April 8, 2025 • 21 mins
ICYMI: ‘Later, with Mo’Kelly’ Presents – An in-depth conversation with “Designer, Developer, Entrepreneur, Sustainable Farmer and Undercover Billionaire” Elaine Culotti! With a goal to prove that “the American dream is still alive,” Elaine took on Season 2 of the hit Discovery+ series ‘Undercover Billionaire’ to prove that she could build something from scratch under extreme pressure. Now, in the wake of the devastating Palisades and Eaton Canyon fires, Elaine is utilizing her real-world experience to offer smart, actionable solutions and calling out leadership failures at every level - on KFI AM 640…Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Whether it is l.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Kelly and six.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
I'm a Lane Colate and I'm one hundred percent about us.
I'm a builder, I'm a developer, I'm a designer, and
I'm a visionary casinos, hospitals, luxury homes. I've handled over
a billion dollars worth of real estate. If it can
be built, I can figure out a way to do it.
Growing up, my father was in the military. He was
a fighter pilot. He flew F one hundreds and F
one eleven's. My father was gone a lot and we traveled.
(00:35):
But children that come from the military that move a
lot are independent and really quick to make friends.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
I was able to figure it out being a woman
that was in a man's world.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
My dad told me that the most important outpit that
you could put on is confidence.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
Undercover Billionaire in Lane Colodia is a builder, interior designer,
and the visionary behind standout projects like Santa Monica's iconic
House of Rock. She also owned Big Z Ranch, a
forty acre working farm supporting local agriculture and direct to
consumer food distribution. While on the Discovery Plus series, Undercover
Billionaire and Lane proved she could build from the ground
up under extreme pressure now, after the devastating Palisades and
(01:14):
Eating Canyon fires, she's leveraging decades of real world experience
to cut through the noise, offering smart, actionable solutions and
calling out leadership failures at every level. She joins us
in the studio as part of our first YouTube simulcast,
and Lane Claude's good see you.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
How are you deceivending?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I'm oh, my gosh, I'm so excited to be a
virgin guest on your show.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Oh you had to put it in that way, and
we're all.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Hey, well, you know what, I'll take any virgin I
can get.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Let's be fair here. I mean, you know, I'm really
glad you're doing this. So great to stream live.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
It's great to have you, and it provides a completely
different i'll say, ethic and energy to it.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
It's nice to be able to see you.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
It's nice that everyone could see us had this interaction.
You are very familiar, obviously with southern California. What was
going through your mind as these fires were unfurling and growing.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Well, first of all, I was at work and I
was I looked over it. Tim had called and said, hey, listen,
this this thing looks like it's growing really quickly. And
when I saw it and I said, oh no, it's
far away, and he goes, no on lane, it's not
it's close and it's fast. And we didn't even get
a chance to get get anything out. I got nothing out.
(02:33):
I literally had to pick him up. He had the
dogs hit it, go all the way around, and it
was it was it, that was it.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
It was gone.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
It's done, it's all over. Whole thing's gone. Altadina's gone,
Pasadena's gone. It's all that whole area gone. Palisades. People
don't even talk about Malibu. Malibou is completely leveled, almost
all the way to up. No boot you can't go
to you can't get down there.
Speaker 5 (02:56):
When I'm quite sure you knew a lot of people
who lost their house. I'm put sure you knew a
lot of people who had to start over. What were
you hearing from them?
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I think, first of all, I think everybody's in shock.
Let's just let's just be realistic. And I really want
to talk about the Palisades because I want to. I
want to talk about Palisades as in terms of its power.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
It's a it's.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Ground zero for sort of the blue Czech Democrat, you know,
real California all in voter all this is, this is
the government that they elected, that we elected, and these
are the people that change who gets into government.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
This is these are the people that run California.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
In the Palisades, it's one of the most expensive neighborhoods
in California. And when you talk about California, that's meaningful.
And now they've all we're responsible for this. These are
our managers of our money, our spatter, our fire to apartment.
(04:01):
It's our choice that we made to be managed like this.
And they are not potted plants. To understand they can
really change things because these people are the people that
change everything.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Anyway.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
Let me ask you this, with different politicians, do we
get a different result what we had?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
A different result from where you see. Yes, we absolutely result.
Let me just say different management. Let's not call them politicians.
I don't I think when you're running for office, you
probably shouldn't be doing that. I mean you should be
you should be elected into office. It shouldn't be something
you pay for. And part of the problem I think is,
you know, we've lost we've completely lost the whole you know,
grassroots running for an office because you know, you live
(04:44):
in the neighborhood, and you know your neighborhood, and you
know your neighbors. It's gone away and it's being paid
for by you know, citizens united in corporations, and you're
and this is the result of that.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
The rubber has hit the road. The jig is up.
The emperor has no close say whatever you want.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
It didn't work, the little speriment, the little democratic experiment,
it did not work. This is a perfect example of
it because now they got to work. They got to
roll up their sleeves and really manage it. And they
can't do it.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
Short of waiting for the next election, which is going
to be in twenty twenty sixth in June and twenty
twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
What have you?
Speaker 5 (05:17):
What can Angelinos do now which could help change the
trajectory for the next fire or the next calamity, the
next disaster.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Well, okay, first it's a big question.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
But first, the most I think active thing you can
do is register read literally, change your your make your
voice heard, and change yourself from a Democrat or a Republican.
Go on a register and just change it to red
because you will get the attention of absolutely everybody in Sacramento.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
I let me jump in there because you talk about
something I talked about. But it's more than registration. I
have been on the Republicans. You got to run somebody,
and you have to run somebody credible. And I can
tell you right now there is no one who is
running for mayor of Los Angeles who is a Republican
as of this moment.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Well, Grick Cruso I think is a Republican.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
No he is, but no, no, no, but in mindset.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
But since he is a registered Democrat, the Democratic Party
is not going to embrace him. And he and to
the people who are not paying close attention, they're still
going to see a D and not an R. Why
is it the Republican Party is not putting forth a candidate.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Well again, this is this is the reason that Rick
Caruso ran as a Democrat is because he believed, like
everybody believes, you can't win in California, only show a Democrat.
The governor's race is kind of interesting because the governor's
race is a runoff, so it's not run like a
typical race where you have, like you know, basically two
groups of Republicans or three. You have the Republicans, the Democrats,
and the independents, and then everybody gets kind of their
(06:47):
own like little primary, and then what's leftover gets to
run against.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
It doesn't work like that.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
It's basically whoever gets the most votes against whoever got
the second most votes. Those are the top two, and
then they have a runoff a runoff election. It could
be two Democrats. So there's plenty of time fun coming.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Come up the jungle primary.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Yeah, they're coming up with.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
They're coming up with They're going to come up with
really a couple of really good Republicans. There's there's going
to come up with a couple of really good Democrats.
Kamala Harris is probably going to run, and it concerns me,
you know, if Rick Caruso does run, and he's got
no chance if she runs, because it's just going to
split it in two and some big Republican will win.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
And that's okay.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I just want somebody that's got boots on the ground,
that understands California is not about politics, but rather about resources.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
You mentioned resources before we go to this first break.
How did resources play a role or didn't play a
role in the preparation for the fires?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Of the management of them. From where you sit, it.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Depends on which one you want to talk about.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
But you know, thirty years ago we stopped cutting our
trees and stop cutting our brush.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
I mean, it's a thirty year old problem.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
It's an environmental idea that you know, we want to
save all these brush, you know, and not cut fire lanes.
It's it's a respectable idea to be environmentally conscious, but
not at the cost of the health and safety of
the citizens that pay for that to happen. So it's
just like it went too far, just went off the
and decided. You know, they have multiple groups in California
that stop you from building. They have these wildlife groups,
(08:06):
they have open space rules, and the problem is there's
no one to maintain those. So if you talk someone
into literally talk someone into giving up space that you'll
give them a permit and then say, you know, we'll
maintain it, and then no one maintains it.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
This is what you have.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
You have houses that have debris in between them and
it never nobody takes care of it. So those resources
are thirty years old from just being not taken care
of it. Then the water situation, I mean, water's a
completely different problem because in the farming world, you know,
we obviously need water. Just signs all up and down
the ninety nine Freeway everywhere he goes is to Gavin
Dear Gavin A, we are farmers stealing water, Like they
(08:42):
want to know why they don't get water and the
water system and the watershed they've had come up with
all these ideas about storage, water storage, all this money's
been poortant into it. There's no water storage. Where's the
money go?
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Where's the money? Why?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Why is it more important to make white wine? You're
using Central Valley grapes anyway, I mean the Rombar Shardonnay
and all the big chardonnays that make all the money
up in the Northern California. They're only required to use
I think twenty percent of their own grapes. It's ridiculous
they get them all down for Central Valley.
Speaker 5 (09:11):
But the argument, I know, and I've heard the argument
is like, hey, we had enough water for the fires,
and the water which was released from the Central Valley
by President Trump would not have impacted the fires.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
So where do you come out on that?
Speaker 5 (09:23):
How do you separate the water which would be used
for the Central Valley versus the water which was available
for the fires down here.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
If all our water's going in different directions other than
the Central Valley and down to Los Angeles in San
Diego County, if we're not getting any water, we're not
getting we don't need storage. I mean, it doesn't matter
if it just runs off. We have no storage and
there's not enough money. There's not enough money apparently left
to make storage for water. Water should be stored. It
should be stored for when you have a fire. And
(09:52):
so when they went to open up fire hydrants and
they went to go use water, there's no water pressure
because there's no water because there's nothing stored. They have
reservoirs that are half full or not at all. They
have reservoirs that have holes in their lids, which it's
important that they're not dirty because the water it won't
filter through. Point being is they're not maintained. All of
our resources are not maintained. And it's not just water
(10:13):
and are our forests. It's also our landfills. Our landfills
are full. So what are we going to do with
eleven million tons of debris that they're not even talking about?
What are we going to do with a million, six
hundred and fifty thousand trucks of debris. They're doing seven
hundred and fifty a day, and that's only the Army Corps.
It's going to take six years to clean up. I mean,
it's ridiculous. And by the way, they're going to be full.
(10:35):
So the resources that we need are not being managed.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Nobody's even looking at it.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
And on top of it, we're not talking about what
it really takes to clean it up because nobody understands
that because the people that are running it are politicians.
They're not construction people, they're not debris removal people. The
Army Corps of Engineers is a contract company under ECC,
which happens to be under the Federal Maytalk, which is
the Biden May Talk. It's not even the Trump may Talk.
(11:03):
I think it had one point one billion dollars in it.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
They deployed him.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
They're here, they're doing a great job, but it's not
anywhere near enough. And then poor Christy No, she hit
the ground running right, she's got her hands full. She's
in charge of FEMA, so she's got to sit down
and get her hands around what's going on here before
we get more money federally, and because our resources are
so mismanaged, Donald Trump doesn't want to just give us
the money, which I don't blame him, because where is
all the money, Where's the ula attax money, Where's the
(11:28):
homeless money, Where's the forest money, Where's the water money,
Where's the watershed money? So when you get down to it,
we're not going to get federal aid. Gavin Newsom, in
a simultaneous parallel lane, flew to Washington, DC to ask
for forty billion dollars while he's teeing up his fifty million
dollar fight against Donald Trump protection.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
I hate to stop there.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
We have to go to a commercial break, but I
want to pick up there when we come back. How
does the federal contingent impact this situation, not only right
now but going forward. My guests on YouTube as well
as iHeartRadio is a Colotti who is a builder, interior
designer and visionary behind standout projects like Santa Monica's iconic
House of Rock. You might have seen her on Undercover
(12:08):
Billionaire recently, and we'll have more with Elaine Collotti in
just a moment. It's later with mo Kelly Live everywhere
in the Heart Radio app and on YouTube at mister
mo Kelly m R M O K E L L Y.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
You're listening to Later with mo Kelly on demand from
HEFI AM six forty Later.
Speaker 5 (12:24):
With mo Kelly, we're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app
and also on YouTube at mister mo Kelly. Yes a
live video sumocast, and our first guest in studio is
Elaine Colotti.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
We're talking about the fires prior to.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
During and also the way forward, the people who might
be responsible, the things that we need, the resources we
need going forward, and Elaine, before the break, we're getting
ready to get into the money of it, all the
money that has been spent, the money has yet to
be spent, in what federal aid we may need going forward.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
What would you say in regard to that?
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Well, I think we have to be really so let's
let's start with this.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
At the moment, we're talking about the people that have
opted in or opted out. Yeah, and everybody's heard it,
if anyone's involved it all in the fires, they've heard
about opt in opt out, and opt in opt out
has to do with whether or not you're asking FEMA
to clean your lot.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Okay, that's the only thing that's really going on.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Six permits have been pulled since it happened, so there's
the permit, and the rebuilding thing hasn't even started yet.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
This is just getting your lot cleaned up.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
And you know, you could imagine what it must be
like to, you know, have a house standing there and
nobody else around you has a house, and the lock
cleaning is going really slowly, and maybe only three lots
are cleaned in your neighborhood. And that's because the amount
of people that have opted in is somewhere between thirty
four hundred people and four thousand, you know, ish, it's
(13:48):
not eighteen thousand. So and the reason that is is
because first of all, California Fair Plan has only twenty
five thousand dollars worth of debris insurance. And what you
got to understand is, if you're going to do all
the metrics on the news, if Karen bass is going
to get on a report on how great things are going,
she's only reporting on what she knows, and what she
(14:08):
knows is what FEMA's doing.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Because that's the only report she's getting.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
So if she says we're fifteen percent done, she's fifteen
percent done of thirty four hundred and fifteen percent done
of eighteen thousand.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
But most people don't understand in the station she's talking
about La City, not La County. She's not talking about Altadena,
and people I think missed.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
That she's not talking about She's talking about a fraction
of the cleanup that's under contract with opt in.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
It's a fraction.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
And all the other contractors that are out there that
want to clean and do stuff, they are completely hogtide.
And the reason are hogtied is because there's this thing
called haul route, which is how you get the stuff
to the dump. The hall route is for ECC, FEMA,
FEMA contractors and everybody that's removing dirt under the FEMA contracts.
That's what they went and met with the Board of
(14:53):
Supervisors about. They had a big win. They were able
to get more trucks per day, not more trucks in
there in the long run, more more yargage going into
the dump, just more trucks per day. So we've got
a huge problem with the debris and the debris removal
because there's just not enough hands on deck and the
only way to get that out is femal money or
government federal money. Because La is broke, and we're broke
(15:17):
because we mismanaged our money. We didn't just mismanage our forests,
and we didn't just mismanage our water. We mismanaged all
our money. We had a billion dollars surplus.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
We have no money. We're in the hole.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
When Gavin leaves or whoever takes over, has got this
massive deficit that they've got to fill. And then on
top of it, they they passed ula tax, which they
call a mansion tax. It doesn't tax mansions. It taxes
anybody transacting real estate over five million dollars, hospitals, low
income lots. Let me tell you, you have a burned
(15:49):
out lot worth more than five million dollars, you're paying
mansion tax. Does that seem right to you? That's circumventing
Proposition thirteen.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
You have to educate folks may not be old enough
to remember Proposition thirteen.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
And it's impact on property tax.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Is Go ahead, well, everybody here, if you own property
in California, it is our Wall Street. Okay, so your
real estate and your equity is your stock investment.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
It is the Gold Coast. That's why they call it.
That is the best real estate in the world.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
We have the best temperatures, we have the most resources,
We have the most beautiful land in the world, and
they are trying.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
To get it from you. Why wake up?
Speaker 3 (16:24):
The Proposition thirteen freezes your tax basis at like it's
one percent is one point two five percent. That's your
transfer tax when you sell that property, and you can
take it with you one time when you're older and
you retire, when you buy another.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Piece of property. It protects your investment.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
And they've been trying to get at it since nineteen
seventy ninety nineteen seventy nine. They've been trying to figure
out a way around it, and they got all these
ideas about how to do it, and they finally did
it when they penetrated this mansion tax thing. And they
called it mansion tax, which is unfair because it's not
a mansion tax. It's a straight it's a transactional tax.
It's a levee, which is illegal. It's a legal to
tax real estate under a levee. It's gonna lose ultimately,
(17:01):
but not soon enough. And meanwhile, it froze our market
and not just La City, it froze everything because when
you stop the Titanic, it takes a minute to get
it going again. And at the end of the day,
mansion tax ruined the Los Angeles, California real estate market.
Which ruined the real estate market here in California. It
brought it to its knees.
Speaker 5 (17:21):
We had a conversation off air that I wanted you
to circle back to. You were talking about Mayor Karen
Bass and what we as those who are Angelino's and
those who may be on the periphery of Los Angeles,
what we should we think of her, what we should
do in this moment.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Well, okay, a couple of things.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
I mean, obviously, when she got off the plane and
she was in the airport and she was, you know,
the reporter came up to her, she was like a
deer in the headlights. And I didn't It didn't give
me a warm, fuzzy feeling that she's going to be
a good leader. Okay, there's lack of leadership, but.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
The recalling hers is challenging.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
First of all, a lot of people don't understand if
she is recalled, city council chooses her replacement until there's
an actual runoff. Most people don't understand that. So it's
you know, I think Nicole Shanahan. God bless her. She
put in one point six million dollars ever recalled. You know,
but it's a twenty five million dollar proposition. It's ten
months down the road, and we need help now. And
(18:19):
I think what would be far more prudent and productive
is to help Karen because she's she's not a dumb person,
and she has a lot of power.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
She has the power of the emergency pen. She needs help.
She's legitimate.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Like you know what I always say, ask for help,
Ask for help. She tried to go with Steve sober Off.
That's not where she where she needs to be. She's
to pick a skill set. Like I personally would love
to sit down with her and talk to her about
the building department and how I can make a custom
program for immediate deployment of building permits for any permits
(18:53):
that are less than.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
Ten years old. Why are we just package it up
and hand it out.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Because the minute that you get those people invested, they
keep their entitlements, it increases the value of their property,
It encourages them, they're going to be able to build.
What you don't want to have happen is a sell off.
That is, it's never going to get done because those
entitlements will be lost forever. What we have to do
is we have to encourage people to sell and we
cannot be charging them for permits. There's gonna be plenty
(19:20):
of business for California. It's going to bring in lots
of new jobs. They're going to have to figure out
some sort of a lay down area and staging area
in Palisades for all the new building materials and equipment.
And think of all the contractors are going to go
to work all the PPP money that's going to come in.
But you've got to give people permits. And Karen needs help.
She needs to understand that there are a lot of
states that structure this with outside consultants instead of trying
(19:43):
to do it in the building department. Yes, they're going
to relieve coastal commission, but are they going to leave
it completely or just one of them because anything in
Palisades is double coastal. Yes, they're going to relieve SEQUA.
Well what does that really mean? Are they're just going
to give you a sequel waiver? And what if you've
never had SEQUA? So I want to sit down with
her and say what does it mean? Let me help
you package it and let's create these fast track passes
(20:04):
that take the burden out of the building department because
they don't have the resources either. They're buried coastal commissions
like twelve people that meet once a month that control
the entire coast.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
I mean, think about that, Elaine.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
I wish I could talk to you all night, but
I'm running out of time so very quickly. I know
that this is a conversation which is going to continue.
But also they are going to be other people who
are going to be joining you on this journey. How
can people reach you and also join you. Well, one
thing that would.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Be very helpful is to follow me on Instagram on
Lipstick Farmer. That would be awesome because on Lipstick Farmer,
I'm not much of a.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Social media person. I'm gonna have to get better at that,
I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
But on Lipstick Farmer, I do check it and I
do have, like, I don't know, twenty thousand followers or something.
But I put a lot of updates on there, especially
about the fires. But the most important thing is that
we can all kind of join together and communicate.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
Create a platform.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
We are thinking grant cardon a friend of mine is
and I did undercover billionaire with who's a great guy
owns ten X?
Speaker 4 (20:57):
I said, let's ten x.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
You know the Palisades on excess this whole process, and
we are also meeting.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
I hope everybody's excited about this, but.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
I'm meeting with our California fourn your railroad, and our
National railroad system to try to remove all of our
debris on rail and get it out of California, which
I think ultimately is what has to happen. It's a
slow process, but I want everybody to support this because
it's we need to get it out of California because okay,
even our farthest stumps are too close to our ocean.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
Elaine Colotte, thank you so much for coming in, thank
you for sharing all of your knowledge of wisdom, and
thank you for staying in the fight for not only
the benefit of Los Angeles and the surrounding areas, but
California at large. And welcome in here anytime.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
Awesome.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
It's later with mo Kelly.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
We're live on YouTube apt mister mo Kelly, m R
M O K E L L Y, and also we're
live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from
KFI AM six forty
Whether it is l.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Kelly and six.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
I'm a Lane Colate and I'm one hundred percent about us.
I'm a builder, I'm a developer, I'm a designer, and
I'm a visionary casinos, hospitals, luxury homes. I've handled over
a billion dollars worth of real estate. If it can
be built, I can figure out a way to do it.
Growing up, my father was in the military. He was
a fighter pilot. He flew F one hundreds and F
one eleven's. My father was gone a lot and we traveled.
(00:35):
But children that come from the military that move a
lot are independent and really quick to make friends.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
I was able to figure it out being a woman
that was in a man's world.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
My dad told me that the most important outpit that
you could put on is confidence.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
Undercover Billionaire in Lane Colodia is a builder, interior designer,
and the visionary behind standout projects like Santa Monica's iconic
House of Rock. She also owned Big Z Ranch, a
forty acre working farm supporting local agriculture and direct to
consumer food distribution. While on the Discovery Plus series, Undercover
Billionaire and Lane proved she could build from the ground
up under extreme pressure now, after the devastating Palisades and
(01:14):
Eating Canyon fires, she's leveraging decades of real world experience
to cut through the noise, offering smart, actionable solutions and
calling out leadership failures at every level. She joins us
in the studio as part of our first YouTube simulcast,
and Lane Claude's good see you.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
How are you deceivending?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I'm oh, my gosh, I'm so excited to be a
virgin guest on your show.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Oh you had to put it in that way, and
we're all.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Hey, well, you know what, I'll take any virgin I
can get.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Let's be fair here. I mean, you know, I'm really
glad you're doing this. So great to stream live.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
It's great to have you, and it provides a completely
different i'll say, ethic and energy to it.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
It's nice to be able to see you.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
It's nice that everyone could see us had this interaction.
You are very familiar, obviously with southern California. What was
going through your mind as these fires were unfurling and growing.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Well, first of all, I was at work and I
was I looked over it. Tim had called and said, hey, listen,
this this thing looks like it's growing really quickly. And
when I saw it and I said, oh no, it's
far away, and he goes, no on lane, it's not
it's close and it's fast. And we didn't even get
a chance to get get anything out. I got nothing out.
(02:33):
I literally had to pick him up. He had the
dogs hit it, go all the way around, and it
was it was it, that was it.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
It was gone.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
It's done, it's all over. Whole thing's gone. Altadina's gone,
Pasadena's gone. It's all that whole area gone. Palisades. People
don't even talk about Malibu. Malibou is completely leveled, almost
all the way to up. No boot you can't go
to you can't get down there.
Speaker 5 (02:56):
When I'm quite sure you knew a lot of people
who lost their house. I'm put sure you knew a
lot of people who had to start over. What were
you hearing from them?
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I think, first of all, I think everybody's in shock.
Let's just let's just be realistic. And I really want
to talk about the Palisades because I want to. I
want to talk about Palisades as in terms of its power.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
It's a it's.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Ground zero for sort of the blue Czech Democrat, you know,
real California all in voter all this is, this is
the government that they elected, that we elected, and these
are the people that change who gets into government.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
This is these are the people that run California.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
In the Palisades, it's one of the most expensive neighborhoods
in California. And when you talk about California, that's meaningful.
And now they've all we're responsible for this. These are
our managers of our money, our spatter, our fire to apartment.
(04:01):
It's our choice that we made to be managed like this.
And they are not potted plants. To understand they can
really change things because these people are the people that
change everything.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Anyway.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
Let me ask you this, with different politicians, do we
get a different result what we had?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
A different result from where you see. Yes, we absolutely result.
Let me just say different management. Let's not call them politicians.
I don't I think when you're running for office, you
probably shouldn't be doing that. I mean you should be
you should be elected into office. It shouldn't be something
you pay for. And part of the problem I think is,
you know, we've lost we've completely lost the whole you know,
grassroots running for an office because you know, you live
(04:44):
in the neighborhood, and you know your neighborhood, and you
know your neighbors. It's gone away and it's being paid
for by you know, citizens united in corporations, and you're
and this is the result of that.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
The rubber has hit the road. The jig is up.
The emperor has no close say whatever you want.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
It didn't work, the little speriment, the little democratic experiment,
it did not work. This is a perfect example of
it because now they got to work. They got to
roll up their sleeves and really manage it. And they
can't do it.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
Short of waiting for the next election, which is going
to be in twenty twenty sixth in June and twenty
twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
What have you?
Speaker 5 (05:17):
What can Angelinos do now which could help change the
trajectory for the next fire or the next calamity, the
next disaster.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Well, okay, first it's a big question.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
But first, the most I think active thing you can
do is register read literally, change your your make your
voice heard, and change yourself from a Democrat or a Republican.
Go on a register and just change it to red
because you will get the attention of absolutely everybody in Sacramento.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
I let me jump in there because you talk about
something I talked about. But it's more than registration. I
have been on the Republicans. You got to run somebody,
and you have to run somebody credible. And I can
tell you right now there is no one who is
running for mayor of Los Angeles who is a Republican
as of this moment.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Well, Grick Cruso I think is a Republican.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
No he is, but no, no, no, but in mindset.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
But since he is a registered Democrat, the Democratic Party
is not going to embrace him. And he and to
the people who are not paying close attention, they're still
going to see a D and not an R. Why
is it the Republican Party is not putting forth a candidate.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Well again, this is this is the reason that Rick
Caruso ran as a Democrat is because he believed, like
everybody believes, you can't win in California, only show a Democrat.
The governor's race is kind of interesting because the governor's
race is a runoff, so it's not run like a
typical race where you have, like you know, basically two
groups of Republicans or three. You have the Republicans, the Democrats,
and the independents, and then everybody gets kind of their
(06:47):
own like little primary, and then what's leftover gets to
run against.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
It doesn't work like that.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
It's basically whoever gets the most votes against whoever got
the second most votes. Those are the top two, and
then they have a runoff a runoff election. It could
be two Democrats. So there's plenty of time fun coming.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Come up the jungle primary.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Yeah, they're coming up with.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
They're coming up with They're going to come up with
really a couple of really good Republicans. There's there's going
to come up with a couple of really good Democrats.
Kamala Harris is probably going to run, and it concerns me,
you know, if Rick Caruso does run, and he's got
no chance if she runs, because it's just going to
split it in two and some big Republican will win.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
And that's okay.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I just want somebody that's got boots on the ground,
that understands California is not about politics, but rather about resources.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
You mentioned resources before we go to this first break.
How did resources play a role or didn't play a
role in the preparation for the fires?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Of the management of them. From where you sit, it.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Depends on which one you want to talk about.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
But you know, thirty years ago we stopped cutting our
trees and stop cutting our brush.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
I mean, it's a thirty year old problem.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
It's an environmental idea that you know, we want to
save all these brush, you know, and not cut fire lanes.
It's it's a respectable idea to be environmentally conscious, but
not at the cost of the health and safety of
the citizens that pay for that to happen. So it's
just like it went too far, just went off the
and decided. You know, they have multiple groups in California
that stop you from building. They have these wildlife groups,
(08:06):
they have open space rules, and the problem is there's
no one to maintain those. So if you talk someone
into literally talk someone into giving up space that you'll
give them a permit and then say, you know, we'll
maintain it, and then no one maintains it.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
This is what you have.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
You have houses that have debris in between them and
it never nobody takes care of it. So those resources
are thirty years old from just being not taken care
of it. Then the water situation, I mean, water's a
completely different problem because in the farming world, you know,
we obviously need water. Just signs all up and down
the ninety nine Freeway everywhere he goes is to Gavin
Dear Gavin A, we are farmers stealing water, Like they
(08:42):
want to know why they don't get water and the
water system and the watershed they've had come up with
all these ideas about storage, water storage, all this money's
been poortant into it. There's no water storage. Where's the
money go?
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Where's the money? Why?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Why is it more important to make white wine? You're
using Central Valley grapes anyway, I mean the Rombar Shardonnay
and all the big chardonnays that make all the money
up in the Northern California. They're only required to use
I think twenty percent of their own grapes. It's ridiculous
they get them all down for Central Valley.
Speaker 5 (09:11):
But the argument, I know, and I've heard the argument
is like, hey, we had enough water for the fires,
and the water which was released from the Central Valley
by President Trump would not have impacted the fires.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
So where do you come out on that?
Speaker 5 (09:23):
How do you separate the water which would be used
for the Central Valley versus the water which was available
for the fires down here.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
If all our water's going in different directions other than
the Central Valley and down to Los Angeles in San
Diego County, if we're not getting any water, we're not
getting we don't need storage. I mean, it doesn't matter
if it just runs off. We have no storage and
there's not enough money. There's not enough money apparently left
to make storage for water. Water should be stored. It
should be stored for when you have a fire. And
(09:52):
so when they went to open up fire hydrants and
they went to go use water, there's no water pressure
because there's no water because there's nothing stored. They have
reservoirs that are half full or not at all. They
have reservoirs that have holes in their lids, which it's
important that they're not dirty because the water it won't
filter through. Point being is they're not maintained. All of
our resources are not maintained. And it's not just water
(10:13):
and are our forests. It's also our landfills. Our landfills
are full. So what are we going to do with
eleven million tons of debris that they're not even talking about?
What are we going to do with a million, six
hundred and fifty thousand trucks of debris. They're doing seven
hundred and fifty a day, and that's only the Army Corps.
It's going to take six years to clean up. I mean,
it's ridiculous. And by the way, they're going to be full.
(10:35):
So the resources that we need are not being managed.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Nobody's even looking at it.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
And on top of it, we're not talking about what
it really takes to clean it up because nobody understands
that because the people that are running it are politicians.
They're not construction people, they're not debris removal people. The
Army Corps of Engineers is a contract company under ECC,
which happens to be under the Federal Maytalk, which is
the Biden May Talk. It's not even the Trump may Talk.
(11:03):
I think it had one point one billion dollars in it.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
They deployed him.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
They're here, they're doing a great job, but it's not
anywhere near enough. And then poor Christy No, she hit
the ground running right, she's got her hands full. She's
in charge of FEMA, so she's got to sit down
and get her hands around what's going on here before
we get more money federally, and because our resources are
so mismanaged, Donald Trump doesn't want to just give us
the money, which I don't blame him, because where is
all the money, Where's the ula attax money, Where's the
(11:28):
homeless money, Where's the forest money, Where's the water money,
Where's the watershed money? So when you get down to it,
we're not going to get federal aid. Gavin Newsom, in
a simultaneous parallel lane, flew to Washington, DC to ask
for forty billion dollars while he's teeing up his fifty million
dollar fight against Donald Trump protection.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
I hate to stop there.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
We have to go to a commercial break, but I
want to pick up there when we come back. How
does the federal contingent impact this situation, not only right
now but going forward. My guests on YouTube as well
as iHeartRadio is a Colotti who is a builder, interior
designer and visionary behind standout projects like Santa Monica's iconic
House of Rock. You might have seen her on Undercover
(12:08):
Billionaire recently, and we'll have more with Elaine Collotti in
just a moment. It's later with mo Kelly Live everywhere
in the Heart Radio app and on YouTube at mister
mo Kelly m R M O K E L L Y.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
You're listening to Later with mo Kelly on demand from
HEFI AM six forty Later.
Speaker 5 (12:24):
With mo Kelly, we're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app
and also on YouTube at mister mo Kelly. Yes a
live video sumocast, and our first guest in studio is
Elaine Colotti.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
We're talking about the fires prior to.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
During and also the way forward, the people who might
be responsible, the things that we need, the resources we
need going forward, and Elaine, before the break, we're getting
ready to get into the money of it, all the
money that has been spent, the money has yet to
be spent, in what federal aid we may need going forward.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
What would you say in regard to that?
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Well, I think we have to be really so let's
let's start with this.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
At the moment, we're talking about the people that have
opted in or opted out. Yeah, and everybody's heard it,
if anyone's involved it all in the fires, they've heard
about opt in opt out, and opt in opt out
has to do with whether or not you're asking FEMA
to clean your lot.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Okay, that's the only thing that's really going on.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Six permits have been pulled since it happened, so there's
the permit, and the rebuilding thing hasn't even started yet.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
This is just getting your lot cleaned up.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
And you know, you could imagine what it must be
like to, you know, have a house standing there and
nobody else around you has a house, and the lock
cleaning is going really slowly, and maybe only three lots
are cleaned in your neighborhood. And that's because the amount
of people that have opted in is somewhere between thirty
four hundred people and four thousand, you know, ish, it's
(13:48):
not eighteen thousand. So and the reason that is is
because first of all, California Fair Plan has only twenty
five thousand dollars worth of debris insurance. And what you
got to understand is, if you're going to do all
the metrics on the news, if Karen bass is going
to get on a report on how great things are going,
she's only reporting on what she knows, and what she
(14:08):
knows is what FEMA's doing.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Because that's the only report she's getting.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
So if she says we're fifteen percent done, she's fifteen
percent done of thirty four hundred and fifteen percent done
of eighteen thousand.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
But most people don't understand in the station she's talking
about La City, not La County. She's not talking about Altadena,
and people I think missed.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
That she's not talking about She's talking about a fraction
of the cleanup that's under contract with opt in.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
It's a fraction.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
And all the other contractors that are out there that
want to clean and do stuff, they are completely hogtide.
And the reason are hogtied is because there's this thing
called haul route, which is how you get the stuff
to the dump. The hall route is for ECC, FEMA,
FEMA contractors and everybody that's removing dirt under the FEMA contracts.
That's what they went and met with the Board of
(14:53):
Supervisors about. They had a big win. They were able
to get more trucks per day, not more trucks in
there in the long run, more more yargage going into
the dump, just more trucks per day. So we've got
a huge problem with the debris and the debris removal
because there's just not enough hands on deck and the
only way to get that out is femal money or
government federal money. Because La is broke, and we're broke
(15:17):
because we mismanaged our money. We didn't just mismanage our forests,
and we didn't just mismanage our water. We mismanaged all
our money. We had a billion dollars surplus.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
We have no money. We're in the hole.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
When Gavin leaves or whoever takes over, has got this
massive deficit that they've got to fill. And then on
top of it, they they passed ula tax, which they
call a mansion tax. It doesn't tax mansions. It taxes
anybody transacting real estate over five million dollars, hospitals, low
income lots. Let me tell you, you have a burned
(15:49):
out lot worth more than five million dollars, you're paying
mansion tax. Does that seem right to you? That's circumventing
Proposition thirteen.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
You have to educate folks may not be old enough
to remember Proposition thirteen.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
And it's impact on property tax.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Is Go ahead, well, everybody here, if you own property
in California, it is our Wall Street. Okay, so your
real estate and your equity is your stock investment.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
It is the Gold Coast. That's why they call it.
That is the best real estate in the world.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
We have the best temperatures, we have the most resources,
We have the most beautiful land in the world, and
they are trying.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
To get it from you. Why wake up?
Speaker 3 (16:24):
The Proposition thirteen freezes your tax basis at like it's
one percent is one point two five percent. That's your
transfer tax when you sell that property, and you can
take it with you one time when you're older and
you retire, when you buy another.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Piece of property. It protects your investment.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
And they've been trying to get at it since nineteen
seventy ninety nineteen seventy nine. They've been trying to figure
out a way around it, and they got all these
ideas about how to do it, and they finally did
it when they penetrated this mansion tax thing. And they
called it mansion tax, which is unfair because it's not
a mansion tax. It's a straight it's a transactional tax.
It's a levee, which is illegal. It's a legal to
tax real estate under a levee. It's gonna lose ultimately,
(17:01):
but not soon enough. And meanwhile, it froze our market
and not just La City, it froze everything because when
you stop the Titanic, it takes a minute to get
it going again. And at the end of the day,
mansion tax ruined the Los Angeles, California real estate market.
Which ruined the real estate market here in California. It
brought it to its knees.
Speaker 5 (17:21):
We had a conversation off air that I wanted you
to circle back to. You were talking about Mayor Karen
Bass and what we as those who are Angelino's and
those who may be on the periphery of Los Angeles,
what we should we think of her, what we should
do in this moment.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Well, okay, a couple of things.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
I mean, obviously, when she got off the plane and
she was in the airport and she was, you know,
the reporter came up to her, she was like a
deer in the headlights. And I didn't It didn't give
me a warm, fuzzy feeling that she's going to be
a good leader. Okay, there's lack of leadership, but.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
The recalling hers is challenging.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
First of all, a lot of people don't understand if
she is recalled, city council chooses her replacement until there's
an actual runoff. Most people don't understand that. So it's
you know, I think Nicole Shanahan. God bless her. She
put in one point six million dollars ever recalled. You know,
but it's a twenty five million dollar proposition. It's ten
months down the road, and we need help now. And
(18:19):
I think what would be far more prudent and productive
is to help Karen because she's she's not a dumb person,
and she has a lot of power.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
She has the power of the emergency pen. She needs help.
She's legitimate.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Like you know what I always say, ask for help,
Ask for help. She tried to go with Steve sober Off.
That's not where she where she needs to be. She's
to pick a skill set. Like I personally would love
to sit down with her and talk to her about
the building department and how I can make a custom
program for immediate deployment of building permits for any permits
(18:53):
that are less than.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
Ten years old. Why are we just package it up
and hand it out.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Because the minute that you get those people invested, they
keep their entitlements, it increases the value of their property,
It encourages them, they're going to be able to build.
What you don't want to have happen is a sell off.
That is, it's never going to get done because those
entitlements will be lost forever. What we have to do
is we have to encourage people to sell and we
cannot be charging them for permits. There's gonna be plenty
(19:20):
of business for California. It's going to bring in lots
of new jobs. They're going to have to figure out
some sort of a lay down area and staging area
in Palisades for all the new building materials and equipment.
And think of all the contractors are going to go
to work all the PPP money that's going to come in.
But you've got to give people permits. And Karen needs help.
She needs to understand that there are a lot of
states that structure this with outside consultants instead of trying
(19:43):
to do it in the building department. Yes, they're going
to relieve coastal commission, but are they going to leave
it completely or just one of them because anything in
Palisades is double coastal. Yes, they're going to relieve SEQUA.
Well what does that really mean? Are they're just going
to give you a sequel waiver? And what if you've
never had SEQUA? So I want to sit down with
her and say what does it mean? Let me help
you package it and let's create these fast track passes
(20:04):
that take the burden out of the building department because
they don't have the resources either. They're buried coastal commissions
like twelve people that meet once a month that control
the entire coast.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
I mean, think about that, Elaine.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
I wish I could talk to you all night, but
I'm running out of time so very quickly. I know
that this is a conversation which is going to continue.
But also they are going to be other people who
are going to be joining you on this journey. How
can people reach you and also join you. Well, one
thing that would.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Be very helpful is to follow me on Instagram on
Lipstick Farmer. That would be awesome because on Lipstick Farmer,
I'm not much of a.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Social media person. I'm gonna have to get better at that,
I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
But on Lipstick Farmer, I do check it and I
do have, like, I don't know, twenty thousand followers or something.
But I put a lot of updates on there, especially
about the fires. But the most important thing is that
we can all kind of join together and communicate.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
Create a platform.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
We are thinking grant cardon a friend of mine is
and I did undercover billionaire with who's a great guy
owns ten X?
Speaker 4 (20:57):
I said, let's ten x.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
You know the Palisades on excess this whole process, and
we are also meeting.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
I hope everybody's excited about this, but.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
I'm meeting with our California fourn your railroad, and our
National railroad system to try to remove all of our
debris on rail and get it out of California, which
I think ultimately is what has to happen. It's a
slow process, but I want everybody to support this because
it's we need to get it out of California because okay,
even our farthest stumps are too close to our ocean.
Speaker 5 (21:27):
Elaine Colotte, thank you so much for coming in, thank
you for sharing all of your knowledge of wisdom, and
thank you for staying in the fight for not only
the benefit of Los Angeles and the surrounding areas, but
California at large. And welcome in here anytime.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
Awesome.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
It's later with mo Kelly.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
We're live on YouTube apt mister mo Kelly, m R
M O K E L L Y, and also we're
live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from
KFI AM six forty
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