I’m at the L.A. Athletic Club right now along with about 150 or so other people, for “The Federal Stimulus: What It Means for Los Angeles and the Environment,” a half-day event put together by the GREEN LA Coalition.
I know what you’re wondering. Have all these people been laid off?
That I don’t know, but a lot of people are really interested in finding out how they can get a piece of the $787 billion in the The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, aka stimulus plan.
To kick off the day, Jim Clarke, Federal Legislative Deputy for Villaraigosa, gave some details about the chunk California’s expected to get from the stimulus plan. The California Budget Project estimates that sum will be $50.7 billion, though I think Jim said $31 billion — but the acoustics are so bad in here that I’m not sure.
Basically, Jim threw out a lot of numbers that Cali can expect for various eco-projects (see this PDF from The Cali Budget Project for some details), and basically said that L.A.’ll hopefully get a good chunk of that, and that the city’s already been applying for some of the competitive grants.
Most interestingly, Jim said L.A. plans to have a city recovery website up sometime next week — a site that’ll also let people submit ideas and provide input.
Next we had a panel featuring Joseph Avila of the LADWP (he sees a lot of great opportunities in the stimulus bill for water conservation and energy efficiency programs for L.A.), Ramon Mendez of nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners (he named some green housing opportunities for L.A., especially in affordable housing for seniors and the disabled, plus energy retrofits for public housing), and Randy Britt from LAUSD (he’s seen no money yet and wants us to appeal to Schwarzenegger to fight for money for our schools’ eco-projects, including a massive solar power project).
Charlotte Hodde of the Planning and Conservation League’s just finished speaking about getting stimulus money for water-related projects — but I missed most of it because I was typing up the above — and I couldn’t hear her very well.
11:30 Robert Garcia of The City Project was slated to talk about open spaces, but from what I could hear, he spoke mostly about the need for social justice in L.A. — and the potential for the stimulus bill to help achieve that.
11:35 Someone asked if there’s money specifically allocated for public parks. The answer was no.
11:40 Someone asked about a neighborhood park he’s helping to create. Is it best to come up with a plan first? Or to work on securing funding first? Answer from Robert: Depends on the funding source you’re trying to get money from.
11:44 Now speaking: Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. She’s delivering Obama’s message to the L.A. enviro community.
11:51 Lots of nice words about Cali, L.A., and Obama. “The Golden State is a model for the potential for alternative and renewal energy sources.” Nancy big ups Obama’s commitment to the environment, green jobs.
11:54 Now she’s going through a list of green items in the stimulus bill, which most of us have already heard about (that’s why we’re here!).
11:55 Nancy on what the stimulus bill means for Cali: 400,000 new jobs. $185 million for weatherization programs, $351 mil for energy efficiency conservation block grant programs. Also money for public transit, water treatment, and more.
12:09 When the fire truck sirens stop, the construction noise begins. This location really doesn’t work well for this event.
12:14 Jonathan Parfrey of Green LA, who’s emceeing the event, jokes that Nancy probably approved the construction work going on outside.
12:15 New panel on how transportation and workforce funds’ll get spent in Cali. Erin Steva of the Cali Public Interest Research Group’s starting to speak. For some reason, a third of the audience is mass exiting the room.
12:21 Erin’s talking really fast; I can’t make out a thing. Her part ends. Jonathan’s beseeching people to move up to the front of the room because the acoustics are so bad. Construction starts up again. No one moves.
12:24 Jane Paul of the Green LA Coalition’s talking about workforce development. Lots of money’s going to worker training — many for eco jobs — and science and technology funding — some in education. There are also block grants that could go to education, with great opportunities for community colleges. Jane also names a whole bunch of state initiatives, bills, and task forces that bode well for the environmental community.
12:36 Someone asks about timelines. Jane says she doesn’t know what they are, and is not sure anyone does.
12:38 Manuel Pérez, Chair of the Cali Assembly Stimulus, Economic Recovery & Jobs Task Force, takes the podium. He’s speaking about the need for not just environmental justice, but social justice. Manuel says his parents were farm workers, which had him thinking about social justice issues at a young age.
12:48 Manuel: “The bottom up approach works, but we need to engage. We at the treetop level needs to engage with the grass roots, and vice versa. And the grassroots need to hold the treetop accountable.”
12:53 Cali has a new website dedicated to Cali info re: the stimulus plan: recovery.ca.gov.
1:08 The audience has shrunk to about a quarter of its original size. Andy Lipkis, founder of TreePeople, is up.
1:10 Andy: “The one takeaway I want to give you today is ‘Wake up and engage.’” He says there’s lots of potential for broken promises with the stimulus bill — so we need to engage. “There’s no definition of what green is. And wherever there is money, there’s going to be sharks…. If we’re not at that table, promises are gonna be broken.”
1:16 Andy says the 5 small water-wise pilot projects by TreePeople captures 1.25 million gallons every time L.A. gets 1 inch of rain. He wants us to make sure the state money allocated to water projects go towards similarly truly-green projects.
1:34 End of event. I guess the big question is: How best can we get engaged?
Hi,
Thank you for attending the Green L.A. conference and posting your notes. I am sorry you could not hear my comments on economic stimulus, public works and equal justice. Here is a summary.
Children of color living in poverty with no access to a car in L.A. have the worst access to parks and school fields of five acres or more, and have the highest levels of child obesity.
Economic stimulus funds can help through the creation of parks; joint use of parks and schools; transit to trails to take children on mountain, beach and river trips; public art in parks; and including public health criteria in infrastructure projects to rebuild cities.
Parks and schools can promote physical, psychic, and social health. Parks and schools can help alleviate the childhood obesity epidemic through places for physical activity and healthy eating. Physically fit students do better academically. After school programs including team sports are the best anti-gang strategy and provide positive alternatives to gangs, crime, violence, drugs, and teen pregnancies, according to the L.A. County D.A. Parks and schools bring people together. Youth conservation corps programs keep students in school and out of the regular job market.
Public work projects like Judy Baca’s Great Wall of Los Angeles in a park along the L.A. River can provide jobs for at risk youth. The City Project is working with Judy and SPARC to restore and extend the Great Wall, but the governor has frozen $2.1 million in state funds. Economic stimulus funds can help.
There are important lessons from New Deal public works, which created 8,000 new parks, 40,000 new schools, public art programs including murals, and the Civilian Conservation Corps to get people back to work greening the nation.
Negative lessons from the New Deal included the fact that many New Deal programs were off limits to people of color. Federal home subsidies were generally not available to black folks, for example. One continuing legacy is that the average black family has only 10% of the wealth of the white family.
Happy days are here again, however. President Obama offers hope and change to strengthen civil rights protections. The first bill he signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, which restored the right to sue for employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. We are also working with the administration to restore the right to sue recipients of federal funds including the City of Los Angeles for intentional discrimination and discriminatory impacts under Title VI. These laws apply to public works that receive economic stimulus funds.
One major way the economic stimulus can promote equal access to public resources in L.A. is that the City can finally implement the blue print for change of the Recs and Parks Department that Controller Laura Chick published in 2005. The audit calls for a strategic plan to improve parks in every neighborhood, a fair system of finance and fees, standards to measure progress and equity and hold public officials accountable, improving park safety, and the shared use of parks and schools.
Also Prop 84 and AB 31 provide $400 million for parks in communities that are park poor and income poor, including underserved communities in L.A. AB 31 defines park poor as less than three acres of parks per thousand residents, and income poor as less than $48,000 median household income. AB 31 offers standards to measure progress and equity and to hold officials accountable for park investments under economic stimulus funds and the civil rights laws.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa promised to plant 1,000,000 trees, but has only planted 200,000. The mayor is doing only 20% of his job for the environment. There are also close to 1,000,000 children in the city of Los Angeles. Each child deserves a tree, a place to play in parks and school fields. The mayor is doing only 20% of his job for the children of Los Angeles.
Economic stimulus funds are not limited to the ARRA but include Prop 84, the 160 consolidated bills Congress passed March 24, 2009, that includes 700,000 acres of green space in California, and the Obama budget.
I also distributed The City Project’s letter to President Obama on economic stimulus, public works, and equal justice; and our Policy Brief on investing park funds in park poor and income poor communities. I am sorry if you did not get a copy of each. They are available on the web at http://www.cityprojectca.org/blog/archives/1219 and http://www.cityprojectca.org/blog/archives/1332.
I hope this helps.
Robert Garcia
Executive Director and Counsel
The City Project
Comment by Robert Garcia — April 4, 2009 @ 11:35 am
And because this is about job creation and helping the environment, I’d like to share a green job posting just listed on Friday for the Los Angeles Enterprise office. Thanks.
http://careers.enterprisecommunity.org/careers.aspx?adata=Wu35tX29JCrnsNQEuRq2tB3hMckpEqSSaSh5BVulbtzo01kBjXt3%2bULojzuZayjI7ijtxwuqcWWARbDEHFaFUlXtoFUYWluP
Comment by Ramon — April 6, 2009 @ 9:35 am