Thursday, August 2, 2007

A Message From Concern Lincoln Heights Stakeholder

YOU KNOW WHAT...I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS BEYOND THIS POST (AND I DID SPEAK WITH SOMEONE ON THE PHONE WHO TOLD THE SAME STORY, WHO THIS COULD BE FROM...BUT I FIGURE, ANYTHING ARTICULATED SO WELL DESERVES A PUBLIC VETTING ON THE NC BLOG!

From Mayor Sam's Blog Comment Section:

What the blogger writing about Alicia Corona and Teresa Durate is trying to inform you about is that your tax money has been given to Alicia and Teresa to the tune of $1.5 Million Dollars to Purchase the former Rose Eye Clinic located in Lincoln Heights.

This is just one more example of the type of irresponsible and negligent development that occurs in communities such as Lincoln Heights.

These ladies are sweatshop owners that do not live in the area and have been able to convince the local city councilman Ed Reyes to support their venture. It is unfortunate because under the guise of bringing so called needed jobs to the community they have been given a variance by the city for a liquor license and gambling establishment to be built on this site which is directly across from Gates Elementary School, Lincoln High School and in back of it Little Flower pre-school and kindergarten. The gambling part consists of over 140 video arcade machines that will be fully operational during regular school hours. Fears are that the a local group claiming to be descendents of the local Native Americans will attempt to declare the site as a federally protected reservation because of the hieroglyphics rumored to be in a dynamited cave on a hill behind the project and thereby utilizing the approval of the gambling variance as a precedent to establishing a full blown casino adjacent to these schools.

The community has been fighting back, but it has been unable since the unethical involvement from USC's Institute of Genetic Medicine’s through Lyn Crandel and David Galaviz in carrying out a coup to take over the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council. Incidentally it seems that David Galaviz is even more unethical then first thought. Information has it that he is married to M. Teresa Villegas, a Mayor Villar’s appointee to the Environmental Affairs Commission. (Villegas served as an Executive Fellow for the California Air Resources Board with funding from the Hewlett Foundation. She developed recommendations for improvements to the State’s Environmental Justice Program, all of which were approved by the Air Resources Board. Ms. Villegas previously served as Legislative Director for the Trust for Public Land in Sacramento. She is currently a public policy consultant for local governments and the Trust for Public Land. She also serves as a Board Member for the Planning and Conservation League, a statewide environmental advocacy group. Board of Directors of the Land Trust Alliance)

It has been 2 years since the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council has had an election. Why would David Galaviz, for that matter anybody in City Government, want to have elections when they have conflict of interest influence on the Neighborhood Councils.

Getting back to Alicia's and Teresa project, remember the $1.5 million grant was just to purchase the property. On top of this they will also receive an estimated amount of an additional $5 million dollars of your taxes for building and tax credits for next five years to hire so-called marginalized workforce. This is just another farce by the politicians to give away your hard earned money.

Other projects that are occurring in Lincoln Heights is the building of 37 Low Income Units on a former EPA site on Sichel Street, under the 1805 Sichel LLC, headed by none other that City Housing Panelist John Huskey of Meta Housing. In this case the entire project is being funded 50% tax payer money and 50% from Wells Fargo. What a sweet deal. Can you ever imagine that someone in the Barrio could get this kind of funding, forget it you would have to be very well connected and you and your employees have to be generous donors to the illustrious sell out Latino Politicians?

More recently it was made known that a certain group of developers are planning to develop one of the largest parcels of open space in the City. Approximately 30 acres on a hill behind Lincoln High Schools Athletic Field, owned by Mee Yin Corp will have a gated community of 387 - million dollar homes. 15 acres will be for the housing and 15 acres of property will be donated to the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy. You say this is okay, think again. All land set aside for open space should be given to the City for Park Land that way it should never ever be used for anything but parks. But the game currently being played now is for non-profits such as the Conservancy to get the Land and then after a period of time they will also get rid of some of this Land for Development. The game is called Land Banking through the use of non-profits.

back to mayor sam

No comments: