News – Zev Yaroslavsky

Making tracks for a better future

November 25, 2014 No Comments

Ceremonial shovels and hard hats await their big moment, beside LACMA’s “Urban Light.”

Los Angeles’ subway is turning out to be the engine that could. A little more than 20 years after the first riders hopped aboard the first leg of the subterranean system, the network is getting ready to make tracks into the Westside, taking center stage in an unprecedented effort that will double Metro’s rail miles over the next two decades.

The Purple Line subway, which now runs from downtown only as far as Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue, will extend to La Cienega Boulevard by 2013, with stops at La Brea Avenue and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where officials recently held a ground-breaking ceremony to celebrate the coming of the line.

Funded in large part by Measure R—the half-cent sales tax approved by county voters in 2008—Los Angeles’ “rail-volution” heralds the region’s transition from smog-choked autopia to transit-friendly metropolis.

“It’s an amazing attitudinal shift,” said Art Leahy, Metro’s CEO. “Well into the 1980s people would say, as regards rail, ‘We don’t need that—this is not New York and it’s not Chicago.’ Well, you don’t hear that anymore.”

The Purple Line Extension is one of five major rail projects that are currently under construction, along with Phase 2 of the Expo Line, the Gold Line Foothill Extension, the Crenshaw/LAX Line and the Regional Connector. When fully built, the projects will add 37 miles of track and 30 stations, reaching destinations including Santa Monica, Little Tokyo, Beverly Hills, Azusa and Watts.

At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art groundbreaking ceremony, officials extolled the project’s benefits for transit riders and the community at large.

“It’s going to help people get where they need to go, cut traffic and boost our economy,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. “Tens of thousands of jobs will be created because voters said, ‘We want to get this done.’ ”

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky called the occasion an “historic day for the Westside,” noting that the area has not seen mass transit for decades—since the demise of the fabled Red Car network. He also said that the traffic-plagued Wilshire corridor—home to popular destinations such as LACMA, the La Brea Tar Pits and UCLA—was the best place to get the most possible riders for the new line.

“It’s the densest corridor outside of downtown,” Yaroslavsky said. “I believe we’ll have over 100,000 people riding this line within a year of its opening.”

The Purple Line extension project is broken into three sections with a projected total price tag of $6.3 billion, from a mix of federal and local funds, including half from Measure R. When completed, riders will be able to get from downtown L.A. to Westwood in just 25 minutes. The first 3.9-mile segment of the subway, with stations at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Cienega, is expected to be completed in 2023. The full extension will have additional stops at Rodeo Drive, Century City, UCLA and the Veterans Administration Hospital and is projected to wrap up in 2035.

The Westside doesn’t have to wait for the subway, however, to get its next rail infusion. Phase 2 of the Expo Line is on track for completion by the end of 2015. The line will bring trains to within blocks of the Pacific Ocean, ending at 4th Street and Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica and opening up transit options for millions of L.A. County visitors and residents. The beneficiaries will include Eastsiders like Metro’s Leahy, who lives in Pasadena. “I don’t go to the Westside often, even though I like the Westside, because it’s so hard to get around,” Leahy said. “It just takes forever to drive anywhere.”

The current rail expansion is the biggest of its kind anywhere in the United States, and transit advocates hope it will whet the public’s appetite for more. Plans for a new ballot measure that could fund additional projects are already in the works. While it’s too soon to predict what those plans will include, L.A.’s transportation makeover is already well underway.

L.A. County’s modern-day rail journey began in 1990 with the opening of the Blue Line, street level light rail that extends from downtown L.A. to Long Beach. Over the next decade, the Red and Purple subway lines opened in phases, connecting downtown to Koreatown, Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. Meanwhile, the Green Line linked Norwalk and Redondo Beach in 1995. Additional lines have opened since then, including the Gold Line to Pasadena and, most recently, the first section of the Expo Line to Culver City in 2012.

Posted 11/25/14

Helping homeless families heal

November 24, 2014 No Comments

At Via Avanta, once homeless moms like Gabriele Gonzalez are putting their lives back together.

Gabriele Gonzalez was living a hard life last winter. She was homeless and addicted to methamphetamine, sleeping in parks and abandoned buildings, unsure where she’d find her next meal.

Today, she’s headed in a dramatically different direction. She lives in a comfortable room in a freshly-refurbished residential treatment center, has a new job in customer service, and is looking forward to a possible reunion with the three children—aged 6, 8 and 10—who were taken away from her when she was at her lowest point.

Her transformation has not been a solo voyage. Crucial assistance is coming from the Via Avanta Residential Center in Pacoima, where a pilot program called “Project 60: Women and Children” is underway to help homeless women, particularly mothers, with serious mental illnesses.

The program marks the latest extension of Project 50, a pioneering “permanent supportive housing” program launched by Los Angeles County in 2007. It provided 50 of the most vulnerable homeless people on Skid Row with housing first, and then surrounded them with mental healthcare, substance abuse treatment and other services. Project 50-style programs have since expanded to assist nearly 1,000 people across the county, said Mary Marx, who oversaw the initial effort for the Department of Mental Health. The initial investment paid off, too—saving $4,774 per person over the first two years by keeping them out of jails and emergency rooms. And the model has spread to cities including Denver, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

And, of course, to Pacoima, where for many in the women’s pilot program, the well-being of their children serves as a powerful motivator to turn things around.

“I had lost apartments, cars and jobs before, but I had never lost my kids,” said Gonzalez, 29, whose son and two daughters were removed last November by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and placed with relatives. “When they got taken, I lost a big part of me. I couldn’t imagine having them grow up with the idea that I didn’t fight for them.”

At a court date last January, Gonzalez realized that she was running out of time to get her kids back. Motivated to take action, she turned to a list of help numbers provided by DCFS and decided to call Via Avanta, which is run by Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services. She moved in on February 5, 2014.

Kita Curry, president and CEO of Didi Hirsch, said that having children involved presents special challenges and raises the stakes of the housing program.

“We’re not just helping an individual get their life together; we’re helping a family get their future together,” Curry said. “Otherwise, these kids would be at risk of trouble at school, getting in bad relationships and repeating the cycle.”

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky—an early supporter and pioneer of the housing-first approach—identified $542,000 in 3^rd District homelessness funding to refurbish one of two residential buildings at Via Avanta last year. Last month, he directed an additional $1.7 million to the facility to redo the second building.

Though only a year old, the women’s program already is making a difference. It has served 39 women since the beginning of 2014. All were homeless and suffered from severe mental illness. Many also came with substance abuse disorders. Some, like Gonzalez, no longer had custody of their children. Others were admitted with children in tow. So far, 16 have been discharged and 23 remain in treatment. Of those discharged, 88% went on to live in supportive housing or with spouses, family and friends. Half moved out with their children and the others continue to work toward reunification.

Unlike Project 50—which dealt with single homeless people, most of them men—this program must consider the safety of the children and the realities of parenting, Curry said. Raising kids can be stressful even without mental health issues and substance abuse challenges, so it’s important to ensure that the women can cope with those realities before they are discharged.

After moving in, Gonzalez felt an immediate sense of security knowing that her basic needs would be met. She began putting her life back together, piece by piece—going to group therapy sessions, working in the kitchen and attending classes on subjects such as parenting, safety, domestic violence and relapse prevention.

“At first I was very emotional,” Gonzalez said. “I would cry in every group. It was part of my healing process.”

After a month or so, Gonzalez was allowed to have visitors, but she first needed to mend the bridges she had burned with members of her ex-husband’s family, who have custody of her children. The kids now visit occasionally, and Gonzalez has tea parties, plays dress-up and reads to them. She’s seen them “about 10 or 11 times. I’ve had to sit back and be OK about the fact that I’m not going to get as many visits as other people, but I‘m doing what I can.”

In addition to working on mental health and substance abuse issues with counselors, she built a resume and did mock interviews at Chrysalis, a nonprofit employment agency that works with Via Avanta. After spending hours each day applying for jobs at the work center’s computers, three weeks ago she was hired to do customer service for online companies. She wakes at 4 a.m. each day to commute from Pacoima to her workplace in Glendale. In her spare time, Gonzalez plays piano and even sings in Via Avanta’s hallways. Her current favorite is “Someone Like You” by Adele.

Gonzalez is adamant about taking responsibility for her life, but, like many homeless women, she also must come to terms with a long series of youthful traumas, including rape, molestation and abuse. By 15 she was diagnosed with clinical depression. Married at 18, she spent the next 12 years in a troubled relationship and turned to drugs, she said, to deal with her inner pain.

At first, she was reluctant to accept help in coming to terms with her past.

“I guess I held that stigma that I’m crazy if I have to see a therapist,” Gonzalez said. “I was very anti-medication. But it made such a difference. The medication and therapy has helped me so much.”

Now she’s looking ahead to the new year. February looms as an important month. That’s when she expects to move from Via Avanta (the program is generally geared to short-term stays) and has a custody hearing scheduled on the 15th.

“Hopefully that will be the date that I reunite with my kids,” she said.

Someday, Gonzalez hopes to attend nursing school and help other women like herself, perhaps at a place like Via Avanta. But she doesn’t want to get ahead of herself. She planes to continue focusing on her mental health and substance abuse issues by staying in treatment and going to 12-step meetings.

“I’ve put in a lot of work but none of it would have been possible if I hadn’t come here,” Gonzalez said. “I’m looking at life in a new way. I love myself today.”

Posted 11/21/14

Progress is in the bag at the beach

November 20, 2014 No Comments

This year’s coastal cleanup turned up plenty of garbage, but fewer plastic bags.

A wedding gown, a polar bear suit, even a fake human skull — volunteers have turned up all sorts of discarded items on Coastal Cleanup Day in Los Angeles County.

This year, along with the usual cigarette butts and crumpled cans, they found a gun near the Malibu Pier and a piece of a firearm under the Redondo Beach Pier, triggering police investigations.

And, of course, they also found another kind of scary item that always seems to turn up amidst the heaps of sodden shoreline garbage: the single-use plastic bag, which is among the 10 types of litter most frequently collected in the ocean, lakes, rivers, creeks and storm drains.

But these days, the tide may be turning against the bag.

“We’ve seen a significant reduction in plastic bags as a component of what’s collected,” says Department of Public Works recycling and waste reduction program manager Coby Skye.

He said that data compiled by the environmental organization Heal the Bay, which analyzes samples of the trash its members and volunteers haul out of coastal and inland waterways, tells the story. In 2010, an estimated 5,000 plastic bags were collected. In 2011 and 2012, that number dropped to about 3,000. And by last year, the count was down to some 2,000.

“It stands to reason there’s going to be less waste because we know fewer plastic bags are being distributed,” said Heal the Bay spokesman Matthew King.

The rapid decline of littered, single-use bags, according to King and others, is a direct result of bans enacted throughout the region in recent years, including one approved in Los Angeles County by the Board of Supervisors in November, 2010. That one is now widely credited with setting the stage for California to recently become the first state in the nation to restrict single-use plastic bags.

In California, almost 20 billion plastic bags are used each year, many of which end up as litter, creating urban blight and flooding hazards. Animals can get tangled up in them, or mistake them for food and starve to death.

Since discarded plastic bags are non-biodegradable, they could harm wildlife and the environment for hundreds of years, and possibly as long as a millennium. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, after voting to approve the ban, called them “urban tumbleweeds.”

San Francisco passed the first ban in the state 2007. Soon following suit were Malibu, Manhattan Beach, Fairfax and Palo Alto. But there, the momentum stopped, when other municipalities were scared off by lawsuits pushed by the plastic bag industry, which accused cities with bans of failing to prepare required environmental impact reports.

The county rendered that argument moot in November 2010 by passing an ordinance with an accompanying environmental impact report that focused on all cities within its boundaries, not just unincorporated areas.

“Soon after, jurisdiction after jurisdiction adopted bans,” Skye said, adding some of them copied the county’s ordinance verbatim and many of them relied on its environmental impact report.

“I think the fact that the county did it on a large scale made other regions more comfortable,” King said.

The city of Los Angeles became the largest city in the nation to ban plastic bags when it adopted an ordinance in June, 2013, that relied on data in the county’s environmental impact report.

The state, in its recent ban, also relied on the county’s ordinance.

Authored by state Senator Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), SB 270 bans groceries and pharmacies from distributing plastic bags after July 2015. Convenience and liquor stores must comply a year later.

The state law would also provide up to $2 million in loans to businesses transitioning to manufacture reusable bags.

The plastic bag industry, however, is petitioning to repeal SB 270, arguing that 30,000 jobs are at stake and that unwashed reusable bags can breed dangerous bacteria.

In a statement posted on the American Progressive Bag Alliance website, Plastics Industry Trade Association President William Carteaux said: “The truth is singling out one product that makes only less than one percent of the U.S. municipal solid waste stream will have no meaningful impact on reducing litter,” he added. “Instead, it will result in forcing consumers to use products such as reusable bags, which are mostly imported from China, made from foreign oil and are not recyclable.”

If the Alliance can gather half a million signatures over a 90-day period to qualify a referendum, then the statewide plastic bag ban would be suspended pending the results of the November 2016 ballot.

King believes voters should uphold the ban.

“People often wonder, ‘Don’t we have bigger issues to worry about than plastic bags?’ ” he said. “Certainly, the state and the world are grappling with a lot of major issues but I do think plastic bags are important.”

“I like to call them a gateway issue because it gets people thinking about the impact of their other habits on the environment,” he added. “After a conversation about plastic bags, you might also start wondering, for example, whether to use single-use plastic water bottles to your kids’ soccer game or just bring a big thermos. It’s very positive to have this process, this debate.”

A sandy message of environmental solidarity was on display at a 2011 cleanup.

Posted 11/20/14

Learning lessons in healthcare

November 20, 2014 No Comments

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky has pioneered school-based health centers like the one at Monroe High.

For years, teachers at Sun Valley Middle School used a 1.8-acre dirt expanse on campus to teach students the finer points of horticulture. But when Los Angeles County officials saw the empty land, they envisioned growing something else, something ripe for a neighborhood in need.

In 2008, the Sun Valley Health Center opened its doors, ushering in a new model of grassroots care in the county. Today, the $7.5-million, 11,000-square-foot community clinic racks up more than 28,000 medical and dental visits each year for ailments ranging from asthma to diabetes.

And patients are treated regardless of their ability to pay.

“It’s like a dream come true,” said Helen Arriola, governmental and community relations officer for the Northeast Valley Health Corp., a nonprofit tapped to provide low-cost or no-cost treatment at Sun Valley Health Center.

“There’s such a great need [for affordable care] in Los Angeles County, given the numbers of uninsured here,” Arriola said, recalling the crowds that lined up for vaccines at the health center as early as 4 a.m. during the 2009 swine flu pandemic. “We have to provide them with services — we can’t say ‘no.’”

The concept of school-based health centers has proven so successful that two more will soon become a reality on San Fernando Valley campuses that lie in what Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky calls “ground zero” in the nation’s healthcare crisis.

The $11-million, 13,500 sq. ft. North Hills Wellness Center at James Monroe High School, which was dedicated last month, is scheduled to start serving patients in January. Meanwhile, construction is expected to soon be completed on the $6.2-million, 5,400-sq. ft. San Fernando Teen Health Center at San Fernando High School.

The Sun Valley Health Center has logged more than 28,000 visits annually for medical and dental services.

All three projects are joint ventures between the county and the Los Angeles Unified School District — the former building the health centers, and the latter supplying the land.

They are partnering with several private nonprofit healthcare groups to staff the facilities with physicians, dentists, optometrists, psychologists, nurses and other medical professionals.

“We started looking into health centers on campuses many years ago, because schools are centrally located in the lives of families,” Yaroslavsky said the recent dedication ceremony for the North Hills Wellness Center.

“This is an effort to take the real estate used by schools, and build things into it that would not just be looking inward to the schools but outward to the community,” he added.

Yaroslavsky allocated $24.7 million in Third District funds for the three projects, while the LAUSD covered the remaining $1 million.

North Hills Wellness Center, located at the corner of Nordhoff and Haskell, will be the most expansive, with 14 medical, dental and visual examination rooms, mental health and behavioral counseling offices, as well as a dispensary and laboratory.

It will also have a Teen Health Center that will offer confidential treatment to the growing number of youths dealing with mental illness, substance abuse, homelessness and other problems.

“This community is home to about 400,000 residents, and about 85 percent of them live at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level — that’s an (annual) income of about $46,000 for a family of four,” said Dr. Roger Peeks, chief medical officer of Valley Community Healthcare, which will operate the wellness center.

“These are the people that we are going to serve,” he added.

The same nonprofit organization behind the Sun Valley Health Center will also operate the San Fernando Teen Health Center. Arriola said Northeast Valley Health Corp. is currently soliciting donations to buy furniture and medical equipment.

Initially, the teen center will treat only students from San Fernando High School, Mission Continuation School and McAlister School. But Arriola is optimistic that the clientele will expand.

“If you look at the construction site, the main door faces the street, and what we’re hoping is that sometime in the future, they’ll allow it to be open to the community, perhaps after-hours or on Saturdays,” she said.

The county’s community health programs director believes the school-based health center model should be replicated over and over again.

“What we know in pediatrics is that over half of the sick low-income kids in the US also have sick parents and sick friends, and the opportunity to serve them in one place is unusual, forward-thinking and fantastic for those families,” Dr. Mark Ghaly said. “We look forward to seeing this idea spread to more places,” he added.

D.A. sees new day for mentally ill

November 20, 2014 No Comments

District Atty. Jackie Lacey tells the Board of Supervisors that jail diversion is “right within my mission.”

When Jackie Lacey won election as district attorney in 2012, no one expected the county’s chief prosecutor to become a crusader for taking people out of—rather than into—jail.

Yet this month, she was again center stage before the county Board of Supervisors to push for sweeping, if gradual, reforms to provide the mentally ill with alternatives to incarceration.

“Too often, our default position is to lock mentally ill people away because of a perception that there is no alternative,” Lacey said. “Well, there are alternatives — we just need to dedicate resources to expanding the capacity of those alternatives.”

Flanked by leaders of the county’s criminal justice system and social safety net, and with advocates for the mentally ill sitting in the audience, Lacey vowed to present a comprehensive report on diversion programs in early 2015.

She emphasized that initial goals for the Criminal Justice Mental Health Project should be “modest and achievable.” Progress, she said, would take time.

“I want to temper our expectations for a quick fix,” Lacey told the board, pointing out that the county is so large and complex that it’s “a country unto itself.”

Still, there is a sense of urgency to the undertaking, not just for mentally ill inmates whose conditions are worsening behind bars. The U.S. Department of Justice has accused the county of failing in its constitutional duty to adequately serve mentally ill inmates and will likely force the county into a court-supervised federal consent decree.

Although the board is weighing a $1.7-billion proposal to replace Men’s Central Jail with a Consolidated Correctional Treatment Facility, envisioned as “a treatment facility for inmates, construction won’t be completed for years.

The county does have diversion programs already in place for the mentally ill but none has the capacity to serve the vast numbers of people whose schizophrenia, paranoia, bipolar disorder and other conditions may cause them to run afoul of the law. An estimated 15 percent of county’s 20,000 inmates have been diagnosed with a mental illness.

A pilot program was recently created to provide permanent supportive housing for 50 chronically homeless, mentally ill people who’ve been arrested for low-level offenses in the San Fernando Valley. Championed by the office of Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, the Third District Diversion and Alternative Sentencing Program is envisioned as a potential template for diversion programs countywide.

Currently, the Department of Mental Health has only three psychiatric urgent care centers and three crisis residential treatment programs across the 4,000-square mile county, and 30 mobile crisis support teams to respond to emergencies, sometimes while partnered with sheriff’s deputies or police officers.

Thanks to a $40.1-million state grant, however, those services will soon be expanded. The board voted to double the number of its urgent care centers, and potentially multiply its crisis residential treatment programs tenfold. It authorized creating 11 more mobile crisis support teams.

In an interview, Mental Health Director Marvin Southard said only those who are not considered a danger to society would be eligible for diversion.

“If somebody has committed a serious crime, they need to pay the consequences,” he said. “Whether they happen to be depressed is really beside the point.”

DMH also has mental health professionals embedded in 22 courthouses, but Lacey acknowledged that some prosecutors and public defenders don’t utilize their services or even know they exist.

She said officers of the court, as well as law enforcement officers, need additional training to ensure the mentally ill receive treatment, instead of ending up behind bars. She said that training would be the “short term” goal of the Criminal Justice Mental Health Project.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky believes that having Lacey spearhead the county’s diversion efforts is a “game changer.”

“It’s one thing for a non-law enforcement officer to advocate for this sort of thing, but it’s another when one of the chief law enforcement officers in the county — in this case, the D.A. — gives this the imprimatur of acceptability,” he told her after her recent testimony.

“I think this will be a real revolution for the county,” he said. “And I hope that we have the political will to get it done.”

In an interview after her board appearance, Lacey said she sees diversion programs as being “right within my mission.”

“My mission is to seek justice,” she said. “The stories of people who have loved ones in jail, or who have been put in jail themselves while mentally ill, just speaks to me personally.”

Posted 11/20/14

Framing the future of L.A. art

November 14, 2014 No Comments

LACMA’s new building will curve over Wilshire Boulevard. Image/Atelier Peter Zumthor and Partner

It’s been dubbed L.A.’s living room, and the coming transformation of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art promises that, artistically speaking, we’ll be living large for generations to come.

LACMA embarked on an ambitious new course recently with the announcement of the largest art gift in its history from entertainment mogul A. Jerrold Perenchio, just a day after the county Board of Supervisors unanimously gave conceptual approval to a plan to help fund a dramatic new Wilshire Boulevard-spanning museum building by acclaimed architect Peter Zumthor.

“Au Café Concert: La Chanson du Chien” by Edgar Degas

Perenchio’s collection includes spectacular but until now rarely-seen works by a range of celebrated European artists, including Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet and René Magritte. The 47 works are to join LACMA’s collection following Perenchio’s death, but the public will have a chance to view some of them at a special exhibition next spring, when the museum celebrates its 50^th anniversary.

The infusion of art and architecture comes as LACMA’s attendance is surging and the rest of Los Angeles County’s cultural landscape is enjoying exponential growth.

“What’s happening here at LACMA is really emblematic of what’s happening in arts and culture in Los Angeles County and the region,” Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said, ticking off a 15-year run that has included two new pavilions at LACMA, the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall, extensive renovations to the county’s Natural History Museum and the Hollywood Bowl, establishment of the Colburn Conservatory of Music and the debut of a new Valley Performing Arts Center at Cal State Northridge, among other highlights.

“If we had just done one of them, or two of them, we would have called it a good decade and a half. But we’ve had all of them,” Yaroslavsky said.

There’s more in store. The Hollywood Bowl this winter will be finishing a series of inside-the-amphitheatre improvements that already have brought patrons amenities like LED screens, updated picnic furniture and new bench seats. The county’s Ford Amphitheatre has embarked on an ambitious overhaul to replace its stage, shore up and re-landscape its scenic hillside and create a striking new terrace dining-and-concession area. On LACMA’s west campus, a new movie museum is about to rise. And LA Opera has launched a new tradition of bringing free, live outdoor simulcasts to audiences outside the Civic Center.

“Tête (Head of Fernande)” by Pablo Picasso

Nowhere is the excitement more visible than at LACMA. Yaroslavsky has coined the term “L.A.’s living room” to describe the museum campus’ around-the-clock pull on visitors, who make themselves at home with activities ranging from outdoor summer jazz to school field trips to photo ops in front of Urban Light to early morning jogs under Levitated Mass.

“When you come here even at 6 in the morning, as I do from time to time, or at midnight, this place is humming,” Yaroslavsky said.

Since the arrival of director Michael Govan in 2006, the museum has made Chris Burden’s Urban Light a crowd-pleasing beacon along Wilshire, created a communal touchstone across Southern California with the rolling of the massive boulder at the heart of Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass, and doubled its attendance to 1.2 million annually.

Now things are about to get really interesting.

The masterpieces in the Perenchio collection will make their permanent home in the new building being designed by Swiss architect Zumthor, winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize.

If all goes as planned, the sinuously curved new building should be completed by 2023, just as the Purple Line subway extension reaches the museum as part of its westward march.

The trifecta of the new building, the masterworks from the Perenchio collection and the arrival of the subway promises to accelerate LACMA’s momentum well into the future.

“The museum has become a cultural force in the community, and the Zumthor building will carry it into the 21^st Century and beyond,” Perenchio, 83, said at the news conference celebrating his gift to the county museum.

Perenchio, the former chairman and CEO of Univision, has made previous donations anonymously. He said he went public this time in hopes of spurring others to contribute artworks and money to LACMA as it prepares to build the new structure.

Under the plan unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors, the county has agreed to provide $125 million for the new building, which would replace four aging structures on the museum’s campus. But under the agreement, LACMA’s board must raise $475 million in private funding to make the building a reality. Perenchio said he hoped his gift would “encourage all types of donations, large and small—hopefully more large than small.”

“We have to make the Peter Zumthor building a reality,” he said. “Failure’s not an option here. We’ve got to do it, for the city and everybody who lives here.”

“Nymphéas,” from 1905, is one of Claude Monet’s celebrated water lily paintings.

Posted 11/14/14

Democracy gets a facelift

October 23, 2014 No Comments

The county’s proposed touch-screen voting machine would print out paper ballots with voter choices.

Envisioning a future that would make the founding fathers proud, Los Angeles County is investing $13.6 million to revolutionize its voting system and possibly set the standard for the rest of the country, too.

After decades of putting up with the clunky InkaVote and its even clunkier predecessors — Votomatic punch cards, anyone? — the Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to develop a prototype with a touch screen and other high-tech innovations designed to serve the different needs of the county’s nearly 5 million registered voters.

Barring any serious glitches, the new “ballot marking machine” will be field tested in 2017 and mass produced in 2018, in time for the gubernatorial election.

“If this works well in L.A. County, it could be a game changer for the nation,” said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan organization that advocates election accuracy, transparency and verifiability.

Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan said the machine’s engineering specifications, intellectual property and functional prototypes would be nonproprietary and remain in the public domain.

“From the beginning, we’ve adopted the principle of doing this in a very transparent manner so other jurisdictions can take advantage of the data,” he said.

The project’s first priority is to upgrade the county’s voting system but Logan added, “If we can do that in a way that is transferrable to other jurisdictions, that can advance voting systems across the country, it would be icing on the cake.”

It may not have a catchy name, but the proposed new voting system is state-of-the-art, sophisticated and intuitive.

The touch screen can be customized to display foreign languages, larger fonts and high-contrast backgrounds. Voters can also select candidates by pressing buttons on an attached handheld device.

Other advanced features include the ability to process voice command and to “read” interactive sample ballots on smartphones. Voters would simply hold their smartphones over the scanner, and the names of their pre-selected candidates would appear on the touch screen to be printed on the official ballot.

The machine also would allow ballots to be cast in conveniently located “voting centers” over an extended period of time, instead of in a specific polling place and only on Election Day. It would print the names of the candidates on the ballot, so poll workers would not have to interpret marks like on the InkaVote.

“This is a critical needs project because the environment and demands under which the county administers elections have become increasingly complex, challenged by a growing and diverse electorate, an aging voting system, and a fluid regulatory environment that has limited the development of voting systems,” Logan said.

InkaVote has been in use only since 2003 but its vote-counting system was based on a program developed in 1968—that’s 46 years ago, when the Vietnam War was still raging, Lyndon Johnson was in the White House and the original Star Trek was on the television.

“It has become increasingly difficult for the registrar/recorder to source replacement hardware, as well as for staff to support its outdated technology,” said a recent analysis by county Chief Information Officer Richard Sanchez. “(And) the lack of system flexibility places the county at risk of noncompliance of election requirements.”

The county launched the Voting Systems Assessment Project in 2009 and began consulting with technology, security and elections experts, as well as different kinds of voters to determine what upgrades were necessary.

When none of the existing off-the-shelf voting systems were found capable of meeting the county’s complex needs, the prominent design and innovation consultancy firm IDEO was recruited to develop a prototype.

The firm’s name may not be familiar to most but its work certainly is. IDEO helped design Apple’s first computer mouse, Crest’s standup toothpaste tube, and TiVo’s thumbs up and thumbs down buttons.

IDEO Director Blaise Bertrand said he hopes the “human centered design” of the new voting system will boost turnout at the polls.

“We tried to improve the voter experience by understanding the voters’ needs and providing a solid technology platform,” he said. “We hope it will make people more engaged.”

Still, not everyone was impressed by the changes. David Holtzman, founder of Los Angeles Voters for Instant Runoff Elections, sought to delay the project. “There’s no pressing need now for a new system,” he told the board, “unless you want to provide for improved election methods like using ranked choice voting to have instant runoff elections.”

Ranked choice voting would allow voters in a primary election to identify their favorite candidates in order of preference, which would eliminate the need for a runoff election.

Given the rapid pace of technological advances, there are worries the new voting machines would be rendered obsolete when, say, online voting becomes a reality. Logan, however, believes that may be years or even decades away

“In order to have a truly online or paperless voting system, you have to get over the barrier of the secret ballot,” he explained.

“When you bank online, for example, and somebody hacks into the system, it can be corrected because you and the bank both know what should be in the account,” he added. “With voting, it doesn’t work that way. Once you put that ballot into the ballot box, we’re not supposed to know your identity, so tracking mistakes would be difficult.”

Smith said the importance of having secured voting systems cannot be overstated.

“It’s participation in our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power,” she said. “To have an obscure, opaque voting system that nobody understands just doesn’t make sense.”

“Voting systems need features that would provide us with justifiable confidence that election outcomes are correct,” she added. “It’s not enough for those running the elections to say, ‘Just trust us, it’s working.’ ”

Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan says the new system will help the county deal with an increasingly complex electorate.

Posted 10/23/14

New recruits in war on flu

October 23, 2014 No Comments

This year, federal officials are recommending nasal flu mist for most children aged 2 to 8.

It’s a scary, potentially deadly communicable disease, and it could be coming soon to your neighborhood, school or workplace.

But unlike Ebola, which has been commanding worldwide media attention in recent weeks, influenza can be prevented with an effective, widely-available tool that you can get even at the corner drug store or supermarket.

We’re talking, of course, about the good old annual flu shot—which is being promoted in more varieties than ever this year, from nasal spray for kids to high dosages for seniors to vaccines that include an extra strain of virus for good measure.

With Ebola fears running high, county Department of Public Health officials are making a special push to persuade people to get immunized early in the season—whichever type of vaccination they choose—so that they don’t come down with the flu. Since flu can have some Ebola-like symptoms (including fever) it makes sense to minimize the number of people who get it and then head to the emergency room fearing the worst.

In other words, flu vaccinations may be an easier sell this season than they have been in years past.

The Ebola situation has created a “teachable moment,” said Michelle Parra, the director of Public Health’s immunization program. She said it is a chance to drive home the message that flu can be serious and even fatal, especially to those with underlying medical conditions or overall frail health.

Ebola has killed thousands in Africa, but at this point only two people are believed to have contracted the disease in the United States—both of them nurses who treated Thomas Eric Duncan, who was infected with the disease in Liberia and later died from it at a hospital in Texas. Flu, on the other hand, claims the lives of tens of thousands of Americans each year—up to 49,000 annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Those stricken include the 105 Los Angeles County residents—101 adults and four children— who died during the last flu season in 2013-14. That was the highest death toll in the county since the H1N1 pandemic of 2009-10, when 127 died.

No deaths and only “sporadic” flu activity have been reported to L.A. County so far this season, which officially runs from November 1 to March 31. But the county Department of Public Health emphasizes that it’s important to get the vaccine early, since it takes about two weeks to take full effect against flu viruses.

While the overall message is to get the vaccine, period, and as soon as possible, a number of new choices have been cropping up—giving consumers a robust array of options to talk over with their health care providers.

One is the first official recommendation that children aged 2 to 8 get nasal spray instead of a shot, unless they have a condition like asthma. The nasal mist also can be given to adults up to the age of 49.

Then there’s the high-dose vaccine for people 65 and over, which, according to a study recently reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, offers more protection for seniors than the traditional vaccine.

Finally, for the second year in a row, there are two different kinds of vaccine blends on the market—one containing three strains of viruses that cause the flu, the other made up of four.

While that’s good news overall (it indicates that manufacturers are becoming increasingly responsive to flu viruses circulating in other parts of the world before they reach the U.S.) it does present a bit of a communications quandary for health officials, according to L.J.Tan, chief strategy officer for the nonprofit Immunization Action Coalition.

That’s because the four-strain, or quadrivalent, vaccine accounts for only about half of the available vaccine. The CDC estimates that 76 million doses of the quadrivalent will be produced this season, while the rest of the 151 to 156 million doses that make up the nation’s total supply will be three-strain, or trivalent.

“We think it’s most important to get vaccinated [with whichever vaccine is most readily available.] We don’t want people going around saying, ‘Oh, the quadrivalent has four, it’s better, therefore I’m going to wait.’ Because by the time they wait it could be too late,” Tan said. “That’s one of the messaging nuances that we’re trying to figure out and get out there.”

Tan said researchers play a guessing game each year as they try to predict the virus strains heading our way in the coming flu season. The so-called B-strains are generally considered less lethal but are harder to predict, so the quadrivalent vaccine doubles down and includes both. The A-strains, meanwhile, are the most deadly, so both the trivalent and quadivalent vaccines include them—and that’s why health officials say it’s better to get a timely shot than to waste too much time shopping around.

In the midst of this expanding universe of vaccine choices, meanwhile, officials warn consumers not to be sidetracked by claims that flu shots give you the very disease you’re trying to avoid. “Flu shots cannot give you flu,” Public Health’s Parra said. “What happens is a lot of time people already have flu in their system” and wrongly attribute it to the vaccination they just received.

Finally, health experts emphasize that we’re all in this together. Even if you don’t feel personally vulnerable, it’s a good idea to get vaccinated to help those who are more susceptible.

“There’s so many people trying to push different messages, and I do think this idea of ‘Do it for your grandma’ is the one the CDC tries to lead with,” said Tan, of the Immunization Action Coalition. “Protect yourself, protect your family.”

More tips from the county Department of Public Health are here.

A recent study confirms that high-dose flu vaccine is more effective for people 65 and over.

Posted 10/23/14

At the ready for Ebola in L.A. County

October 17, 2014 No Comments

Nurses at LAC+USC hospital this week learn how to protect themselves from Ebola with protective gear.

When LAC+USC Medical Center handed out its latest batch of protective gear against the Ebola virus Wednesday, several emergency room nurses eagerly reached out with both hands.

There were impermeable gowns, scarves, booties, hair coverings, face shields, goggles and gloves – boxes and boxes of them. Still, the offered protections were not enough to ease the anxieties of at least a few of the nurses who’d gathered in the facility’s conference room.

After all, two members of their profession had, stunningly, contracted Ebola in a well-known Dallas hospital while extensively treating a patient who would succumb to the deadly disease.

One of the nurses at the LAC+USC training session, for example, worried whether the back of her neck was still exposed after she’d slipped on her blue gown. A tall, male nurse, meanwhile, wondered what might happen if his large feet tore through his protective booties.

Observing the session was nurse Jason Guzman, 33, who’d already been training for more than a week at the Los Angeles hospital, which is operated by the Department of Health Services. He understood the importance of those questions and concerns because before his training, he had them, too. For with Ebola, even the slightest wardrobe malfunction can lead to infection.

The training, he said, “helped me get more comfortable with the gear. It’s really boosted my confidence. It’s helped me feel a bit better about the situation.”

According to the World Health Organization, the current outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease has infected some 8,900 people, killing about 4,500 of them. That’s more than all other previous Ebola outbreaks combined. Among the casualties: 256 healthcare workers.

Although West Africa remains the epicenter of the disease, the patient in Dallas succumbed after a visit to Liberia, infecting two nurses who’d cared for him.

According to Los Angeles County’s interim health officer, Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, the nurses’ infections underscore the need for healthcare workers and others to take extreme precautions if they come into contact with a patient who may be contagious.

“I feel personally responsible for their safety,” he said.

Ebola, first discovered in 1976, can cause fatal hemorrhagic fever. A person can get sickened through direct contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids. The first symptom is fever, followed by headache, weakness, diarrhea and severe bleeding.

Gunzenhauser is concerned but calm, even unruffled. That may be because he’s not only a doctor but a retired Army colonel, whose resume includes graduation from West Point, medical training at Walter Reed Army Hospital and drafting health policies for soldiers deploying to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He even learned to parachute out of planes, should that be the only way to reach wounded soldiers on the battlefield.

“Coming out of the military, I’m very accustomed to working in highly stressful operational environments and approaching problems with greatly detailed plans,” he said.

Last week, Gunzenhauser and other county leaders convened a task force to evaluate the response to Ebola if it were to reach Los Angeles. He knows that patients would need more than just medical care.

That’s why beyond medical, emergency and law enforcement agencies, the task force includes such departments as Children and Family Services, Mental Health and Public Social Services.

“Let’s say, for example, we might have a case where we would need to quarantine a family,” he said. “How are they going to get their food? What if they need medications? What if we’re pulling a kid out of school? We need to look at all those contingencies, and plan for them.”

If preparing for Ebola is like mounting a military campaign, then nurse Jason Guzman is among those on the front lines. He feels a “calling” to be a nurse, despite knowing that taking risks is “part of the job description.”

“Nurses are in the field to care for those who need help, and Ebola patients aren’t any different,” Guzman said. “They definitely need care — a little bit more care, perhaps.”

“I just know that if there’s a situation where there’s possibly a patient with Ebola, I’m going to do everything i can to help them,” Guzman said. “I’ll also definitely do everything I can to protect myself.”

Nurse Jason Guzman says his Ebola training has “really boosted my confidence.”

Posted 10/17/14

405 speeds little changed

October 9, 2014 No Comments

Afternoon rush hour speeds haven’t changed much but the worst traffic may be ending sooner.

Afternoon rush hour speeds on the northbound 405 Freeway through the Sepulveda Pass appear to have stayed relatively constant—or perhaps gotten a bit slower—in the year following the full opening of a new carpool lane at the heart of a $1 billion-plus improvement project, according to a recent two-week sample by a traffic monitoring firm.

But given the increase in cars on the road due to an improving economy, just staying even may be an accomplishment, according to analysts at INRIX, which monitors traffic for clients including government agencies and media organizations.

The firm looked at afternoon travel times on the northbound 405 between the 10 and the 101 this September, when the new carpool lane was fully open for business, and the same period last year, when only a 1.7-mile stretch of the new lane was in use. INRIX did not have a measurement of travel times during the same period in 2009, before the project started. Caltrans and Metro said they were unable to immediately provide their own travel time statistics for either the 2013 or 2014 period, or for the same period in 2009, before the project began.

The INRIX snapshot, while far from definitive, is significant because it offers the first glimpse of how the long-running project may be affecting motorists in one of the nation’s most notorious traffic hotspots.

The sampling took place on weekdays during the second and third weeks of September. It found that drivers on the northbound 405 between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. took 35 minutes to travel between the 10 and the 101—a rate of about 16 miles per hour. That’s a minute slower than the same period last year, despite the full opening of the 10-mile carpool lane this May as part of the 405 Project.

“The data shows that nothing’s changed despite the investment that’s been made,” said Jim Bak, director of INRIX.

However, on the positive side, the most congested part of the rush hour appears to be ending earlier, Bak said. Travel times in the sample weeks averaged just 23 minutes during the final hour of the rush period, compared to 28 minutes a year ago.

And things could be worse. The freeway is doing a good job of managing a regional surge in traffic, Bak said. “L.A. County had the fastest year-over-year growth in employment since the recession began in 2007,” Bak said. “You’ve got people going back to work in good numbers. People are spending money, they’re going to restaurants—all that stuff contributes to more traffic on the roads.”

The finding that speeds appear to have remained level despite the increase in traffic is a sign of the project’s success, Metro spokesman Dave Sotero said. Caltrans, Metro’s partner on the 405 Project, estimates that the carpool lane handles 1,600 cars per hour during peak travel times. “If you didn’t have that extra lane, all those cars would be competing for five lanes instead of six,” Sotero said.

What’s more, the 405 Project’s benefits go beyond traffic speeds, Sotero said. The project enhanced safety by rebuilding three bridges to better withstand earthquakes and by creating additional shoulder space on the freeway, he said, while reconfigured on- and off-ramps have increased capacity and improved traffic flow. Sotero said the project never was expected to be a panacea for rush hour traffic.

“You can’t escape the fact that carpool lanes are going to fill up during peak periods,” Sotero said. “What carpool lanes do is reduce the duration and severity of traffic.”

The 405 is one of the busiest and most congested roadways in the world. According to a Metro estimate from 2011, it handles 300,000 vehicles per day. INRIX’s Bak said that congestion on the 405 is emblematic of a national problem that’s made worse by deteriorating infrastructure. Highway improvements help, he said, but every option—from better public transit to improved technology for the timing of traffic lights—should be on the table, he said.

Metro’s Sepulveda Pass Transit Corridor project—which could include a high-capacity rail line connecting the San Fernando Valley and the Westside—may be an option for improving transportation along the 405 over the long term, if funding for the project can be identified.

But shorter-term fixes also are on the way. Metro will debut an express bus line in December that will take advantage of the 405’s new carpool lane to create a nonstop transit connection between the Valley and Westside.

“We are taking an ‘all of the above’ strategy to improve mobility in the Sepulveda Pass,” Sotero said. Carpool lanes are one step toward Metro’s main goal, which “isn’t to move more vehicles, but to move more people.”

For now, though, Metro or Caltrans measurements toward that goal are unavailable, as far as the 405 Project’s performance is concerned. Caltrans plans to collect such data but has not yet installed the necessary road sensors to do so, said Lauren Wonder, spokeswoman for the agency.

For its part, INRIX, using technology developed by Microsoft, combines road sensor data with crowd-sourced data from vehicle navigation systems and mobile devices such as smart phones. In cases where there are no road sensors the company can still calculate speeds within a two mile-per-hour margin of error, Bak said. INRIX contracts with media organizations, automobile manufacturers and 40 state transportation departments to provide real time traffic data and assess long term traffic trends.

A more detailed examination is expected in March or April of 2015 when INRIX releases its Traffic Scorecard—an annual report on traffic congestion in the United States and parts of Europe.

Posted 10/8/14

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