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 A last-minute spate of office-switching is enlivening the election campaigning for the first Palms Representative Assembly.
Eighteen candidates remain in the running for 13 seats in the May 22 voting.
These are the same people who were introduced to the public at a candidates' forum Thursday evening, May 12, in Palms Elementary School.
Some 45 people attended — the 18 candidates and 27 others. Palms has about 30,000 residents.
Len N. Nguyen and Geary John Carrol Sheridan are running for president.
But Alejandro Soschin announced he was dropping out of the race for vice president and instead will run as a write-in candidate for the organization/nonprofit seat.
Todd W. Robinson thus became the remaining candidate on the printed ballot for vice president.
That fact impelled Cliff Cheng to drop his candidacy for the Overland residential seat and declare against Robinson for the vice presidency.
George Garrigues and Asad Yavari are running unopposed for secretary and treasurer, respectively.
Residential area candidates are Bea Steelman and Willie Bell in Palms West, Billie W. Silvey in Overland; Lamar Glover, Adrian Hernandez Garcia, Mario Bruhwiler and Steven D. Klein in Motor and Ingeborg Prochazka in Exposition. (See the maps below.)
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Lori Donahoo is running for the Assembly in the Charnock Ranch Historic Business Area, while F. Danny Monempour and Neal James Anderberg are vying in the Palms Depot Historic Business Area.
Three seats will lack candidates on the printed ballot. They are the organization/nonprofit post, the
Studio residential area and the Pacific Electric Historic Business Area.
Write-in candidacies are allowed, so it is possible that all of the seats will be filled when the votes are counted after the close of polls on May 22.
To be a write-in candidate, you must submit a form signed by 15 stakeholders before 11 a.m. Sunday, May 22. Contact Election Committee Chair Terry Robinson, here, or Independent Election Administrator Jerry Kvasnicka, here, for more information.
Terry Robinson, chair of the Nominations and Elections Committee, said that 69 stakeholders had registered to vote. Other registrations can be made on the election day itself.
Those 69 stakeholders can cast their ballots by mail if they applied for one before the deadline of April 23.
The Palms bylaws provide for an instant runoff, so voters will mark their ballots in the order of their preference of candidates (1, 2, 3, etc.).
Thus, some 119 years after its founding, Palms is moving forward to electing its first Representative Assembly.
Palms was founded in 1886 as a residential subdivision directly under the control of Los Angeles County. It was never an independent city and never had any sort of representative council before it was annexed to the city of Los Angeles in 1915 along with several other contiguous areas.
The election will be held Sunday, May 22, at Palms Elementary School, at the corner of Palms and Motor (map here), between noon and 5 p.m., but it will be preceded by a vote-by-mail period in which absentee ballots will be accepted.
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Vote-by-mail registration period has ended
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Organizers of the Palms council have emphasized the vote-by-mail aspect of the campaign because of the large number of apartment dwellers in the district and the perceived difficulty in getting people to the polls.
However, the registration period for voting by mail ended on April 23. If you didn't sign up before then, you will have to go to Palms Elementary to cast your ballot.
Voters must choose whether to cast ballots in a business district or a residential district. They can't vote in both.
Any stakeholder can vote for the at-large seats —president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and non-profit representative.
In Palms, the definition of a stakeholder is very broad. It includes not only residents, property owners, business people and employees but also members of organizations that serve this neighborhood. |
The latter category includes active members and participants in the Palms-Westside Village Neighborhood Watch and school-serving organizations at Palms Middle and Charnock Elementary schools, which are shared with the Mar Vista Community Council.
Other stakeholders might come from the Culver-Palms YMCA, the Friends of the Palms-Rancho Park Library, churches and similar "trans-border" organizations.
Kvasnicka of the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles will have charge of the election process. In the event of an election dispute, the Los Angeles City Department of Human Relations will make a final decision.
Until the election is certified, the affairs of the Palms Neighborhood Council are being guided by a 14-member Interim Governing Body approved by the Los Angeles City Board of Neighborhood Commissioners. |
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Errors on vote-by-mail ballots will be corrected
Vote-by-mail ballots as sent out by the League of Women Voters, the independent election administrator for the Palms Neighborhood Council election, contained two major errors:
• The ballots indicated that the voter could cast a ballot for all the candidates. In reality, the stakeholder may vote ONLY for president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and organization/nonprofit, PLUS (a) a residential candidate or (b) a business candidate of his or her area.
• The position of organization/nonprofit representative was omitted. The voter may add it in writing. Ballots to be used at the polling place will be corrected.
More information is on the official Neighborhood Council Web site, here.
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IMPROVEMENTS PLANNED
AT OVERLAND AVE. AUTO-REPAIR GARAGE
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After 34 years in business, Hugh Piper is applying for a conditional-use permit that would allow him to build a nicer office than this shack in his auto-repair lot on the northeast corner of Tabor and Overland. He also plans to enclose the repair bays in the rear. The property is zoned for C2-1 commercial. John Tennant Construction submitted the application. The case, numbered ZA 2005-1357, will be considered by a city examiner at 9 a.m. Thursday, May 26, in the West Los Angeles hearing room at 1645 Corinth Ave. Go to the city's Web site, here, for more information and a map.
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PROPOSAL FOR A 'DRYING-OUT' CENTER IS WITHDRAWN
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A 'sobering center' proposal for a vacant building on the southwest corner of Venice Blvd. and Dunn Drive has been withdrawn. A parking lot separates the building from Los Angeles city historic-cultural landmark No. 624, the Lawrence and Martha Joseph Residence and Apartments at 3819-3827 Dunn Drive. You can see the curved roof of this 'Hobbit-style' structure behind the trees. Sony Studios headquarters is at the south end of Dunn Drive, across Washington Blvd. Click here and here to see photos of the Joseph apartments and the Spanish Colonial-style residences across the street from it.
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 A proposal to put a 'sobering center' into a vacant building on Venice Blvd. at Dunn Drive has been withdrawn, The Sun has learned.
It is thought the 'drying-out center' for alcoholics will be placed somewhere else in the medical district on the south side of Venice Blvd.
The Sun received this earlier report from Len Nguyen, chair of the Interim Governing Body of the Palms Neighborhood Council:
"On March 21, the Santa Monica Daily Press reported that the Santa Monica City Council was going to help fund a regional, urgent care sobering facility for the homeless. The proposed location is a 10,000 square foot building in Palms, at 10000 Venice Blvd. (SW corner of Venice Blvd. & Dunn Dr.) The center would be operated by Exodus Recovery.
"As a result of inquiries and concerns expressed by a member of the Palms Neighborhood Council, LAPD Captain Bill Williams, Senior Lead Officer Anthony Vasquez, and Mark Edwards from Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski's office met with the CEO of Exodus Recovery to discuss concerns about the proposed facility."
The building at 10000 Venice Blvd. was used for diabetes programs of the UCLA Medical Group. It is now vacant.
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Click here for links to articles about Santa Monica's plans to send its homeless alcoholic population to other cities.
Click here for more information on the Exodus Recovery program of Brotman Medical Center.
Click here for an Opinion article: Venice Blvd. facility for the homeless would place a burden on police departments.
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FOUND
THE ONLY TWO DISTRICT MARKERS IN PALMS
On the left, a faded, forlorn sign is hard to see on northbound Motor just north of Washington;
on the right, a brilliant blue boundary symbol graces southbound Motor near the old railroad bridge marking the southern limit of Cheviot Hills
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Quoted in the L.A. Times
"Their mock town is the most up-to-date one we've seen," said Matthew Coolidge, program manager at the Center for Land Use Interpretation, a land-use research organization based in Culver City [actually, it is in Palms]. Coolidge visited 12 emergency response training centers in the region to prepare for an exhibit last year.
Coolidge was speaking about the 44-acre LAPD training facility in Granada Hills. Go here to read the complete article (registration required).
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