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This page tells you about the certification hearing for the Palms Neighborhood Council
on Dec. 14, 2004.

The Los Angeles Board of Neighborhood Commissioners granted certification of the Palms Neighborhood Council at a meeting in Palms on Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2004.

The board is composed of seven members from across the city appointed by Mayor Hahn. Four of them were present and all voted for Palms.

A crowd of Palms and Westside Village people turned out for the event at the Iman Center on Motor Avenue. Westside Village is not included in the certified area.

Planning for neighborhood elections will begin soon.

The application was the 100th to be filed since the neighborhood council movement was begun in 1999 with the adoption of a new Los Angeles City Charter.

The hearing on the application was preceded by a "public comment" section in which three members of the Westside Village Civic Assn., a homeowners' group, spoke in favor of the Village retaining its ties with the Mar Vista Community Council. One of them was Ken Alpern, who is also a director of the Mar Vista council.

Several directors of the Mar Vista group were in attendance. They delayed their board meeting in Mar Vista so they could attend. Two of them, Bill Scheding and Maritza Przekop, also spoke in favor of retaining Westside Village.

During the evening meeting, five stakeholders from Westside Village and one from Palms spoke in favor of Westside Village linking up with Palms. Petitions bearing the names of 200 Westside Village residents or businesspeople favoring such a link have been submitted to the neighborhood commissioners over the past 10 months.

But Commissioner Bill Christopher of Hollywood made it clear that nothing of the sort was going to happen unless "all parties" — including Mar Vista and Palms — agreed to a boundary shift. (See his statement below.)

Palms was founded as L.A.'s first Westside subdivision in 1886. It is now the city's 85th certified community council.

COMMISSIONER PRAISES PALMS, REJECTS WESTSIDE VILLAGE PETITIONERS
BILL CHRISTOPHER, member of the Board of Neighborhood Commimssioners, summed up the hearing as follows:

It's not often that we get to see the diversity and detail on display that comes with this application. . . .

When we certified the Mar Vista Community Council quite a way back, there was a deliberate means of inclusion for Westside Village at that time.

There was an e-mail from Marie Wallace [sent on Dec. 13, 2004] on behalf of the Westside Village Civic Assn. which outlined the deliberations that were undertaken at that time for the inclusion of Westside Village in the Mar Vista Community Council, and that represents to some extent the process by which we've divided up the city into 84 entities to this point. It's not a perfect process, and it probably leaves a number of things to be desired, but it is the means by which we've gotten where we are today.

It's more or less a "first come, first served" system, and . . . each Neighborhood Council has been allowed or been permitted to define their own boundaries. . . . [but] there have been serious disputes over who gets to put the boundaries in what places all around town, and we've had to work our way through sort of a minefield of different disputes in different areas, but as the map which is displayed up here in various shades of purple, indicates, as the playing field gets smaller and smaller, those decisions get narrower and narrower.

As we come to Palms and the 85th neighborhood council, our options are fairly limited, and I was pleased to find that as the application came forward that . . . [Palms] recognized the ways that previous decisions have essentially focused the boundaries for this neighborhood council. And I commend the Neighborhood Council for recognizing that and moving forward on that basis. . . .

In the wake of some of those decisions on the part of the Organizing Committee, some other members of the community and other Stakeholders in other parts of the area have disagreed with that, and you see that manifested in some of the fliers that have been going around in the last few weeks about Mar Vista encroaching into Palms and other issues of that nature.

But in effect it's the way we have worked out the system of neighborhood councils that gets us where we are today, and there aren't really . . . there is no legal mechanism by which the board today or the applicant could in effect annex Westside Village. It's already part of the Mar Vista Community Council, so that decision has already been made and can't be undone in this context. . . .

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Marie Wallace of the Westside Village Civic Assn. displays a zoning map to illustrate her contention that Westside Village should remain linked with Mar Vista because both areas are predominantly single-family residences.

Palms Interim Governing Board members in the photo are Willie Bell, left; Ingeborg Prochazka, behind Wallace, and Alejandro Soschin, right.

A partial version of this map can be seen here.


Westside Village resident Ken Alpern displays a STOP MAR VISTA poster he said was posted illegally. Eloy (Rod) Rodriguez of the Palms Community Council listens.

Jim Kellogg of Greenfield Ave. in Westside Village told the commissioners he wants a combined Palms-WV Neighborhood Council. So did his wife, Bonnie. 
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TWO DOZEN SPEAKERS SUPPORT PALMS CERTIFICATION
Testimony is split 6-5 in favor of Westside Village inclusion
(The excerpts have been edited)
WILLIAM SCHEDING [Mar Vista Community Council vice president and Mar Vista homeowner]: When we [MVCC] were originally forming, there was a question of what should we do with Palms, because there was nobody actually looking at the Palms area . . .. So at that point, we discussed it with DONE [the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment], and we said, "Let's let them go."

KEN ALPERN [Westside Village homeowner and Mar Vista council board member, photo above]: My neighborhood has been plastered with signs on mailboxes with these petitions, which are completely false and inflammatory and really confuse and obfuscate . . . I am interested in building bridges, and I want to educate people and encourage them to join both neighborhood associations, homeowners associations, neighborhood councils, and I'm going to ask perhaps that BONC take measures in the future when this kind of inflammatory propaganda shows up, because it burns bridges between neighborhoods, and I'm interested in building bridges.

MARIE WALLACE [Westside Village homeowner, president of the Friends of the Palms-Rancho Park Library, photo above]: This is a zoning map, so if it's yellow, it's R-1 residential, and Westside Village is right here, and this is the Palms area right here. And you can see by the different colors that there is very little R-1-type residential [in Palms], and a lot of high-density residential and also commercial and other kinds of zoning. . . .

DONALD ELIOT [Westside Village homeowner]: I would like to keep the status quo, that we stay part of the Mar Vista Community Council and that no further action be done in trying to move us into any other community council.

JIM KELLOGG [Westside Village homeowner, photo above]: I'm here to support George [Garrigues] and other Westside Village residents who want to join with the Palms Neighborhood Council rather than the Mar Vista council.

BONNIE KELLOGG (Westside Village homeowner]: I would like to see the combining of the Palms and the Westside Village neighborhoods as a cohesive neighborhood. We share the same school system in Palms as well as Westside Village. We share fire and police services with Palms and Westside Village, and geographically I believe that the two neighborhoods will work very well together.

ERIC VOLLMER [Grants consultant for arts and education groups]: I thought that this neighborhood council arrangement . . . would be a good thing, and I'm just surprised how contentious it turns out to be. . . . I don't want to see people who have put in a lot of effort be dismissed and their time and effort be diminished when I'm confident they were trying to do the best for their communities . . ., and we just can't afford to have it [lost] in a kind of civil war.

TERRY ROBINSON [Palms renter and chair of the Palms-Westside Village Neighborhood Watch]: Our history is actually a long history with and part of the city of Los Angeles. . . . Our neighborhood has always been characterized by a wide diversity of ethnicities, due in large part to the many UCLA faculty and students in residence here. Our neighborhood has also had a wide diversity of religions, which are represented in a range such as a reading group all the way to major spiritual centers . . .

Moving on to the boundaries, we actually have had a lot of harmony over this. We were late in getting started so we only took what was left to us by the other councils that were already formed on the other sides of us, and of course there was Culver City, which was formed long ago. So, we didn't argue over the boundaries. . . . We feel very comfortable with them because we know we'll do good things with them.

LEN NGUYEN [Palms condominium owner and chair of the Palms Organizing Committee]: Palms is a very well-balanced, diverse community, and by residential status it is very, very heavily renter, over 90%, with less than 10% [home] owners. Looking at the age group, you'll see that Palms is quite young, the majority of people in their 20s and 30s. And so those were some of the challenges we had . . .

In addition, we had no real homeowners group of renters union, so that was a challenge in organizing. And also, no Palms-specific, area-wide merchants or business association. . . .

About 55% of our organizing group is [home] owner and 45% is renter, so it is very balanced. Additionally, some 43% of our organizing group is involved in some other [community] organization. . . . The organizing committee had 27 meetings, so it was a very long effort. . . . Our door-to-door walk program covered all areas of Palms.

ALEJANDRO SOSCHIN [Executive director of the L.A. Scores child-serving organization. Soschin told of his first encounter with the Palms-Westside Village Neighborhood Watch one evening at Palms Elementary School]: I sat down, and I was amazed. It reminded me very much about what [19th Century French observer Alexis] De Tocqueville talked about: What makes America unique, and that is — this is a country that's created where the government really is of the people, and it's in the meeting halls, and in these small-town gatherings that people really become invested, and they understand how important government is to their daily lives.

We are hoping to preserve that idea. We think that the neighborhood councils are a fantastic experiment which will serve as a model for many other cities, and we hope that Palms, working with the other neighborhood councils around us, can really make that experiment a reality, not just for Los Angeles but for the entire country.

ANTHONY VASQUEZ [LAPD senior lead officer for Palms-Westside Village]: One of the biggest outreach events we had last year involved our chief. Chief Bratton did attend an event here, which was put on by the Neighborhood Council. . . .		 The Neighborhood Watch meetings are done in conjunction with the Neighborhood Council, which is really great because most of the problems out here is reaching out to folks. . . . It has helped me get the word out a little more swifter as to what some of the crime issues are in the area.

PATTY ANCIANO [field deputy for Council Member Martin Ludlow]: Palms Neighborhood Council . . . has been an outstanding partner of Council District 10. . . . Len [Nguyen] has actually fought to have his constituents included in the city's decision-making process, most notably in the relocation of Fire Station 43.

KEN ALPERN (again): I'm staying here, representing my fellow Board members elected of the Mar Vista Community Council, which is meeting tonight. We tried to stay here late; we were delaying our monthly Board meeting to give our support of the Palms Neighborhood Council, so I am just going to stay here; the others have to form a quorum.

I want to emphasize that the Mar Vista Community Council . . . is not just Mar Vista. . . . When the MVCC was certified, there was nothing presented about this, switching Westside Village to Palms. . . . Borders can't be as important as issues. We need liaison. . . .

On behalf of both the WVCA, on behalf of the MVCC, please certify the Palms Neighborhood Council.

HILLARY MANTINI [representing the governing council of the Pacifica Community Charter School]: The Palms Neighborhood Council has been tremendously supportive to us in writing letters of support for including in our grant proposal, especially neighborhood beautification grant proposals.

MARITZA PRZEKOP [Mar Vista resident and chair of the Urban Planning Committee of the Mar Vista Community Council]: I look forward to working with the Palms Neighborhood Council on joint planning efforts. . . . We support their certification. . . . As a Board member, I do not support the efforts of redesigning the boundaries of Palms, but I do support their certification.

NEAL RICHMAN [Westside Village resident, UCLA faculty member in urban planning involved in mapping communities]: Growing up here, I never, ever heard the term Westside Village, I always heard Palms, and what Palms always represented was a multiethnic, very affordable community on the Westside. . . . I think Westside Village was created and broke off for realtor purposes, to identify a cluster of high-income home ownership.

JANE PAINE [chair of Pacifica Community Charter School]: We want to commend them [Palms] because we know . . . how incredibly hard it is to get a group of people together and stick with it for a couple of years.

ASSAD YAVARI (chief financial officer of the Iman Center): Palms Neighborhood Council has been the instrument that has united us with our neighborhood.

JEAN SHIGEMATSU [West Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce]: I am here to speak in support of the Palms Neighborhood Council.

CARLOS COLLARD [President of the South Robertson Neighborhood Council]: The energy, the ambition and the integrity they've displayed, not only with our Neighborhood Council, but throughout the 10th district . . . Palms was integral in helping our Neighborhood Council complete our elections that we just had in August . . . .

SALLY RICHMAN [Westside Village homeowner]: When we started out, we were renting a single-family house, and we got a request to join the Westside Village Civic Assn. because they didn't know that we were renters . . .; that's what it used to say in 1993, when we joined, that's what the literature said, and I always felt a little bit subversive. . . .

I would really like to be joined with my neighbors in the Palms Neighborhood Council, and if there's any concern that the vast majority of people in Palms are renters, you could balance that by adding Westside Village, which is predominantly homeowners. . . . We need a united voice to represent us in City Hall.

CONNOR LYNN [canon pastor of St. Mary's Episcopal Church]: As a result of participating in this [neighborhood council activity], we've come very close to the Iman Center [which is Muslim] — we have a special relationship with them. . . . We've joined with them in earthquake relief to Iran; they've joined us in our outreach to AIDS [patients] at County Hospital .

RICHARD LEIB [Westside Village homeowner for 19 years]. Westside Village was originally Palms, from 1886 to approximately 1939. . . . I have assisted George Garrigues in getting over 200 petitions to bring Westside Village into the Palms Neighborhood Council.

Many times when I have knocked on a person's door, the statement made was "Why are we in the Mar Vista Council in the first place when we are not in Mar Vista?" I sincerely hope that we can have a meeting where homeowners, renters, condo owners, business owners and even the co-op owners along Sepulveda Blvd. [can come together]. . . At some time in the future I hope we can open up our minds, and have an open meeting and do what the residents of Westside Village want to do.

PAUL BACKSTROM [field deputy to Council Member Jack Weiss]: I'm impressed with their outreach efforts, and we look forward to working with them in their official capacity.

BEA STEELMAN [Palms homeowner for 54 years]: I've never heard of Westside Village; I've only heard of the Palms area.
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