There’s a notice posted on the Glendale Masonic Temple at 234 S. Brand Boulevard. The text says that the City of Glendale is considering an amendment to its Advertising Signage Overlay Zone (ASOZ) which would expand the zone’s boundaries. It gives no further details about the scope of the expansion, or what kind of outdoor advertising is being contemplated.
But I’d be willing to bet that the City of Glendale wants to let advertisers install digital billboards, possibly on the side of the Masonic Temple. You can already find digital signage at the Americana mall on the south side of Brand. Outdoor ad companies are lobbying cities all over the US to open up to bigger and more invasive digital signage. It’s a hugely profitable business that’s growing rapidly.
Personally, I’m against outdoor digital advertising for a few reasons. One reason is that I see it as urban blight. But more importantly, I’m concerned about the way digital advertisers are collecting and sharing cell phone data. There are huge privacy risks here, and most city officials are completely oblivious.
A public hearing is scheduled later this month. If you’re interested in attending, here’s the info….
DATE: Wednesday, November 19, 2025
TIME: 5:00 PM
LOCATION: 633 E. Broadway (MSB), #105, Glendale, 91206
You can also contact Roger Kiesel, of the Glendale Community Development Department, at 818 937-8152.
The Glendale Masonic Temple was dedicated in 1929 and served as a meeting place for different Masonic Lodges into the 50s. It was designed by Arthur Lindley, who also designed the nearby Alex Theatre. Rick Caruso’s company bought the building about a decade ago and refurbished it, making some changes to the design. The building is a Glendale Historical Landmark and also on the National Register of Historic Places.
Rendering of Convention Center expansion project recently approved by LA City Council.
I’ve been critical of the LA City Council for years, so I don’t expect a lot from them. But even I was stunned by their vote to approve the LA Convention Center expansion in September. The Council is not known for fiscal responsibility. You may recall that they’ve been struggling to deal with a $1 billion deficit during the current fiscal year. So you’d think the councilmembers would be a little hesitant to plunge the city even further into debt. But on September 19, the LA City Council approved the expansion in an 11 to 2 vote, with two absent. Mayor Bass signed off on it a few days later.
Supporters of the Convention Center expansion promoted it as a great idea, and a crucial step in attracting events to Downtown LA. No one disputes that the Convention Center needed repairs and upgrades, and the expansion could provide benefits. But the cost of the project will bury the City of LA in debt for decades. Don’t take my word for it. Read what LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia had to say about the impacts it will have on the city’s budget….
The City of Los Angeles is currently contemplating a $2.7 billion expansion and modernization of the Convention Center, which will end up costing taxpayers $5.9 billion with borrowing and other costs included, of which $5.45 billion will be paid for by the General Fund. If this plan goes through, the City is projected to need an additional average of $116 million from the General Fund each year for the next 28 years starting in FY2029. $116 million is the equivalent of nearly 1,000 City jobs.
The City isn’t expected to see a related net positive General Fund impact for 30 years (in FY2057 once the debt service payments end). However, at that time, the City will still be down $3.2 billion from the General Fund and will take an additional 25 years or so to truly break even.
Mejia goes on to point out that if the city can’t bring in the revenue necessary to cover the cost of the expansion, it would likely have to make further cuts to funding for city departments, which are already understaffed. The quality of services could decline even further. Beyond that, rating agencies have put the City’s credit rating on negative watch status, which means we could be heading to a rating downgrade. That would make it more expensive to borrow money, raising the deficit even further.
So why did the Council okay this project? Let’s start with a little background. The City has been talking about expanding and modernizing the Convention Center for years, and again, there are certainly good arguments for making that happen. But it was clear that the expansion would be extremely costly, and there were budget conscious folks at City Hall who argued that the City couldn’t afford it. It’s important to remember here that the City of LA has a history of staggering from one budget crisis to the next. Because there’s no meaningful long-term fiscal planning, the City’s budget process invariably involves a lot of wishful thinking and a fair amount of financial sleight of hand.
You would think the fact that the 2025-2026 Budget resulted in a $1 billion shortfall would serve as a clear warning to elected officials that the City was in serious trouble. There were folks at City Hall who saw the flashing red lights and tried to move things in a different direction. On September 16, the Budget & Finance Committee voted to approve a scaled down version of the project, involving repairs and upgrades to the Convention Center now, and deferring the expansion until after the 2028 Olympics. This would have been a much more realistic, much more manageable option. The vote was 3 to 2, with Councilmembers Yaroslavsky, Blumenfield and Hernandez supporting the reduced project. Observers who had been alarmed by the cost of the expansion breathed a sigh of relief. If the City Council accepted the Committee’s recommendations, disaster could be averted.
But on September 19, just three days later, the Convention Center showed up on the Council’s agenda, along with a motion presented by Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson that ignored the Committee’s action and asked for approval of the expansion. The Council voted 11 to 2 in favor. Councilmembers Blumenfield and Rodriguez were absent. The two no votes were from Nithya Raman and Katy Yaroslavsky. At the meeting, Raman rightly pointed out that the City of LA had just declared a fiscal emergency in June, and spoke about the devastating impacts the project would likely have on funding for public services and homeless programs. Yaroslavsky gave a detailed breakdown of her reasons for opposing, including the likelihood of cost overruns and the unrealistic timetable for completion. Alissa Walker published Yaroslavky’s comments on Torched, and it’s worth taking the time to read them.
The City of LA is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. We have a huge homeless population, and in spite of repeated promises from City Hall, progress has been minimal at best. Transit ridership has been declining since 2014, and still hasn’t even recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Our sidewalks are a mess, and it can take years for repairs to happen. We have a growing solid waste crisis that few people are even talking about, even though illegal dumping has become a chronic problem. And the Palisades fire made it clear that there are serious questions about the City of LA’s ability to deal with disasters.
We could be doing a whole lot better if our elected officials made a serious attempt at planning for the future. Instead, the majority seem determined to ignore reality and pretend that were doing just fine. They give us a lot of talk about their vision for the future, but if you look at the facts, they seem to be flying blind.
US ships are firing on boats off the coast of Venezuela. Masked ICE agents are grabbing people off the street. Troops have been sent into cities governed by Democratic leaders. The Federal government has cut billions in funding for universities that don’t teach what the President wants them to. This is the new reality under Trump, and millions of Americans are seriously concerned about what they believe are grave threats to democracy and the Constitution.
On Saturday people across the US turned out for No Kings rallies to voice their opposition to the current administration. According to the LA Times, 2,700 protests were scheduled to take place, about 600 more than for the previous day of protest in June. According to the No Kings organizers, more than seven million people turned out to protest yesterday. There were events scheduled throughout the LA area, including Beverly Hills, Burbank, Glendale, Hollywood, Lynwood, Long Beach, Torrance and Whittier.
I went to the protest in Downtown LA and took some photos. Actually, the photo at the top of this post was taken several blocks south of the event on Olympic Boulevard. I snapped it while I was on my way to the protest. Something about the size and the colors seemed to capture the urgency of the moment. When I arrived at the Civic Center, crowds were marching into Grand Park carrying all sorts of signs and wearing all sorts of costumes.
Protesters gathered at City Hall in Downtown LA.
Crowd gathered near the steps to LA City Hall.
The fact that many protesters carried US flags seems to undercut the argument that they’re anti-American.
A friend of mine sent me these photos from the protest in Burbank. Looking at these photos it struck me how much that city has changed over the years. When I was growing up in Burbank, it was a fairly conservative town, and I don’t recall ever seeing a protest on this scale in the 60s and 70s. This kind of activism shows how much the city’s politics have shifted. The gathering was held at the intersection of Buena Vista and Verdugo.
Many protesters expressed their anger over troop deployments in US cities.Photo by Michael Golob.I don’t remember seeing anything like this when I was growing up in Burbank.Photo by Michael Golob.Some protesters wore colorful costumes. Photo by Michael Golob.When the introverts are angry, watch out. Photo by Michael Golob.
Thousands gathered at Pasadena City Hall to demonstrate against the Trump administration. Speakers included Congressional Rep Judy Chu, Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo and Councilmember Rick Cole.
No Kings protest in Pasadena. Photo by Denise Goddard.Another image of Pasadena No Kings protest. Photo by Denise Goddard.
On my way to Downtown, I stopped at the Hollywood event. Protesters gathered at the intersection of Hollywood and Vermont. As people waved signs, drivers passing by honked their horns.
A lively crowd gathered at Hollywood and Vermont.Passing drivers honked their horns in sympathy.
The crowd spilled off the sidewalk and onto the street.
I am really worried about the future of this country, but I’m also really encouraged by the scale of the response. Not only do millions of people think we’re going in the wrong direction, but many of them are willing to show up at events across the country to make their anger known. It ain’t over yet.
A few hundred protesters gathered in Hollywood on Wednesday night to protest ABC’s decision to pull the Jimmy Kimmel show, at least for the time being. I’ve never seen the show. If I’d heard that he was going off the air for low ratings, it wouldn’t have made any difference to me. But it appears that ABC pulled the show because of pressure from the Trump administration over comments Kimmel made in the wake of the Charlie Kirk shooting. This is really disturbing.
Crowd listening to speaker at protest.
According to both the New York Times and Fox News, in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, Kimmel said on air that the right was working hard to portray the killer as a leftist in order to score political points. Apparently, Kimmel mistakenly believed that that killer had right wing views. Brendan Carr, the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission appointed by Trump, was angered by Kimmel’s comments, which he believes were part of a concerted effort to lie to Americans. According to the New York Times, Carr stated that broadcast companies needed to “find ways to change conduct and take action”, or the FCC might take action against them.
Unfortunately, while Carr claimed that Kimmel’s statements were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people,” I couldn’t find any reports that he gave other example of those lies, or that he talked about who was involved in the effort. No doubt he’s pointing the finger at the “liberal media”, a loosely defined term that seems to include any broadcaster or publisher that presents news that could be seen as critical of Trump.
Plenty of signs objecting to ABC’s action.
None of the published accounts I’ve read quote Kimmel as saying anything negative about Kirk himself, nor does it seem like he made any comments that could be perceived as condoning the killing. He made an inaccurate comment about the killer. TV personalities say things that are inaccurate all the time. They often make inaccurate statements because of their own personal bias. They often say controversial or shocking things because that draws media attention. This is true of celebrities on the right and the left. American popular culture rewards people who create controversy.
As many people have pointed out, when Trump was re-elected he claimed that he was going to restore free speech in America. But just in the last two years, he’s aggressivley gone after news organizations that have published stories he doesn’t like, suing the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and CBS for billions of dollars. Now it looks like the Trump administration is willing to use the power of the FCC to punish broadcasters that don’t fall in line.
Free speech is under attack. This is a scary time for America.
California Sen. Scott Wiener is celebrating the passage of SB 79, which requires local governments to approve qualifying housing projects if they’re located near transit. Wiener says in an analysis of the bill:
“SB 79 tackles the root causes of California’s affordability crisis by allowing more homes to be built near major public transportation stops and on land owned by transit agencies – bolstering transit use, slashing climate emissions, and supporting public transportation in the process.”
Unfortunately, Sen. Wiener hasn’t bothered to check the facts. Los Angeles and San Francisco have built thousands of new units near transit over the past decade, but transit ridership in both cities has been in steady decline.
It’s maddening that Wiener continues to jam legislation like this through the legislature when he clearly doesn’t understand the facts. And it seems most of the members of the California Legislature haven’t bothered to check the facts, either.
Photo by Sal Castro, Security Pacific Bank Collection, LA Public Library
Journalist Rubén Salazar was killed 55 years ago today. He’d been covering a large protest in East LA that was part of the Chicano Moratorium. Salazar was taking a break at the Silver Dollar Cafe when a sheriff’s deputy standing outside fired a tear gas canister into the bar. The canister hit Salazar in the head and killed him instantly.
Salazar worked at the LA Times in several capacities for more than a decade. At the time of his death, he was news director at Spanish-language KMEX-TV, though he still wrote a weekly column for the Times. Salazar reported on tensions between the Latino community and the cops, and it was no secret that law enforcement officials weren’t happy about his reporting.
It’s important to remember Salazar’s work, but also to think about his death in the context of what journalists are facing today. Both in the US and abroad, journalists are increasingly being targeted for doing their job. Beyond that, fair and objective journalism is increasingly threatened by the changing economic landscape and a social media sphere that values likes more than facts.
LA Times columnist Gustavo Arellano wrote an excellent piece on Salazar today. See below. I’m also including a link to Salazar’s own reporting. It’s worth taking some time to think about Rubén Salazar today. Fifty five years later, his life and his death still hold meaning for us.
Protesters gathered in front of LA City Hall on Saturday, June 14.
Thousands of people gathered in Downtown LA on Saturday for a boisterous, hours-long protest . Attendees held signs voicing anger over a number of issues, but the overarching message was that the protesters were not happy with President Trump. The air was filled with music and chanted slogans. Helicopters and drones flew overhead.
Protesters marching up Hill Street.
Late morning, a friend and I got on the subway heading to Downtown. Unfortunately, the driver announced that the stops at Pershing Square and Civic Center were closed due to police activity, so we got off at 7th and Metro. This meant we had to hike about a mile and a half to get to City Hall. While walking up Grand, we could see the throng of protesters marching up Hill Street in the distance.
Windows were covered with boards at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).
We also saw that the windows were boarded up at the Museum of Contemporary Art. A number of businesses had boarded up their windows to protect against the vandalism that’s been occurring in Downtown over the past week or so. The raids by Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), where agents have grabbed undocumented immigrants, sparked an outpouring of anger, and groups opposing the raids have held numerous gatherings to voice their outrage. But it’s hard to say who exactly is responsible for the graffiti, broken windows and retail theft. No doubt, some of it’s tied to the protests, but I think it’s also likely that some of the damage has been caused to opportunists who are taking advantage of the unrest to grab some merchandise or promote general mayhem.
Protesters arriving at Grand Park after marching up Hill Street.
When we arrived at Grand Park, protesters were still streaming in from Hill Street. While many came to speak out over the ICE raids, as well as Trump’s order to send the National Guard and Marines to LA, the event had been planned long before as part of a nationwide movement to push back against the President’s policies. On Saturday protests were held in New York, Chicago, Sacramento, Raleigh, St. Louis, Dallas, and many other US cities.
“Legalization is the answer.”
“I.C.E. Fuera de Tovaangar” (I.C.E. Out of Los Angeles) (Tovaangar is the name that was used by the indigenous people living in the LA area before Europeans arrived.)
“Feliz Dia del Padre” (Happy Father’s Day)
While I was there, the protest seemed completely peaceful. Hard to say how many turned out, but I’d say several thousand. Apparently things got rough later in the afternoon. The LAPD said that around 4:00 pm some protesters began throwing rocks, bricks and bottles. They responded by issuing an order to disperse. From an account published in the LA Times, it appears officers then used rubber bullets and tear gas to clear the streets. No serious injuries were reported.
Law enforcement stationed above the steps to LA City Hall.
An image of the Constitution standing in front of City Hall.
The protests will continue. While most of Trump’s supporters seem to stand firmly behind him, there are millions of Americans who believe his administration is deliberately undermining the Constitution and that he’s trying to assume power as an authoritarian dictator. Personally, I think there are dark days ahead of us.
I went down to City Hall for a hearing this afternoon. I got off the subway at Civic Center and walked across Grand Park to Spring. The park seemed peaceful, as usual, but as I got closer to City Hall I saw a crowd of around a hundred protesters gathered on the steps at the entrance. Activists spoke passionately about the injustice of the ICE raids.
I entered City Hall and attended the hearing, which lasted until about four fifteen. Then, since I hadn’t had lunch, I walked up First Street looking for a place to eat. Unfortunately, these days its hard to find a restaurant that’s open in the Civic Center. As companies have reduced their footprint in Downtown or abandoned it altogether, many local businesses have cut their hours or closed down.
As I walked up First Street, I saw that the ground floor of the former LA Times building was covered with graffiti. A little farther up there was a row of parked police cars. Helicopters crisscrossed the sky overhead. Even though things were calm, there did seem to be tension in the air.
Thinking that the cafe at MOCA might still be open, I headed up to Grand. I walked into the cafe and saw that they were cleaning up. The woman behind the counter said they were open for another 20 minutes, so I ordered a sandwich. When it was ready, I went out to the patio and sat down to eat it.
The woman at the counter spoke with a heavy accent. My guess is that she had come from somewhere in Central America. In the time I was there, she made my sandwich, wiped off the tables in the patio, straightened the chairs and emptied the trash cans. When I left she was sweeping up inside the restaurant.
These are the people that keep this city going. These are the people that keep this country going.
Graph from California Legislature’s report “Recent Legislative Actions to Increase Housing Production in California”
As has become usual over the past several years, the California legislature is considering a number of bills that would override local planning control and weaken environmental review for new development projects. Two of the most controversial bills are SB 79 and SB 607. SB 79, from State Senator Scott Wiener, would remove local zoning restrictions for housing projects proposed on sites near transit. SB 607, also from Senator Wiener, along with principal co-author Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, would essentially gut the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), giving local agencies broad latitude in deciding what level of environmental review was needed for a project, if any. (On May 19, both bills were placed in the Senate Appropriations Committee suspense file, which generally means a bill is on hold, but both are scheduled to be heard again by the Committee today, May 23.)
You probably won’t be surprised to hear that, while these bills have a long list of supporters, they’ve also generated major pushback from both individuals and established organizations. SB 79 is opposed by Public Counsel, the Public Interest Law Project, the Western Center on Law & Poverty, and numerous California cities. SB 607 is opposed by a number of environmental groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club California and Friends of the LA River. (Full disclosure: I work with a group that has sent letters opposing both bills, United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles.)
This has turned into a routine. Every new session, state legislators present a number of bills designed to allow developers to build bigger and faster, with little or no environmental review. The legislators claim it’s the only way to solve the housing crisis. What’s unusual about this year is that Governor Gavin Newsom has upped the ante. As the efforts of citizens and organizations opposed to these bills seem to be having an impact on legislators, Newsom has come forward to say that he’s going to use the budget process to achieve the goal of speeding up new development. Like Wiener, Wicks and many others, Newsom sees the housing affordability crisis purely as a matter of supply and demand. They believe that housing prices will go down if they erase local planning authority and let developers build with little or no environmental review. It’s the classic supply-side economics argument. Unleash the free market, and it will solve your problems.
Unfortunately, the legislature has been unleashing the free market for years now, and it doesn’t seem to working. Take a look at the graph above. This is taken from a report produced by the State Senate and State Assembly Housing Committees. The report is titled….
California’s Housing Crisis: More Construction Is Needed to Meet the State’s Housing Needs
The paper was produced by the State Senate and Assembly Housing Committees. It argues that California has failed to produce enough housing for decades, and that lawmakers in Sacramento have been reversing this trend with the many bills that have been passed in recent years. They cite reforms to density bonus law, reforms to the Surplus Lands Act, faster approval timelines, and increases in “by-right” approvals. (When a project is approved “by-right”, it means an application is approved automatically, with no public hearings and no environmental review.) The text emphasizes large increases in the percentage of Low-Income and Very Low-Income units completed, and says there’s been a 61.5% overall increase in affordable housing production. That’s great, but the report doesn’t give numbers for rent-stabilized units lost during the same period, or the number of affordable units that converted to market-rate when their covenant expired, which means we don’t know if there’s really been a net gain.
And in spite of the report’s claims about increased housing production, the graph seems to show the opposite. By my count, the report lists 98 bills that were intended to spur housing growth over the last two decades. Things really kicked into high gear in 2017, when Sacramento passed 15 pieces of legislation related to housing. Looking at the lists compiled in the report, it appears that from 2017 through 2024 the Legislature approved a startling 87 bills to jump start housing. Based on the number of bills, if you accept the arguments that Wiener and friends are making, you’d expect housing production to go through the roof. But if we look at the chart above, you can see that the number of units permitted since 2017 is well below the number permitted during the first decade of this century. While it looks like there’s been a slight increase in multi-family units produced over that period, there’s been a huge drop in the number of single-family homes produced. The numbers look even worse if we go back to the 80s. The quantities of both multi-family and single-family homes produced in that decade are far higher than the quantities produced since 2017.
Which brings us to the question, What has this onslaught of legislation actually accomplished? Wiener and his pals have spent years pushing bills to override local zoning restrictions, and they’ve also been busy hacking away at the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). They argue that loosening local zoning and sidelining CEQA will spur new housing growth. But look at the numbers. Wiener and friends started their assault on local zoning and CEQA back in 2017. While the text of the report seems to be telling us that their campaign has been a resounding success, the graph the authors lead off with tells a different story. Housing production since 2017 is well below what it was in the 2000s, and it’s WAY below what it was in the 1980s. And it’s important to point out that in both of these earlier periods, local zoning was more restrictive than it is now, and CEQA was in full force. No doubt some will argue that the pandemic held down new construction, but California’s own housing dashboard shows that the number of permits issued actually increased during the crisis. (See slide 8 on the housing data dashboard.)
Newsom, Wiener, Wicks and their cohorts keep telling us that local zoning and environmental review are two of the biggest roadblocks to new housing. But given the numbers that we see in the Legislature’s own report, it seems these folks have no idea what they’re talking about. The graph they lead off with tells the story. California was producing more new housing before the Legislature began its attack on local zoning and environmental review.
Would you want these diesel trucks driving through your neighborhood?
How would you like to have hundreds of diesel trucks driving up and down your street, spewing diesel exhaust, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Residents living on Redondo Beach Boulevard in the Harbor Gateway area have been trying for years to stop a massive distribution center from being built right across the street from their homes, but it seems that no one at LA City Hall is listening.
Back in 2018 I posted about the LA City Planning Commission’s approval of this toxic project directly across the street from residents’ homes in the Harbor Gateway community. Developer Prologis had filed an application to build a 300,000+ sq.ft. warehouse which would generate hundreds of diesel truck trips every day, and would operate all night long. The LA Department of City Planning had allowed Prologis to slide by with low-level environmental review that didn’t begin to address the impacts. Thankfully the State’s then-Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, stepped in to let the City know that they weren’t doing enough to protect the residents’ health. The people who had been fighting the project were overjoyed, but it turns out the reprieve was only temporary.
Apartments right across the street from the proposed distribution center.
The Prologis distribution center is back, and will be heard again by the City Planning Commission on Thursday, May 8. Given the CPC’s record of approving pretty much everything that comes before them, it’s likely the project will again be given the green light. The folks at LA City Hall do not seem to care that the residents are already subject to vehicle exhaust from the nearby 110 Freeway. Nor do they seem to care that the area ranks in the top 5% for pollution burden and vulnerability according to the California Environmental Protection Agency’s screening tool. And apparently it makes no difference that, in addition to the residential buildings, the project site is surrounded by a public park, an LAUSD school, nursing homes, and two churches. This project will bring the trucks already travelling the freeway right into the neighborhood, and air pollution has been shown to have serious health impacts on children, adults and seniors.
Area residents will be showing up at the CPC meeting to voice their opposition. If you can make it down to City Hall, they’d appreciate your support. The meeting starts at 8:30 am, but it’s hard to say exactly what time the item will be taken up by the Commissioners.
If you can’t make it down, you can also submit comments to the following e-mail address.
cpc@lacity.org
Be sure to identify the project in the subject line.
The Horizon and the Skyline 