50 Facts About Zev Yaroslavsky

Zev Yaroslavsky was born on December 21,1948 and is a politician from Los Angeles County, California.

Zev Yaroslavsky was a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors from District 3, an affluent district which includes the San Fernando Valley, the Westside of Los Angeles and coastal areas between Venice and the Ventura County line.

Zev Yaroslavsky was first elected to the board in 1994.

Zev Yaroslavsky, the son of David and Minna Yaroslavsky, was born on December 21,1948, in Los Angeles.

Zev Yaroslavsky's father was a founder of the Hebrew Teachers Union in Los Angeles, and both parents, who were born in Ukraine, were founders of North American Habonim, a Labor Zionist youth movement.

Zev Yaroslavsky recalled that his parents spoke to their children only in Hebrew to prepare them for emigrating to Israel.

Zev Yaroslavsky attended Melrose Avenue Elementary School, Bancroft Junior High School and Fairfax High School.

Zev Yaroslavsky earned a Bachelor of Arts in history and economics from UCLA in 1971 and a Master of Arts in history, specializing in the British Empire, from the same school in 1972.

Zev Yaroslavsky first gained public notice as a UCLA student who had begun orchestrating high-profile protests in Los Angeles against oppressive treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union.

In 1971, as executive director of the Southern California Council on Soviet Jewry, Zev Yaroslavsky made news again when he led protests against the Bolshoi Ballet and boated into Los Angeles Harbor to paint "Let My People Go" on the side of a Soviet freighter.

Zev Yaroslavsky was arrested during one Bolshoi protest but no charges were filed.

Zev Yaroslavsky was "deeply involved" in a campaign to burn Standard Oil credit cards after the company sent a letter to 300,000 stockholders that appeared to support a pro-Arab Middle East policy.

Zev Yaroslavsky resigned from that $150-a-week job to campaign for the City Council.

Zev Yaroslavsky was on the city council from 1975 to 1994.

Zev Yaroslavsky successfully obtained ordinances that reduced neighborhood building heights and imposed severe restrictions on hillside development.

Zev Yaroslavsky led an effort to substantially limit the scale of development in Century City.

Zev Yaroslavsky was credited with orchestrating the negotiations concerning the use, for the first time, of potential traffic congestion measurements to help determine the scope of a project.

The story noted that Zev Yaroslavsky received strong financial support from major developers.

In January, 1989, Zev Yaroslavsky announced that he would not challenge Bradley, calling the four-term mayor a "very popular and entrenched incumbent" who would be "virtually impossible" to beat.

In 1993, Zev Yaroslavsky sought to block or limit expansion plans for 20th Century Fox in his Westside district.

Zev Yaroslavsky played an important role in blocking the Expo line expansion to Santa Monica in his Westside district in 1993.

In 1990, Zev Yaroslavsky authorized a nonprofit group, Jewish Federation Council, which was run by the husband of Zev Yaroslavsky's long-time top aide to build housing on a lot without taking part in competitive bidding procedures.

Zev Yaroslavsky offered a resolution that would have required bakeries to post the prices of their goods.

Zev Yaroslavsky successfully worked to unseat long-time council President John Ferraro.

Ferraro purportedly struck back by engineering the election of Councilman Joel Wachs to the council presidency over Zev Yaroslavsky's favored candidate, Councilwoman Pat Russell.

Zev Yaroslavsky broke with City Council tradition when he campaigned for challenger Michael Woo against pro-growth fellow council member Peggy Stevenson, who had helped defeat a controversial building moratorium planned for part of Zev Yaroslavsky's district.

Zev Yaroslavsky represented the Third Supervisorial District of Los Angeles County, which encompasses the cities of Malibu, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Calabasas, as well as most of the western San Fernando Valley and other portions of the City of Los Angeles.

Zev Yaroslavsky was elected to a fifth term in 2010, running unopposed.

Zev Yaroslavsky sought to restrict development and preserve open space in the Santa Monica Mountains.

In 2004, Zev Yaroslavsky helped craft a controversial ordinance that made it more difficult to develop scenic ridge lines in the Santa Monica Mountains, while cutting in half the amount of grading allowed without a conditional use permit.

In 2007, Zev Yaroslavsky sought to block a proposal to lift height limitations on housing construction.

In 2012, Zev Yaroslavsky successfully blocked NBCUniversal from building 3,000 apartments on part of its back lot in Universal City.

Zev Yaroslavsky led a campaign to ban the use of the transit sales tax to fund further expansions of the Los Angeles subway.

Zev Yaroslavsky sponsored controversial ballot initiative, Proposition A, to that end.

Zev Yaroslavsky argued that mass transit could be achieved less expensively and more efficiently through light-rail and dedicated busways than through subways.

Zev Yaroslavsky pushed for a 14-mile dedicated busway that would cut through the San Fernando Valley on paved right-of-ways.

In Ethan Elkind's history of the Los Angeles rail system, he writes that Zev Yaroslavsky shifted his attitudes on light rail and subway rail after becoming a county supervisor and being less beholden to homeowner interests in Cheviot Hills and Rancho Park.

The measure detailed specific rail and highway projects that will be undertaken, including the Purple Line subway on the Westside and the Expo Line, a light rail project backed by Zev Yaroslavsky that begins in Downtown Los Angeles and will end in Santa Monica when completed in 2017.

In 2002, Zev Yaroslavsky authored a ballot initiative to raise $168 million annually in an effort to avert the potential collapse of Los Angeles County's vast emergency and trauma-care network, which was threatened by a deep health-care budget deficit.

Zev Yaroslavsky proposed setting up a health care clinic on the campus of the local Sun Valley Middle School in the northeastern San Fernando Valley.

Zev Yaroslavsky proposed re-opening the medical center under a partnership with the University of California.

Zev Yaroslavsky has been instrumental in securing millions of dollars in funding for the arts in Los Angeles County.

Zev Yaroslavsky appropriated an additional nearly $7 million from the Third District capital and maintenance fund to replace the deteriorating 1929 shell.

Zev Yaroslavsky played a key role among local elected officials in the construction of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.

Zev Yaroslavsky appropriated $1 million to help build architect Frank Gehry's distinctive hall, which opened in 2003.

In 2018, Zev Yaroslavsky expressed opposition to SB 827, which allowed dense housing construction near major public transit stations.

In 2019, Zev Yaroslavsky expressed opposition to SB 50, which permitted the construction of duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes on much of the residential land that had previously been zoned exclusively for single-family homes.

Zev Yaroslavsky was married to the former Barbara Edelston, whom he met as a student at UCLA.

Barbara Zev Yaroslavsky was first appointed to the Medical Board of California in 2003, and subsequently served multiple terms as its president.

Zev Yaroslavsky has been a supporter of the Los Angeles Opera, conducting the national anthem at the 2014 performance of La Traviata at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, directed by Marta Domingo.