Newest member of the powerful Metro board attends her first meeting on March 23
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has appointed L.A. City Council member Katy Yaroslavsky to a seat on the board of the county’s regional transit agency, bringing the board to full strength for the first time this year.
Yaroslavsky, who was elected to City Council District 5 in November, is the fourth member of the Los Angeles city delegation on the 13-seat LA Metro Board of Directors.
The appointment, announced Thursday, March 16, solidifies Bass’s stamp on LA Metro, an agency with a $9 billion budget that runs 2,200 buses and seven rail lines and accounts for 800,000 daily boardings.
The other L.A. city members are Bass, Jacquelyn Dupont-Walker and L.A. City Council President Paul Krekorian, who represents the San Fernando Valley. Yaroslavsky takes the place of former councilmember Mike Bonin, who served on Metro’s board for nine years.
Yaroslavsky was an aide to former L.A. County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, who retired last year, and she has worked on affordable housing, arts and environmental issues.
She is honing in on Metro’s struggles with drug overdoses on trains and station platforms, bus driver assaults and homeless passengers who ride trains and buses, using them as mobile shelters.
“Our Metro buses and trains are ground zero for our homelessness crisis, and the Metro Board has a critical role to play in our regional approach,” Yaroslavsky said in a prepared statement. “That means building housing on Metro-owned properties, ensuring true community safety on Metro buses, trains, and stations, and connecting unhoused riders directly to services.”
Yaroslavsky noted that two major rail projects are in her district, which includes the Westside from Westwood to Bel Air to Palms, plus Pico-Robertson, Greater Wilshire and Mid-City West. The two projects she referenced are the extension of the D (Purple) line to Westwood, nearing completion, and the proposed Sepulveda Pass Transit Corridor project that would connect the Westside to the San Fernando Valley.
Read more at: https://www.dailynews.com/2023/03/17/la-councilwoman-katy-yaroslavsky-appointed-to-la-metro-board-by-karen-bass/