Repairs for the Queen Mary have cost the city of Long Beach more than $45 million over the last eight years, according to city records obtained by The Times, a hefty bill as the city looks to keep the historic ship on a fledgling path toward profitability.
Repairs have included more than $3 million for rust and hull repairs, and $3.35 million for bulkhead repairs and removing lifeboats.
More repairs — both essential and costly — to keep the 90-year-old ship operational are still expected, but city officials are optimistic the financial headwinds the ship has battled are easing. Last year, the Queen Mary generated more than $12.6 million in revenue, including more than $3 million in profits between June and October.
For the end of fiscal year 2024 — the first year the ship has been fully operational since it was shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic — city officials expect the aging ocean liner to bring in a “modest profit” of $3.6 million.
“From an operating perspective, the Queen Mary can now support operating expenses with regular operating revenue,” city officials said in a statement. “All revenue generated is being invested directly back to the ship and vicinity.”
But the records from the city, first reported by the Long Beach Business Journal, have offered a glimpse into the significant costs that have come with the city’s effort to keep and preserve the iconic vessel.
At one time, the Queen Mary was dubbed the world’s fastest and most luxurious cruise ship. Among its celebrity and royal guests were the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Bob Hope and Elizabeth Taylor, who paid extra for her poodle. It also transported soldiers to the European front during World War II.
After Long Beach bought the Queen Mary from the Cunard Line shipping company in 1967, various firms were brought in to manage the vessel and develop adjacent property.
In 2021, the city took over the Queen Mary amid worries that it was not being maintained. City officials at the time were aware the ocean liner was in dire need of repairs.
One study in 2017 estimated it could need up to $289 million in repairs and renovations, and court documents showed about $23 million in repairs were needed to keep the once majestic ship from capsizing.
In addition to the needed repairs, city officials point out that between 2007 and 2019, before Long Beach took over, private operators had reported more than $31 million in losses.
Since 2021, city officials said they’d completed at least 25 major projects on the ship.
Most of the $45 million that has been spent on the ship, city officials said, has come from revenue from the Queen Mary or related subleases.
In 2017, about $23 million came from a Queen Mary reserve fund and bond issue from the Queen Mary’s Carnival sublease.
A $12-million agreement with the Port of Long Beach, which transferred control of about 14 acres of city property to the port to lease to third parties, and split revenue with the city, has also helped pay for some of the repairs.
Since October, city officials say more than 118,000 people have visited the vessel, and the ship is once again becoming the center of the city’s plans.
“The Queen Mary is thriving once again,” Steve Caloca, general manager for the contracted operator, Evolution Hospitality, said in a statement. “From new Art Deco floors and staircases in the Main Hall, to the restored Observation Bar overlooking our beautiful city of Long Beach, there is so much to do when visiting the Queen.”
Hotel capacity on the ship has been expanded to 200 rooms, and onboard activities have expanded to 22 guest tours, exhibits and other activities.
This year, city officials said, hotel room renovations, elevator upgrades, repair of the ship’s third smokestack and an expansion of the Sun Deck, which is used for special events such as weddings, are planned.
The Queen Mary also is meant to play a crucial role in plans the city has for the nearby area.
Officials are looking to develop 43 acres of space next to the ship into “a world-class entertainment and mixed-use development venue.”
“The return of live music, special events and music festivals at the Queen Mary and adjacent Harry Bridges Memorial Park has further highlighted the importance of live music and entertainment to the future success of the ship,” city officials said in a statement. “This waterfront space, with expansive views of the Long Beach shoreline and downtown, collectively represents one of the city’s most unique future development opportunities.”
And although the ship continues to need repairs, city officials said its condition might not be as dire as was once believed.
The study that estimated up to $289 million in needed repairs included $215 million to $261 million for hull repairs, city officials said in a statement. A more recent hull and tank study suggested the cost could be “considerably less.”
“We envision an even brighter future for the Queen Mary and adjacent land with plans for future development that will further elevate its status as a premier tourist destination,” Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said in a statement.
PEOPLEGreg Stevens was recently announced as the new president at Cabot Wealth Management. Rob Lutts and the firm’s managing partners made the announcement last week. It was effective Jan. 1. Stevens has been with Cabot for 20 years and has been instrumental in managing the growth and success of the firm over those years. He takes over the role of president from Lutts who founded the firm in 1983. Lutts will remain with Cabot as part of the management team. “I am confident that Greg will be a solid leader for the firm and, along with other senior leadership, will continue to ensure that our key focus is the same as it has been for 40 years — doing everything we can to help our clients achieve their goals,” said Lutts. The firm, based in Salem, is a leading wealth management firm that provides a wide range of services including investment management, financial planning, estate planning, tax filing and planning. Cabot is a national firm that serves clients across the country.
Aubrie L. Gallagher recently joined Downey Law Group, LLC/DLG Closing to its law practice based in Topsfield and Haverhill. Gallagher is an experienced estate planning, probate, and trust administration attorney, having practiced as a solo practitioner for over 10 years. An Amesbury native, she graduated from Massachusetts School of Law in 2011. She comes from three generations of estate planning and probate attorneys, following in the footsteps of her mother, attorney Janice Weyland Sinclair, and her grandfather, attorney Wendell P. Weyland, who was a CPA and estate attorney in the Topsfield/Boxford area. Gallagher lives in Amesbury with her husband and family.
Hancock Associates, a leading provider of land surveying, civil engineering and wetland science services, has announced the semi-retirement of Don Frydryk PE, PLS. Frydryk joined Hancock Associates, which has offices in Danvers, as a Regional Office Manager when the firm acquired Sherman & Frydryk, LLC, a land surveying and civil engineering firm located in Palmer. He will continue in a smaller, part-time role as Business Development Coordinator and focus on business development for Hancock’s western Massachusetts offices and mentoring staff.
MILESTONESConnolly Brothers Inc., a construction management firm based in Beverly, recently completed a 52,000-square-foot design-build fit-up project for Calare Properties. The facility, located in Milford, will serve as a new state 911 Public Safety Answering Point, State 911 Training Center, Municipal Police Training Committee Academy and offices for the Massachusetts Department of Correction Professional Standards Unit. The two-story building was vacant for seven years, presenting challenges for Connolly’s design team. At first, it was critical to ascertain an understanding of the existing infrastructure, such as underground plumbing and structural components. Connolly proceeded to update the structural requirements, such as reinforcing second-floor and roof bar joists, strengthening steel column brace frames and creating four new grade beams, in order to meet updated building code requirements for use group risk category of the building. Connolly provided additional accessible entrances and replaced the exterior stairs with new granite. The electrical requirements to support the 911 Communication Center required a high level of coordination between Connolly’s design and construction teams, as this included design of 22 workstation consoles that support the intricate technological infrastructure needed to support the operating requirements for a 911 emergency dispatch center. Connolly served as both Architect of Record and Construction Manager for this design-build project. The project team also included Platinum Fire Protection, D+D/DNET and Tech Mechanical.
A court ruled on Monday that La Cañada Flintridge violated the state Housing Accountability Act when it denied an application for an affordable-housing project last year.
Under the ruling, the city will be forced to process the application, which was filed under a little-known but increasingly relevant provision in California housing law known as “builder’s remedy.” The provision serves as a punishment for cities that are out of compliance with housing element regulations that require local governments to develop specific zoning plans to address population increases.
Builder’s remedy is a massive boon for developers, allowing them to build whatever they want — even outside local zoning restrictions — so long as it has a certain number of low- or middle-income units.
The proposed project in this case, located at 600 Foothill Blvd., would replace an aging Christian Science church with a five-story building that includes 80 mixed-income units and a 14-room hotel, totaling nearly 120,000 square feet, bringing density and affordable housing to a city that has very little.
La Cañada is a city of single-family homes, and the average value is $2.317 million, according to Zillow. It has added virtually no multifamily housing in recent years, and as a result, the population has hovered around 20,000 for the last four decades while surrounding communities swelled with residents.
The court’s decision is a big win for affordable-housing advocates as well as the developers behind the project, who’ve been fighting to get the multiuse development approved for nearly half a decade.
It’s a setback for officials and others in the city who have resisted the project, drawing criticisms of having a “not in my backyard” attitude along the way.
“La Cañada Flintridge is the latest community that has failed in their effort to override state housing laws. Today’s favorable ruling should serve as a warning to other NIMBY jurisdictions that the state will hold every community accountable in planning for their fair share of housing,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
Newsom, along with state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, had intervened in the situation in December, filing a legal action asking the court to reverse the city’s denial of the project.
“We are pleased that the court agrees with us that La Cañada Flintridge must follow state housing laws to facilitate affordable housing and alleviate our housing crisis,” Bonta said in a statement. “The California Department of Justice is committed to enforcing state laws that increase housing supply and affordability.”
The three partners behind the project have strong ties to the city: Alexandra Hack grew up in the area; Garret Weyand lives a few blocks from the site; and Jonathan Curtis was once the mayor.
“This should be a sign for other cities that may be thinking about taking similar steps to La Cañada on builder’s remedy applications,” Weyand said. “The city’s reluctance to do this is one of the reasons housing is so expensive to build and develop in California.”
The trio filed the application under the builder’s remedy provision in November 2022, but city officials rejected it. They claimed La Cañada wasn’t subject to the provision since it had already “self-certified” its housing element plan, which had yet to be approved by the state Department of Housing and Community Development.
The city has since come into compliance, but because the developers submitted their application before Housing and Community Development approved La Cañada’s housing element plan, the builder’s remedy provision remained an option.
“Builder’s remedy is probably going to be one of most successful laws to build housing in the state of California,” Weyand said.
Last October, the Los Angeles City Planning Department ditched some of the region’s most ambitious actions to tackle racial and economic segregation and confront the ongoing affordability crisis. Two housing initiatives — an Affordable Housing Overlay and expansions to the Transit Oriented Communities program — would have made it possible to build affordable and mixed-income housing in areas traditionally off-limits to multifamily homes.
But core components of these proposals have been withdrawn to shield single-family neighborhoods from development. This move puts L.A. at risk of running afoul of California’s fair housing law, falling short on housing production goals, and increasing displacement in its most vulnerable communities. Revised proposals are expected to be made public this winter or spring, with public outreach to follow. City leadership can and should reverse this harmful decision.
The original proposals were a response to state mandates meant to accelerate housing construction to meet demand. Under these mandates, Los Angeles has made plans to add more than 450,000 new housing units through 2029, including amending its zoning rules by February 2025 to accommodate about 250,000 more homes.
California law requires that development programs “affirmatively further fair housing,” meaning that they should “overcome patterns of segregation and foster inclusive communities” and “address significant disparities in housing needs and access to opportunity.” In certifying L.A.’s housing plan, the state made clear that “rezoning for multifamily housing in higher opportunity and low-density neighborhoods” was crucial.
The initial Transit Oriented Communities expansion and Affordable Housing Overlay did just that. In their original form, the two initiatives combined could have added almost 200,000 new units citywide, with a focus on higher-income, transit-accessible neighborhoods. Many of these communities are dominated by single-family detached houses, including Rancho Park, Westwood and Encino, among others.
The change is significant, and unjust. Our review of the city’s data shows that L.A.’s current capacity for development — places where denser housing is already allowed, ignoring the rezoning proposals — is disproportionately concentrated in lower-income neighborhoods and communities of color. The data indicate that half of this capacity is in the poorest quarter of Los Angeles, while the wealthiest 10% of the city furnishes less than 1%.
We also found that the change to exclude single-family neighborhoods from rezoning slashes the two programs’ capacity by up to 82%, with the greatest reversals in the city’s wealthiest and whitest neighborhoods. Among the census tracts where the proposed zoning changes were cut by 75% or more, the median household income is $111,000. In neighborhoods where the original proposals are still being considered, it is $67,500. The racial and ethnic disparities are also stark, with tracts in the former group having more than twice the share of white residents as those in the latter (57% to 23%, respectively).
From a fair housing perspective, the Transit Oriented Communities expansion and Affordable Housing Overlay in single-family neighborhoods were L.A.’s strongest proposals. None of the alternatives come close to their potential to produce new mixed-income housing in the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, where exclusionary policies have limited opportunities for lower- and middle-income households and people of color.
With less capacity to build in higher-income neighborhoods where developers most want to invest, it’s likely that fewer apartments and condos will be constructed citywide in the years to come. As the housing supply falls further behind growing demand, affordability will decline. Meanwhile, more homes will be built in lower-income, renter-dominated neighborhoods, where residents are at greater risk of displacement as older apartments make way for larger multifamily buildings.
Angelenos, and Californians, shouldn’t accept the decision to exempt L.A.’s richest neighborhoods from helping to solve our housing crisis, insulating them from changes the city needs. The outcry of a vocal minority is no excuse to renege on the city’s commitments to fair housing.
The proposed changes are disheartening, but Los Angeles still has time to adopt a progressive housing affordability strategy, adding homes where they’re needed most. The city can start by restoring the rezoning plan to its original form, or by implementing similar strategies that direct most of the city’s new housing to higher-opportunity neighborhoods. Until L.A. takes those steps, very little about this housing plan can be called fair.
Aaron Barrall is a housing data analyst for the UCLA Lewis Center Housing Initiative, which Shane Phillips manages.
When Mayor Karen Bass laid out her budget proposal for the Los Angeles Police Department last year, she had big plans for rebuilding the size of that agency’s workforce.
The mayor’s budget called for the LAPD to end the 2023-24 budget year with about 9,500 police officers — a target that would require the hiring of nearly 1,000 officers over a 12-month period.
Now, a new assessment from City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo — the city’s top budget analyst — shows the department is falling well short of its staffing goal. By June 30, the end of the fiscal year, the department is expected to have 8,908 officers, according to Szabo’s projections.
That would leave the LAPD with its lowest sworn staffing levels in over two decades.
Szabo’s report, issued Tuesday, is likely to fuel calls for the council to scale back the LAPD’s hiring goal. Even before it was released, some at City Hall had begun arguing that the annual budget calls for hundreds of officer positions that have little to no chance of being filled.
“I do not think 9,500 is realistic,” Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez said Wednesday. “We can’t be in denial about this. It is not realistic. And the reason it’s not realistic is because … people who are entering the workforce do not want to be police officers.”
Soto-Martínez has long argued for the idea of shifting certain duties out of the LAPD and into agencies with unarmed responders. He asked for the LAPD’s 12-month hiring projections last month, just as the council began the process of cutting an as-yet-unknown number of civilian city positions — part of a larger effort at reining in a budget shortfall.
Meanwhile, police staffing is continuing its year-to-year slide.
The LAPD had about 10,000 officers in 2019, the last full year before COVID-19. In June 2020, not long after the murder of George Floyd, the City Council voted to scale back the deployment to about 9,750.
Bass took office in 2022. By the time her first budget went into effect, the number of officers had fallen to 9,027. In an attempt to reverse those trends, she negotiated a four-year package of pay increases and higher starting salaries.
That deal, approved in August, is now a major contributor to the city’s budget shortfall, which could reach as much as $400 million in the coming fiscal year.
De’Marcus Finnell, a spokesperson for Bass, said Wednesday that the salary agreement with the police officers’ union is producing results, helping to spur recruitment and lower attrition.
“According to conversations with LAPD, retirement rates could’ve been much higher if we hadn’t taken the action we did,” Finnell said in an email.
Councilmember Nithya Raman, who voted against the salary agreement last year, has been offering a different assessment, calling the police contract financially irresponsible. Raman, now running for reelection with support from the mayor, has repeatedly warned that the police raises will leave the city with insufficient funds for other government programs.
“I thought that the size of the raise would be so much that it would create significant budget deficits going forward,” she told an audience last month, adding: “So far, the data has proven me correct.”
Others on the council say they still support the police raises.
Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, in an interview, said attrition has “slowed significantly” at the LAPD since the contract was approved. The contract, she said, is “doing what we needed it to do.”
Bass, as part of her budget, had been hoping to hire 780 new officers during the current fiscal year. She also had been looking to bring 200 retirees back to the department.
So far, only 15 retirees have come back, Szabo said.
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The decrease in LAPD staffing is producing at least one benefit — cutting costs in the city budget.
The city’s financial analysts are currently projecting an $82-million shortfall in the LAPD’s sworn salary account this year. Had the department had been successful in reaching the mayor’s hiring goals, that number would have grown to more than $118 million, Szabo said in his report.
Meanwhile, some categories of crime continue to fall.
Homicides have decreased by nearly 6% compared with the prior year, according to LAPD figures covering the period ending Jan. 27. Burglaries decreased by nearly 7% over the same time frame.
Other types of crime are on the rise. Assaults have gone up by 12% compared to the same period last year, according to LAPD figures. The number of shooting victims is up 29% so far this year.
PEOPLEIan Staber recently joined SV Design in Beverly as the project manager for the firmâs commercial architecture team. Staber brings 13 years of experience ranging from architectural design, kitchen and cabinet design, project management, and facilities management, having worked for multiple firms between Connecticut, the Boston area and Colorado. As project manager at SV Design, he oversees several local, affordable housing developments and is working on multifamily and institutional projects from conception to completion. Staber has a bachelorâs degree and masterâs in architecture from Northeastern University. Most recently, he had worked with Seger Architects in Salem on projects ranging from office fit-outs, multifamilies, dormitories, and restaurants. He lives in Salem with his wife and two kids. On the side, he creates custom calligraphy designs and paints large scale murals as Esoteric Calligraffiti.
Lou DiFronzo, Matthew LaLone and Carole Wedge were recently elected to the board of directors for Northeast Arc, a nonprofit organization based in Danvers that serves children and adults with disabilities. DiFronzo, who lives in North Reading, is a partner at Seyfarth Shaw, LLP, and provides advisory legal services to his clients concentrating in commercial transactions and general outside counsel counseling to private companies. He has been involved in numerous complex financing and M&A transactions helping his clients to achieve their business objectives. LaLone, who lives in Melrose, is President of Administration and General Counsel at Energy North, one of the largest wholesale distributors of fuel in New England and Upstate New York. It also operates and owns 70 gas stations, convenience stores, car washes and food service locations as well as providing 45,000 households with heating oil and propane. Wedge, who lives in Concord, recently retired as a principal at Shepley Bulfinch, a national design firm with studios in Boston, Durham, Hartford, Houston, and Phoenix. As the former president and CEO, she is recognized for her leadership in the firmâs evolution and growth into an innovative organization with an open and diverse culture.
MILESTONESWilliam Raveis Real Estate recently won the National Top Brokerage Award at Inman Connect in Las Vegas. Since 1998, the Inman Innovator Awards have honored companies, individuals and new technology that increases productivity, efficiency and transparency for consumers and real estate professionals alike. Out of more than 150,000 real estate firms in the country, only a handful of companies meet the criteria to qualify. Inmanâs highest honor of âTop Brokerage 2023â was awarded to Raveis, which has been a real estate industry leader for 50 years. âWeâve been on a winning streak with number one for global, HGTV Ultimate House Hunt, best local agency awards, and now we are officially the number one real estate company in the United States,â said founder and CEO William âBillâ Raveis. âWe are very proud to be recognized and owe our outstanding success to the wonderful sales associates and employees at William Raveis.â The company has more than 4,500 sales associates, 400 employees, and over 140 office locations from Maine to Florida, with local offices in Marblehead and other North Shore communities.
When Varlin Higbee eyes the scrubby forest of pinyon pines and juniper trees that fill the high desert outside this old Union Pacific Railroad town, there’s just one thought that crosses his mind:
“They’re just a wildfire waiting to happen,” the Lincoln County commissioner says of the low, bushy trees.
And Higbee is not alone in his distaste for the plants.
Lincoln County Commissioner Varlin Higbee, 63, in the rural eastern Nevada community of Caliente, Nev., which he believes would benefit from a plan to harvest pinyon and juniper trees to make methanol.
(Louis Sahagun / Los Angeles Times)
Despite the many uses Native Americans once had for pinyon-juniper woodlands — not the least of which was sustenance from pine nuts — ranchers and federal land managers throughout the American Southwest have now come to regard them as a highly flammable and invasive scourge.
In parts of California and much of the Great Basin, land owners have declared war on pinyon pines and juniper trees, clearing them from rangelands with chains, bulldozers, saws and herbicides. At the same time, the trees are drawing increasing interest as a source of renewable energy — such as in California’s Lassen County, where 150,000 tons of the trees are fed into the Honey Lake Power Plant each year to generate energy for customers including San Diego Gas & Electric.
Most recently, Higbee and other Nevada officials have proposed converting them into green methanol — a biofuel that could be used for everything from generating electricity to powering cargo ships calling on the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
In January, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo signed a declaration of understanding with Denmark to develop an industrial park in Lincoln County where methanol would be extracted from wood and used as a fuel additive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from diesel engines.
To hear Lombardo tell it, it’s a match made in heaven.
“This innovative and collaborative technology project produces clean renewable energy, while simultaneously utilizing trees that need to be thinned out to maintain a healthy forest,” Lombardo said.
Environmental groups, however, have blasted the plan. Among other criticisms, they say the deal with Denmark sets the stage for a fight over the future of an ecologically rich landscape, much of which has remained untouched by the glitz and bustle of Las Vegas and Reno.
Gary Hughes of Biofuelwatch, an advocacy group focused on the impact of bioenergy development, dismissed the proposal as “a technological dead end road and heartbreaking waste of healthy trees.”
A Maersk line container ship from Denmark awaits unloading at the Port of Los Angeles. Denmark is looking to the state of Nevada to convert pinyon pine and juniper trees into biofuel that could be used to power cargo ships.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Denmark — which is home to Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping company — has pledged to become 100% fossil fuel free by 2050, and bioenergy is a key part of that ambitious effort.
“Denmark is at the forefront of renewable energy developments and closer collaboration between Nevada and Denmark can only strengthen our joint quests to create economic growth and well-paid jobs — while also doing good for the environment and our planet,” read a statement from Danish Ambassador to the U.S. Jesper Møller Sørensen.
Nevada officials want to locate the facility in the middle of about 1.3 million acres of pinyon-juniper woodlands in public lands some 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas. The proposed site is also crossed by a Union Pacific mainline that terminates at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
The facility, according to officials, could attract $260 million in investments, create 150 sorely needed local jobs and become a model for creating similar industrial parks in other parts of Nevada.
But there are significant environmental issues involved in scalping eastern Nevada’s mountainous public lands of century-old trees standing 15 to 20 feet tall.
“I’d be surprised if this proposal is successful,” Hughes said. “So far, efforts to produce methanol from wood at scale for the aviation industry, for example, have all failed.”
Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity, called it a new chapter in “our nation’s 200-year-long war on pinyon-juniper ecosystems.”
“Each generation finds a new excuse to justify their destruction because they don’t provide the economic benefits obtained from tall pine trees favored by the timber industry,” he said.
“Now, it seems the state of Nevada is popping champagne corks because it believes it has found a way of making money from the trees,” Donnelly said. “But I see it as a short-term carbon benefit at the expense of the long-term carbon sequestration benefits provided by a healthy forest.”
The development of renewable energy facilities — solar, wind, geothermal and biomass — on public lands has been a top priority of the federal government as it seeks to ease the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels and curb global warming.
With that goal in mind, the Bureau of Land Management is working closely in Lincoln County with the governor’s economic development office, engineers in Denmark, and Sixco Nevada Inc. — a consortium of companies focused on deployment of new technologies — to develop the proposal.
In the eyes of the BLM, pinyon pine and juniper trees are weedy species that invade sagebrush rangelands and increase the risk of wildfire. They say an overabundance of pinyon-juniper woodlands fueled the 2022 Calf Canyon-Hermits Peak fire in New Mexico, which burned 341,735 acres, a state record.
But environmentalists argue that the loss of the trees outweighs the benefits of biofuel and biomass production.
Pinyon-juniper woodlands absorb atmospheric carbon through the process of photosynthesis, and have been widespread for thousands of years in much of Nevada and Utah, as well as portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming and Baja California. Critics of the biofuel project say the woodlands’ role in carbon storage is critical to battling climate change.
Environmentalists also worry that the loss and degradation of pinyon-juniper woodlands will pose a significant threat to a number of animal species, including the bright blue pinyon jay, which is under consideration for listing as a federally endangered species.
Lincoln County Commissioner Varlin Higbee, center, walks with Derick Hembd, right, president of Sixco Nevada, a consortium of firms focused on infrastructure, and Bill Vinnicombet, a Sixco Nevada energy finance advisor, at the proposed site of the tree harvesting and biofuel production project northeast of Las Vegas.
(Louis Sahagun / Los Angeles Times)
The Western Watershed Project and Center for Biological Diversity have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court challenging the BLM’s approval of a plan to remove pinyon-juniper forests across more than 380,000 acres of sagebrush shrublands on federal land in eastern Nevada.
The lawsuit claims the plan would eradicate habitat for imperiled sage grouse and pinyon jays with techniques including “chaining” — the dragging of an anchor chain from a U.S. Navy vessel between two bulldozers in order to uproot and crush pinyon-juniper forests and sagebrush.
Derick Hembd, president of Sixco Nevada, said the governor’s proposal calls for using shears and saws to harvest individual trees, leaving saplings and sagebrush untouched.
It remains to be seen, however, whether concerns over the future of pinyon jays and other creatures threaten to stall or derail the project in rural Lincoln County, which is best known as a gateway to the secretive Area 51 U.S. Air Force military installation.
But Higbee, 63, has high hopes for the proposal that could also breathe new life into struggling rural communities such as Caliente, where the population of about 1,100 people hasn’t budged in decades.
“We need to grow,” Higbee said with frustration. “I’m going to do everything in my power to get this project up and running.”
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to reject California’s plan to curb air pollution in Los Angeles, a consequential move that could result in stiff economic sanctions and federal regulatory oversight of the nation’s smoggiest region.
Despite having the strictest air pollution rules in the nation, Southern California has never complied with federal health standards for ozone, the lung-searing gas commonly called smog. Because of this, state and local air regulators are required to submit plans to the EPA detailing how they intend to reduce pollution and comply with federal standards.
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California air regulators acknowledge that the region still needs to reduce smog-forming nitrogen oxides by more than 100 tons per day in order to achieve the 1997 standard for ozone.
However, the South Coast Air Quality Management District proposal calls on the federal government to make most of those cuts — at least 67 tons per day — arguing that some of the largest sources of smog-forming emissions are federally regulated, such as ships, trains and aircraft. Local air quality officials lack the jurisdiction to regulate mobile sources of emissions, and can only control stationary sources, such as industrial facilities.
In a recent draft response, the EPA has proposed rejecting California’s plan, declaring “states do not have authority” under the Clean Air Act or the Constitution to order the federal government to reduce pollution.
In a pointed response, local air officials claimed the EPA was responsible for the damaging health effects of Los Angeles area smog, because it has failed to offer solutions to curb emissions from “sources that they know are beyond our control.”
“U.S. EPA’s draft decision is disheartening,” read a statement from the air district. “South Coast AQMD intends to comment on this new proposal and take all appropriate actions in hopes that this decision does not become final. More importantly, U.S. EPA will need to answer the millions of residents, especially children, who have asthma, lung disease and other illnesses associated with air pollution that continue to suffer.”
The EPA has until July 1 to decide whether to finalize the rejection. If the state and local air regulators fail to submit a plan that the EPA finds acceptable within that time, the federal government could withhold billions of dollars in highway funding, place strict requirements on new permits and even impose a federal plan to curb smog.
The EPA has disapproved of the air district’s plans several times in the past, but the region has managed to avert potential sanctions.
The proposed denial is the latest confrontation between Southern California air regulators and the Biden EPA — two unlikely adversaries who have clashed for nearly two years over how to solve the region’s long-standing issues with smog.
It has also highlighted the complex nature of regulating pollution in the region where at least three entities have authority — the local air district, which oversees smokestack emissions; the California Air Resources Board, which governs in-state vehicles; and the EPA, which handles interstate and international travel.
However, some environmental advocates say the dilemma is a collective failure by every level of government.
Adrian Martinez, a senior attorney with Earthjustice, said the conflict follows years of repeated delays and deadline extensions, when all three environmental agencies were capable of cutting more emissions.
“The plan to meet our clean air standards relied on these faith-based assumptions that we’ll figure out how to reduce the pollution at a later time. And what ended up happening is we never figured it out,” Martinez said.
Historically, Southern California has been plagued by smog, which forms when the region’s persistent sunlight interacts with vehicle exhaust and smokestack emissions. The region’s mountainous terrain confines this toxic haze over the region, rather than allowing it to disperse.
Although there has been significant progress over the last several decades through the development of cleaner vehicle engines and pollution controls for industry, the region’s smog remains the worst in the country.
Since 1997, nitrogen oxides have decreased 70% in the air basin. The majority of those emission reductions are the result of stricter vehicle standards imposed by the state, and locally imposed regulations on industry, according to the South Coast air district.
As emission reductions have stalled and aircraft emissions have risen, the air district has found itself under increasing pressure to force the EPA’s hand. According to estimates, even if Southern California eliminates emissions from all building and industrial sources, it wouldn’t be enough to meet federal standards.
The air district has sued the EPA for violating the Clean Air Act, arguing it was impossible for the region to comply with federal smog standards without massive cuts from federal sources. The move was intended to compel the EPA to adopt new regulatory strategies that would curtail pollution from ports, railyards and airports. The air district later settled the case.
For its part, the Biden administration last year adopted tighter vehicle emission standards, including for heavy-duty trucks, which is expected to reduce smog.
But these federal requirements still pale in comparison to rules in California — the only state that can implement its own vehicle emission standards with federal approval.
“We acknowledge that there are sources of air pollution in South Coast that the air district and CARB do not have the regulatory authority to control,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement. “EPA has made it a very high priority to help reduce mobile source emissions through rulemaking and leveraging unprecedented federal funding … wherever possible.”
The EPA is accepting public comments on its proposed disapproval of the regional smog plan until March 4.
If the EPA finalizes this disapproval, California will have 18 months to obtain the federal agency’s approval for a new plan. By failing to meet that deadline, the federal government would require some newly permitted businesses to reduce twice as many tons of smog-forming as they emit.
Six months later, if the deadline still hasn’t been met, the Federal Highway Administration is required to impose a moratorium on highway funding (with exceptions for mass transit and public safety).
No more than two years after final disapproval, the EPA must enforce a federal implementation plan to achieve federal smog standards.
California’s lawsuit against Huntington Beach, which accused the city of defying state efforts to ease the housing crisis, appears to be back on a fast track after the suit was temporarily halted by a Superior Court judge in November.
A three-judge panel at California’s 4th Circuit Court of Appeal instructed a lower court Thursday that Huntington Beach’s status as a charter city did not stop the state from seeking a rapid hearing on its lawsuit. Charter cities adopt a voter-approved set of governing rules that give them more say over local affairs.
The lawsuit, brought by Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Department of Housing and Community Development, alleges that the city violated state law by rejecting a plan to provide enough houses and apartments to meet the region’s expected population growth.
Thursday’s action did not decide the merits of the state’s case against Huntington Beach. Instead, it paves the way for the case to continue on an expedited basis, unless the city can persuade the courts to halt the lawsuit for other reasons.
Although numerous cities have been slow to increase their housing supplies, Huntington Beach has drawn fire repeatedly from state officials because it has pointedly refused to follow state laws that address the housing crisis.
Triggering the latest battle, Huntington Beach’s council voted in March against a proposal to zone for roughly 13,400 additional housing units — the number assigned to the city by the Southern California Assn. of Governments in 2021. Under state law, cities have to revise the housing element of their general plans periodically to comply with a “regional housing needs assessment” done by intergovernmental groups such as SCAG.
The day after state officials filed an early version of its current lawsuit, Huntington Beach sought protection in federal court. In that case, the city claims the state-mandated regional housing needs assessment and its additional housing demands usurp Huntington Beach’s authority as a charter city, in violation of the California Constitution. It also argues that the mandates violate the city’s rights under the U.S. Constitution’s 1st and 14th Amendments, as well as the Commerce Clause.
For the record:
7:50 p.m. Jan. 19, 2024A previous version of this story said a federal judge rejected the state’s lawsuit. The ruling was against the city’s suit.
Huntington Beach persuaded San Diego County Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal in November to put the state’s lawsuit on hold until after the city’s federal lawsuit could be decided. Shortly thereafter, a federal judge rejected the city’s lawsuit, saying the city had no standing to sue. Huntington Beach has since taken its case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
On Thursday, the state 4th Circuit panel wrote that by state statute, “charter cities are exempt from some requirements of state planning and zoning law,” but “like all other cities, charter cities must adopt general plans with the mandatory elements specified by state law, including a housing element.”
It went on to say that state law gives top priority to lawsuits against a city’s general plan, obligating the court to hold a hearing within 120 days if requested.
In a statement Thursday, Bonta said, “Today the Court of Appeal affirmed that every city will be held to the same standard…. No one, including Huntington Beach, is exempt from following the law. We’ll continue to use every legal tool available to hold those who break state housing laws accountable.”
Huntington Beach City Atty. Michael E. Gates, however, said the appeals court misread state law. “We will continue to challenge any ruling that applies state law to charter cities that do not apply to charter cities,” he said in an interview.
Bacal has set a hearing for Jan. 26 on Bonta’s motion to let the state’s lawsuit proceed. Gates said Bacal “could continue the stay on other bases,” or she could lift the stay and have the two sides start litigating.
In 2020, after the tragic murder of George Floyd, there was a moment when it seemed as if America, California included, was ready to reform our broken and discriminatory criminal justice system.
Proposition 47, which helped lower California’s prison population by changing certain nonviolent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, is likely to be rolled back, if not undone this year.
Drug dealers are being charged with murder as deaths from fentanyl overdoses continue to spike, a new tactic in a new war on drugs, little different from the one that led to overincarceration of Black and brown people during the crack epidemic of the ’80s when we insisted we could arrest our way out of poverty and addiction.
It is a troubling reversal of both attitude and reform that, as history has proven, will not lead to the safer communities we all want.
But what is about to happen inside San Quentin State Prison has the potential to fundamentally change crime and punishment in the Golden State, and beyond.
Because as much as we want to believe that a single law, more police or a tougher sentence can protect us, the truth is that the best way to cut crime is to stop it from happening in the first place — not with the pounding fist of punishment that for decades has left us with jails and prisons where more than a third of people return within a few years of release.
But instead by helping people to find other paths, and giving them opportunities to survive in ways that uplift rather than prey upon our communities — an approach with proven results both in the U.S. and other countries, where incarceration decades ago embraced rehabilitation not as an option but a mandate.
Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he wanted to transform San Quentin, California’s oldest and most famous prison, into a new kind of incarceration facility modeled after Scandinavian principles of rehabilitation, where that mandate for changing lives is written into law.
With his love of catchphrases, he dubbed it the California Model and left the details for later. On Friday, a long-awaited explanation of what the California Model will look like in practice was released, providing both an ideal and a blueprint for what is a radical, subversive and important shift in what it means to be in prison.
“This is a big deal,” Darrell Steinberg told me. He helped chair the committee that created the recommendations, and is the mayor of Sacramento, a city as plagued as any by the drug addiction, mental illness and homelessness that have driven much of the shift in attitudes around crime. So he knows as well as any that voters want results, not experiments.
“This will enhance public safety for the self-evident reason that when people have the tools to succeed on the outside they will have better lives and are much less likely to commit another crime,” he said.
It is visionary, he said, but also doable.
A core part of the transition involves changing the job of correctional officers from enforcers and adversaries to participants in rehabilitation, a metamorphosis that the union representing correctional officers supports. Under the plan, officers would take college-level classes on trauma-informed practices, and be expected to interact with inmates as mentors and guides.
San Quentin itself would also receive a makeover, albeit one curtailed by our current economic realities. Cramped cells that currently house two people in 46 square feet, about half the size of a decent bathroom, would be removed to allow for single-occupancy spaces that Steinberg said are the minimum dignity demands.
Correctional officers would also see an upgrade. Housing prices are so high in Marin County, where San Quentin is located, that it is impossible for many to live close enough for a daily shift (a two-bedroom averages more than $3,000 a month), leaving them with hours-long commutes.
So some officers have resorted to “dry camping” in trailers with homeless-like conditions that lack running water, electricity or even sewers. They are packing a week’s worth of work into a few days just to get by. The new plan would give correctional officers a campground with basic facilities and access to showers and safe spaces to relax — perhaps making the job less stressful.
For incarcerated people, the change will mean that on Day 1 of their sentences, there is a coordinated effort to arrange services — mental health care, education, job training, substance abuse treatment. And that there are people to implement those plans, and support them.
While that seems basic, it doesn’t happen now. People are largely left to their own devices to navigate an opaque and inefficient system that is so archaic that some of it isn’t even computerized. Wait lists are long and information can be hard to come by.
If the ideas laid out in the plan makes it through the upcoming budget negotiations (in a year with a large and unexpected deficit), it will be a culture change inside the most infamous prison in the country’s second-largest state prison system (Texas is the only state with a larger incarcerated population).
Though taking the California Model from paper to practice is the work of years, the proposal for San Quentin has the potential to be the largest and most meaningful criminal justice reform in decades — if we get it right, which of course is always an if when it comes to government.
But it is a big swing with the potential for real payoff — not the knee-jerk anger and fear of proposals like gutting Proposition 47, which will only repeat the mistakes of the past.
There will always be predators and there will always be crime. And admittedly, it all sounds touchy-feely and nebulous, like we are about to spend a bunch on money on holding criminals’ hands while they talk about their childhoods and get their GED.
And to be honest, that’s part of it, one we shouldn’t ignore.
At its root, the California Model is about dignity and compassion, creating policy around the belief that healing isn’t just for the innocent, and it isn’t soft.
Fixing humans, especially ones broken enough to hurt others, is the hardest of tasks.
But it can be done.
And if California turns San Quentin into a place where that happens, we will all be safer.
Dozens of digital billboards are poised to go up above Los Angeles freeways and boulevards, marking the largest expansion in the city in nearly two decades.
Despite opposition from more than a dozen neighborhood groups, the City Council backed a plan on Friday to allow 71 digital billboards to be installed on property owned by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Eleven council members approved the plan, with Traci Park, Nithya Raman and Katy Yaroslavsky voting no.
Opponents argued that the influx of new signs, which would change images every eight seconds, would make L.A. streets even deadlier by distracting drivers, while adding a new source of blight to the cityscape.
“Our shared open space should not be for sale to commercial messaging,” said Barbara Brodie, co-president of the Coalition for a Beautiful Los Angeles, an advocacy group that has opposes billboards. “They will cause unnecessary injury and death, pollute our visual environment and harm wildlife.”
The largest sign, at 1,200 square feet, will be alongside Union Station flashing at commuters along the 101 freeway as they head downtown from East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights. The stark visual changes the illuminated signs will bring to the landscape could scare Hollywood filmmakers away, actor Stacey Travis told the City Council.
“For lucrative one-hour shows and features, L.A. rarely plays itself,” said Travis, SAG-AFTRA’s chair of government and public policy in Los Angeles. “They will simply move productions elsewhere, and (the city will) lose the jobs, revenue and tourism that brings in millions of millions of dollars.”
But city and county officials say the new billboards will be a lucrative source of revenue while also offering traffic alerts. Seven out of every eight images are expected to be ads.
Holly Rockwell, a Metro executive who is overseeing the program, said the billboards will provide “real-time transportation messaging” and money that can be used for transportation projects, while also replacing “old and dilapidated static signs.”
During events like the Olympics, the billboards will be used to help direct traffic, she said.
The city and county will split the revenues, which were at one point projected to reach $300 million to $500 millionover 20 years. As many as 300 nondigital billboards throughout the city could be removed through the program.
Metro’s plan now calls for 52 freeway-facing digital billboards, which can operate nearly 24 hours a day from 5 a.m. to 3 a.m. Another 19 billboards along major boulevards will operate from 5 a.m. to midnight. Before the latter group of signs can go up, they must go through a city permitting process.
Since all are on Metro property, many are near rail stations or along large thoroughfares, for example Westchester at Century and Aviation Boulevards near Los Angeles International Airport.
The fight over digital billboards harks back more than two decades, when the city blocked the widespread use of billboards that shone into people’s homes, confining them to certain areas. The legal battle between the city and outdoor advertising companies played out in court for years. Since then, the city has restricted digital signs to special districts in commercial areas.
Most digital billboards in the city have been concentrated downtown. Friday’s vote allows them in many more neighborhoods across L.A.
Since the vote was not unanimous, the billboard plan will requires a second vote next week. Groups such as Scenic Los Angeles, which has fought the proliferation of billboards, still hope to thwart the plan.
“There has been zero transparency on the financial aspects of this. When we did our own analysis, it looks horrible for the city and Metro,” said Dustan Batton, executive director of Scenic Los Angeles. He said thousands of his members oppose the plan, and he hopes that their pressure will convince some City Council members to change their minds.
The plan originally included 93 billboards but was watered down as it wound its way through city committees, with several council members opposing billboards in their districts.
Raman, who doesn’t have any billboards in her district, said she opposed the plan because of the hours of operation and concerns that billboards could be too close to housing. She said there has not been enough research into the effects of the billboards on traffic safety.
Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.
You can sense it in the ubiquitous “Help Wanted” posters in artsy shops and restaurants, in the ranks of university students living out of their cars and in the outsize percentage of locals camping on the streets.
This seaside county known for its windswept beauty and easy living is in the midst of one of the most serious housing crises anywhere in home-starved California. Santa Cruz County, home to a beloved surf break and a bohemian University of California campus, also claims the state’s highest rate of homelessness and, by one measure based on local incomes, its least affordable housing.
Leaders in the city of Santa Cruz have responded to this hardship in a land of plenty — and to new state laws demanding construction of more affordable housing — with a plan to build up rather than out.
Many Santa Cruz business owners back the city’s plan for high-rise development, saying the city needs more affordable housing for servers and retail workers.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
A downtown long centered on quaint sycamore-lined Pacific Avenue has boomed with new construction in recent years. Shining glass and metal apartment complexes sprout in multiple locations, across a streetscape once dominated by 20th century classics like the Art Deco-inspired Palomar Inn apartments.
And the City Council and planning department envision building even bigger and higher, with high-rise apartments of up to 12 stories in the southern section of downtown that comes closest to the city’s boardwalk and the landmark wooden roller coaster known as the Giant Dipper.
“It’s on everybody’s lips now, this talk about our housing challenge,” said Don Lane, a former mayor and an activist for homeless people. “The old resistance to development is breaking down, at least among a lot of people.”
In recent years, Santa Cruz has approved development of modern multistory housing complexes, part of a broader effort to add housing stock.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Said current Mayor Fred Keeley, a former state assemblyman: “It’s not a question of ‘no growth’ anymore. It’s a question of where are you going to do this. You can spread it all over the city, or you can make the urban core more dense.”
But not everyone in famously tolerant Santa Cruz is going along. The high-rise push has spawned a backlash, exposing sharp divisions over growth and underscoring the complexities, even in a city known for its progressive politics, of trying to keep desirable communities affordable for the teachers, waiters, firefighters and store clerks who provide the bulk of services.
A group originally called Stop the Skyscrapers — now Housing for People — protests that a proposed city “housing element” needlessly clears the way for more apartments than state housing officials demand, while providing too few truly affordable units.
City officials say the plan they hope to finalize in the coming weeks, with its greater height limits, only creates a path for new construction. The intentions of individual property owners and the vicissitudes of the market will continue to make it challenging to build the 3,736 additional units the state has mandated for the city.
“We’ve talked to a lot of people, going door to door, and the feeling is it’s just too much, too fast,” said Frank Barron, a retired county planner and Housing for People co-founder. “The six- and seven-story buildings that they’re building now are already freaking people out. When they hear what [the city is] proposing now could go twice as high, they’re completely aghast.”
Frank Barron is among the activists who say the City Council’s development plans are out of character for the laid-back beach town.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Susan Monheit, a former state water official and another Housing for People co-founder, calls 12-story buildings “completely out of the human scale,” adding: “It’s out of scale with Santa Cruz’s branding.”
Housing for People has gathered enough signatures to put a measure on the March 2024 ballot that, if approved, would require a vote of the people for development anywhere in the city that would exceed the zoning restrictions codified in the current general plan, which include a cap of roughly seven or eight stories downtown.
The activists say that they are trying to restore the voices of everyday Santa Cruzans and that city leaders are giving in to out-of-town builders and “developer overreach laws.”
The nascent campaign has generated spirited debate. Opponents contend the slow-growth measure would slam on the brakes, just as the city is overcoming decades of construction inertia. They say Santa Cruz should be a proud outlier in a long string of wealthy coastal cities that have defied the state’s push to add housing and bring down exorbitant home prices and rental costs.
Diana Alfaro, who works for a Santa Cruz development company, said many of the complaints about high-rise construction sound like veiled NIMBYism.
“We always hear, ‘I support affordable housing, but just not next to me. Not here. Not there. Not really anywhere,’ ” said Alfaro, an activist with the national political group YIMBY [Yes In My Back Yard] Action. “Is that really being inclusive?”
Zav Hershfield, a renters’ rights activist, advocates rent control caps and housing developments owned by the state or cooperatives.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The dispute has divided Santa Cruz’s progressive political universe. What does it mean to be a “good liberal” on land-use issues in an era when UC Santa Cruz students commonly triple up in small rooms and Zillow reports a median rent of $3,425 that is higher than San Francisco’s?
Beginning in the 1970s, left-leaning students at the new UC campus helped power a slow-growth movement that limited construction across broad swaths of Santa Cruz County. Over the decades, the need for affordable housing was a recurring discussion. The county was a leader in requiring that builders who put up five units of housing or more set aside 15% of the units at below-market rates.
But Mayor Keeley said local officials gave only a “head nod” to the issue when it came to approving specific projects. “Well, here we are, 30 or 40 years later,” Keeley said, “and these communities are not affordable.”
Santa Cruz County, known for its windswept beauty and easy living, is in the midst of one of the most serious housing crises anywhere in California.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Today, with 265,000 residents, the county is substantially wealthy and white.
An annual survey this year found Santa Cruz County pushed past San Francisco to be the least affordable rental market in the country, given income levels in both places. And many observers say UC Santa Cruz students contend with the toughest housing market of any college town in the state.
State legislators have crafted dozens of laws in recent years to encourage construction of more homes, particularly apartments, across the state. While California has long required local governments to draft “housing elements” to demonstrate their commitment to affordable housing, state officials only recently passed other measures to actually push cities to put the plans into practice.
Under the new regulations, regional government associations draw up a Regional Housing Needs Assessment, designating how many housing units — including affordable ones — should be built during an eight-year cycle. The state Department of Housing and Community Development can reject plans it deems inadequate.
For years 2024 to 2031, Santa Cruz was told it should build at least 3,736 units, on top of its existing 24,036.
For decades, Santa Cruz culture has centered on quaint shops and restaurants along sycamore-lined Pacific Avenue.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Santa Cruz and other cities have been motivated, at least in part, by a heavy “stick”: In cases when cities fail to produce adequate housing plans, the state’s so-called “builder’s remedy” essentially allows developers to propose building whatever they want, provided some of the housing is set aside for low- or middle-income families. In cities like Santa Monica and La Cañada-Flintridge, builders have invoked the builder’s remedy to push ahead with large housing projects, over the objections of city leaders.
The Santa Cruz City Council resolved to avoid losing control of planning decisions. A key part of their plan envisions putting up to 1,800 units in a sleepy downtown neighborhood of automobile businesses, shops and low-rise apartments south of Laurel Street. Initial concepts suggested one block could go as high as 175 feet (roughly 16 stories), but council members later proposed a 12-story height limit, substantially taller than the stately eight-story Palomar, which remains the city’s tallest building.
City planners say focusing growth in the downtown neighborhood makes sense, because bus lines converge there at a transit center and residents can walk to shops and services.
“The demand for housing is not going away,” said Lee Butler, the city’s director of planning and community development, “and this means we will have less development pressure in other areas of the city and county, where it is less sustainable to grow.”
Santa Cruz planning director Lee Butler advocates concentrating new development downtown, rather than building in areas where growth is less sustainable.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
A public survey found support for a variety of other proposed improvements to make the downtown more attractive to walkers, bikers and tourists. Among other features, the plan would concentrate new restaurants and shops around the San Lorenzo River Walk; replace the fabric-topped 2,400-seat Kaiser Permanente Arena, which hosts the Santa Cruz Warriors (the G-league affiliate of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors), with a bigger entertainment and sports venue; and better connect downtown with the beach and boardwalk.
Business owners say they favor the housing plan for a couple of reasons: They hope new residents will bring new commerce, and they want some of the affordable apartments to go to their workers, who frequently commute well over an hour from places such as Gilroy and Salinas.
Restaurateur Zach Davis called the high cost of housing “the No. 1 factor” that led to the 2018 closure of Assembly, a popular farm-to-table restaurant he co-owned.
“How do we keep our community intact, if the people who make it all happen, the workers who make Santa Cruz what it is, can’t afford to live here anymore?” Davis asked.
One opponent calls the plan to add high-rises to the city’s picturesque downtown “out of scale with Santa Cruz’s branding.”
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The city’s plan indicates that 859 of the units built over the next eight years will be for “very low income” families. But the term is relative, tied to a community’s median income, which in Santa Cruz is $132,800 for a family of four. Families bringing home between $58,000 and $82,000 would qualify as very low income. Tenants in that bracket would pay $1,800 a month for a three-bedroom apartment in one recently completed complex, built under the city’s requirement that 20% of units be rented for below-market rents.
The people pushing for high-rise development say expanding the housing supply will stem ever-rising rents. Opponents counter that the continued growth of UC Santa Cruz, which hopes to add 8,500 students by 2040, and a new surge of highly paid Silicon Valley “tech bros” looking to put down roots in beachy Santa Cruz would quickly gobble up whatever number of new units are built.
“They say that if you just build more housing, the prices will come down. Which is, of course, not true,” said Gary Patton, a former county supervisor and an original leader in the slow-growth movement. “So we’ll have lots more housing, with lots more traffic, less parking, more neighborhood impacts and more rich people moving into Santa Cruz.”
Leaders on Santa Cruz’s political left say new construction only touches one aspect of the housing crisis. Some of the leaders of Tenant Sanctuary, a renters’ rights group, would like to see Santa Cruz tamp down rents by creating complexes owned by the state or cooperatives and enacting a rent control law capping annual increases.
“No matter what they build, we need housing where the price is not tied to market swings and how much money can be squeezed out of a given area of land,” said Zav Hershfield, a board member for the group.
The up-zoning of downtown parcels has won the support of much of the city’s establishment, including the county Chamber of Commerce, whose chief executive said exorbitant housing prices are excluding blue-collar workers and even some well-paid professionals. “The question is, do you want a lively, vital, economically thriving community?” said Casey Beyer, CEO of the business group. “Or do you want to be a sleepy retirement community?”
The town clock is one of several landmarks in the beach town.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Just days after the anti-high-rise measure qualified for the March ballot, the two sides began bickering over what impact it would have.
Lane, the former mayor, and two affordable housing developers wrote an op-ed for the Lookout Santa Cruz news site that said the ballot measure is crafted so broadly it would apply to all “development projects.” They contend that could trigger the need for citywide votes for projects as modest as raising a fence from 6 feet to 7 feet, adding an ADU to a residential property or building a shelter for the homeless, if the projects exceed current practices in a given neighborhood.
The authors accused ballot measure proponents of faux environmentalism. “If we don’t go up,” they wrote, “we have less housing near jobs — and more people driving longer distances to get to work.”
The ballot measure proponents countered that their critics were misrepresenting facts. They said the measure would not necessitate voter approval for mundane improvements and would come into play in relatively few circumstances, for projects that require amendments to the city’s General Plan.
While not staking out a formal position on the ballot measure, the city’s planning staff has concluded the measure could force citizen votes for relatively modest construction projects.
The two sides also can’t agree on the impact of a second provision of the ballot measure. It would increase from 20% to 25% the percentage of “inclusionary” (below-market-rate) units that developers would have to include in complexes of 30 units or more.
The ballot measure writers say such an increase signals their intent to assure that as much new housing as possible goes to the less affluent. But their opponents say that when cities try to force developers to include too many sub-market apartments, the builders end up walking away.
Santa Cruz’s housing inventory shows that the city has the potential to add as many as 8,364 units in the next eight years, when factoring in proposals such as the downtown high-rises and UC Santa Cruz’s plan to add about 1,200 units of student housing. That’s more than double the number required by the state. But the Department of Housing and Community Development requires this sort of “buffer,” because the reality is that many properties zoned for denser housing won’t get developed during the eight-year cycle.
As with many aspects of the downtown up-zoning, the two sides are at odds over whether incorporating the potential for extra development amounts to judicious planning or developer-friendly overkill.
Joyful, left, and Valerie Christy, right, jam for fun and a few dollars in downtown Santa Cruz.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The city’s voters have rejected housing-related measures three times in recent years. In 2018, they decisively turned down a rent control proposal. Last year, they said no to taxing owners who leave homes in the community sitting empty. But they also rejected a measure that would have blocked a plan to relocate the city’s central library while also building 124 below-market-rate apartment units.
The last time locals got this worked up about their downtown may have been at the start of the new millennium, when the City Council considered cracking down on street performers. That prompted the owner of Bookshop Santa Cruz, another local landmark, to print T-shirts and bumper stickers entreating fellow residents to “Keep Santa Cruz Weird.”
Santa Cruzans once again are being asked to consider the look and feel of their downtown and whether its future should be left to the City Council, or voters themselves. The measure provokes myriad questions, including these: Can funky, earnest, compassionate Santa Cruz remain that way, even with high-rise apartments? And, with so little housing for students and working folks, has it already lost its charm?
Over the next two decades, Los Angeles County will collect billions more gallons in water from local sources, especially storm and reclaimed water, shifting from its reliance on other region’s water supplies as the effects of climate change make such efforts less reliable and more expensive.
The L.A. County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday adopted the county’s first water plan, which outlines how America’s largest county must stop importing 60% of its water and pivot over the next two decades to sourcing 80% of its water locally by 2045.
The plan calls for increasing local water supply by 580,000 acre-feet per year by 2045 through more effective stormwater capture, water recycling and conservation. The increase would be roughly equivalent to 162 billion gallons, or enough water for 5 million additional county residents, county leaders said.
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“We need to conserve every drop of water possible for beneficial reuse by reducing demand, by recycling our water, by capturing much more stormwater in our natural aquifers. And I know that the public is watching to make sure we do exactly that,” said Board Chair Lindsey P. Horvath. “As climate change makes our important water resources less reliable and more expensive, I would like to see the majority of our stormwater be diverted for beneficial reuse rather than washed out to the ocean where it pollutes our coast.”
The development of the county’s water plan started in 2019 when former L.A. County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl authored a motion that created the county’s sustainability plan and paved the wave for a water plan.
Horvath, her successor, closed the loop Tuesday on her first day as board chair with her motion to implement the plan. At 41, Horvath is the youngest person to serve as board chair.
Mark Pestrella, L.A. County Department of Public Works director, said pivoting the county from a long history of importing water “is aspirational, but it is actually achievable.”
There are at least 200 independent water districts or agencies in L.A. County responsible for delivering safe, clean water, and Pestrella said the plan was aimed at fostering collaboration.
In 2020, the county asked each for input and also held 90 stakeholder meetings over three years with local and tribal leaders, community members and advocate groups, Pestrella said.
Most of the 200 agencies are on record agreeing to adopt the county water plan.
“For years, we’ve been basically letting each of those any one or a number of those water agencies sort of lead the way or actually just act individually in the interest of the county of Los Angeles,” Pestrella said. The water plan however “has brought all those people together saying what makes sense for this region in terms of our best and highest use of our water.”
The plan will focus on a number of goals: improving the reliability of the region’s water supply; collecting and storing groundwater; increasing the quality and resilience of small systems that are at risk of failing; mitigating the impact of wildfires on the water supply and managing watershed sediment.
The county’s water plan, Pestrella said, also sets the county up to be more competitive in applying for state and federal money.
Environmental advocacy groups, such as Heal The Bay and the Natural Resources Defense Council, applauded Tuesday’s move.
“I think I (was in) the very first stakeholder group when this was first formed, and at that time, I admit I was very skeptical of the effort,” said Bruce Reznik, executive director of watchdog group L.A. Waterkeeper. However, he said, the county listened to stakeholders and developed a “a plan I think we can all be really proud of.”
Supervisor Kathryn Barger, whose Fifth District includes Antelope Valley, said L.A. County is mandated by the state to build 90,000 more housing units by 2029 and asked how the plan incorporates that mandate.
Pestrella said it’s built into the plan, but it will require conservation as “an absolute way of life for us to not only maintain our current water supply but to meet the demands you’re describing.”
The supervisors at Tuesday’s meeting stressed how important it was that all residents have access to clean water.
Of the 200-plus water agencies in L.A. County, 11 are failing, 23 are at risk of failing, and 33 are potentially at risk of failing, according to the county water plan. Many of these systems provide water to low-income communities.
Pestrella said the purpose of the plan is not to call out and punish these systems — the state regulates water systems, not the county — but to instead of bring them into the fold and give them resources to improve their systems.
“Full immunity — come out and tell us what your needs are, work with us, don’t hide the problem, put it on the table, there’s actually help,” Pestrella said. “In their defense, I’m sure in the past they’ve asked for help, and they don’t get the help they need.”
Supervisor Hilda L. Solis said there must be standards that everyone follows.
The water quality for some residents in the First District, Solis said, which includes East L.A. and many factories, is “least to be desired,” whether that is because of old systems that need to be maintained or because of illegal discharge from industrial areas.
Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell agreed, highlighting residents of Compton and Willowbrook who for years dealt with “putrid groundwater that they paid top dollar for” from the failed Sativa Water District, which suffered poor maintenance and mismanagement. The county’s Department of Public Works assumed full control after the district was dissolved in 2019.
“That shouldn’t happen anywhere,” Mitchell said. “And the regional program that’s being proposed in this plan to identify and support the small potentially at-risk and failing systems will be instrumental in ensuring that nothing like Sativa happens again.”
Eight months after then-Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and then-Transport Minister Michael Wood unveiled options for a second harbour crossing, two transport bodies have opposed the preferred option and work has started on cheaper alternatives.
In August, Labour chose to go with two three-lane tunnels for vehicles and a 21km light rail tunnel between the CBD and Albany that would take decades to build and was priced at an eye-watering $56 billion in a newly released council report.
Former Transport Minister Michael Woods and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins in front of the Auckland Harbour Bridge ahead of an announcement about new Waitematā Harbour crossing options in March. Photo / Michael Craig
The Ministry of Transport and Auckland Transport do not support the road/light rail tunnel plan, and Auckland councillors are expected to join them at Thursday’s transport and infrastructure committee meeting.
What’s more, the new Government will almost certainly kill the plan for light rail to Albany, but could adopt some of the work for a revised crossing.
Transport Minister Simeon Brown said during the election, National campaigned on the importance of a second crossing for Auckland’s Waitematā Harbour to reduce congestion, provide additional options for commuters on both sides of the harbour and address capacity pressures on the ageing Auckland…
An Orange County man has pleaded guilty to firebombing a Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa as well as plotting similar attacks elsewhere in Southern California, according to authorities.
Chance Brannon, 24, of San Juan Capistrano pleaded guilty Thursday to four federal charges: malicious destruction of property by fire and explosives, possessing an unregistered destructive device, intentional damage to a reproductive health services facility, and conspiracy.
Brannon, who at the time was an active duty U.S. Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton, was one of three suspects arrested in connection with the 2022 attack.
The other two defendants, Tibet Ergul, 22, of Irvine and Xavier Batten, 21, of Brooksville, Fla., have pleaded not guilty to their charges and are scheduled to go to trial in March.
According to Brannon’s plea agreement, the three made plans in February and March 2022 to use a Molotov cocktail against various targets, including the office of the Anti-Defamation League in San Diego. The trio decided to target the Planned Parenthood in Costa Mesa to deter doctors and scare pregnant women from seeking abortions, prosecutors said.
The plea agreement states Brannon and Ergul threw the incendiary weapon at the clinic on the morning of March 13, 2022. It exploded at the front entrance, leaving noticeable damage.
Later that year and into 2023, authorities say Brannon conspired to seek out additional targets, including a second Planned Parenthood clinic and the Dodgers’ LGBTQ+ Pride Night. He also discussed plans to start a “race war” by damaging a utility substation to disrupt Orange County’s power grid, according to the plea agreement.
“This defendant exemplifies the insidious danger posed by domestic extremism,” U.S. Atty. Martin Estrada said in a statement.
Brannon was arrested in June and has remained in federal custody since.
“Chance is a young man who has made mistakes. He is looking forward to closing out this chapter in his life,” his attorney, Kate Corrigan, wrote in an email.
Brannon is due to be sentenced on April 15. He faces a maximum sentence of 51 years in prison.
When a series of atmospheric rivers flowed into California last January, the Big Sur coastline was quickly swamped, and Highway 1, a lone life raft connecting San Simeon in the south and the Monterey Peninsula to the north, was overcome.
Long vulnerable to the whims of nature, the iconic serpentine is especially susceptible to landslides, debris flows and terrain ever bowing to the weight of water, no more so than a lonely and lovely stretch of road just south of the New Camaldoli Hermitage and the nearly forgotten outpost, Lucia, and just north of redwood-forested Limekiln State Park and the Ragged Point headlands.
Here at Paul’s Slide, fencing and K-rails were no match for last winter’s deluge that piled stones, mud and debris over the pavement, forcing Caltrans to stop traffic and once again create two of the most picturesque cul-de-sacs in California, if not the country.
Ten months later — even with crews working seven days a week throughout most of the year — the road is still closed, and holiday travelers, hoping to take in the broad vistas of sea and sky en route to destinations north or south, will be frustrated, having to settle for Highway 101 or even Interstate 5.
The effect of last week’s rain on the construction site is not known, but with an El Niño-fueled winter ahead, no one is making any predictions.
“Highway 1 is a dynamic location due to the geography and nature,” said Jim Shivers, public information officer for Caltrans’ District 5. “It is always in a state of movement. In recent weeks we have been able to make good progress … but the exact opening is unknown.”
Famously troublesome, Paul’s Slide has long been scrutinized by geologists ever mindful of the large movements of land along this edge of the continent. Unlike Mud Creek 13 miles to the south — where one Saturday morning in May 2017, a hillside collapsed, sloughing an estimated 1.5 million tons of rock and mud over the highway and into the Pacific — Paul’s Slide is less dramatic.
But, said Shivers, “each incident on the Big Sur coast is different; no two situations are the same. When you talk about Mud Creek, an entire mountain came down and took out the highway and spilled into the ocean. That was a major landslide.”
Paul’s Slide, however, is a different geological phenomena. It moves slowly yet persistently, raining the highway with debris and topsoil and ever gradually shifting underneath to the weight of water and gravity. One-lane closures are not uncommon.
Earlier this year, as designers for Caltrans completed one set of blueprints for rerouting Highway 1 in the aftermath of last winter’s storms — and as contractors began to line up their skip loaders and dump trucks — Paul’s Slide shifted a second time, according to Shivers, requiring a new design and causing new delays.
“We had a plan,” said Shivers, “and then things kept moving.”
The new and improved road will eventually take travelers further inland and slightly higher, according to Shivers.
Until then, the two scenic dead ends invite travelers to linger without traffic, without rushing, without a destination in mind — before turning around and going back the way they came.
Paul Pelosi, husband of former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, offered chilling details in federal court on Monday of the night he was allegedly attacked and bludgeoned with a hammer by a man now on trial for attempted kidnapping and assault.
Paul Pelosi, 83, took the stand on the second day of the federal trial against David DePape, who faces federal charges for attempting to kidnap the Democratic congresswoman and assaulting her husband with the intent to interfere with the lawmaker’s official duties or retaliate against her.
DePape, 43, is accused of traveling from his Richmond residence to the Pelosis’ San Francisco home the early morning of Oct. 28, 2022, in search of the lawmaker, allegedly with plans to hold her hostage and question her regarding far-right conspiracy theories involving the Democratic Party and a list of politicians and public figures.
Instead of finding Nancy Pelosi, who was in Washington at the time, DePape wandered through the quiet Pacific Heights home before stumbling upon a bedroom with her husband sleeping inside.
“The door opened and a very large man came in, with a hammer in one hand and some ties in the other hand,” Paul Pelosi testified. “And he said ‘Where’s Nancy?’ And I think that’s what woke me up.”
Until then, it was a typical evening.
Paul Pelosi told jurors he’d gone to dinner that night in San Francisco. He went to sleep as usual between 11:30 p.m. and midnight, bringing a cup of ice water he took to bed each evening. He didn’t set the alarm system, which the family only used when they were out of town, because it’s sensitive and will go off easily with people in the home.
A couple of hours later, Paul Pelosi woke up in “tremendous shock” after realizing that “someone had broken into the house.”
“And looking at him and looking at the hammer and the ties, I recognized that I was in serious danger,” he said. “And so I tried to stay as calm as possible.”
Paul Pelosi said he told DePape that his wife was in Washington.
“Well then we’re going to have to wait for her,” Paul Pelosi said DePape responded.
DePape told Paul Pelosi that his wife was the “leader of the pack,” and “he had to take her out,” he testified. Because she wasn’t home, Paul Pelosi said DePape told him he had to tie him up and wait for her.
“He had these cords in his hand. I assume that’s what he was going to use,” he said.
Paul Pelosi said he first tried to move toward the elevator outside the couple’s bedroom, which had a telephone inside. But DePape caught on, Paul Pelosi said, so instead he moved toward his bathroom where he charged his cellphone each night.
He called 911, but didn’t feel like he could be honest with the dispatcher about the situation. DePape still had the hammer, and was demanding that Paul Pelosi tell the dispatcher that he was just a friend of the family.
“And looking at him and looking at the hammer and the ties, I recognized that I was in serious danger,” Paul Pelosi, shown above, told the jury in the federal trial against David DePape. “And so I tried to stay as calm as possible.”
(Noah Berger / Associated Press)
According to his court testimony, Paul Pelosi hung up the 911 call, and tried to reason with the intruder. DePape said he was tired, and wanted to tie Paul Pelosi up so that he could get some sleep. Paul Pelosi suggested the two men walk downstairs, where DePape left his two backpacks and other belongings. Paul Pelosi said he knew that if the police came, they needed to get downstairs where it would be easier to arrest the suspect.
“He said, ‘Oh, the police are going to be here, it’s over for me, I’m going to have to take you out,’ things like that,” Paul Pelosi said DePape told him. “I said ‘No, they’re probably not going to come. They’re probably not going to come.’
“And then the police were at the door.”
Police body camera footage shows Paul Pelosi — holding his cup of water — opening the door with DePape standing next to him. The two were fighting for control of the hammer, which officers ordered them to drop.
DePape instead grabbed it from Paul Pelosi and swung it at his head multiple times, fracturing his skull and causing injuries to his arm and hand. Photo and video evidence shown to the jury on Thursday depict Paul Pelosi lying in a pool of his blood, struggling to breathe as police tackled DePape.
He was hospitalized for more than a week at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital for a fractured skill and other injuries. He received a dozen stitches on the back of his right arm, he said, and his badly damaged left hand was also treated. Paul Pelosi told the jurors that the plastic surgeon was able to reconstruct his hand and avoid doing skin grafts, while his head injury recovery included regaining his balance and “getting my walking back.”
Paul Pelosi recounted the attack as his daughter, Christine Pelosi, sat in the far back corner of the courtroom and while DePape watched from beside his defense attorneys.
Despite the graphic testimony and evidence, the trial is considered far from an easy assault case. Prosecutors bear the burden of proving that the attack was due to Nancy Pelosi’s role as House Speaker, and that DePape intended to kidnap her after breaking into the lawmaker’s home.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Laura Vartain Horn told the federal court jury in her opening arguments on Thursday that DePape had gone to the couple’s home that early morning with the idea to hold Nancy Pelosi “hostage,” “break her kneecaps” and “teach her a lesson.”
“When the defendant broke into the speaker’s home, he had a plan,” Horn told the jury of 12 men and three women. “It was a violent plan.”
Prosecutors attempted to bolster their argument on Monday when questioning FBI Special Agent Stephanie Minor, who has handled the case over the last year. Minor walked the jurors through a series of videos showing DePape traveling from the East Bay to the Pelosis’ home, and described a list of his internet searches in the days leading up to the attack.
Minor explained how DePape had extensively researched the Pelosi family, along with others on his so-called target list, and paid for a service that provided their emails and home addresses. The prosecution also played a recording of a phone call DePape made to a reporter earlier this year, in which he seemingly apologizes for not being successful in his mission.
“I have an important message for everyone in America. You’re welcome,” he said. “I would also like to apologize…I’m so sorry I didn’t get more of them.”
But federal public defenders Jodi Linker and Angela Chuang have disputed the argument that DePape intended to kidnap Nancy Pelosi or attack Paul Pelosi because of his wife’s official position in Congress.
Instead, they claim that the Pelosi home was the first stop in a broader scheme to end corruption and other offenses he believed were being committed by the Democratic Party and public officials and celebrities.
DePape’s plan was to use Nancy Pelosi to put an end to his QAnon-like theory that Democratic politicians and public officials were abusing and trafficking children, the jury was told.
“This is not a who done it,” Linker told the jury in her opening argument. It was a “why done it,” she said, “and the why matters.”
The assault has inspired additional conspiracies and prompted political attacks against the Pelosi family, including from former President Trump.
Along with the federal criminal case, DePape faces separate state charges including assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, burglary and threats to a public official and their family.
Paul Pelosi said he’s mostly recovered from his injuries, but that he still suffers from lightheadedness and headaches.
“There are still lumps on my head. If I run my fingers, I can still feel dents and lumps,” he said. “They’re not as sensitive to the touch as they were.”
The recovery process was “very painful,” he said. He said that he had not read news related to the incident, nor had he listened to the tapes or watched the videos.
“I’ve tried to put it out of my mind,” he said, taking periodic pauses to maintain his composure.
“I’ve made the best effort I possibly can to not relive this.”
Defense attorneys for the man accused of bludgeoning the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a hammer last year told jurors Thursday they acknowledge their client committed a crime and harbored “bizarre” far-right conspiracy theories, but they disputed federal charges that he attempted to kidnap the congresswoman and assaulted Paul Pelosi in connection with her official duties.
In a lengthy opening argument, federal public defender Jodi Linker said David DePape, 43, broke into the Pelosis’ home during the early morning of Oct. 28, 2022, as part of a broader plan to end corruption, human trafficking, child abuse and other offenses he believed were being committed by the upper echelons of the Democratic Party, including Nancy Pelosi and elected officials such as Rep. Adam Schiff and Gov. Gavin Newsom, and public figures such as actor Tom Hanks and billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
“Members of the jury, many of us do not believe any of that. We think it’s bogus,” Linker said. “You may think it is all lies, harmful lies that are in fact destroying the country. … But the evidence in this trial will show that Mr. DePape believes these things, he believes them with every ounce of his being. He believes them firmly and completely and it is these beliefs, wholly unrelated to Nancy Pelosi’s official duties to Congress, that propelled him to act that night.”
DePape’s ideas, whether true or not, Linker explained to the jury of three women and 12 men, prompted his plan to “stop the wealthy elite, to protect children and end the lies and reveal the truth.”
“And in this court, on these two charges, these beliefs matter,” she added, because the government is required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that DePape acted in response to Nancy Pelosi’s official duties.
“That’s definitely not why he did it,” Linker said.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Laura Vartain Horn told the federal court jury that DePape spent months gathering information about the Pelosi family on the internet. He traveled from the East Bay to the couple’s San Francisco home with plans to hold Nancy Pelosi “hostage,” “break her kneecaps” and “teach her a lesson,” she said in her opening arguments.
“When the defendant broke into the speaker’s home, he had a plan,” Horn said, using the large wood-handled hammer, kept in a plastic bag, to reinforce her argument. “It was a violent plan.”
Not able to find Nancy Pelosi that morning, Horn said, DePape “unleashed his violence on the next closest thing to the speaker.”
DePape faces up to a combined 50 years in prison for attempted kidnapping of the former speaker and assaulting Paul Pelosi with the intent to interfere with the lawmaker’s official duties or retaliate against her. He also faces state charges including assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, burglary and threats to a public official and their family.
DePape was in court Thursday and had swapped his orange jail jumpsuit for a blue sweater and a collared shirt, his hair tied back in his signature low ponytail. His ex-partner, Gypsy Taub, and their two sons looked on from the gallery, while the Pelosis’ daughter, Christine Pelosi, sat at the rear of the courtroom.
Much of the trial will focus on an unnamed woman listed as Target 1, who was described in court as an anthropologist and queer studies professor at the University of Michigan. DePape had planned to use Nancy Pelosi to “lure” Target 1, Linker said, whose research on feminism, pornography and gender roles he believed was at the “root of harm to children.”
“The evidence will show he had a much larger plan and the stop at the Pelosis’ was only the first stop in that plan,” Linker said.
What “thwarted” his greater plot, she added, was when police arrived at the home. Paul Pelosi had called 911 after DePape broke into the home, and the two were fighting for control of the hammer when officers knocked on the front door.
Police ordered them to drop the weapon, but DePape forced it from Pelosi and struck the 82-year-old man on the head, according to several officer body-camera videos shown in court.
“In that moment, he reacted impulsively and yanked the hammer out of Mr. Pelosi’s hand and he hit him,” Linker said, not because he had a greater plan of assault, but “because [Paul Pelosi] was the one standing there in that moment.”
Prosecutors called as witnesses three officers who had responded to the 911 call, along with Lt. Carla Hurley, who interviewed DePape from his hospital bed while he was being treated for a dislocated shoulder and other injuries. Hurley described portions of the interview, in which DePape wanders into conspiracies about Hillary Clinton, the Watergate scandal and Democrats stealing the election from former President Trump, as “so jarring, so disturbing,” which prompted her to ask about his mental health history.
Despite public questions over DePape’s mental capacity, his attorneys are not expected to raise that argument during trial.
At one point in the interview, DePape said his plan was to question Nancy Pelosi. If she admitted to his conspiracies, he’d let her go. If she didn’t, he’d break her kneecaps, and she’d have to wheel herself into Congress, where other lawmakers could see as an example the consequences of being the “most evil” people on the planet.
“I am not of unwell mind. I knew exactly what I was doing,” he said.
Certain police body camera footage, along with the 911 call, surveillance video of DePape breaking into the home and the police interview after his arrest, was already widely publicized ahead of trial and replayed for the jury on Thursday.
Jurors also saw two photographs of Paul Pelosi lying on his foyer’s wooden floor in a pool of his own blood. Video footage caught what prosecutors referred to as Pelosi’s “agonal breathing,” or what one officer described as the body trying to push oxygen to the brain in a last-ditch effort to stay alive.
In another police body camera video taken shortly after the crime, DePape seems to offer an admission.
“I’m sick of the insane f— level of lies coming out of Washington, D.C.,” he told officers. “I didn’t really want to hurt him, but you know, this was a suicide mission, and you know, with the s— that’s going on in f—Washington, D.C., I’m not just going to stand here and do nothing.
“If you guys need evidence, the evidence is there,” he said. “There is no denying what I did. Cops watched me do it.”
A proposal to reduce the speed limit in the Hāwera CBD to 30km/h is part of the South Taranaki District Council’s Speed Management Plan. Photo / Bevan Conley
Reducing the speed limit in the Hāwera CBD to 30km/h and reducing 70km/h roads to 60km/h are among the key proposals in South Taranaki District Council’s 2024-2034 Speed Management Plan.
South Taranaki Mayor Phil Nixon said Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency required councils to develop 10-year speed management plans every three years.
“Over the last 12 months, we reduced speed limits outside our schools,” Nixon said.
“Over the next three years, we’d like to focus on delivering safe and appropriate speed limits around marae, the Hāwera CBD, beach communities and on some of our 70km/h roads.”
The key proposals for the next three years were to reduce the speed limit in the Hāwera CBD and in beach communities such as Ōhawe and Waiinu, reduce 70km/h roads to 60km/h and introduce a 60km/h speed limit outside all marae.
Nixon said speed management was about achieving safe and appropriate speeds to reflect the road’s function, design, safety and use.
“As a road controlling authority, we want everyone to be able to get home safely every time and to feel comfortable choosing from a range of travel options, be it driving, walking, biking or scootering.”
The council encouraged residents and road users to have their say on the speed on rural roads and in townships.
Yup. Lego’s own company “OCTAN” as featured in their set since I was a kid. Plan on ironing on these mirrored decals onto a t shirt (they’ll be “un mirrored” once applied) and see if anyone catches the humor at the car show. I have the VIP Lego hat to match.
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