News, opinion and good humor
about the Mar Vista, Westdale and North Westdale neighborhoods
of Los Angeles, California

The Westmar Sun 
Excerpt from the discontinued Web site / No. 23 / March 16–31, 2005 
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'SMOKING GUN' DOCUMENT SHOWS HOW MAR VISTA DIRECTORS AND HOMEOWNERS' ASSN. LEADERS WERE RALLIED TO OPPOSE WESTSIDE VILLAGE 'DIVORCE' AT A CITY MEETING
Do you remember the question The Sun asked last December after six Directors of the Mar Vista Community Council showed up at a hearing of the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners on Dec. 14, 2004, and two of them took a poke at 200 of their Westside Village stakeholders who want to get out of Mar Vista and into a Palms-Westside Village Council of their own?

How did this come to pass? we asked, as follows:
 
Nobody can believe all this just HAPPENED without even a phone call or an e-mail or a smoke signal, any one of which would be a total violation of the state's open-meetings law, the Brown Act. (Official decisions have to be made out in the open, after public notice and the opportunity for public comment.)

In order to find out the extent of this hanky-panky, The Sun has asked all Board members for copies of all Board e-mail correspondence, on all topics, for the Dec. 7-14 period because, frankly, we are tired of playing games.
Well, we didn't get any response from the Directors, except that Chair Tom Ponton said that if had any such e-mail he had trashed it. And he went on to write an e-mail to The Sun denying there had been any kind of "conspiracy."

But now the "smoking gun" e-mail has surfaced.

We present a copy of it below, and you can decide for yourself if it smacks of any kind of a conspiracy, inasmuch as it was addressed to each member of the Mar Vista Board of Directors (and it wasn't addressed to you or to me).

We won't go so far as to say that the e-mail is a violation of the state's open meetings law, the Brown Act, but it certainly pushes the envelope.
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Click here to read The Sun's coverage of the Dec. 14, 2004, meeting of the L.A. City Board of Neighborhood Commissioners.
The original was sent by Ken Alpern to the Directors of the Mar Vista Civic Assn., and to the chair of the Organizing Committee of the Palms Neighborhood Council.

Copies went to members of the board of the Westside Village Civic Assn., the homeowners' group for the area.

Alpern is a member of the boards of both the Mar Vista group and the Westside Village homeowners' organization.

Some words and phrases in the text below have been enlarged by The Sun for emphasis.
From: [Ken Alpern. Address omitted.]

Date: December 9, 2004 3:25:58 PM PST

To: [The e-mail was sent to 11 Directors of the Mar Vista Community Council — Tom Ponton, George Chung, Rob Kadota, Amy Lawrence, Ken Marsh, Bahaa Mikhail, Tony Navarro, Maritza Przekop, Bill Scheding, Robert Mednick and Christine Taylor — and to Len Nguyen, chair of the Organizing Committee of the Palms Neighborhood Council. Addresses omitted.]

Cc: [Copies went to Westside Village Civic Assn. leaders Charles West, Everett and Marie Wallace, Greg Severson, Richard Saltsman, Tracy Marsh, Roberta Schiller, Ian Halsema, Lotti Furlan, Michael Goldman, Donald Elliott Jr., B. Considine, Lisa Haught and R. Wymbs.]

Subject: Support for Palms NC (and for Westside Village) at 12/14/04 public hearing

To the Mar Vista Community Council and Westside Village Civic Association Boards:

Thank you in advance to any of you who will make it to support Len Nguyen and his Palms N.C. Organizing Committee.  Despite the fact that it might delay a very busy MVCC Board meeting that night, I am grateful for the support of those MVCC Boardmembers who, like myself, will give public comment and support Palms' efforts at the IMAN Center before racing over to Palms.

I would appreciate the following, in light of the sudden report of 200 signatures asking Westside Village to be switched to the Palms Neighborhood Council borders:

1) Marie or someone else in Westside Village--please compile and copy the inflammatory flyers given out to Westside Village residents for both the MVCC Board, the Palms Organizing Committee and the BONC commissioners.  These flyers were illegally placed, and if they prove to be slanderous to the actions and intentions of the MVCC and their efforts then action might need to be taken. 
       These flyers absolutely do not reflect the intentions and actions of either the MVCC or the Palms N.C. Organizing Committee, and BONC needs to know this in light of how these signatures were gathered.

2) Are these signatures and addresses for the public record--if so, can it be determined that these were residents within Westside Village?

3) To my understanding, only two individuals within Westside Village have asked for redistricting of Westside Village to Palms (compared to the scores of individuals who have attended MVCC Committee and Board meetings with reference such issues as the DWP substation), and I believe there has been no official reference of such redistricting in the efforts of the Palms Organizing Committee.
       BONC needs to know this--and it needs to certify the new Palms N.C. on what it's been formally proposed by the Palms Organizing Committee without any distracting issues that could in any way prevent certification of the Palms N.C.

4) Robert Mednick, as the MVCC Zone 1 Director, needs to testify to BONC on Tuesday that only two individuals have discussed with him about Westside Village recertification, and that Zone 1 has been focused primarily on issues such as the DWP substation and the Westside Village Festival, in which the MVCC has played a major role to Westside Village, and not redistriting.  If this is not the case, Robert, please let us all know and meet with your WVCA constituents and update us.

5) Most importantly, if Westside Village needs to revisit the Palms issue then it should be done with the oversight of a neutral third party.  At this immediate time, the most important thing is for Palms to be certified as a neighborhood council by BONC.

I want to again offer my encouragement and support of the exhausting effort by Len Nguyen and his Organizing Committee (well do I remember what it took for the MVCC), and ask for an excellent and supportive turnout this Tuesday at the IMAN Center.

Ken Alpern

In a message dated 12/8/2004 10:11:42 PM Pacific Standard Time, [Tom Ponton; address omitted] . . . writes:

MVCC Directors,
Please try to attend the BONC meeting for a short time on Tuesday evening right before our Board meeting, if you can(see below).  I spoke to Len Nguyen tonight and he agrees that border questions are not an issue for them, since  our MVCC Borders are set in stone at this time and out of their control.  Any issues in that area can be discussed after they are certified, if the stakeholders so desire.
Tom