BALLONA WETLANDS ALERT
posted March 17, 1999

photo (c) 1999 by Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.

NEWS MEDIA ALERT

STUNNING WHISTLEBLOWER REVELATIONS SHOW PLAYA VISTA/BALLONA WETLANDS DEVELOPER’S SECRET POLITICAL STRATEGY TO HELP RE-ELECT RUTH GALANTER AND BILK THE TAXPAYERS

WHAT: PRESS CONFERENCE AT THE BALLONA WETLANDS

WHERE: CORNER OF LINCOLN AND JEFFERSON BLVD. SOUTH OF MARINA DEL REY

WHEN: 10 A.M. WEDNESDAY MARCH 17^TH

WHO: 6^TH DISTRICT CITY COUNCIL CANDIDATE REX FRANKEL WILL REVEAL
FORMERLY TOP SECRET INTERNAL MEMO’S FROM THE DEVELOPER OF PLAYA VISTA

It’s well known that the troubled Playa Vista developers love Councilwoman Ruth Galanter. Their employees, consultants and lawyers have given her 1999 campaign $20,000, her largest single source of campaign contributions. The Playa Vista developer is sending out thousands of brochures to residents of her district praising her. In return, Galanter is offering them a $600 million package of corporate welfare composed of tax dollars, tax breaks and tax-exempt bonds, to help restart their project, which was nearly in bankruptcy in 1997. Galanter says the government can’t afford to buy this land, 1000 acres of green open space, wetlands and wildlife habitat in the middle of the most densely developed city on the West Coast. Galanter pushed the City Council to approve development of a third of this property in 1993 and 1995.

What isn’t well known, until today, is actually what the current owners of the land paid for it. According to a shocking and revealing 188 page internal memo given to the citizens who oppose this development by an active whistleblowers network inside the development company, the firm Playa Capital LLC only paid $101 million to acquire this fragile urban open space. Galanter, who claims to be a "strong environmentalist", wants the government to help develop 2/3rds of this land with incentives of well over twice what the entire parcel is worth. Galanter is amply rewarding the developer for their huge campaign contributions.

But the Playa Vista developer’s assistance to her campaign goes much farther than that.

After 3 ½ years of study, they intended to release their controversial phase 2 development plans, for the rest of the property, in early 1999 and hold public hearings now. But since the first phase was approved, public opposition to the development has exploded.

Their internal memo says, however, that due to "the risk of conducting major public hearings on the project in the midst of an election", they will postpone releasing their 2^nd phase plans until after the April primary and June runoff election for Galanter’s city council seat. Their vice president, Robert Miller, stated that the plan will now be released in July or August.

This is a deliberate move to avoid bad publicity for their bought and paid for ally Ruth Galanter, who’s been their best friend at City Hall. Galanter first won her seat in City Hall by opposing the massive plans for this development, composed of 13,000 condominiums and apartments, over 5 million square feet of office and retail space, with a daytime population of 50,000. It will dump 200,000 cars a day on local streets, more than L.A. International Airport. It will add 28% more rush hour traffic to the San Diego Freeway and 100% more to the Marina Freeway. It will spew over 10 tons a day of air pollutants making it the 4^th largest single source of smog in the city of Los Angeles, beaten only by LAX and 2 oil refineries.

In fact, Galanter’s bailout is making possible an environmentally unsound project, a project that is considered economically unviable by the L.A. Mayor’s office without the bailout.

Why is the site not suitable for development? It is located in a swampy river valley, with an extremely high water table, crossed by several earthquake faults, and with a leaking natural gas storage field operated by the Southern California Gas Company. All of their buildings, even the smallest, will have to be built upon stilts which will go down to 50 feet below sea level, to avoid the soil which has a high risk of turning to Jell-O in an earthquake.

The internal memo’s authors admit that the site is plagued by "poor soil conditions".

A new study which the landowner was ordered to do by the City’s building and safety department, reveals that the soil is highly contaminated with flammable methane gas. This is much like L.A.’s Fairfax district where a single spark set a city block in flames in 1985. The city has now declared the Playa Vista land a "high methane risk zone".

But Playa Vista is not just an environmental hazard to future occupants and investors in the project. It is a financial hazard to the taxpayers and anyone who buys or rents a condo at Playa Vista.

The whistleblower memo reveals that the developer intends to dump nearly all of their infrastructure costs onto the California taxpayers or the future residents of the project.

And to thwart the "right to vote on taxes" law, known as proposition 218, they intend to load up their property with over $400 million in special Mello-Roos taxes to pay for all of their roads, sewers, parks, and other so-called benefits to the surrounding community. These extra taxes will be paid through extra-high property taxes, which will lead to residents paying double the normal property tax rate paid by anyone else in Los Angeles. According to the memo, the developers intend to avoid building the housing in the first phase of the project until the 2^nd and final phase is approved. This is because under proposition 218, if any of the first phase housing is sold, then the residents have a right to vote and even repeal any of the Mello-Roos taxes, thereby putting the development costs back on the developer, where they belong.

The memo reveals further that while the landowner is being offered upwards of $600 million of their development costs with government assistance, coincidentally, they are willing to let this money "trickle down" back to their friends, to buy support from politicians, environmental and charitable groups, to the tune of $360,000 in 1998 alone.

Their payments in 1998, according to the memo: