Candidate for
Council Member; City of Los Angeles; District 11

MAKING OUR GOVERNMENT WORK

"Los Angeles is a city of unparalleled talent, vision, and resources. Our city government needs to be as smart and creative as our people." - Mike Bonin

Our City government's top priority should be the smart, efficient delivery of core services: police and fire protection; water and power; street maintenance and public works; parks, libraries, and programs benefitting our children and our seniors.

Los Angeles residents deserve the very best. If he's elected, Mike will fight for:

• More resources for the LAPD and LAFD
• Increased funding for street resurfacing, pothole repair, and tree trimming
• An upgraded and more reliable power system
• Cleaner parks with expanded programming for our kids and parents
• A dedicated team of prosecutors to enforce the City's "quality of life" codes and rules

MAKING GOVERNMENT SMARTER

"I want to harness the technological genius of this City to streamline our government, make it more transparent, and make delivery of core city services more efficient and cost-effective. I want to think outside of the box and use technology to create solutions for our neighborhoods." - Mike Bonin

We can harness technology to make government smarter and more efficient. Mike will challenge local high-tech companies to develop software and smart phone apps that connect people to government and improve service delivery.

Mike will also champion the use of technology to make government more open and transparent, including:

• Creating a CD11 "311" smart phone app to access City services
• Publishing city budget data online
• Creating "Yelp for Government" allowing residents to review and grade city services
• Using Skype and Google Chat to give residents easier access to meetings and city departments.

KEEPING OUR NEIGHBORHOODS SAFE

"Public Safety will always be my highest priority. Every neighborhood in Los Angeles needs to safe and free of crime and danger. Every child needs to feel safe playing in her or his front yard. Every resident should feel safe walking home from the store at night." - Mike Bonin

In recent years, Los Angeles has become one of the safest big cities in America + and we need to keep it that way. We need to increase the number of cops on the streets, stop the cuts and restore funding to the Fire Department, and better prepare for emergency situations.

Mike will fight for public safety by:

• Maintaining LAPD Academy classes so we can keep hiring more police officers.
• Moving able-bodied officers off desk duty so we get more cops on the streets and in our neighborhoods.
• Giving officers better and smarter technology so they can do their jobs more efficiently and spend more time fighting crime.
• Developing and implementing an "LAFD Service Restoration Plan"
• Deploying "Motorcycle Response Teams" staffed with firefighter/EMTs to provide rapid initial response to medical emergencies in remote areas in the hills and canyons

GETTING OUR CITY MOVING

"Los Angelenos are people who create the future, who make dreams a reality, and who put ideas into motion. Yet, we are literally stuck in gridlock with a transportation system that is stuck in the past. It is time to imagine, create and live the transportation system of the future." - Mike Bonin

Los Angeles is stuck + literally. With each year, gridlock keeps getting worse. We lose time with our families and our friends as we wait forever to make a left-turn. We arrive at work, a show or a sporting event angry and unhappy because we spent an hour on the freeway. Widening freeways or finding shortcuts through residential neighborhoods are not the answer. We need to design differently, build differently, and act differently.

When Mike is on the City Council, he will pursue an agenda to get Los Angeles moving by:

• Completing the Expo Light Rail Line to Santa Monica by 2015.
• Bringing the Green Line into LAX, and connecting the Crenshaw Line to the airport.
• Designing and funding a mass transit line along the 405 from LAX into the Valley.
• Creating a trolley system along Lincoln Boulevard.
• Supporting and promoting public-private partnerships to create neighborhood shuttle or DASH systems.
• Building out the network of bicycle lanes called for in the Citywide Bicycle Master Plan.
• Promoting smart, transit-oriented development near mass transit stops.
• Fighting for laws protecting the safety of cyclists and pedestrians.
• Incentivizing telecommuting.
• Requiring pedestrian-friendly development.

GROWING OUR ECONOMY

"Los Angeles is a place of boundless creativity, remarkable ingenuity, and tremendous talent -- and that will be the foundation of a new economy that produces smart, good-paying jobs that will revitalize our city." - Mike Bonin

Los Angeles has a smart, diverse, creative population. We are blessed with talent, brains, and tremendous resources. We can harness those resources, build on our strengths, and capitalize on our place as Gateway to the Pacific, and make Los Angeles an economic powerhouse, and a leader in the new global economy.

The Westside and Council District 11 are a key part of building that economy. We are host to LAX and the emerging Silicon Beach tech industry. We are sight to the region's most beautiful natural resource, the beach, which drives the tourism industry. And we home to the talent and money and workforce that is the backbone of the entertainment industry. The next economy of Los Angeles will begin here.

When Mike is on the City Council, he will help jumpstart the economy and create smart jobs by:

• Encouraging and incentivizing the growth of the "Silicon Beach" industry on the Westside
• Fighting to keep entertainment industry jobs in Los Angeles through tax credits and expedited permitting
• Supporting the tourism industry and more aggressively marketing Los Angeles as a destination
• Focusing city agencies, such as LADWP, on economic development and job creation
• Supporting and encouraging the role of LAX as a core economic engine, modernizing the airport without expanding its footprint
• Supporting economic development along the Century Boulevard Corridor near LAX
• Helping small businesses by reducing and eventually eliminating the Gross Receipts Tax
• Streamlining the city permitting process
• Implementing policies that encourage creative activity (e.g. high bandwidth fiber to attract internet and entertainment companies)
• Creating and promoting business incubators through partnerships with local universities such as LMU, Otis and UCLA
• Incentivizing and encouraging LA's natural role as home to clean tech manufacturing and green jobs
• Provide demonstration opportunities for locally developed clean technologies to become commercially viable, and create incentives to attract 50 new clean technology businesses to Los Angeles.

PROTECTING OUR ENVIRONMENT

"With beaches, mountains, wetlands and abundant wildlife, Los Angeles is an environmental treasure + and its residents and its government must be environmental stewards. I want Los Angeles to be America's greenest city. We need to be on the front lines of environmental protection and sustainability." - Mike Bonin

Los Angeles can be a city of clean air and clean water. And it can be a city that leads the nation in producing clean energy, promoting alternative transportation, requiring sustainable development, and protecting open space. As UCLA's landmark Vision 2021 blueprint for a sustainable city says, "Los Angeles has taken great strides over the past several decades to become a greener and more livable community. Improvements in air quality, public transit, clean energy, solid waste recycling, greenhouse gas emissions, water quality, and in other areas have meant a better quality of life for many. But there is still a tremendous amount of work to be done to transform Los Angeles into an environmentally sustainable and healthful place to live for all of its residents."

When he is on the City Council, Mike wants to help implement the Vision 2021 plan. Specifically, he hopes to:

• Complete Proposition O projects, helping to clean up Santa Monica Bay
• Introduce a vehicle (car or bicycle) sharing program that allows city residents access to a zero emission vehicle for local trips.
• Increase treatment or reuse of stormwater runoff, preventing pollution from reaching our beaches.
• Increase square footage of cool roofs to 4 million ft and significantly increase square miles of cool paving.
• Incentive and expand the use of solar power.
• Switch Los Angeles from dirty to renewable energy (with a goal of generating 0% of Los Angeles' electricity from coal and 40% from renewable resources)
• Increase diversion rates from our landfills
• Significantly increase the percentage of recycled or composted material that is reused locally.
• Mandate LEED standards for all city buildings
• Obtain 32% of water from local sources, such as stormwater, recycled water, and groundwater.
• Significantly increase funding for maintenance and operation of existing and planned parks and open spaces, particularly in underserved and/or high density communities.
• Provide demonstration opportunities for locally developed clean technologies to become commercially viable, and create incentives to attract 50 new clean technology businesses to Los Angeles.
• Create more farmers' markets and community gardens to promote healthy eating.
• Increase access to and knowledge of shared natural resources (Santa Monica Mountains, beaches, wetlands) through mass transit and better promotion.

PLANNING FOR A CITY OF NEIGHBORHOODS

"Los Angeles is the City of Neighborhoods. We are not one place, with one character and one identity. We are a collection and a community of neighborhoods with distinct characters, personalities and needs. We need to cherish, celebrate and protect our neighborhoods." - Mike Bonin

For too long, Los Angeles has been a city with poor planning. We have a history of evaluating development proposals on an individual, ad hoc basis. We do not spend sufficient time or energy thinking proactively about growing our city while preserving our neighborhoods, keeping them safe, clean and vital. We do not think sufficiently about what works for each individual neighborhood, and what local residents want and aspire to see in their community.

When he is on the City Council, Mike will protect and celebrate our neighborhoods by:

• Insisting on genuine community input in planning, development and transportation decisions.
• Preserving the character and scale of low-density and single family neighborhoods.
• Creating and requiring adherence to design standards to improve the quality of new development
• Focusing new development along mass transit stations
• Encouraging mixed use development along key transportation corridors
• Securing funding to update Community Plans
• Approving the Local Coastal Plan, giving CD11 communities more say over local development
• Making our neighborhoods more bicycle friendly by building out the Citywide Bicycle Master Plan, creating more bicycle parking, and encouraging bike share programs
• Integrating planning and transportation policy with economic development to create more walkable neighborhoods.
• Supporting the Planning Department's "Streets 4 People" program -- an effort to recapture under-used portions of public rights-of-way to improve sidewalks, create mini-parks, and develop new bike facilities.
• Fighting urban blight, such as the proliferation of billboards and digital signage
• Encouraging and funding community arts projects
• Supporting farmers' markets, community gardens, neighborhood festivals, concerts and movies at parks, and other community-building events
• Fixing our sidewalks and beautifying our medians
• Creating a citywide team of prosecutors to focus exclusively on enforcing codes and quality of life regulations

"Making Los Angeles a city of strong, safe and vital neighborhoods depends on balancing the budget and getting our fiscal house in order. We can no longer afford to kick the can down the road. The time to act is now." + Mike Bonin

Los Angeles is facing unprecedented challenges that will require principled, experienced leaders to roll up their sleeves and get to work to move our city forward. We need to balance our budget and end our structural deficit. We need to make comprehensive choices and move past the culture of annual "quick fixes." That will require increased revenue and efficiencies as well as spending cuts. We need to work cooperatively with business and with labor, taking a fair and balanced approach to deal with pension reform.

When Mike is on the City Council, he will work to balance the city budget and free up resources for vital city services by:

• Implementing the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Commission of Revenue Efficiency (CORE)
• Cracking down on rogue parking lot operators
• Aggressively pursuing money owed to the City
• Developing a comprehensive Infrastructure Improvement Plan, with a 10-year timetable, and an accompanying proposed bond measure dedicated solely to fixing our streets and sidewalks.
• Approving public-private partnerships for use of vacant and surplus city lands
• Requiring better money management
• Generating revenue through taxing billboards
• Generating revenue by taxing the sale of medical marijuana
• Reviewing and considering every efficiency or savings proposal made in the past 5 years by the City Controller
• Reviewing and considering every efficiency or savings proposal made by the Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates
• Reviewing and considering every efficiency or savings proposal made by the Coalition of City Unions
• Streamlining and consolidating city agencies as necessary
• Publishing the city finances online, in real time, so the public can serve as fiscal watchdog

"It is imperative that we modernize LAX, and equally imperative that we not expand it. We need a world-class airport that is a first-class neighbor." + Mike Bonin

We need a world-class airport that looks and feels like Los Angeles: welcoming, efficient, and forward-looking. We need modernization projects that jumpstart our economy and make LAX the economic engine it can and should be. We need to finish LAX Modernization as soon as possible.

But we must not move the runways north into Westchester and Playa del Rey. An irrefutable study has shown the north airfield to be safe, and Los Angeles World Airport's own planning document says that not moving the runways is the "environmentally superior" alternative. By contrast, LAWA's plan for the runway would create more pollution, produce more noise, and not do a thing to improve throughput or operational efficiency at LAX.

When he is on the City Council, Mike will support modernizing LAX and not expanding it by:

• Finishing the modernization of the Tom Bradley International Terminal
• Insisting on a Consolidated Rental Car Center
• Supporting an Intermodal Transportation Center ad the Automated People Mover
• Insuring the, Green Line extension runs directly into LAX.
• Refurbishing and modernizing Terminals 1, 2 and 3
• Pushing LAWA to improve the passenger experience
• Encouraging LAWA to use LAX as a marketing opportunity for Los Angeles attractions, businesses, etc
• Opposing reconfiguration of the north runways and moving the runways north
• Fully installing runway status lights to insure airfield safety
• Pressuring the federal government to fully and properly staff to LAX air traffic control tower
• Using vacant LAX "northside" properties for new parks, ballfields, passive recreation, dog parks, and local business and job creation

FIGHTING FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE & EQUALITY

"The measure of our greatness is how well we treat the least among us, and how hard we fight for equality and social justice." -Mike Bonin

Los Angeles is home to tremendous wealth, but also to tremendous poverty and a large homeless population, including a growing population of homeless children. One promise as a great city will never be met until we eliminate homelessness, create good-paying jobs so everyone has a decent standard of living, and insure equality of opportunity for all Angelenos.

When he is on the City Council, Mike will fight for social justice and equality by:

• Expanding and extending CD11's homeless outreach programs, and housing 500 more people.
• Working with Los Angeles County to create a focused and targeted program to end homelessness among children.
• Insisting developers build affordable housing.
• Creating a "bridge housing" facility to provide shelter to the homeless while vouchers for permanent housing are being processed.
• Promoting an expansion of the living wage.
• Supporting job training programs to teach marketable skills.
• Supporting equal opportunity programs on city contracts.
• Supporting programs that help bring undocumented residents out of the shadows and engage in civic life.
• Partnering with LAUSD and civic groups to provide after school programs for at-risk youth.