The Brief

Wearing gloves past their wrists, Alekos Tetradis stood guard by a cluster of compost, recycling, and landfill bins. Around them, attendees at this West Los Angeles College climate conference mulled where to toss their trash. If someone went for the wrong bin, Tetradis, a WLAC biochemistry student, stooped, reached in with gusto, and righted the wrong.

“It can seem a little daunting to know what is and isn’t compost, but that’s why I’m here,” Tetradis said.

Tetradis was excited to volunteer for this work at the West Los Angeles’ Climate Careers Conference. The conference’s stated goal was to identify new curriculum and training programs to advance sustainability careers.

LAist’s goal was to watch the food line: Would it be any different from other conferences, with rows of boxed lunches that might get tossed? Would participants be given those red “delicious” apples only to then just throw them away? What does it take to “walk the sustainability walk” when you have to feed hundreds of people?

The plan to spend money

Tetradis stepped away to consult with another volunteer about the coffee cups, which seemed compostable — they looked brown and felt rough, as if made from recycled material. Tetradis and the volunteer determined the inside had a wax coating, so it would fall under recycling.

(Editor's note: After this story published, there was some discussion about whether a coffee cup with a wax coating is recyclable. Tetradis did note that it technically requires a special facility. These things are complicated.)

“We have to care to compost because if you're not thinking about the effects, if you're not thinking about honestly how easy it is to separate your trash before you throw it away, you just toss everything into one bin,” Tetradis said. “It's so much easier.”

Jo Tavares, the director of the California Center for Climate Change Education, said the planning committee began meeting several months in advance, “making sure that we were aligned with practices with the things that we're telling the world that we all need to change. Perhaps not overnight, but culturally speaking, right? Like a culture of reducing waste in general.”

Jo Tavares is the director of the California Center for Climate Change Education at West L.A. college.

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For instance, the committee spent more on aluminum water bottles than plastic — at around $2 an aluminum bottle, four times more. Before the event, participants were also encouraged to bring reusable bottles.

“When you plan an event, you have a budget, and you have to make sure that you try — especially when you're using public money, which is our case — you have to try to minimize costs. But everything that we do has a hidden cost, right,” Tavares said.

For example: the pollution from a single-use plastic water bottle isn’t reflected in the consumer price of 50 cents. And the aluminum water bottles can be recycled.

The necessary provisions of calories and caffeine

Then there’s the first meal of the day: A breakfast of bagels, danishes, muffins, quick breads, cut fruit, and of course, coffee.

Coffee’s contention with sustainability includes the environmental cost of production, including substantial water use and other issues.

But, Tavares said, “we’re still in a situation that I cannot have a conference that starts at 8:30 a.m. and not offer coffee to the participants, right? It's something that culturally would be absolutely unacceptable."

A cart carrying the leftovers from breakfast gets wheeled away.

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Mid-morning, a cart carrying half-full bowls of cut fruit, muffins, and bagels made its exit. Research from the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment and World Wildlife Fund identified those items as among the most common kinds of food waste at events.

The committee decided to pay a local organization to manage the compostable waste and leftover food, which cost $2,000 spread over three days of events. There are composting centers available for drop-off, but Tavares said it made sense to pay another organization to manage the waste and leftovers.

“What is it that is important to you? What are these trade-offs that you're willing to do? And, you know, do they really need to be sacrifices all the time? Are there substitutions or new ways of looking at the way things ought to be?” Tavares said.

A lot of events stick with the tried and true.

“I’m looking at breakfast buffets and hotels — it’s sugar, it’s pastries, and things like that,” Tracy Stuckrath, a certified events planner, told LAist.

Struckrath works for thrive! meetings & events, which specializes in safe, sustainable, and inclusive dining. She also runs a podcast called Eating at a Meeting, and said she asked her audience what they wanted to eat for breakfast.

“They said they were looking for protein and you don’t get that on a continental breakfast,” said Stuckrath, who pointed out adding eggs, bacon, and sausage could add $20 per person.

Adding a lot of meat has other costs, too, though. But it’s still early; we’ll save that discussion for lunch.

The tedious but rewarding chore of sorting trash

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, food waste accounts for about 20% of municipal solid waste in U.S. landfills, but makes up nearly 60% of annual landfill methane emissions.

California has made it a requirement to divert organic waste from landfills and reduce methane emissions since the passage of SB 1383. By 2025, the state aims to reduce organic waste in landfills by 75% and redirect at least 20% of currently disposed edible food for people to eat.

Alekos Tetradis, a second year West L.A. student

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Bonnie Ho

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LAist

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West L.A. College student Alekos Tetradis sorts through the compost bin.

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Bonnie Ho

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To help sort through its own waste and minimize harm, the center conference relied on friendly student volunteers, like Tetradis.

Tetradis talked to LAist about “greenwashing,” how items may be marketed as plant-based, but in reality may be mixed with chemicals that ultimately renders them not compostable. They believe the labeling should be more transparent.

Examining the cutlery at today’s event, Tetradis found out what it was made of: “Oh, the forks are metal! Oh this is perfect.”

They would be washed and reused.

The perennial headache of the RSVP list

Not surprisingly, the best way to reduce food waste is to make less food to begin with.

Fabio Miranda’s locally based company City Fare catered the event. City Fare has been incorporating more compostable disposables and more vegan options, which he anticipates there will be increasing demand for. In theory, he said, catering for an event means preparing food for a set number of people, so there would be less waste than the uncertainty restaurants face.

With catering for events, however, “there’s always attrition,” Miranda said. “There’s always last minute no-shows even though individuals have RSVP’d, and that’s a little difficult to kind of gauge and estimate. How many people will be no-shows?”

He points out that no one hosting events wants to run out of food either.

Fabio Miranda represents the catering company City Fare at West L.A. college.

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Stuckrath, the events planner who specializes in sustainability, told LAist, “it really comes down to monitoring your attendee arrivals and departures schedules.”

There have been financial and cultural incentives for providing extra food, said Jackie Suggitt, director of capital, innovation and engagement at ReFED, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending food loss and waste. Vendors would need to compensate attendees if food runs out and event attendees “regardless of what we say about our sustainability preferences, we like the options, even if we’re the last one going through the buffet.”

Suggitt said one of the solutions their organization proposes from their own event planning experience and case studies is to actually underproduce. ReFED will produce food for 50% to 85% of the people registered for the event. (By day two of an event, “No one actually comes down for breakfast, they just want coffee,” she said.)

“I mean, that's hard, right? Like over the fear of running out of food. You may run out of one of your dishes and that happens. Right?” Suggitt said.

She observed this earth friendly mindset could be acceptable at a conference about food waste, but elsewhere “can be kind of a difficult norm to break away from.”

The environmentally conscious plant-based lunch

The climate conference lunch was a taco bar buffet spread with traditional fixings of rice, beans, tortillas, guacamole, salsa, and, among other items, plant-based beef fajitas.

Besides food waste in landfills, the raising of livestock also contributes significantly to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Vegan beef fajitas are served for lunch as part of the taco buffet bar.

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Meat and plant-based preferences is something the organizer Tavares did wrestle with, worrying that students, particularly high school students attending this week’s events, may not eat the vegan options.

But Jade Allison, a conference participant, said the plant-based lunch menu showed the organizers are aligned in practice with their sustainable messages.

Some liked the plant-based meat. “I love rice and beans, and I like the Beyond Meat steak,” said Andrea Abrego, a West L.A. student who participated in an internship panel.

Ayman Sharafat, though, preferred a meat option. He's doing a fellowship in Texas with the Climate Action Network, but originally hails from Jordan. While the lunch was “delicious and healthy,” when asked how he would design the ideal conference lunch, he said, “some people like lamb, some people like pork, beef, and chicken.”

The necessary origin of the food

Seated at a round table, conference participant Beth Yirga chimed in to a conversation about the food’s origins and final destination.

“I want to know the history of my plate…I want every piece of my plate to be connected to a community that is doing this work to heal the planet," Yirga said. "And I'm, we're, supporting their efforts and nourishing our bodies at the same time.”

Mariela Bazán, chief sustainability officer for the Events Industry Council, a global organization that has established sustainable event standards, calls this “social procurement.”

Social procurement means “where are you purchasing from? Do you have a policy of sourcing from small and medium enterprises? Are you looking for diversity in your supply chain? Are you looking for fair labor, not child labor, in your supply chain?” Bazán said.

She said in the past, when considering sustainability, the events industry used to focus on materials like plastic water bottles and reducing waste, but over time, considering the climate impact of travel and social procurement has grown in importance. That means considering things like chocolate certifications, fair trade coffee, and other elements of sourcing (seafood, for example, can be notorious to track, but one can start the conversation by asking).

The final fate of the waste

Not all of this conference’s food would make its way onto people’s ceramic lunch plates.

“I think that is a hidden side of something like conference lunches and buffets that we don't really get to know,” said attendee Allison, who wanted to know what would happen to the leftovers. “Like a product’s life cycle and lifespan is much larger than it being on a plate in front of me. And I think, like, for sustainability, we have to shift our mindset to incorporate the full picture more often.”

CCCCE contracted the organization Compostable to bring the compost to partner farms and urban growing spaces within 10 miles of the event, and redistribute the leftovers to Free Food Collective, a local organization which delivers food to unhoused people in West L.A.

Becca Scheuer takes away the leftover food and compost. The leftover food will go to a local organization that will distribute the food to unhoused people and the compost will go to partner farms and urban growing spaces.

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At the end of the day, Becca Scheuer from Compostable weighed the food waste and leftover food — approximately 60 pounds of food waste to become compost, about 80 pounds of leftover food to be redistributed.

“So that is great,” Scheuer said while loading up the pickup truck. “None of that is in the landfill.”

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

California regulators ordered Health Net to fix how it’s handling the termination of assisted living services for low-income residents after the insurer’s abrupt decision left patients and providers scrambling. The state’s corrective action plan requires Health Net to extend services for all members until the end of the year, rather than stopping some as soon as October.

Health Net, one of the largest Medicaid insurers in the country, notified providers several months ago that it was ending its assisted living and home care services contracts. The services are optional under Medi-Cal — California’s version of Medicaid — meaning an insurer can decide annually whether it will continue coverage. Providers and family members said they got little or no warning, leaving them confused and panicked about finding other arrangements.

In an August letter to Health Net, the Department of Health Care Services cited eight deficiencies in the insurer’s handling of the change, including failure to submit transition plans for members, failure to move members to other medically appropriate care, and denying services to members. Regulators wrote that violations “jeopardize member safety, disrupt continuity of care, and endanger medically vulnerable members.”

If Health Net does not extend benefits and create individualized transition plans for each affected member, the state may fine them $25,000 per member per day of violation, the letter states.

Advocates and providers estimate about 3,500 Medi-Cal patients rely on Health Net to pay for assisted living costs. Most are elderly, and many have cognitive issues like dementia. Health Net operates Medi-Cal plans in 10 counties: Amador, Calaveras, Fresno, Inyo, Los Angeles, Mono, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Tulare.

In a statement to CalMatters, Health Net spokesperson Beatriz Lopez said the company still plans to end the services next year, but will now cover all members through the end of the year.

“Health Net and DHCS share a commitment to advancing the health and well-being of Medi-Cal members,” Lopez said.

Health Net has previously told CalMatters the assisted living benefit “has not led to better care” in terms of fewer emergency room visits or days hospitalized. The benefit is part of CalAIM, a broad state initiative to improve Medi-Cal services and save money by stabilizing high-cost users who frequently end up in emergency rooms. Lopez said Health Net would continue analyzing data and supporting services that result in better health outcomes.

Providers confirmed to CalMatters that their contracts would run through the end of the year.

Thousands still face January deadline

Hagar Dickman, director of long-term services and supports at Justice In Aging, said the state’s corrective action plan resolves the immediate crisis but fails to address the long-term problem: “Thousands of older Californians are still set to lose their housing on January 1st.”

Allowing health insurers to cancel housing-related benefits creates problems, Dickman said, because most assisted living residents have no other home to return to. Additionally, the Department of Health Care Services has stated that if a member moves to another insurer that still covers assisted living, continuity of care protections would no longer apply, meaning the new insurer might not approve the member's assisted living costs.

"It’s disingenuous to say there are protections and then say the protections don’t apply,” Dickman said. "So the option is skilled nursing or homelessness.”

Pauline Shatara, deputy director of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, agreed that state protections are inadequate.

“It doesn’t sound like we found a solution to help pay for these people to remain where they are,” Shatara said.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

Long Beach will make a slew of parking tickets more expensive and charge higher cannabis taxes to avoid cutting library hours and some specialized police officers. The last-minute change, proposed hours before a City Council vote, reversed a controversial plan city leaders laid out in June to lay off nearly a dozen library employees to help balance its budget.

Facing a $58 million shortfall, the city will still lay off roughly 180 other employees and cut hundreds more vacant positions. But it will spare library staffing and hours, after the original budget — which would have cut Monday hours at five city libraries, the only ones open that day — prompted fierce public backlash.

Long Beach City Council members voted 7 to 2 on Tuesday for the revised $4-billion city budget.

Councilmember Cindy Allen, who objected, called the increased parking fines “predatory fees,” arguing that library funding shouldn’t come at the expense of unfairly targeting people already struggling financially. Allen represents a district that includes the densely populated Alamitos Beach and Rose Park neighborhoods, where parking is already scarce. “We don’t have driveways,” she said.

Kristina Duggan, who represents southeast Long Beach neighborhoods like Belmont Shore, also voted against the budget because it cut Fire Engine 14 near Colorado Lagoon, a move that’s expected to save $3.88 million but drive up response times.

Duggan and Allen both tried but failed to delay the budget vote, with Allen saying the changes were put together in a “slapdash manner” without a chance for the public to weigh in.

She warned her colleagues before the vote that if they approved the budget “without substantial discussion” then they were “complicit in rubber-stamping” a plan that would “affect people’s livelihoods.”

Under the plan, 18 categories of parking citations — including for blocking bike lanes, hydrants, double parking and crosswalks — will rise to a flat $100, up from $74 or $90, to generate $1.5 million. Street sweeping tickets would also get a $5 bump, to $80 — a difference that raises $700,000 in revenue.

In the last fiscal year, which ran Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, the city issued more than 100,000 parking citations and 201,000 street-sweeping tickets, Public Works Director Josh Hickman said. More than a fifth of street-sweeping tickets were written in Allen’s district, and more than half of all parking tickets citywide were issued in the first two council districts, which include downtown and Alamitos Beach.

John Edmond, a local lobbyist who sits on the board for the Library Foundation and spoke in support of the plan, said the $100 rates are on par with cities like San Francisco ($108), Oakland ($110), San Diego ($117). He argued this applies to the “most serious parking violations.”

“We can’t say we’re serious about pedestrian and bicycle safety without accountability,” he said.

The budget also raises the city’s cannabis retail tax from 7% to 8% and increases the cultivation tax to more than $15 per square foot, changes expected to bring in roughly $1.15 million.

The proposals came from Councilmember Joni Ricks-Oddie, who chairs the city’s Budget Oversight Committee. Ricks-Oddie said earlier Tuesday she had spent weeks preparing these and dozens of other recommendations in concert with city staff, continuously updating them to accommodate new requests that came in from the public and fellow council members.

“If we can’t do this … then we can’t fund the libraries,” Ricks-Oddie said in response to Allen’s concerns about pricier parking citations. “If we reject that, we’re saying no to our library hours on a Monday.”

The budget also sets aside $1 million for the city’s immigration legal defense fund, the Long Beach Justice Fund. That’s well short of the $2.2 million immigration attorneys and local immigrant rights groups say is needed to sustain it amid rising caseloads. Gina Amato Lough of Public Counsel’s Immigrants’ Rights Project said “the need has never been greater,” citing prolonged detentions, warrantless raids and difficulty accessing counsel.

Since Public Counsel’s $919,000, one-year contract to provide legal services began in November, the group has taken on more than 55 consultations and 46 full-scope cases through the Justice Fund.

After hearing repeated pleas for more money Tuesday, Allen proposed reallocating all the funding for Long Beach’s new Vibe City marketing campaign — which some have derided as a waste of money — to the Justice Fund. She was quickly shot down, with a representative from the City Attorney’s office saying they’re not sure that would be legal, considering the Vibe City campaign is funded by tax revenue earmarked for advertising and promoting the city.

City Council leaders called the budget cuts a necessary, if painful, step toward stabilizing Long Beach’s finances after years of instability papered over with one-time cash — a bet that higher fees now will spare deeper cuts later.

“It’s hard, and it’s personal for everyone, and it will be really difficult on families across this community,” said Councilmember Megan Kerr.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Colorful parade floats, charros on horseback and live music will take over Cesar E. Chavez Avenue on Sunday for the 80th East L.A. Mexican Independence Day Parade.

For decades, organizers have brought together community leaders, performers, businesses and organizations to celebrate culture, community and tradition. This year, the parade will culminate in a festival with family-friendly activations, including live music, local vendors and lucha libre. 

This year’s co-grand marshals are singer and actor Dasahev López Saavedra, better known as El Dasa, and Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis.

Here’s everything you need to know.

When is the parade and festival?

The parade runs from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 13. The festival takes place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on First Street and Mednik Avenue. 

What’s the parade route? 

The 1.5-mile route will run along Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, starting at Mednik Avenue and ending on Gage Avenue. You can find a map of the parade route and other festivities on the festival’s webpage here. Early arrival is suggested to secure a viewing spot for the parade. 

A map of the East LA Mexican Independence Day Parade route.

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What streets will be closed?

• Mednik Avenue: Between 1st Street and Cesar E. Chavez from 5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12 to 9 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13.
• Cesar E. Chavez Avenue: Between Vancouver Avenue and Gage Avenue from 6  a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13.

What can I expect at the festivities?

The parade will feature floats, show cars, representatives from Eastside organizations, equestrian teams, marching bands and folklórico dancers. 

The festival will include vendors, musical performances, resource booths, a pop-up from local boutique The Goddess Mercado, a free pet vaccination clinic that will administer free vaccines for the first 200 pets, and a free lucha libre showcase by East Los Lucha. 

Where can I park? 

Limited free parking will be available at the East L.A. Civic Center lot located on E. 3rd Street and Civic Center Way. Attendees can also find street parking in the surrounding area. 

Can I take public transit to the event? 

The Metro E Line’s East L.A. Civic Center station is just a short walk from the event. 

What if I don’t want to attend in person? 

If you’re unable to attend or want to watch the parade from home, you can tune in to the live broadcast on ABC7. 

For more information, check out the website here. 

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Robbie Hall has a record of the people she has treated for overdoses at MacArthur Park.

The photos of many of the people she has treated are saved on her phone. She can scroll through them and remember each one.

Hall, an ambassador with the nonprofit Five Keys, has been doing this work for about four years and is at the park almost every day, carrying Naloxone, a medication used to reverse opioid overdoses.

She typically responds when someone stops breathing.

“I stopped counting when I got up in my 40s, because it started being gradually three of them, four of them,” Hall said. 

On a recent September morning at the park, Hall said she found a 14-year-old girl in a bathroom who was experiencing an overdose. Tears welled up as she talked about the people she encounters at the park.

“They need help, they need help,” she said. “This is every day.” 

She believes the city needs to address the problem. When asked about the plans to fence the park, she said she sees the fence as one way to improve the conditions she sees on the ground.

“They need to put something up here,” she said.

For Hall and others who work around the park, the fence is less a solution than a stopgap, something concrete to try amid problems that have proven harder to solve.

The Department of Recreation and Parks says the fence will be temporary and is still on track for construction this fall, but has not provided a specific date, cost estimate or explained what conditions would need to change before the fence comes down.

Marco Pacheco, president of the MacArthur Park Park Advisory Board, does not believe the fence will be temporary. 

“I think this is going to be permanent,” Pacheco said. “This is going to be a permanent fixture of some sort because first of all, you don’t put up a fence that costs millions of dollars to take it down. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Pacheco isn’t the only one who has doubts.

Richard Barron, who served on the Cultural Heritage Commission for 22 years before departing in July, also questioned whether the city would follow through on its promise to remove the fence.

“I doubt that the fence is going to come down,” Barron said, “especially when they’ve spent all that money. Even taking it down costs a lot of money, you know, and you’re going to throw all that material away?”

The Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners approved $2.3 million in funding for the project. The city has not said how much money will ultimately be spent on the fence.

Everyone has a different idea of what the fence will do

The city’s consultants have described a fence that would be transparent, reversible and designed to blend into the park.

Leila Hamroun, a senior preservation architect with Tetra Tech, the consulting firm working with the city on the project’s design, said the fence won’t be a dominant feature.

“The whole intent here is to guarantee that it just blends in, that it’s seamless,” Hamroun said. “It’s reversible, transparent, minimalist, consistent with the evolution of urban parks over time.”

A rendering shows the proposed green metal fence around MacArthur Park.

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Courtesy L.A. Recreation and Parks

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The fence is expected to be about 8 feet tall, with gates at eight existing entrances. Decorative elements would be considered separately, with community input expected next year.

For Michelle Garcia, who has been a vendor around MacArthur Park since 2015, it could help distinguish vendors from the people living in the park.

“I support it if they could get the homeless people out,” Garcia said. “They are the ones that make MacArthur Park look bad. But they also make us look bad, because we sell around the area, so they think we’re like them, which we’re not.”

Garcia was among a group of vendors at MacArthur Park who held a Sept. 2 press conference to call attention to what they described as police harassment and citations that pushed vendors away from the park.

“Like us, we’re trying to work and get money for our bills, our rent,” she said.

Police have their own expectations for what a fenced park could accomplish.

The Los Angeles Police Department has stepped up enforcement around the park through a joint task force with the Drug Enforcement Administration focused on drug dealing in the area. In July, Rampart Division Capt. Benedict Fernandes said the operation had significantly disrupted the drug trade, but that drug users were spreading into surrounding neighborhoods in search of narcotics.

“We know that all the communities around have been impacted because it got spread this way, sort of like a shotgun blast,” he said. “It went south, it went east, it went north, it went west.”

Fernandes said the next phase of the enforcement effort would focus on connecting unhoused people and drug users with shelter and recovery services.

The fence, he said, is meant to make the park less convenient for drug activity and “prevent crime” inside the park.

“Because that’s the problem,” Fernandes said. “The Alvarado corridor at MacArthur Park has been convenient for drug users for years. We’re just trying to make those things stop.”

Fernandes said the temporary fence along Alvarado and now the orange bollards installed in the area, have worked to disrupt that activity. 

But Hall, the outreach worker administering Narcan at the park, has not seen those types of improvements on the ground.

“Since they did that big bust? No, it got worse,” Hall said when asked whether she had seen fewer overdoses in the area.

She said people wait for police to leave the park before returning.

“If it wasn’t for Five Keys, there would be a lot more dead bodies here,” she said.

Some residents say that adding a fence around MacArthur Park would change the makeup of the neighborhood. Others welcome a change to the troubled park.

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Gary Coronado

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How the fence is supposed to work

The plan calls for the park to remain open during the day, with eight entry points, and close overnight from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. LAPD would close the gates at night, and Recreation and Parks maintenance workers would reopen them each morning.

The department says the fence is intended to make the park easier to maintain. Illegal dumping, littering, vandalism and graffiti have made routine maintenance difficult, according to the department, which has said MacArthur Park generates more graffiti cleanup requests than nearby Lafayette Park.

The city has pointed to nearby Lafayette Park, which is fenced and closed at night, as a model for MacArthur Park.

Pacheco, the president of the park’s advisory board, said he has heard general support for the fence among community members. 

“In many cases, community members alluded to Lafayette Park having been fenced for a long time, the difference between the two parks, Lafayette being a lot safer and a lot cleaner and less of a problem than MacArthur Park,” he said. 

The fence still needs final approval from the five-person commission that approved the project’s conceptual phase in October. The commission has not yet set a date to consider the final plans.