Around the Halls: November 17 - 19

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — It's Monday, November 17, and Council returns from recess to a full slate of meetings. Wednesday's the heavy day for Downtown items, with mixed-income housing rules as the marquee item.

MONDAY: Public Safety committee is considering CF 08-2476, a motion that would create new training requirements for Fire Safety Directors and Floor Wardens in high-rise buildings. The Building Owners Management Association is in favor of the proposal.

There's a 3pm presentation of river updates at a special meeting of the Ad Hoc River Committee.

TUESDAY: Council's in session. Item 42 is CF 08-3025, a Perry / Rosendahl motion authorizing the winter shelter program. Of the five temporary shelter sites, one would be Downtown.

WEDNESDAY: At 8:30am, Housing, Community and Economic Development committee is holding a joint meeting with Planning and Land Use to consider CF 08-2614, which would instruct several city departments to create new mixed-income housing rules for Los Angeles. You can be sure that this is an issue developers around the city are watching quite closely. Interesting note -- the Council File has three letters from the public in it. All three share the exact same talking points.

Also at Housing is 08-2567, a CRA memo establishing the "Grand Avenue Predevelopment Revolving Loan Program." The program would be funded by $1.5 million from Related and provides initial loans to affordable housing projects. When asked in September, Related said that the company would be funding the program only once construction begins.

Housing will also receive an ordinance for CF 07-0332, which creates a community taxing district for the Grand Avenue project. This would capture the parking and hotel taxes generated on the site.

At Council, item 32 is CF 08-1858, the nighttime DASH motion. Expect to hear much more about this during the week.

Public Works committee will hear CF 08-2989, the Taxicab Appreciation Week motion we wrote about recently.

At 3pm, Arts, Parks, Health and Aging will hold a joint meeting with the Planning and Land Use Management committee to discuss a permitting process for murals. Though Los Angeles has a rich history of murals, the works had gotten caught in crossfire with the city's (so far fruitless) efforts to tackle advertising and billboards.