Letter to the Editor/Public Comment - BCHD's Propaganda Machine

Yet again, BCHD has sent out a deliberately misleading description of its Wealthy Living Campus. BCHD's Communications department show 8 employees in the disorganized, confusing 240-page budget for 2022-23. There's no cost associated with the 8 employees, and no coherent subaccounting to understand the total cost of propaganda from BCHD. Based on Transparent California data, the best we can do is see that Communications spent $546,000 in 2021 on employees. That doesn't count consultants, vendors, printing, postage, and the like.

The most recent BCHD WLC propaganda email misled the public on 1) BCHD's increase in the size of the proposed campus development, 2) the increased damages from putting the open space in the center of the 10 acre lot, and 3) who benefits from the 100% private-owned development on 100% public-owned land with 0% BCHD ownership.

First, BCHD loves to state that it reduced the number of $150,000 per year rent units from 420 to 217. BCHD never admits that they increased the height of the building from 90-feet above homes to 112-feet above homes, and added an 8-10 story parking ramp as it removed 160,000 square feet of underground parking. So while BCHD reduced the number of units, it increased both the height and the square-footage of above ground buildings on the edge of the site. Propaganda is information of a biased or misleading nature. BCHD has that dialed in!

Second, BCHD fails to admit that it committed in 2017 to put the open area and parking around the edges of the site to insulate homes from both the construction and the 95-years of operation. Instead, BCHD decided to consolidate the open space in the center, breaking that promise to the local community. As a result, BCHD moved all the tall buildings to the north and east side, 112-feet or more above Beryl & Flagler streets and BCHD moved underground parking to an 8-10 story parking ramp at Diamond & Prospect. Again, BCHD makes a propaganda misstatement.

Last, non-residents benefit from this BCHD privatization of public land by a factor of roughly 10-to-1 over the resident taxpayers that own BCHD. BCHD's consultant forecasted occupancy of the $10,000+ per month wealthy living units and found that 80% would be filled by non-residents of the zipcodes of the three beach cities. BCHD's contract for ALLCOVE is for nearly 1.4 million residents of a huge area that goes all the way to Long Beach. Only 9% of the area is Hermosa, Manhattan and Redondo. The PACE facility is the worst however. According to the National PACE Association data, only 5% of enrollees of the PACE program will be from the beach cities. Who knows where the other 95% will come from?

We've experienced BCHD's lack of concern for resident benefits during Covid as well. BCHD tested 84% non-residents according to LA County Health records. Ultimately, BCHD lost $2.3M in unrecovered Covid costs and has never provided a full accounting of what zipcodes or cities that $2.3M loss belongs to. One has to assume it's 84% non-resident expenses, so we donated $2M of taxpayer funds to non-residents during Covid.

How many more residents might have survived Covid had BCHD spent that $2M on resident services? Head over to StopBCHD.com and check the Get Informed tab for more information.