SAN PEDRO
POLA Starts Construction on Yusen Terminal Improvements
SAN PEDRO — The Port of Los Angeles will begin construction this summer on a two-year project to improve the marine container terminal operated by Yusen Terminals LLC. The Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners has awarded Manson Construction Co. a $44.6 million contract to upgrade berths, and backlands at Berths 212-224.
Based on all design, project management and construction costs, the port’s total investment is estimated at more than $67 million. This amount includes cost for an on-dock rail project which will be done under a separate contract in 2016. Additionally, Yusen estimates it could invest more than $60 million in support of the project. About $8 million of the port’s costs will be paid by California Proposition 1B Transportation Bond funds.
Yusen operates the 185-acre container terminal under a long-term lease with the port that extends through 2026. The project is part of the Port’s larger capital program aimed at enhancing berth, gate and rail efficiencies at all Los Angeles marine terminals. Over the next five years, the port plans to invest more than $800 million in its facilities.
The project consists of upgrading wharf, and backland infrastructure within the terminal’s existing footprint to enhance Yusen’s ability to service the biggest ships in the trans-Pacific trade lanes. The improvements will allow Yusen to simultaneously work three container ships carrying up to 13,000, 11,000 and 6,500 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) respectively and ensure cargo flows during peak periods when ships call at all three berths.
To date, the largest ship that has called at Yusen is an 8,500-TEU vessel. The terminal typically receives 6,500-TEU ships and works two vessels concurrently.
Major project elements include:
- Deepening Berths 214-216 from -45 to -53 feet and Berths 217-220 from -45 to 47 feet.
- Adding up to four new ship-to-shore gantry cranes and raising some existing cranes to equip the terminal with up to 14 operating Post-Panamax cranes, including eight Super Post-Panamax cranes with a maximum outreach of 197 feet or 22 container rows across.
- Extending the wharf crane rail infrastructure that supports lateral repositioning of ship-to-shore cranes by adding 1,500 feet of crane rail at Berths 217-220.
- Adding four new alternative maritime power (AMP) boxes at Berths 217-220 to provide shore to ship electrical connection facilities.
- Increasing Yusen’s on-dock rail capacity 25 percent by adding a single 2900-foot line of loading track to accommodate higher container volumes in a short period of time when large ships call.
The project incorporates 25 measures to mitigate environmental impacts during construction and ongoing terminal operations. They include using the cleanest construction equipment, implementing noise reduction strategies and recycling building materials for use on-site or other construction projects. Green practices include:
- By Jan. 1, 2017, 95 percent of the ships calling at the terminal will comply with the Port’s expanding Vessel Speed Reduction Program and slow to 12 knots with 40 nautical miles of Point Fermin.
- By 2026, NYK-operated ships calling at the terminal must run on shore power for 95 percent of the time they are at berth.
- Independent energy audits will be done every five years and energy-saving technology will be used wherever possible throughout the facility.
The construction project is expected to generate about 592 jobs during construction and eventually add more than 2,200 permanent direct and indirect jobs to the Southern California economy through 2026. More than 13 percent of Manson’s subcontractors and suppliers are small or very small business enterprise companies. Construction will be done under a project labor agreement that facilitates timely project completion, ensures fair wages are paid and promotes use of local labor.
LONG BEACH
Boys & Girls Clubs of Long Beach Announce New President of Board of Directors
LONG BEACH — The Boys & Girls Clubs of Long Beach appointed Trent Bryson as its new president of the board of directors.
Trent is a business owner and CEO of Bryson Financial, a Long Beach-based business.
Trent two-year term began July 1. He will be responsible for leading more than 40 volunteers.
The club serves about 4,300 children annually.
LB Launches Unpermitted Construction Crack Down Hotline
LONG BEACH — On June 30, Long Beach announced the implementation of a new Saturday hotline to address concerns about potential unpermitted construction.
The unpermitted construction hotline is open to the public each Saturday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Anonymous complaints regarding potential unpermitted construction may be reported by calling (562) 570-0000. All reports will be investigated and will be subject to a site visit by a code enforcement inspector.
Anonymous referrals about possible unpermitted, unsafe, unhealthy, or unsightly conditions in homes and neighborhoods may also be reported after business hours at (562) 570-2633 or www.lbcode.org.
In cases of verified unpermitted construction, the city will issue a Stop Work Order to the responsible party, halting all further building activity. The Stop Work Order will remain in effect until the city has determined that the property is in compliance, and all applicable permits have been issued. Failure to comply with the notice in a timely manner will result in administrative citation fines and possible case referral to the city prosecutor’s office.
Most major construction projects, including alterations and repairs, require a permit of some type to ensure the safety and health of property occupants and neighbors. Projects that typically do not require a permit include fence additions, interior painting and repairs of existing plumbing leaks and faucets.
Code Enforcement responds to complaints of violations of the Long Beach Municipal Code, including substandard buildings, property maintenance, inoperative vehicles, weed abatement and land use violations.
The city encourages a preliminary consultation prior to beginning any project, and has designated staff available to discuss the various technical aspects associated with each individual project.
To schedule an appointment with city staff, call (562) 570-6194 or visit the Permit Center at City Hall, 333 W. Ocean Blvd., 4th Floor, Long Beach.
Top Seaport Honors Go to Long Beach
LONG BEACH — On June 29, the Port of Long Beach was named the best seaport in North America at the recent Asian Freight, Logistics and Supply Chain Awards in Hong Kong, hosted by the shipping trade publication Asia Cargo News.
The award recognizes the best ports as judged by importers, exporters, and logistics and supply chain professionals. In the past, the program was organized by another publication, CargoNews Asia. If viewed as a continuation of those awards, this is the Port of Long Beach’s 17th time in the last 20 years winning the Best North American Seaport honors. A year ago, Long Beach won the award for being the world’s Best Green Seaport, based on its environmental record.
The more than 15,000 industry professionals who read Asia Cargo News participated in the nomination and selection of winners. The awards were presented recently at an event in Hong Kong. Awards also are given in many categories, including best shipping lines, container terminals, air cargo terminals, airports and rail haulers.
Robbery Suspect Arrested, Charged, Firearms Recovered
LONG BEACH — On June 29, multiple felony charges were filed against 21-year-old Randall Nick Young, a Long Beach resident, for his involvement in two commercial robberies that occurred Long Beach.
Young is suspected of entering a restaurant in the 4300 block of East Anaheim Street with a handgun and demanding money on June 22, and doing the same in the 600 block of Redondo Avenue on June 24. The loss was cash in both instances and nobody was injured in either incident.
Robbery detectives received an anonymous tip that the suspect lived at a residence in the 3300 block of Roxanne Avenue in Long Beach.
On June 25, detectives served a search warrant at the residence and arrested Young in connection to the robberies. During the course of the investigation, the suspect’s 48-year-old father, Martin Young, was also arrested for weapons and narcotic violations. Detectives recovered in excess of 50 firearms at the residence, in addition to evidence believed to be connected to the robberies.
The case was presented to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office for review on June 29. Randall Young was charged with four counts of robbery. He is currently being held at Los Angeles County Jail on $100,000 bail.
Martin Young has since made bail and is expected to return to court on July 24. The District Attorney’s Office is still reviewing Martin Young’s case for filing.
If anyone has information regarding these crimes they are urged to call (562) 570-5537 or visit www.LACrimeStoppers.org.
Investigation Leads to Major Drug, Cash Seizure
LONG BEACH — The Long Beach Police Department Drug Investigations Section served a search warrant on a residence resulting in the seizure of several pounds of illegal narcotics and cash believed to be related to a large scale drug trafficking ring.
Detectives targeting high volume narcotics shipments in the Long Beach area made contact with suspected narcotic traffickers. Detectives then followed leads that led to the 700 block of McDonald Avenue in Wilmington. There they served a search warrant resulting in the seizure of the following:
• 124 Pounds of cocaine
• 3 Pounds of methamphetamine
• About $25,000 in cash
One person was detained in connection to the narcotics, however the LBPD is not releasing their identity at this time pending further investigation.
Anyone wishing to report illegal drug activity should contact the Long Beach Police Department’s Drug Investigations Section at (562) 570-7221 or visit www.lacrimestoppers.org.
LOS ANGELES
Garcetti Announces New Public Works Commissioner
LOS ANGELES — On July 2, Mayor Eric Garcetti nominated Joel Jacinto to the Board of Public Works.
Jacinto serves on the Affordable Housing Commission and is executive director of Search to Involve Pilipino Americans, a community-based organization that empowers youth, families, and businesses through health and human services, community economic development, and through a community center that serves as a place for collaboration and community engagement.
Throughout his career, Jacinto has been active in networks and coalitions that advocate for diverse communities, especially underserved and low to moderate income populations. He was instrumental in the creation of Historic Filipinotown and worked closely with the city to enhance the public spaces in that neighborhood to reflect its character, such as creating decorative crosswalks, installing streetlight banners, and building a gateway sign at Silverlake Blvd. and Temple Street. Jacinto recently received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Greenlining Institute, a public policy, research, and advocacy non-profit organization based in Berkeley, Calif.
Complementing his work in social services, Jacinto is a long-time arts and cultural practitioner, having co-founded in 1990 a Filipino folk and traditional arts organization, Kayamanan ng Lahi. He was also a founding board member of the Alliance for California Traditional Artists (ACTA), which provides advocacy, grants, and other resources for folk and traditional artists in California to preserve the health and longevity of California’s cultural landscape.
Hailing from San Francisco, California, Jacinto attended UCLA and received his degree in Kinesiology. He also completed post-graduate coursework in Public Health at the University of Hawaii Manoa and Applied Anthropology at California State University Long Beach. Jacinto has resided in Los Angeles for 26 years, along with his spouse Ave and two sons, Kai and Keianu.
If confirmed by the Los Angeles City Council, Jacinto will directly oversee the Bureau of Engineering.
Garcetti Announces $15 Million in Funding for Housing Homeless Veterans
LOS ANGELES — On July 1, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that the Los Angeles area will receive more than $15 million from the first round of Proposition 41 grant returns.
These grants will help with housing, disability benefit advocacy and health care. Five projects across Los Angeles, from Skid Row and East Los Angeles to Crenshaw, will receive funding.
This is the first round of funding through Proposition 41 and the Veterans Housing and Homeless Prevention Program.
Seventeen programs across the state received funding and the majority of those programs committed to providing intensive support services that respond to veterans’ individual needs.
A second round of awards will be available this fall, providing additional opportunities to apply for and receive funds for the acquisition, construction, rehabilitation, and preservation of affordable multifamily housing for Los Angeles’ veterans and their families.
Garcetti campaigned in support of Proposition 41, which passed in 2014 and will make $600 million available to expand housing options for veterans, allowing homeless veterans and their families who struggle with disabilities and unemployment to access safe, decent, affordable places to live.
The mayor also partnered with Governor Jerry Brown to help educate local developers and service providers about how to apply and compete for Prop. 41 funding.
Between January 1, 2014 and May 31, 2015, Los Angeles housed 3,960 homeless veterans, a press release stated.
LA Failed to Collect $1.8 Million for Traffic Control
LOS ANGELES – On July 1, Controller Ron Galperin released an audit of “Special Event” assignment and reimbursement practices at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. Auditors found that, when providing traffic control at gatherings like sporting events and movie premieres, poor accounting and inadequate cost monitoring resulted in the city swallowing $1.8 million in the 2014 fiscal year in employee overtime costs — money that should have otherwise been paid by sports teams, entertainment companies and other event sponsors.
City labor agreements require that traffic officers and other DOT employees receive time-and-a-half when they work overtime and perform traffic control at special events.
The city generally absorbs the traffic control costs associated public rallies and demonstrations. But when it comes to the Academy Awards, Hollywood Bowl nights, block parties and certain other such events, the sponsors are generally supposed to reimburse the city for traffic control overtime costs.
Galperin’s audit found that in Fiscal Year 2013-14, the DOT deployed personnel to 2,242 special events and paid out $5.9 million — 40 percent of all DOT overtime — to employees who managed traffic at them. While $3.5 million of the 123,000 hours of overtime was reimbursed, $1.8 million —which should have been billed to and collected from event sponsors — was instead absorbed by the city because the DOT didn’t properly track and monitor how much it was spending on event overtime and costs.
The audit further found that, in instances where the DOT had a standing contract to provide traffic services at venues like Dodger Stadium and the Hollywood Bowl, the department miscalculated the hourly rates it paid its own employees. Consequently, in FY 2013-14, the DOT underbilled venues by $147,808.
In his letter to policymakers, which accompanied the audit, Galperin also questioned why the City was only recovering the cost of paying employee overtime and not other costs associated with traffic control, like department overhead, uniforms, wear and tear on City vehicles that would otherwise be garaged, fuel costs, and potential workers’ compensation costs.
Last month, Galperin released a related audit detailing exceptionally high overtime use in the DOT. The audit found that, as a percentage of salary costs, the DOT paid more overtime than any other department except the Fire Department. The cost of paid overtime at the DOT more than doubled from FY 2009-10 to $14.6 million in FY 2013-14. Paid overtime accounts for 12 percent of DOT salaries — compared to 5.6 percent at the Los Angeles Police Department and 4.7 percent at other civilian departments.
LA City Council Approves PACE Financing
LOS ANGELES — On June 30, The Los Angeles City Council authorized three Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) providers to provide easy to access financing for seismic retrofits, energy efficiency projects, renewable energy installations, and water conservation – including turf removal.
PACE financing allows property owners to access long-term financing that they pay back through their property taxes. This structure simplifies lending procedures and gives property owners access to a network of pre-qualified contractors whose work quality is checked by the lender.
This is the second significant initiative of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s earthquake plan that has been approved by the city council. This past month, the council approved an ordinance that will prevent cell towers from collapsing so LA residents can communicate and our businesses can function after an earthquake.
The council action also instructs the CAO to consider bringing additional providers into the market in the coming months.
Read more about Mayor Garcetti’s earthquake plan at www.lamayor.org/earthquake and his sustainability plan at www.lamayor.org/sustainability
Garcetti, Cedillo Improve Ellis Act Enforcement
LOS ANGELES — On June 30, Mayor Eric Garcetti and Councilman Gil Cedillo, chairman of the Housing Committee, announced a call to city departments to improve enforcement of the Ellis Act.
The Ellis Act is a 1985 California law that allows properties subject to rent stabilization to be removed from the rental market. Intended to offer landlords a means to “go out of business,” the Ellis Act is sometimes abused in order to evict tenants, especially in strong real estate markets.
Cedillo introduced a motion that directs the Housing and Community Investment Department to review permits for properties that have invoked the Ellis Act at all stages of their development plans, including the issuance of both demolition permits and building permits, for a 5-year period after the properties have been withdrawn from the rental market. This closes an existing loophole and ensures that property owners follow the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, when they remove units through the Ellis Act.
To raise awareness of the City’s rent stabilization regulations and provide better information to both renters and property owners, Garcetti is asking that properties subject to the rent stabilization ordinance be indicated in the zoning information mapping access system. The zoning information mapping access system an online resource that provides property information to the public at zimas.lacity.org. The zoning information mapping access system will also indicate properties that have filed for removal from the rental market under the Ellis Act.
From 2005 to 2014, the city lost more than 13,500 rent-stabilized units through Ellis Act removals.
Decker Sworn In as U.S. Attorney
LOS ANGELES – Eileen M. Decker was sworn in, June 29, in a private ceremony as the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California.
Decker was sworn in by U.S. District Judge Beverly Reid O’Connell in her courtroom in the United States Courthouse.
Decker now leads the largest United States Attorney’s Office outside of the District of Columbia. The office, which currently employs about 250 lawyers, serves more than 19 million residents in the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.
After being unanimously confirmed by the Senate on June 11, Decker was given a four-year appointment by President Barack Obama. Decker succeeds U.S. Attorney André Birotte Jr., who resigned to become a United States District Judge in August 2014.
Prior to becoming the U.S. Attorney, Decker was the Deputy Mayor for Homeland Security and Public Safety for the City of Los Angeles, and served in the administrations of Mayor Eric Garcetti and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. As Deputy Mayor, Decker was responsible for matters related to the police department, fire department and emergency management department. In addition, she was the principle government liaison to all federal law enforcement agencies for Los Angeles.
Decker was an Assistant U.S. Attorney from 1995 until 2009, during which time she prosecuted cases in the office’s national security, fraud and violent crime sections. For most of her almost 15 years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, Decker acted as a supervisor, serving as the chief of the National Security Section (2007 to 2009), deputy chief of the Organized Crime and Terrorism Section (2002 to 2007), and deputy chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force (1999 to 2002).
From 1990 to 1991, and again from 1992 until 1995, Decker worked in private practice in Los Angeles at the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. From 1991 until 1992, she served as a law clerk to U.S. District Judge Gary L. Taylor in the Central District of California.
Decker received her undergraduate and law degrees from New York University. She also received a master’s degree in Homeland Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School.
Gilmore to Serve as Sister Cities Of Los Angeles Chairman
LOS ANGELES — On June 26, Mayor Eric Garcetti appointed Tom Gilmore as chairman of Sister Cities of Los Angeles, as prescribed by the organization’s bylaws. Councilmember Tom LaBonge will serve as Chairman Emeritus and continue to support the work of Sister Cities with his longstanding relationships.
Sister Cities of Los Angeles is a 501(c)(3) that was founded as part of the broader movement around Sister Cities International, a nonprofit Washington-based organization that emerged from President Dwight Eisenhower’s People-to-People program in 1956. Sister Cities of Los Angeles coordinates programming in the areas of civics, education, culture, trade and economic development, travel, sports and recreation, and other areas of mutual interest. Sister Cities of Los Angeles promotes the image of Los Angeles around the world, expands global interest in the city, and invites visitors to Los Angeles.