Los Angeles City Council

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a routine 5% pay increase for its members, the mayor and other high-ranking officials. Acting on the recommendation of the city's official Salaries Authority, the council approved unanimously, and without discussion, 5% pay hikes for each of the next two years for themselves, Mayor Tom Bradley, Controller Rick Tuttle and City Atty. James K. Hahn. The move comes at a time when the mayor's financial affairs are under investigation and various city officials are calling for changes that could dramatically increase the salaries of elected officials, while prohibiting them from receiving outside income.

Robert Kennedy was a young Bill Rosendahl's hope for the White House, but Kennedy's rival, Hubert Humphrey, practiced the "happy warrior" style of politics that represents the principles Rosendahl has embraced. As he leaves the Los Angeles City Council after two terms, his eight years in office (and a diagnosis of cancer, now in remission) have not extinguished Rosendahl's cheerfulness, but they have given his warrior side an instruction booklet. He's crusaded for gay rights, for better care for the homeless and his fellow veterans, for mass transit.

Somehow, somewhere along the line, connections had been frayed and confidence lost. Conceived in the ashes of Watts, this was supposed to be a municipal administration built to absorb ethnic shocks. In a city of so many colors, of so much wealth and poverty, it was expected to keep the peace. But on a single evening in late April, the flames that lighted the Los Angeles sky revealed that despite its multiracial hues, Mayor Tom Bradley's model City Hall was powerless to keep the lid on.

A never-used, $21.8-million children's museum the city built next to Hansen Dam Recreation Center on Los Angeles' northern edge is back on track to become an attraction and an educational asset after years as a municipal white elephant. After more than two years of discussions with operators of the nonprofit Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, the City Council has approved putting an additional $18.1 million into the project, which will enable Discovery to equip the 57,000-square foot San Fernando Valley site with environmental and other science exhibits.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to adopt a comprehensive medical marijuana ordinance that clamps strict controls on dispensaries, which have spread with a velocity that stunned city officials and angered some residents. Settling the last controversial issue on its list, the council decided to require the stores to locate at least 1,000 feet from so-called sensitive uses, such as schools, parks, libraries and other dispensaries. The decision to reject a 500-foot setback reflected the council's intent to write the most restrictive rules that would still allow dispensaries.

The Los Angeles City Council agreed Wednesday to pay $320,000 to settle a lawsuit by a man who was cleared of murder when footage shot for the HBO comedy "Curb Your Enthusiasm" showed him at a Dodgers game when the crime occurred. Juan Catalan had filed a police misconduct suit against the city after spending nearly five months in jail for a crime he did not commit -- a point his lawyer proved after producing outtakes from the television show.

A proposed 24-story condo tower with shops and office space in Brentwood was unanimously approved by the Los Angeles City Council. Construction of the building at the northeast corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Barrington Avenue should begin in January 2006, said developer Ken Kahan, president of California Landmark. Five units in the tower will be rented to low-income tenants and the other 73 units will be sold at market rate, probably in the high $600,000s to low $700,000s, he said.

The Los Angeles City Council gave final approval Tuesday by a 13-1 vote to a long-awaited ordinance regulating development in the city's hillside neighborhoods. The ordinance, adopted after minimal debate Tuesday, seeks to halt the trend of building large houses on small hillside lots and to make hillside living safer through a series of fire-protection measures. Adoption of the law has been a top priority of homeowner groups, led by the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns.

The Los Angeles City Council has unanimously approved a resolution urging voters to approve Proposition 172, the November ballot measure that would extend a half-cent sales tax to pay for police service. Council members said passage of the proposition is critical to ensure that the city's services do not suffer further reductions, with a $200-million deficit already looming next year. Gov.

The Los Angeles City Council has voted to file a lawsuit challenging the massive Ahmanson Ranch housing project in neighboring Ventura County, becoming the third government entity to initiate legal action against the proposed development. The city of Calabasas and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors have authorized lawsuits against the Ahmanson Land Co. plan to build 3,050 houses on a former sheep ranch in the Simi Hills.

Hoping to lure car dealerships back to Los Angeles, the City Council voted Tuesday to eliminate the business tax for new auto dealers. Dealerships are sought after by cities because they generate substantial sales tax revenue. But officials say nearly 100 dealerships have left L.A. over the last 25 years, with some businesses migrating to nearby cities such as Glendale, which exempts them from the gross-receipts tax. "For too long, Los Angeles' business tax has driven auto dealers outside the city limits," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in a statement released after the 12-0 council vote.

Miriam Fogler and Donna Pearman settle into chairs at the Van Nuys Civic Center, ready to participate in a City Council meeting taking place 17 traffic-clogged miles away in downtown Los Angeles. The room's mostly empty, as usual, but a city safety officer is on hand to keep order. So is Michael Martin, who handles the camera equipment that will enable Fogler and Pearman to address council members. Before going on camera, Fogler, in thick black wraparound sunglasses, gives herself a little pep talk.

In the latest effort combat production flight, the Los Angeles City Council is weighing a plan to waive fees producers pay to shoot television pilots in the city. The City Council's Jobs and Business Development Committee on Wednesday endorsed a proposal to waive the various fees pilot producers pay when they shoot substantially in the city. The motion comes in the wake of growing evidence that L.A. is losing its share of new television production, much as it did with feature film work.  In the most recent pilot year, 51% of all television pilots were filmed in the L.A. area, down from more than 80% in prior years.

The Los Angeles City Council approved a long-awaited federal financing agreement that will help ensure a vital transportation corridor doesn't become a drain on the finances of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The vote — 13 to 0 in favor, with two council members absent — allows the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority to accept $83.7 million from the Federal Rail Administration to help fund operations of the Alameda Corridor, a 20-mile freight rail expressway linking the ports to transcontinental rail lines.

Joining a growing number of municipalities, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday adopted a "responsible banking" ordinance that will require banks doing business with the city to disclose detailed data on loans and foreclosure activity by community. Much of the information is already reported under federal law but can be hard to find in voluminous federal banking reports, said Miguel Santana, city administrative officer. The new law would bring the information together on a city website that the public could search by census tract, he said.

Months after demonstrators with Occupy L.A. demanded an aggressive crackdown on Wall Street banks, the Los Angeles City Council approved a watered-down plan requiring regular reports on local lending and charitable giving from financial institutions that seek city business. The council voted 13 to 0 to draft a law requiring those banks to disclose data on their foreclosures, small-business loans and other involvement in city neighborhoods. But council members dropped plans to rate the banks after being warned by budget managers that such a move would be too expensive.

A Los Angeles City Council committee on Tuesday concurred with Mayor Richard Riordan's plan for balancing the city budget by trimming expenditures in all other departments to maintain police service. The Budget and Finance Committee sent to the full council Riordan's financial plan, which closes a projected $33-million deficit and creates a $17-million contingency fund.

The Los Angeles City Council has a new president, Herb Wesson. But does a new president change anything? The council president is just one vote of 15 on that notoriously difficult to manage body. In that sense, he's not much different from his colleagues. He manages his district and votes along with his colleagues. But the president also has some additional power: He assigns members to committees and acts as the figurehead for the larger body. For years, John Ferraro used the position to establish himself as second only to the mayors with whom he served; more recently, Eric Garcetti has brought a lighter, more cerebral touch to the job and used it to launch his bid for mayor.

Fearing a new financial burden in a budget crisis, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday jettisoned its once-vaunted redevelopment agency, an entity that spent decades revitalizing downtown, Hollywood and other areas of the city. On a 9-3 vote, the council decided that it could not afford to take on the agency and its 192 employees as California's long era of redevelopment comes to a close. A new state law will eliminate 400 redevelopment agencies and shift billions of dollars in tax revenue to state, city and county agencies.