my imagination with his candid comments about the challenges of developing Adams & Central, a new mixed use development in what was once the heart of LA's African-American community and an R&B and jazz Mecca. Coincidentally, at the recommendation of Councilwoman Jan Perry I had visited the impressive development which includes a Fresh & Easy supermarket just last week. At least during the day, the development and the market are the envy of most mixed use developments and supermarkets in West LA.
Many of the other speakers spoke of LA's critical 30/10 Initiative, including Metro Board member Richard Katz who reminded us that those who are speaking of the death of 30/10 are underestimating the merits of the program and the hard work that has gone into creating an infrastructure financing model for the nation. Katz' wise counsel to the media, including yours truly, is worth heeding, just as many were forecasting Measure R's demise just before it was approved by a two thirds majority of County voters in November 2008.
Given the sustainability theme, the conference featured some nice touches including a cloth conference tote that will make a nice shopping bag now that the County Board of Supervisors has passed a sweeping ban on plastic shopping bags. The wasteful bags have become known as urban tumbleweed that all too rarely gets recycled.
The LABC tote included a soon to be collectible "Watts Is Worth It" reusable coffee mug, grace à the LA Housing Authority's Jordan Downs Redevelopment.
At breakfast and lunch, what looked like biodegradable cutlery and unbleached paper napkins accompanied the food. Nice, though as Metro's Leahy noted, is there really a plentiful water source in Las Vegas, where the bottled water provided to the panelists came from? Am I the only one who remembers when conferences provided a pitcher of ice water and glasses to their presenters?
One more criticism of the otherwise excellent sustainable housing and transportation conference. It appeared as if I was as guilty as most of the other attendees in driving alone to the early morning event at UCLA's Anderson School. Maybe next year LABC can organize a shuttle from the Metro Wilshire 720 Rapid, the Metro 2 and other buses that make stops in Westwood.
All small issues. Kudos to the LABC for organizing this important conference! Oh, one more thing. The Mayor spoke as well.
Joel Epstein is a Los Angeles-based public transportation advocate and also a contributor to the Huffington Post. http://joelepstein.com/
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If only Los Angeles could bottle the kind of energy seen during Lakers Day Parades, such as the one on Monday, June 21st, there would be little need for discussions about rate hikes and energy consumption. Until that day arrives, the Los Angeles Business Council has been consulting with local stakeholders and helping Mayor Villaraigosa and Councilwoman Jan Perry and others to come up with a Feed-in Tariff plan for Solar energy. This is how it is proposed to work in benefit to Los Angeles the city and its citizens.
Photo courtesy LA Times Blogs
Can't See The Video? CLICK HERE
| What Is A Solar Feed-in Tariff Program? A solar Feed-in Tariff program allows businesses, public and non-profit organizations, and residents to install solar panels on their roofs and parking lots and sell the power generated back to the local utility. Participants receive a payment back from the utility for each Kilowatt-hour fed back into the power grid. FiT programs can generate a cost-effective source of renewable energy, create local jobs, and bring in revenue for businesses and ratepayers. Successful FiT programs have been put in place around the world. LABC has singled out programs in Germany and Gainesville, Florida as particularly effective models that Los Angeles should look to emulate. | |
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Contact the Los Angeles Business Council for more information on the Solar FiT program. This month LABC has been building a broad coalition in support of bringing an ambitious 600 Megawatt Solar Feed-in Tariff (FiT) program to Los Angeles using the guidelines we have developed in partnership with the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. |
By Paige DonnerLet’s start by mentioning a few of the wonderful things that the Los Angeles Business Council and its fabulous President, Mary Leslie, are doing: They are corralling the city’s public and private heads of agencies and businesses into a forum where they can engage in conversation. This corral has taken place at the Getty Museum for the past 3 years under the moniker of the Los Angeles Business Council’s Sustainability Summit.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, Photo by Paige Donner
On August 10th, Leslie hosted a similar event specifically for our film industry. The LABC is shepherding our City’s prominent, if not still #1, industry – the film studios – and getting them all together to talk about the business of sustainability.
I’m all for conversation. When we sit down and talk with each other, a wealth of information can get shared if all parties engage and are engaged. Personally I’m convinced that it was through these types of pow-wows that the notion of “creating fire” was spread among humankind.
But talk, as they say, is cheap, and unless it’s backed by action, giving business and industry leaders yet another forum upon which to pontificate and sing their own praises only furthers the spin – not the “change.” So far, the summits are being used for both purposes: dialogue for spin and dialogue for change.
Paige Donner and President Bill Clinton, 2009
There couldn’t be a better President for the Los Angeles Business Council than Mary Leslie. By her own account, she is “obsessed with the business of sustainability. It’s a better business practice; it’s not philanthropic,” she says. Her pedigree spans from Clinton’s West Coast Finance Director in ’91, to Riordan’s Deputy Mayor for Economic Development during the Northridge earthquake era (i.e. the influx of $11B in Federal Aid funds into L.A.), to her present day position of liaison between L.A.’s public and private sectors. And let’s not forget her ties to D.C. that now span a generation and reach to the highest echelons.
Recently I was afforded the opportunity to have a sit-down conversation with Ms. Leslie, who was fresh off a family cruise vacation in Alaska. Reinforced during this meeting, was, once again, the value of person-to-person discourse.
In her own words, Leslie wrote in the LABC special supplement to the Los Angeles Business Journal about the Getty Summit Corral: “…the event also made clear the need for the public and private sectors to collaborate in achieving solutions.”
Hoorah! Hoorah!
So now the real, overarching, question is, Are we going to go about this public-private collaboration as “business as usual”? Or are we going to open up the closely-guarded, lobbyist dominated pipeline to something else like, best practices, open bids and a transparent, city-wide procurement mechanism here in Los Angeles?
“Water conservation” is the phrase that, without exception, our various City and Municipal water kings refer to when they point to our greatest water resource in the face of declining water reserves. They refer to the fact that our citizens’ conservation efforts have resulted in our water usage rates remaining at the same level for the past decade despite the significant rise in population in our city.
One would think, then, that an agency such as LADWP would have a mechanism by which they can explore and vet new products and vendors that could help save even more water in city-wide public-private partnerships. Right? Especially now that they have been under such fire for using the “stick” of fines and tickets for wasteful water usage – some even calling the leadership of LADWP as orienting itself towards “police state” tactics.
Well – let’s see – Is there an open procurement procedure at LADWP? Hmmm…if there is, after a full year of texting, emailing, meeting with and having the Czar of DWP over to my house to talk about the issues, I can honestly and confidently say, No, there’s not. Even after I was able to pointedly make this issue clear at The Israel Conference attended by Nahai and a number of his business associates from Israel, I was dismissed out of hand for bringing to their attention such a low-tech, low-investment business proposal that was U.S. borne as opposed to originating elsewhere. [My business proposal involves a waterless carwash product which replaces the need to use water – even a drop of water – for washing vehicles. Likewise, it requires no investment in machinery and it’s locally manufactured, is non-toxic and is biodegradable. It also offers a partnership with Youth Employment services to give youth green jobs.]
After a year of talks, emails, phone calls and even an in-office pitch at LADWP have I been successful in getting anyone from the DWP to even look at a demo of the product? No. I have not. However, I was invited recently to watch a demo of a competing product that a) requires the investment of $10 - $15K in machinery per car wash location and b) is manufactured in Korea that LADWP had sent its representative on a Saturday to check out. Of course, LADWP has money to burn now; they are lending the bankrupt City of L.A. money from their $4B kitty while pledging to aggressively go after Federal stimulus money. Someone please explain this to me?
In my discussions with Mary Leslie, two questions regarding this sort of “business as usual” behavior arose: 1) What’s it going to take to establish a transparent procurement mechanism for agencies operating under and answerable to the City of L.A.? How can we get this up and running now? Now, when the economy and entrepreneurs and small business owners need a shot at staying in business and feeding their families.
And 2) Do we need Charter Reform? This, of course, has to do with renewable energy generation and feed-in tariffs. But are the days of DWP being the sole owner/operator of electricity in the City of L.A. numbered? For example, Safeway Inc., with its owner-operated, self-sustaining, solar generated feed-in tariff system for its vast California grocery store operations, could not implement their very successful sustainable energy business model within the city of L.A. – because of DWP’s lockhold on electricity generation. Historically, whenever there’s been an attempt towards distributed energy generation, that attempt gets squelched or killed here in Los Angeles. Are we ready for some change? People, are we really ready for some change?
Another example – this week’s Brand X publication, put out by the L.A. Times has a story about Sylmar-based lithium-ion battery manufacturer, Quallion. The owner of the company, Alfred Mann, has a personal net worth of $1.4 billion. His company expects to earn more than $25 million this year thanks to their U.S. military contracts. But that hasn’t stopped him from getting the support of the L.A. Board of Supervisors in going after $220M in Fed. Stimulus Funds from the D.O.E. to set up a battery manufacturing plant in Sylmar. My question: If he gets this money from our taxes, are we, meaning EVERYBODY in the State of California, automatically paid shareholders in Quallion?
The answer, I hope for all our sakes, is Yes.
This closed door, backroom handshake way of doing business is a mindset. It’s not capability. It’s not a question of good business. It’s not best practices in business. It’s not a matter of philanthropy vs. profit-yielding methodology. And it’s certainly not a question of a better energy efficiency (or water conservation for that matter). It’s a mindset. Does that mindset any longer have any place in our city if we are going to be, as our Mayor has stated on many occasions, “coal free” by 2020, use 40% renewable energy for the city by 2020 and be the center of a Clean Tech Corridor with a healthy, employed population who can pay their mortgages and feed their children? Another accomplishment: L.A.’s Green Building Ordinance. Read here about L.A.s Green Building Ordinance
Indeed, one of the keys to L.A.’s economic development is the growth – and support of – indigenous renewable programs for our city. This is the Next Wave. Everyone who voted for change, here’s your chance. Let’s see some change.
Paige Donner writes the popular Greening Hollywood Blog and is also the Owner-Operator of the eco-consulting business, Greening Hollywood. She is the Founder/Publisher of The Green Blog Network.
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