Dear Friend of the Chili Bowl,
Thank you for joining more than 800 concerned citizens who have signed the petition urging councilmember Mike Bonin to pause the pending demolition permit and help to move L.A.’s last Chili Bowl from its longtime home at 12244 West Pico Boulevard to a safe location within the city of Los Angeles.
Now that City Hall is open for in-person business once again, the potential destruction of the Chili Bowl is rushing along at a feverish pace. Next Tuesday, June 29, Chili Bowl landmarking will be voted on by full City Council.
This vote is only a formality, because councilman Mike Bonin has already expressed his lack of support for the Chili Bowl, and the powerful PLUM Committee deferred to his opinion by rejecting the landmark nomination. If the landmark is rejected, we fear the property owner will seek to get his demolition permit approved.
It is highly questionable that Mike Bonin has moved to schedule this vote. The Los Angeles Conservancy, which nominated the Chili Bowl as a landmark, has filed a Brown Act complaint because neither they nor members of the public were allowed to make comment before the PLUM vote. They are demanding that City Council follow the law, void PLUM’s vote and hold the hearing again with the public and applicant heard from.
This City Council routinely violates the law and treats citizens with contempt, for the benefit of wealthy property owners and their politically connected lobbyists and land use attorneys. That’s why they’re under FBI investigation.
But when citizens speak up loudly and clearly, sometimes City Council gets nervous and changes course. You’ve already signed this petition, and we will be submitting it and all your names into the Council File.
What else can you do to help save the Chili Bowl?
1) Share the petition with friends who care, and on your social media channels. Let’s get to 1000 signatures!
2) Call or email your own councilmember with this suggested message, which you can customize to reflect your own thoughts: “I am a resident of your district, and I am very concerned about the pending vote on 6/29 (agenda item 8, Council File 20-0246, Chili Bowl landmarking). The Los Angeles Conservancy has filed a substantiated Brown Act complaint due to lack of public or applicant comment prior to the PLUM vote, and this matter should not be heard by full City Council under these circumstances. Please ask the City Clerk and Council President Nury Martinez not to schedule this item until the Brown Act complaint is reviewed. If this matter does go before full Council, I urge you to vote YES on landmarking the Chili Bowl. Thank you.”
You can find your councilmember’s contact info here: https://www.lacity.org/government/popular-information/city-directory
3) You can also submit a similar message by email to the Council File by clicking the button marked NEW in the middle of this page: https://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa=ccfi.viewrecord&cfnumber=20-0246
4) And you can try to call in and make public comment during the meeting on Tuesday, June 29, starting at 10am. However, City Council regularly refuses to hear public comment by voting on items previously heard in committees “on consent.” But if they won’t let you speak on the Chili Bowl (agenda item #8), you can ask to speak on General Public Comment, and you will have one minute if called on to complain about more generally about the failure to abide by the Brown Act. You can see the meeting agenda, and call in instructions, here: https://lacity.primegov.com/Portal/Meeting?compiledMeetingDocumentFileId=10104
That’s all the news that fits in a giant Chili Bowl. Please continue to share the petition (http://www.change.org/SaveTheChiliBowl) with friends who love the Chili Bowl and want to see it saved. And stay tuned for additional updates as they happen.
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim Cooper & Richard Schave
Friends of the Chili Bowl