Whether it is l.
Kelly and six.
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.
But children that come from the military that move a lot are independent and really quick to make friends.
I was able to figure it out being a woman that was in a man's world.
My dad told me that the most important outpit that you could put on is confidence.
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 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.
How are you deceivending?
I'm oh, my gosh, I'm so excited to be a virgin guest on your show.
Oh you had to put it in that way, and we're all.
Hey, well, you know what, I'll take any virgin I can get.
Let's be fair here. I mean, you know, I'm really glad you're doing this. So great to stream live.
It's great to have you, and it provides a completely different i'll say, ethic and energy to it.
It's nice to be able to see you.
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.
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. 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.
It was gone.
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.
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?
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.
It's a it's.
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.
This is these are the people that run California.
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. 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.
Anyway.
Let me ask you this, with different politicians, do we get a different result what we had?
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 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.
The rubber has hit the road. The jig is up. The emperor has no close say whatever you want.
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.
Short of waiting for the next election, which is going to be in twenty twenty sixth in June and twenty twenty eight.
What have you?
What can Angelinos do now which could help change the trajectory for the next fire or the next calamity, the next disaster.
Well, okay, first it's a big question.
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.
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.
Well, Grick Cruso I think is a Republican.
No he is, but no, no, no, but in mindset.
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.
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 own like little primary, and then what's leftover gets to run against.
It doesn't work like that.
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.
Come up the jungle primary.
Yeah, they're coming up with.
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.
And that's okay.
I just want somebody that's got boots on the ground, that understands California is not about politics, but rather about resources.
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?
Of the management of them. From where you sit, it.
Depends on which one you want to talk about.
But you know, thirty years ago we stopped cutting our trees and stop cutting our brush.
I mean, it's a thirty year old problem.
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, 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.
This is what you have.
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 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?
Where's the money? Why?
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.
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.
So where do you come out on that?
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.
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 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 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. So the resources that we need are not being managed.
Nobody's even looking at it.
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. I think it had one point one billion dollars in it.
They deployed him.
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 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.
I hate to stop there.
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 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.
You're listening to Later with mo Kelly on demand from HEFI AM six forty Later.
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.
We're talking about the fires prior to.
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.
What would you say in regard to that?
Well, I think we have to be really so let's let's start with this.
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.
Okay, that's the only thing that's really going on.
Six permits have been pulled since it happened, so there's the permit, and the rebuilding thing hasn't even started yet.
This is just getting your lot cleaned up.
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 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 knows is what FEMA's doing.
Because that's the only report she's getting.
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.
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.
That she's not talking about She's talking about a fraction of the cleanup that's under contract with opt in.
It's a fraction.
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
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 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.
We have no money. We're in the hole.
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 out lot worth more than five million dollars, you're paying mansion tax. Does that seem right to you? That's circumventing Proposition thirteen.
You have to educate folks may not be old enough to remember Proposition thirteen.
And it's impact on property tax.
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.
It is the Gold Coast. That's why they call it. That is the best real estate in the world.
We have the best temperatures, we have the most resources, We have the most beautiful land in the world, and they are trying.
To get it from you. Why wake up?
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.
Piece of property. It protects your investment.
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,
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.
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.
Well, okay, a couple of things.
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.
The recalling hers is challenging.
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 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.
She has the power of the emergency pen. She needs help. She's legitimate.
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 that are less than.
Ten years old. Why are we just package it up and hand it out.
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 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
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 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.
I mean, think about that, Elaine.
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.
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.
Social media person. I'm gonna have to get better at that, I'm sorry.
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.
Create a platform.
We are thinking grant cardon a friend of mine is and I did undercover billionaire with who's a great guy owns ten X?
I said, let's ten x.
You know the Palisades on excess this whole process, and we are also meeting.
I hope everybody's excited about this, but.
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.
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.
Awesome.
It's later with mo Kelly.
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.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty