city hall

Bob Blumenfield would like to see Angelenos’ old banana peels and moldy bread stay local.

On Tuesday morning, the City Council member told a small crowd of waste advocates in front of city hall that he was introducing a motion to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by strengthening local composting infrastructure and decreasing reliance on distant facilities.

Currently, when city residents separate their food waste and yard clippings, chances are it’s being trucked to faraway processing facilities in Bakersfield or Lancaster.

The motion would help the city meet targets set by California’s Short-Lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Strategy, or Senate Bill 1383, which phases out sending green waste to the landfill, because it is a major source of the powerful climate pollutant methane.

It also would help meet Mayor Bass’ Climate Action Plan, which aims to use at least 50% of locally produced compost and mulch within Los Angeles by 2030. Currently, only 25% to 30% of the city’s material is applied to land locally.

The city produces approximately 350,000 tons of organic material a year, Blumenfield told the crowd, which he said equates to roughly 1.2 to 1.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

“That’s a big number, and when you do the math,” he said, that’s roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide released by the entire country of Belize, the entirety of Humboldt County or the equivalent of burning 1.6 billion pounds of coal per year.

As the announcement was underway, in the background a fire burned for a sixth day in a Boyle Heights warehouse, where 85 million pounds of frozen food was thawing and beginning to rot.

Signed into law in 2016, the state’s composting bill mandated a gradual increase in the amount of organic waste that must be diverted away from landfills. It required 50% of all green and food waste be diverted by 2020; by 2025, that number was supposed to hit 75%.

But it hasn’t. Although Los Angeles has pushed to get a residential curbside bin program in place — recall the “Great Green Bin Apocalypse of 2025” — it has struggled to get people to comply.

According to reports for the recycLA program, a commercial and multifamily waste collection franchise program, only about half of households and business are separating their compostable waste.

Alex Helou, assistant general manager of L.A. Sanitation & Environment, provided a much brighter picture of the city’s food waste situation. L.A. is the first major city to provide green bins to 750,000 residential customers, he said. The city has “exceeded expectations” in food recovery, he said, saving 80 million meals that would have been thrown out and redirecting them to people in need.

Helou said Blumenfield’s motion completes the loop by keeping food waste close to home, creating more local composting and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transporting waste outside of the city. It doesn’t directly affect the city’s compliance with SB 1383, but that isn’t necessary, he said. “We’re meeting that and exceeding that at multiple fronts.”

Blumenfield’s initiative directs the Bureau of Sanitation to develop a plan for expanding local composting across the city. It would also increase the use of locally produced compost and mulch.

For instance, the motion would encourage using the compost on urban farms and at community gardens and city parks. It also would be used to replace artificial grass and turf.

It will support a “citywide transition away from artificial turf and towards nature-based solutions, such as California native plants and natural grass plant fields, and ensure everyone has access to safer, cooler, and sustainable parks, schools, and communities,” said Terry Saucier, a Tarzana resident and member of the Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance and the Tarzana Neighborhood Council.

The state’s composting law has proved challenging on several fronts.

The Antelope Valley has become a dumping site for many of the city’s haulers looking to cut transport and facility costs — causing concern among environmentalists and others who say the material is destroying fragile ecosystems.

Complying has been particularly difficult for Los Angeles and much of coastal Southern California, where there are few large composters and low demand for compost. Unlike areas to the north, there is little agricultural demand for compost and mulch.

Experts say dumping in the desert has always been a problem, but the law made it worse by making it more expensive and difficult to deal with.

In addition, composters are struggling with the amount of plastic and other debris that people and businesses put in the food waste bins.

According to a report by Closed Loop Partners, which partners with companies such as Pepsico and McDonald’s, nearly 4% of food waste is contaminated with other materials — most of it plastic. State law requires that finished compost contains no more than 0.5% by dry weight of physical contaminants.

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m going to miss Spencer Pratt.

I had never heard of the former reality TV star before he said God wanted him to be mayor of Los Angeles. And now that he’s out of the race, he’s still serving up lazy fastballs down the middle of the plate, calling the top two vote-getters — Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman — dummies and morons.

Quick question for Pratt: If you’re on record claiming that 9/11 was an inside job and the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, and you run for office in a deep blue city with President Trump’s backing but not much of a plan or even a clue as to what a mayor can or can’t do, should you be calling other people morons?

And yet the pouting Pratt pulled more than 200,000 votes. So sore loser or not, he tapped into a lack of faith in elected officials and simmering frustration with City Hall, which happen to be the essence of today’s column.

I have five questions for Bass and Raman. They’re somewhat inter-related and have to do with matters I hear about regularly from readers:

Infrastructure (sidewalks, streets, etc).

Homelessness (billions of dollars spent, and a long way to go).

Parks (L.A.’s national ranking for quality and accessibility just dropped again).

Trash and blight (no explanation needed, right?).

And focus. (Do the candidates have a clear set of goals and a plan for achieving them?)

We’ve got five months to visit and revisit these topics, and today I’m going to focus on the first, so here we go.

Infrastructure:

A few days ago, I met with Earl Ofari Hutchinson of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable. Hutchinson is a longtime community activist and commentator, and he had just launched a torpedo in the direction of City Hall.

“There are hundreds of busted, dangerous sidewalks in South L A that have gone unrepaired for years,” he wrote to his network of followers. “They cause hundreds of injuries, and have resulted in massive numbers of claims and payouts in settlements. LA City Officials must act now to jumpstart a crash program to fix these sidewalks.”

On my way to meet Hutchinson, I traveled west along Florence Avenue and saw dozens of typical rough patches on the street and sidewalks. But if there were a contest to identify the all-time worst sidewalks in Los Angeles, Hutchinson’s discovery of the one at 71st Street and 11th Avenue would be a Hall of Fame contender.

For starters, it’s got the classic uplift, and the villain is the usual suspect — ficus tree roots. A 20-foot slab of sidewalk is pitched sharply, as if designed by trip-and-fall lawsuit lawyers. Way back in 2014, in my early days on sidewalk patrol, I was able to crawl under a similarly ruptured sidewalk in West L.A., and I could’ve done the same at 71st and 11th.

But I thought better of it after Hutchinson peered into the opening and said it looked like a comfy home for rats and other vermin.

The homeowner, Sharon Kelly, can’t use her front gate because of the lopsided sidewalk. She let me borrow her tape measure, which revealed a 16-inch rise in the pavement.

“It keeps rising,” Kelly said. “But it was already lifted when we came here.”

That was in 1997. I asked if she’s called the city for help.

“Several times,” she said, and the only response was a slapdash temporary asphalt patch.

Hutchinson said residents have responded in force to his call for emergency sidewalks repairs, just as they did when he crusaded for a crackdown on widespread illegal dumping.

“Dozens of residents have come out of the woodwork, and here’s what they all say: ‘We have called our city council person and various city departments repeatedly, over and over again.’”

And the response?

“Nothing,” Hutchinson said.

While we were talking, two people with walkers steered clear of the worst spot near Kelly’s property. Charles McQuarn, 77, said traversing the neighborhood means zigzagging around all the hazards.

“I gotta come out into the streets, too,” he said.

When he was a teenager, McQuarn said, he worked for a community group that fixed sidewalks. I mentioned that Councilmember Monica Rodriguez has been using Conservation Corps youths to do the same, but it’s time to scale up that program and come up with other remedies to speed the process.

The city is fixing about 600 sidewalks each year, the backlog of requested repairs stands at about 30,000 and if you get onto the waiting list, you’re looking at about 10 years before help arrives.

When we were done on 71st Street, Hutchinson led me over to a nearby stretch of Florence where, for blocks and blocks, it appears as if there have been volcanic eruptions around the trees. Large chunks of cracked sidewalk form mounds, one after another. The Hutchinson Himalayas are a site to behold — a mile-long museum of municipal neglect.

And it’s been like this, Hutchinson said, “for years.”

The question for Bass and Raman: What will you do to speed the repairs?

Homelessness:

Voters have been generous when it comes to repeatedly taxing themselves more, and more, to address homelessness. There’s been Measure H, Measure A, Measure ULA and Proposition HHH.

Yet although billions of dollars have been spent and tens of thousands of people have been helped and housed, more than 40,000 people are homeless in the city and roughly 70,000 in the county. In her primary victory speech, Bass said families shouldn’t have to step around encampments, and Raman has said greater urgency is needed.

Questions for Bass and Raman: Why haven’t taxpayers gotten more for their money with the two of you at the helm, what are you going to do to speed progress and create more accountability, and what distinguishes you from each other?

Parks:

In the annual rankings by the National Trust for Public Lands, Los Angeles has dropped from 90th to a tie for 93rd in park investment and accessibility among the nation’s 100 most populous cities.

The City Council is about to consider a motion to increase park funding through charter reform (with dozens of community groups in support), and progress is ridiculously slow on an agreement to use schools as after-hours playgrounds.

Question for Bass and Raman: Do you support the charter reform, and what else are you going to do to address the sad state of the city’s parks?

Trash and blight:

In downtown L.A., vandalism, shuttered storefronts and post-COVID abandonment have crippled what was a vibrant, revenue-generating economy that benefited the whole city.

In Hollywood, a resident hired her housekeeper to help report illegal dumping of goods that are often used to construct more homeless encampments, leading to all sorts of problems.

On the south lawn of City Hall, a graffiti-tagged monument and fountain have been out of commission for most of the last six decades.

Question for Bass and Raman: At the very least, can you fix the fountain?

Focus:

Like any big city with great assets and unlimited challenges, many residents have a love-hate relationship with L.A. But years ago, someone told me he loves Los Angeles because it’s a messy, multi-cultural work in progress, set on a dramatic landscape between mountain and sea, trying to figure out what it wants to be.

Question for Bass and Raman: Whether in the realm of basic services or grand visions, what three or four primary objectives do you have over the next four years?

In other words, what do you want L.A. to be?

steve.lopez@latimes.com

Well, I gave him a chance, offering my services.

I was willing to give the young novice a primer on what a mayor can and can’t do, and let him know City Hall is a reality show like no other he’s been on. But Spencer Pratt didn’t call me in response to my column last week.

I did, however, hear from a slew of his most ardent supporters.

Steven C. had this to say: “You’re a left-wing idiot, and … it’s time for you to retire. You’re a joke!!! You always have been!!! God bless Spencer Pratt and the 45th and 47th President of the United States Donald Trump!!!!!”

You may be onto something, Steven!!! I’ve been thinking about retiring!!!! But then a former reality TV star like Pratt comes along and tells Vanity Fair he had a chat with God, who told him He wants Pratt to be mayor of L.A!!!!! With people like this running for office, how can I retire?!!!!!

R.W. wrote to say: “You say Spencer has never done anything in his life…What credentials do you have? From what I’ve read about you, you are a lousy commie journalist who has never accomplished anything in your life!!”

Just recently, R.W., I replaced a broken toilet tank flush valve and I learned two Willie Nelson songs on the guitar. That’s not nothing.

Peter did not mince words: “Your piece on Pratt is a hit piece filled with bull— . You should go f— yourself before someone takes you out, which is the appropriate response to a s—bag like yourself. So please f— off and drop dead, which is exactly what you deserve.”

Peter, I did drop dead once. Cardiac arrest. While on the other side, I saw God, who told me to snap out of it because He was going to tell Spencer Pratt to run for mayor. Who knew God had a defibrillator?

All of these, by the way, were actual emails, and there were many more just like them. But it’s only fair to note that despite the fulminating knucklehead wing of Pratt’s posse, he’s tapped into a justifiable sense of frustration with City Hall, given homelessness, the Palisades inferno and budget issues that squeeze all manner of basic city services.

That’s why Mayor Karen Bass is paddling furiously, trying to keep her political career afloat. In the latest UC Berkeley-L.A. Times poll, Bass is at 26%, Nithya Raman at 25% and Pratt at 22%. That’s so tight, it appears that no one will get the 50% needed to win outright, and if we get a top-two runoff, it’s not clear who will go to the dance.

So as we close out the primary, with the election on Tuesday, five talking points come to mind.

Which candidate knows the city best?

Los Angeles has 114 distinct neighborhoods spread across 470 square miles (that’s 10 times the size of San Francisco), with an estimated 220 languages spoken. Diversity is a defining characteristic, and roughly half the population is Latino, which makes it a shame there’s no Latino candidate for mayor, especially given the raids and roundups by President Trump.

A mayor doesn’t have to speak six languages and know every corner of the city, but residents want to be seen and heard, and feel like they’re understood and represented.

Raman is well-versed on homelessness policy, and she’s spot-on about the need for greater urgency in problem-solving, but as my colleague Noah Goldberg reported, constituents in her district complain that they haven’t seen enough of her.

As I said, Pratt has wisely targeted municipal failure. But in the realm of outsider candidates with Republican credentials, Rick Caruso, who ran against Bass last time, was comfortable whether he was in the Valley, South L.A. or anywhere in between. And he easily connected with people. Would Pratt be a tourist in his own city?

By virtue of her job the last four years, Bass — who raised a blended Black and Latino family — knows the city best, although her unfavorability rating is a big problem.

What about the other candidates?

In the aforementioned poll, minister and housing activist Rae Huang had 9% and former educational technology businessman Adam Miller had 5%. Virtual unknowns, neither had a legit chance of winning, but they could be spoilers for one of the top three candidates.

I spoke to both, and if you’re undecided, you should read up on them before voting. On Huang’s website, the first words are “Homes are for people, not profit.” Miller wants to bring his success in the business world to City Hall, and when you consider his policy agenda along with his nonprofit work with veterans and homelessness, he’s a better candidate than Pratt.

But he wasn’t on a reality TV show.

Democrats ruined L.A. and California, right?

If only I had a nickel for every time a reader suggested that.

By 101 measures, Los Angeles is one of the great cities of the world and California has built the world’s fourth-largest economy while leading on climate change, so apocalyptic diagnoses are a bit off the mark.

Also, local elections are nonpartisan. You don’t run for mayor as a D or an R.

And yet it’s true that Democrats and their policies and sensibilities rule the day, and they have a lot to answer for in Los Angeles and in California.

But would the same critics suggest that in conservative cities like Fresno and Bakersfield, which have their own homelessness and other problems, Republicans are to blame?

When it comes to housing, poverty, healthcare and streets occupied by people who are addicted or mentally ill, the failures go back decades, touch all levels of government, and cross party lines.

Have I given up on Los Angeles?

When I pointed out that Pratt seemed unaware of these complexities, and of the structural limits of mayoral power, readers suggested he was rising to the challenge while I was giving up on L.A.

Not at all. I care about L.A. enough to hold its leaders to a higher accountability, and to scrutinize posers and pretenders who think they can do a better job.

My advice for the next mayor.

Fix what’s broken, celebrate what works and take responsibility for what doesn’t.

Now let me try one more time:

Spencer, give me a call.

You can’t tell us you had a conversation with God about running for mayor and not share more details.

Did God scold you for referring to the mayor as Karen “Basura,” which means trash in Spanish?

Did He say we should pull out of the ‘28 Olympics, or have any advice on how to fill potholes and fix sidewalks?

If you’re having regular conversations about City Hall with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we’re dying to know:

On homelessness, what would Jesus do?

steve.lopez@latimes.com