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THIS IS THE WESTSIDE VILLAGE PAGE
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One of only two Web pages in the entire universe that give a woof about Westside Village.
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WESTSIDE VILLAGE LINKS
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FEATURES
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SCHOOLS
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MAPS
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ORGANIZATIONS
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Palms-Westside Village Neighborhood Watch
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This NONCOMMERCIAL site is a harmless hobby of George Garrigues, who has lived in the Westside Village district of Palms for 12 years. These pages have no connection with any organization.
Send him e-mail with corrections and comments
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City board dismisses boundary protesters
 The manager of the city's Department of Neighborhood Empowerment says neither his department nor the citizens' board that guides it can do anything to take Westside Village out of the jurisdiction of the Mar Vista Community Council.
That was the gist of a brief report he made to the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners on Tuesday, Sept. 20, at a meeting in South Los Angeles.
The board took no action on the report, although Commission Chair Jimmie Woods Gray suggested that there should be some way developed so that a section of a neighborhood council can secede without the permission of a parent board.
General Manager Greg Nelson wrote:
"There is no provision in the laws that govern the neighborhood council process that allow for one part of a certified neighborhood council to be moved to an adjacent neighborhood council without approval from both neighborhood councils."
Richard Leib of Westside Village spoke in favor of the Village being part of the Palms Neighborhood Council, and Tom Ponton and Bill Scheding of Mar Vista spoke in opposition. Ken Alpern of Westside Village submitted a lengthy letter in favor of Mar Vista. Go here to read the letter.
Woods Gray asked for the report after George Garrigues, the editor-owner of The Sun and a resident of Westside Village, appeared for the sixth time before the commission on Sept. 6 to plead the cause of Villagers who don't want to be included in the Mar Vista Community Council.
Garrigues has presented petitions with 200 signatures of Villagers seeking establishment of a joint Palms-Westside Village Neighborhood Council.
"On the signatures of only 15 stakeholders, our Village — which has 12,000 residents — was joined with Mar Vista," he told the commissioners at the Sept. 6 meeting in Northridge. The map shows the area involved.
The board of directors of the Village homeowners' association has decided that it prefers to keep the entire area — including apartments and businesses, which have no representation in the association — with Mar Vista.
You can read more about this controversy by clicking here. Map is from the MVCC Web site. See editorial comment below.
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DEPARTMENT OF NEIGHBORHOOD EMPOWERMENT
REPORT FROM STAFF
Date: September 20, 2005
To: Board of Neighborhood Commissioners
From: Greg Nelson, General Manager
Subject: Westside Village/Mr. George Garrigues
At its meeting on September 6, 2005, Mr. George Garrigues appeared during Public Forum time and reiterated his desire that the Westside Village area be removed from the boundaries of the Mar Vista Community Council.
When the Community Council was certified on August 13, 2002, the boundaries were discussed and established by the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners.
There is no provision in the laws that govern the neighborhood council process that allow for one part of a certified neighborhood council to be moved to an adjacent neighborhood council without approval from both neighborhood councils.
The department has not wished to initiate actions to decertify the Mar Vista Community Council, as suggested by Mr. Garrigues. Your board cannot initiate the process.
The Mar Vista Community Council has discussed the matter, but has not supported a change in their boundaries.
Without a change in the laws that govern us, there is no legal authority for your board meet Mr. Garrigues' request.
Shannon Hoppes
Commission Executive Assistant
Department of Neighborhood Empowerment
(323) 847-7155
TOLL FREE (866) LA HELPS
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POWERS OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS ARE LIMITED
Under the 1999 City Charter, which increased the powers of the mayor, commissions like the BONC have limited authority; great latitude is given to general managers, who are appointed by the mayor
Sec. 902. Board of Neighborhood Commissioners.
(a) There shall be a board of seven commissioners to be known as the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (board). Commissioners shall be appointed by the Mayor, and shall be from diverse geographic areas, as further specified by ordinance. Appointment and removal of commissioners shall otherwise be in accordance with Section 502.
(b) The board shall be responsible for policy setting and policy oversight, including the approval of contracts and leases and the promulgation of rules and regulations, but shall not be responsible for day-to-day management.
(c) The board shall operate in accordance with Sections 503 through 508 and 510 of the Charter.
Sec. 903. General Manager.
(a) There shall be a general manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment who shall be appointed by the Mayor, subject to confirmation by the Council, and may be removed as provided in Section 508.
(b) The general manager shall have those powers and duties set forth in Section 510.
(c) The general manager shall appoint, discharge and prescribe the duties of staff, consistent with the civil service provisions of the Charter.
Sec. 510. Powers of Chief Administrative Officer of Department Under the Management and Control of Chief Administrative Officer. Each chief administrative officer who is the head of the department shall:
(a) have full charge and control of all work of the department;
(b) be responsible for the proper administration of its affairs;
(c) appoint, discharge, suspend or transfer all employees of the department, subject to the civil service provisions of the Charter;
(d) issue instructions to employees in the line of their duties, all subject to the civil service provisions of the Charter;
(e) as authorized by ordinance, assign employees of the department as are required for the carrying out of the powers and duties of the board of commissioners, if any;
(f) provide technical assistance and information as requested in writing by the board of commissioners of the department, if any;
(g) prior to the beginning of each fiscal year submit an annual budget covering the anticipated revenues and expenditures of the department; including, pursuant to the instructions of the board of commissioners, if any, the money required for the proper conduct of the board' s affairs;
(h) expend the funds of the department in accordance with the provisions of the budget appropriations or of appropriations made after adoption of the budget, including those appropriated for the board of commissioners, if any;
(i) file with the board and the Mayor a written report on the work of the department on a regular basis and as requested by the Mayor or board; and
(j) exercise any further powers as may be conferred upon him or her.
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More Mar Vista Madness
VILLAGE REPRESENTATION STINKS
BY GEORGE GARRIGUES
Ten-year resident of Westside Village
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Those Mar Vista homeowners really dreamed up a sneaky way to keep control of their neighborhood council — the one that was foisted on us in 2002 with the aid of some of our own Village people.
 They fixed it so in the first year all 13 of the Board seats in the Mar Vista Community Council, or MVCC, were elected at large — Westside Village really had no independent representation.
So it was pretty much a straight west-of-the-405 control deal in 2003, except for Ken Alpern, a Village activist who was chosen as an at-large member in March of that year.
The second year, starting in March 2004, six of the 13 seats were divided by neighborhoods, and Bobby Holliday (at that time the president of the Village homeowners' association), was elected, unopposed, to represent our area (which Mar Vista calls a zone).
She attended two Board meetings in April 2004 and just one of the two Board meetings in May 2004. Then she quit, so the Village had no zone representation in June.
President Tom Ponton looked around for another Villager willing to serve and zoned in on Robert Mednick, the manager of the Palms branch of Wells Fargo Bank (which is in Westside Village). Mednick said OK. (He actually lives in Mar Vista, but there's no problem with that, is there?)
 Yet Mednick has been absent from seven of the past 13 Board meetings. He says he has been too busy to attend. And he does not serve on any of the MVCC committees, where most of the policies are hammered out. His MVCC e-mail address has been disconnected for months. He says he prefers face-to-face chats; smart guy (see the item about e-mails, below).
So the two Westside Village "zone" representatives have been absent from 10 of 19 MVCC Board meetings.
Kind of like the Twilight Zone, wouldn't you say? |
 That "speed trailer," which cost $8,000 of taxpayers' money, is still sitting beside the home of MVCC Treasurer Bill Scheding (in Hilltop Mar Vista, of course), virtually unused except when it is plugged in, which is seldom.
It's been there for more than a year.
In the last report we had (November 2004), Scheding and Westdale representative Ken Marsh were going to exchange e-mails in an attempt to find a way to get the blamed thing to do some earthly good.
I asked Mednick several months ago if maybe Wells Fargo would like to set the trailer up on Palms Blvd. to deter speeding, but he said he didn't think the bank brass would care to be associated with anything like that.
We could still put it on Palms Blvd., but we would need a long extension cord and a way to keep it from being trashed — or stolen.
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| Speaking of e-mails, I hear that the pixels were flying among the key players in the Westside Village homeowners' association:
 They apparently were frantically trying to figure out how to handle the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment's investigation of just how the Village was sucked into the Mar Vista Community Council back in 2002.
Of course these players were not sharing their concerns with the rank-and-file homeowners of our Village, 42% of whom, by the way, don't even care enough about the association to pay their dues, as we reported last month when were sent one of those supposedly secret e-mails.
These days, conspirators against the public weal (think Enron) should stick to the telephone or smoke signals and not commit anything to the mercies of AOL or Yahoo.com. It is just too easy for an apostate to hit the FORWARD key and share a "confidential" message with the whole world.
(Just as we were able to report a "smoking gun" message to MVCC Board members and others last November.)
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| I will just have to say: In public affairs, honesty is the best policy. We in S-U-P-E-R* (the 200+ signers of the dump-Mar Vista petition) have no secrets. (*Strong and United to Preserve Everyone's Rights.)
 We are openly seeking a full debate in Westside Village on whether we Villagers should or should not leave Mar Vista and hook up with the Palms Neighborhood Council.
We expect that the city's Human Relations Commission will play a key role in arranging the terms of this debate.
The scotching of our petition to the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (see lead article, above) is just a momentary blip in an ongoing process. In the long run, we Westside Villagers will win.
After all, the people of Westside Village won the straw vote last March — the one that the MVCC decided to ignore.
When the Village does join up with Palms, I'll bet that our Westside Village representatives (we should get two, according to our population) won't be skipping very many meetings at all.
Why should they, when they'll be dealing with LOCAL issues? And going face-to-face with LOCAL people. And solving LOCAL problems.
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I'll be listing more of these "Mar Vista madness moments" as they crop up.
Fortunately there is a group of Villagers working to get our area out of Mar Vista and into a unified Palms-Westside Village Neighborhood Council.
Go here for information on that project.
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 Fall Festival is scheduled for Oct. 1
The Westside Village Civic Assn., the homeowners' group for our Village, has set the date for its second fall festival.
It will be from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 1, at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 11000 National Blvd.
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| THE SHORTEST STREET IN PALMS-WESTSIDE VILLAGE |
It's Ellenda Place in Westside Village, between Queensland St. and Rose Ave. There is only one house on the south side of the block. |
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What is the next shortest street? Look for the answer in the October issue
or e-mail your response here. |
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| Beautification and safety on Palms Blvd. |
This path east of Bentley is the only sidewalkless stretch on all of Palms Blvd. in Palms-Westside Village.
The Mar Vista Community Council has been asked to help get the stretch paved.
This area has never had a sidewalk and desperately needs one.
The area is a major problem because is all dirt which becomes pure mud when it rains. It is an area that literally hundreds of people, including students that attend Palms Middle School walk through daily.
As a result, when it rains people have to actually walk on Palms Blvd in the street, next to the traffic.
The area is also very uneven, and a person with disabilities world have a very difficult time getting through the area. Possibly the ADA act would come into play with situation — also I understand there is a safe access to schools act (not sure of the name ). — Richard Leib
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This is one of the blocks where a neighborhood committee is hoping to plant ornamental trees (see below). |
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| The Sun has received a copy of this Sept. 9 e-mail from Lisa Cahill, the key player in a neighborhood group that is hoping to plant ornamental trees on Palms Blvd. between Sepulveda and Overland.
Just a quick update about the Tree Planting Project on Palms Blvd.
We heard back from Home Depot Reforestation Program, and they didn't give us the $15,000 grant....WE GOT THE $20,000 GRANT!!!!!! YAHOO!!!!
What this means is that it is full-steam ahead for our goal of planting trees all along Palms Blvd. from Overland to Sepulveda. We are very excited about the money and the progress we are making to seeing our vision happen. Thanks for all your help and support to beautify Palms Blvd.
Another part of our great success is due to the volunteers going door-to-door and our two mailings to get permission from the owners to plant. Thanks to everyone who has given their time to this effort. We've received many signatures, and they keep coming in, but we are not done.
There are still owners who have not granted their permission for us to plant in front of their property. Getting signatures on these forms is vital, because if we don't have permission, we cannot proceed. What we need now are a few more volunteers to complete the permission process. It may be going door-to-door, it may mean some phone calls, emails and faxing. If you have some time, even a couple of hours, please contact me. Each person makes a huge difference.
Our planting dates are tentatively set for late Oct. and early Dec. We will have two planting dates because of the magnitude of this project. If you are interested in helping out on those days, stay tuned for more info and please, consider attending another TreePeople event before then.
Educating yourself about the process of planting and how TreePeople does things can be enormously beneficial. You can get a calendar of their events at www.treepeople.org.
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