What Happened
Eleven members carried the September 9, 2026 meeting, with Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson presiding; four members were absent for the day's votes, including the contested one — Bob Blumenfield, John Lee, Monica Rodriguez and Hugo Soto-Martinez. The first roll, on Items 4 and 6, was taken with ten members present. Item 30 was held on the desk and Item 6 was held briefly; the ordinance on Item 1 (CF 26-0600-S22), raising Los Angeles Zoo admission fees, was held to Wednesday, September 16 under reconsideration by 12 members.
Most of the agenda moved in two rolls of 11-0 with no discussion: Items 1, 7, 8, 10 through 14 and 16 through 21, and then the closed-session settlement items. That included both emergency declarations up for continuation — Item 7 (CF 25-0030), on the January 2025 windstorm and wildfires, and Item 8 (CF 26-0906), on the June 20, 2026 cold-storage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights — plus the FEMA supplemental grant for Urban Search and Rescue Task Force California Task Force 1 (Item 11, CF 25-0594), a conflict-of-interest waiver allowing outside counsel to assist in city litigation (Item 12, CF 26-0625), the request for closed session on the City Attorney's assessment of civil action over the June 17, 2026 Lineage Logistics warehouse fire in Boyle Heights (Item 13, CF 26-0906-S8), the Recreation and Parks Summer Lunch Program grant (Item 14, CF 14-0455-S10), funding for a dedicated streetlight repair crew in Council District 13 (Item 16, CF 26-1243, Soto-Martinez–Raman), dead wood and brush removal at Limekiln Canyon, Wilbur-Tampa and Aliso Canyon Parks in Council District 12 (Item 17, CF 26-1244, Lee–McOsker), funding for construction of access ramps citywide (Item 19, CF 26-1246, Hernandez–Yaroslavsky), and two Port of Los Angeles permit amendments with TraPac, LLC and Ports America Cruise, Inc. (Items 20 and 21). Item 15 (CF 26-1124), the FY 2026-27 First Construction Projects Report, was adopted 11-0 on a Yaroslavsky–Harris-Dawson motion to approve the Budget and Finance Committee report. Item 5 (CF 26-1104), on transportation access for older adults, passed 11-0 as amended by Motion 5-A.
Budget and Finance Chair Katy Yaroslavsky moved Items 22 through 36, the closed-session settlements heard in committee on September 1; they were adopted 11-0 after the clerk read the amounts into the record, which ranged from a $140,000 settlement up to $13.5 million on Item 35 (CF 26-1181) and roughly $5.3 million on Item 36 (CF 23-0782), with $675,000 on Item 33 and $685,000 on Item 34. Item 30 (CF 26-1188), held earlier, was taken after a closed session at which the City Attorney reported nothing out, and passed 11-0 forthwith. Council Member Curren D. Price Jr. spoke to Item 32 (CF 26-1187), the settlement arising from the June 30, 2021 LAPD fireworks detonation that displaced residents in Council District 9, saying the last displaced resident was moving that day from the Level hotel to a senior housing facility: "The nightmare is over for these families."
Item 2 (CF 26-1200-S38), the appointment of Joana Reyes to the Board of Library Commissioners, passed 11-0 after tributes from Council Members Imelda Padilla, Heather Hutt, Adrin Nazarian and Eunisses Hernandez. Padilla said she first met Reyes as a youth coordinator at Pacoima Beautiful and traced her path through SEIU advocacy work to her current role as a district director for a state Assembly member. Hernandez called libraries "the front entrance to everybody in the city."
Item 3 (CF 26-1140), retaining a consultant to study zoo governance models and produce a roadmap for a governance change, passed 11-0. Council Member Ysabel Jurado, who introduced it with Council Member Katy Yaroslavsky, noted the Los Angeles Zoo is one of the only major zoos still operated directly by a municipal government and pointed to the Hollywood Bowl and LACMA as models where private and nonprofit support "can help preserve and even strengthen cultural institutions."
Item 9 — $13 million for LAPD Olympic vehicles (CF 26-0600-S111), adopted 8-3-4. Council approved the Budget and Finance Committee report on LAPD vehicle procurement for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Jurado called the item for a separate vote and comments. Hernandez laid out the objection: the $13 million covers 107 LAPD vehicles tied to Olympic operations, and LAPD itself says no other existing city or departmental funding sources can cover them on the required timeline, so the city would finance the purchase. She noted LAPD has said it needs 300 additional vehicles beyond these, each requiring about $26,000 in emergency equipment installation, putting the potential total "around $44 million in vehicle-related costs just for the Olympics," with the full cost still unknown. She added that the organizing committee "has stated that there is no budget line item for law enforcement operations," asking: "If LA is not paying for it, who are we expecting to pick up the bill? That's right, you guessed it — Angelenos. You cannot tell Angelenos they're getting a no-cost Olympics and then come back expense by expense and tell us we have to pay because the Olympics is coming." She said she was not interested in "writing blank checks today and asking what the cost will be tomorrow." No member spoke in favor on the floor. Voting against: Eunisses Hernandez, Nithya Raman and Ysabel Jurado.
Public Comment
Public comment was dominated by a large, organized turnout of Chinatown and Lincoln Heights tenants — many speaking through Spanish and Cantonese interpretation — who linked Item 9 directly to the city's housing crisis. Speakers identified themselves as residents and organizers at William Mead Homes, Hillside Villa, Metro senior housing and a Chinatown plaza development, as volunteers with local tenant groups, as a member of a Chinatown equitable-development organization, and as the president of the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council. Their common demands were a rent freeze, immediate rent relief for working-class renters, and redirecting the $13 million away from LAPD.
The specifics they brought: annual rent increases of 8 to 10 percent against a 2.8 percent cost-of-living increase for people on fixed incomes; seniors whose rent now exceeds their monthly income, leaving "no money left for food and medicine"; a Hillside Villa tenant of 25 years who said her rent has doubled while nothing in her apartment has ever been repaired; a mother of three undergoing cancer treatment facing a $2,620 rent; and a Council District 1 rental assistance program that speakers said had received only about $300,000 — "not enough." Tabitha, an organizer at William Mead Homes, argued against the planned privatization of the development: "We should be preserving our public housing and building more... Build public housing on vacant or blighted land, not on existing housing sites. We need repairs, not demolition and not privatization." Genie Wong, speaking with tenants, said LAPD already holds roughly $3 billion of the city budget: "I urge you to take this money away from the LAPD and put it into housing. Like, how hard can that be?" Several speakers connected the Olympic policing buildup to their own neighborhoods, arguing that tenants pushed onto the street by rent increases would then "be further policed by the increased police presence in Chinatown due to the Olympics."
Toward the end of in-person comment the Council President admonished audience members for shouting over a speaker, noting that "other people are trying to give their testimony; they have the right to the government just like you do." A handful of callers used their time for abuse or unrelated material.