YouSaid · the spoken record

Rick Caruso

lines on the record: 31
first: 2025-01-30
most recent: 2025-01-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The chapter I'm thinking about most is this one as a private citizen doing as much as I can to support the city, the state, the federal government through the lens of all the residents that want to get back in their home. Beyond that, I don't know. Listen, I obviously have a history of public service. I love it. If there's an opportunity down the road, I'll take a look at it. But it's just not sort of on the plate in front of me right now because I don't want to do anything now. Sort of hurts or changes the perception of why I'm doing this. This isn't about politics. The problems we have now are so much bigger than politics. And that's why I just want to focus on helping out. And then down the road, we have a lot of time to figure things out”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A very happy place They've done a great job. We went as a family. I loved it. And the people are just terrific. Great culture. But to your point, and that sovereign front is, as you know, is one of the largest sovereign fronts in the world. They can't spend it quick enough because it grows so fast. But their education system, their health system, their employment system there is really remarkable. I agree with that.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we have to start prioritizing. But to your point, How did we blow so much money? I really don't know. I've never heard a good explanation. I don't know if you've done that. Yeah, I know it's a.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of it goes back to infrastructure. I was on the governor's committee, the COVID committee and whatnot. I was amazed to learn how many kids did not have access to the internet. This is the fifth largest economy in the world. And we had kids that had to go home for school but couldn't connect on the internet. How could that be? We've got demands on our power grid that are exceeding what we can supply. We need to go fix that. We certainly have a vegetation overgrowth problem with forest fires. We need to go fix that. The water delivery problem, we need to go fix that. We need to upgrade our schools or school system. I think we get back to basic things of saying what would make residents of Los Angeles' lives better and more livable and safer and give them an opportunity to prosper. And let's organize our budget dollars around that”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think you got to think big to your point, you have this open palette, you have this once hopefully and multi-generation opportunity to do something to make this community as dear and as sweet and as wonderful as it was, but also a city of the twenty first century in terms of sustainability. We should be recycling the water up there, using it on the park. Our village takes all the irrigation, holds it, we contain it, and then we ship it to the park. You know, all of those kind of systems can be put in now. And not holding anybody up from building. That goes back to the parallel path.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, and it's a great idea. And I was with a group the other day that wants to rebuild the Pally Rec Center. But now there's a wonderful opportunity. Let's make it the state of the art rec center, right, with all the things to support the kids in the surrounding area up there. And maybe that part gets bigger. Maybe there's an opportunity now that you can grow the size of that park. But certainly the infrastructure of that park. Just the infrastructure of the whole town in terms of communication. things that are going on around the world that we should be studying. There's asphalt that gets laid down to help charge your cars, your driving, you know.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe. I like the way you think. I think that's great. I think once you get all the toxic waste out of there, then you can start doing a lot of things at the same time. About getting the toxic waste, but listen if there was a schedule that showed six months, I'd be all in.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shouldn't be past a year. Maybe the hazard as cleanup as three, four months. The infrastructure is going in right after that. People will end up spending maybe a year to redraw a house, blah, blah, blah. Permits should all be very easy to get. All the costs should be suspended. And then we start mobilizing. Is there going to be supply chain constraints? Yes. All of those things are going to be have to be dealt with. But there's a great opportunity here to have these communities literally come out of the ashes in a year. That would be my demand if I was king for a day, put together a program that allows people to start building in a year.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Could make. This goes back to what you do. It's just basic business sense. It's not complicated. So the more of us that can help our elected officials think through this in a different fashion is going to be really, really important. And I would really Suggest to people strongly stay engaged, stay active, and be pushing your elected officials to do the right thing here. We've got people's lives at risk. We've got thousands of people who've lost their jobs. They have nowhere to sleep tonight, right? This is really a human disaster to great, the greatest degree that I've ever seen.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The cleanup has to happen, yes, but this community, whether it's Altadina or Pacific Palisades, these are older communities. You got to go in now and underground the power lines. You got to go in now and upgrade the water systems. You got to go in now. We know we have to go in now and upgrade the fire hydrants and the reservoir systems. All of that should be designed now so that the minute the cleanup is done, you're in the street laying new pipe and undergrinding the power. Why would you build the same system when you know you're in a fire hazard area? It doesn't make any sense. And what I'm hearing from some elected officials, well, we don't have the money to do that. That's baloney. Of course, you have the money to do it. And you just had a disaster that's cost, what, couple hundred billion dollars is now the estimate. Whatever you're going to spend on infrastructure to prevent this from happening in the future is the best investment.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the good news is Anna, you're absolutely right. The good news is Gavin suspended Coastal Commission and whatnot in order to pull a permit. So that's good, smart thing to do. We've got a list of things. He's asked for more suggestions that we're going to be getting him from our point of view on this.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have And, you know, hopefully we'll break through with that thinking. But we've got some of the greatest minds in the world and the greater Los Angeles area. Bring them in. And we got some of the greatest contractors. And everybody wants to lean in and help. And let's take advantage of it. And so I'm trying to do as much of that as I can to move the elected officials along and hopefully, and they've been pretty open to it. So I'm optimistic.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The way they're approaching it now is in a Syrianum fashion. We're going to do cleanup and then we're going to do this and then we're going to do that. And we're going to have one master contractor. I'm trying to break that out. It just isn't the right way to do it. And you know from your experience seem very successful businesses, you should run on multiple paths at the same time”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I really believe it shouldn't take years. And this is a conversation I've had most. If we approach this with all due respect, thinking like a government, it's going to take years. If we approach this thinking like a business person and putting it in business terms, The only thing worth thinking about is what's in the best interest of these residents to get them back in, then you would quickly run a schedule along parallel paths. Break down the area into different quadrants, bring in different contractors for cleanup and infrastructure, and incentivize them. A success timeline that gives them a win for moving quickly at the level of quality that we expect.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was one big law that needed to be changed, which did, which is the definition of a felony versus a misdemeanor in terms of theft. Many of the laws aren't being enforced or they're being put on hold on how officers can engage. And I think that is a problem. It's absolutely a problem.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've got to get the drugs off the street. We got to start enforcing it. We've got to start going after the gangs that are selling drugs and being tough on them. And again, hopefully with a new district attorney, and we also have a new chief of police, Jimmy McDonald, we're going to start making progress in that regard.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're spending billions of dollars to deal with the homeless situation that we have in LA to no avail. We still have the same amount of people on the streets. That number is growing, even after spending billions of dollars. So we're not spending money wisely. And we have to start fighting drugs on the streets. We have open sale of drugs on the streets. Well, let me put it this way. The most active. Fire station in the United States is in an area around MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. It's the most active because of the amount of people dying on the streets from overdoses. That tells you everything. And that is a disaster, and it's sad at every human level.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If the right leadership is brought in that has the courage to do the right things and protect the public. And I think that's where LA City and this administration failed and the last administration, Eric Garcetti, is that the number one job is to protect the public and their livelihood. And when you look at the city budget, it doesn't reflect that when you start cutting fire and cutting police.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Senior lead officers, more officers on the street, more officers walking beats, understanding communities, engaging and be very preventative. And then we also need to help people get a path in life that gets them away from criminal conduct. And, you know, there are people that want a second chance and we should give them a second chance. But there's a ton of things we could do. I could take the whole podcast up on it. What I do want to say, though, it's all fixable.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You do have to marry that with holding especially serial criminals accountable. Now, fortunately, we just changed the law in California on the misdemeanors and whatnot. Fortunately, we just changed our district attorney here, Nathan Hockman, I think he's going to do a very good job, just like they changed in San Francisco. So those kind of things are going to be very helpful. But we've lost a lot of police officers in LA City. We're very understaffed. Part of the frustration is they don't feel like they can be ineffective police officers. So they go to other agencies. We need to change that culture. We need to start hiring. And then we need to bring in the things that Bill Brad and I brought in 20 years ago.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, crime in Los Angeles, like a lot of major cities, has been a real problem. And there was a lot of decisions made by people that were not enforcing the laws. There has been a lot of decision made that have pulled back the ability of officers to engage and be more proactive. And I'm not talking about. Officers doing anything that's illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, that's never acceptable. I'm talking about proactive policing that prevents crime from happening.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It appears to be pretty significant. I mean, that's a real sickness, and these people need to be held accountable. And in my opinion, losing 28 lives, you know, they need to spend time in a prison for the rest of their life. But I know we had it afterwards here in Brentwood. I'm at my home in Brentwood along Sepulveda. Seems to be arson. There's some thinking there was two or three other fires up at Griffith Park, I think was arson they cut. So it's a real problem.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I just got off the phone with an elected official in Congress that was finding every excuse in the world why it wasn't anybody's fault, which I think elected officials are really good at. I think they have a PhD in that. But no, listen, I was on the phone with my team, a senior member of the rapid response team that we have was up there and embedded in the command staff. And at about, I think it was a little bit after 10 o'clock or 10.30, I get the call. the hydrants are empty. We're not getting water. It had nothing to do with broken pipes. It had everything to do with the reservoirs not being filled. Everything up there is gravity flow. So those reservoirs draining are coming into the hydrants. And there is protocols should be in place that's keeping those reservoirs full. But the largest reservoir was empty. And that was a huge problem.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I mean, that's just to me, it's a sin of what happened, and people have paid a dear price for the bad planning of it.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had been through this about six years prior when we were building a Rosewood Miramar Beach Hotel, with the fires up in Montecito. And what we do know is that Owner of a commercial property, we don't want to be taking resources away from protecting homes. So we bring in as much of our own private systems as possible. We did that up in Montecito. We use that same playbook down here. It was very effective. And in addition, we were able to save some adjacent buildings. And in our village, there are eight homes. We saved the eight homes, saved thousands of jobs because businesses are going to be able to reopen and people are going to be able to come back to work. So it was clearly the right thing to do. And it's frankly a really good example of how much better the city could have been prepared. But the city didn't even have enough equipment because they've underfunded the fire department for so long and Maribas cut even more out this last budget cycle that they had equipment mothballed in parking lots.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, it's a good lesson on being prepared, but it started with design. You know, knowing that we were building in an area that was prone to fires, we did not build with any combustible materials. There's no combustible materials. Even what looks like wood is concrete, formed to look like wood. And so that's the first level of defense. The second level of defense was we have a team, this rapid deployment team, when there's any kind of natural disaster. We have protocols that come off the shelf. And for fires, we immediately engage with companies that can pour retardant on the building, which we had out there. We had backup water systems out there, and we had a private firefighting department out there because”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Four, that's probably a pretty good sign that we needed to be prepared, and we knew the winds were coming. So unfortunately, I think it's border negligence. There's no doubt in my mind, but it's clearly bad planning, bad leadership. And maybe you couldn't have prevented the fire. I'm completely convinced you could have substantially mitigated the fire. We've lost the equivalent of two Manhattans in terms of land sizes. It's an unthinkable amount of devastation that's out there.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All the above. I mean, listen, I don't think you can doubt that there's an impact to climate change. So let's just say that's a given. But the Palisades fire was fueled by 40 years of brush that was never managed. And so you have an enormous amount of brush in those hills behind the Palisades. And when you had the winds coming up, the city was not prepared adequately to deal with it. The fire department was not properly deployed to deal with it. To be in the second largest city in the United States and to run out of water and have fire hydrants empty is completely insane. So there was a series of things, but it really starts with, frankly, incompetent leadership that wasn't prepared for something like this, like clearing brush, like making sure the reservoirs were full. There's a whole reservoir that was empty that was drained because they wanted to have repairs on it. Well, we had a fire in Malibu 10 minutes from the Palisades fire three weeks before.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then after that, Jim Hahn, the mayor at the time, asked me to head up the police commission because LA back then was having really rising crime. We were losing a lot of police officers, very similar to what's happening today. And to come in and turn LAPD around. And I did. I brought in Bill Bratton as the chief of police at the time. We were able to get crime down to levels not seen since 1950. I'd been very fortunate to have been involved in government service. reason I decided to eventually run for mayor was because I saw what could be done, especially if you're not beholding to worry about getting re-elected if you're just focused on doing the right thing and becomes a very powerful mindset to have.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm a big believer in public service. I enjoy it, and I just think it's an important thing to do. So at a very young age of 26, Tom Bradley tapped me to be on the board of the Department of Water and Power, and I then became president. After that, Dick Reardon asked me to go back on the board. So I was at DWP for about 13 years.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. Well, I actually started out as a lawyer and I practiced law for a number of years. Interestingly, it was with a large law firm out of New York. And I say it was a large law firm for the reason that after about six years of being there, the law firm imploded. And it forced me to make a business decision. I always loved business. And I started out, you know, very small. I bought a duplex. I fixed it up, rented it out. And then I built my company over time. And what I realized is what I really love doing is being around people and, you know, creating spaces that people enjoy. And the retail sector was the space that I could do that and began building very small retail centers and one by one. We built the grove. We built the Americano brand Palisades Village. And I've got an incredible team of people and they're smart and innovative.”
2025-01-30 · No Priors · Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT