What Happened
The council met on May 28, 2025, with 11-13 members present. Council Member Eunisses Hernandez led a joint retirement recognition for City Engineer Ted Allen and Bureau of Sanitation Assistant Director Julie Allen, a married couple with a combined 64 years of city service; Ted Allen, who managed a capital project portfolio worth more than $5 billion and helped launch the Build LA permitting portal, thanked the council for budget decisions that preserved jobs in the Bureau of Engineering and other departments during recent budget constraints.
All items passed unanimously (13-0, with some absences). The council adopted renewal of the mayor's declaration of local emergency concerning the January 2025 windstorm and wildfires (Item 15, CF 25-0030), several Rent Escrow Account Program property removals, Fiscal Year 2025 Annual Planning Reports for the East Hollywood, Historic Core, LA Tourism Marketing District, Lincoln Heights Industrial Zone, and Larchmont Village business improvement districts (Items 5-9), and a Housing and Homelessness Committee report requesting a study on homes owned by limited liability companies and corporations citywide and options for a ballot measure taxing corporate ownership of significant numbers of single-family homes (Item 10, CF 24-1586). The council also adopted a motion from Council Members Tim McOsker and Marqueece Harris-Dawson canceling a previously scheduled 4% salary adjustment for non-represented city employees effective June 29, 2025, retaining the current salary schedule instead (Item 23, CF 25-0567), as part of the city's broader budget-savings efforts. No action was taken on Item 22, the Fiscal Year 2025-26 annual budget resolution, because it had not yet been formally submitted. Council Member Curren Price recused himself from Item 12 due to a potential conflict through his wife's employer.
Public Comment
Organizers with the LA Community Action Network again pressed the council on habitability conditions in the roughly 17 former Skid Row Housing Trust buildings acquired by developer Leo Pustilnikov (referred to in public comment as Hope for an Affordable LA), citing broken elevators, pest infestations, and inadequate security, and asked what the council intended to do to enforce the city's tenant anti-harassment ordinance against the new owner. A Public Counsel attorney and member of the Keep LA Housed coalition urged the council to update the Rent Stabilization Ordinance formula, which she said had not been revised in 40 years, citing a Housing Department finding that the formula is unfair to tenants amid a roughly $100,000 income needed to afford a one-bedroom apartment in the city. Another speaker suggested reducing the share of escrowed rent landlords recover under REAP the longer a property remains out of compliance, as an added incentive for landlords to fix violations quickly, and questioned whether elected officials and city administrators had accepted comparable pay reductions given Item 23's cancellation of the rank-and-file salary adjustment.