The Same Politicians Responsible for L.A.’s Destruction Shouldn’t Oversee Its Rebuilding

(The Daily Signal)—Virtually the entire town of Pacific Palisades, my home, has been destroyed by the recent fire. The fact that Pacific Palisades and so much of Los Angeles is in ruins is all one needs to know to conclude that Los Angeles’ and California’s leaders were grossly negligent. This simply cannot happen in a modern, wealthy, highly taxed, American city set to host the next Olympic Games.

Allowing Pacific Palisades’ sole reservoir to sit empty awaiting a minor repair for close to a year is but one of many examples of neglect already identified. A severely under-resourced Los Angeles Fire Department, with staffing at the same level as the 1960s yet subjected to additional budget cuts this year, is another.

The question now is whether these same negligent leaders should be trusted with the rebuilding of Pacific Palisades and the other fire-damaged parts of Los Angeles. The rebuilding will be extremely complex. How do you start reconstructing a single home when the entire block and those around it are gone?

In a desperate attempt to show leadership after obvious failure, city and state leaders are rushing to establish new rules governing such construction even as firefighters are still searching Los Angeles’ charred remains with cadaver dogs.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency and is using that power to go after developers seeking to profit from the tragedy by making “unsolicited offers” to those who lost their homes. But is cracking down on real estate developers the best way to ensure the redevelopment of the city’s real estate? Personally, I have never been offended by someone offering me money. Californians remember well the last time Newsom abused his state of emergency powers during COVID-19, violating his own orders by dining at the French Laundry.

Mayor Karen Bass has announced that she will streamline LA’s notoriously onerous building permit process for those looking to rebuild, but there is a catch. They cannot increase the size of their homes by more than 10%.

The cost of construction in LA was through the roof before the fire, thanks to supply chain problems brought on by the COVID-19 lockdown, followed by inflation caused by enormous COVID-19 and “Inflation Reduction Act” spending and California’s Green New Deal, which imposes onerous environmental restrictions and requirements on builders.

The cost to build before the fire was over $1,000 per square foot. After the fire, demand will drive those prices even higher. It likely will be far too costly to rebuild a 1,600-square-foot home, about the size of many of the homes that burned in Pacific Palisades’ downtown area, if the new home cannot exceed 1,760 square feet. The value simply will not justify the cost.

These rules are just the start. LA and California leaders will no doubt see the tragedy as an opportunity to “reimagine” the Palisades and “build back better.” They will likely encourage low-income and homeless housing development, despite the town being the among the city’s most affluent neighborhoods. After all, they have billions to spend on such housing thanks to new taxes LA residents recently voted to impose on themselves. City leaders told them the taxes were necessary to solve the out-of-control homeless problem, a problem those same leaders inflicted on the residents by eliminating the city’s ban on camping in public spaces.

In addition to an additional half-cent sales tax, residents approved a “mansion tax”—a misnomer, since the tax applies to all real estate in the city, including commercial, where the sale proceeds exceed a certain amount— to fund homeless housing and provide free legal representation for anyone evicted by a landlord regardless of the reason.

This tax will act as a major deterrent to the redevelopment of the Palisades. It imposes a tax of 4.0-5.5% on the gross sale proceeds of any property in LA over $5 million. This equates to a tax of about 25% of the net proceeds for any new development. Passed two years ago, the tax has resulted in LA being essentially redlined for any new commercial or high-end residential development. The Palisades primarily consists of high-end residential properties.

It is nonsensical to subject Palisades residents to rules created by the same politicians who caused their suffering. One option is to recall Bass and Newsom. Such efforts are already in the works. But this is not the best option. By law, Bass would simply be replaced by the City Council president, who is equally culpable for the fire along with the rest of the Council (consisting of 10 Democrats, five Democrat Socialists, and zero Republicans). Newsom would probably also be replaced by a like-minded politician.

A better solution is to allow the town of Pacific Palisades to break away from the morass that is LA. LA is the nation’s second largest city in the nation’s largest county and largest state. It is almost double the square miles of New York City. It is just too big to effectively manage.

Consider this: Would an independent town set in the foothills and canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains whose homes have been rated by insurance companies as a high risk for fire have allowed its only reservoir to sit empty awaiting minor repairs for a year? Of course not. But a city the size of LA, with a hundred other priorities ahead of it, including ensuring “environmental equity,” DEI, and acquiring luxury apartments for the homeless, one relatively small reservoir in one of a hundred towns is simply not on its radar.

Consider the city of Santa Monica, which, unlike the Palisades to its immediate north, is not part of LA. Its home values are inflated because it maintains a good, local public school system. Palisades residents are stuck with the LA Unified School district, one of the worst public school systems in the country. And when one walks or bikes along the beach in Santa Monica, the paths are meticulously maintained because the beach is the centerpiece of the city. Naturally, its government focuses on those things central to the city.

As you continue along one of those same paths into Venice, a town within the city of LA, the path noticeably deteriorates, and the homeless abound. The beach simply cannot be a priority for a huge city like LA. It is but one minor component, and thus Venice’s beach community suffers compared to its neighbor to the north.

The town of Pacific Palisades must be given its freedom. It has suffered at the hands of distant and incompetent leaders. As America’s Founding Fathers said, “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another … they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

I welcome my fellow residents of the Palisades to further declare those causes, as I have done here, and declare their independence from LA.

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