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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 the Westside Village area of Palms.
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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 a dozen years or so. These pages have no connection with any organization.
Send him e-mail with corrections and comments
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L.A. Neighborhoods manager may be asked to help in surveying Westside Village about its future
Another step in the ongoing Palms-Mar Vista boundary dispute?
 Carol Baker Tharp, the new general manager of the city's Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (left), would be asked to speed up resolution of the Westside Village boundary dispute if the Palms Representative Assembly adopts an idea put forth by the Outreach Committee of the Palms Neighborhood Council.
The item was on the May 2 agenda of the Assembly but was not considered because of the lack of time.
The resolution states that the Palms Council asked the Mar Vista Community Council, which now has jurisdiction over Westside Village, to "authorize a committee to work with Palms" on the dispute. That request was turned down by Mar Vista on April 10.
If adopted by the Palms Assembly, the resolution would ask Tharp "to direct the staff of the Department to work with the Palms Council (and the Mar Vista Council if possible) on a method of accurately determining the wishes of the stakeholders in the Westside Village area."
The decision by the Mar Vista governing board was 3 votes in favor of a motion by Ken Alpern of Westside Village to form the committee and 6 votes against.
Nevertheless, the Palms Neighborhood Council will move ahead on its own with the public-opinion survey. Palms has asked the city attorney's office for a legal opinion on several issues involved in bringing about a boundary change.
On May 1 Tharp was given a preliminary feeling for the boundary issue when Secretary George Garrigues of the Palms Council addressed the city's Board of Neighborhood Commissioners, meeting in the community room of the Westside Pavilion on Pico Blvd. Tharp was present.
He spoke on behalf of the Palms Council at the invitation of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. It was one of a series of informational talks by neighborhood council representatives before the commissioners, all of whom have been appointed since Mayor Villaraigosa took office.
Rob Kadota, president , and Sharon Commins, concept plan chair, spoke on behalf of the Mar Vista Community Council. They did not touch on the boundary issue.
Click here for the reaction of Commissioner Lewis Logan after the meeting.
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RESOLUTION REGARDING PUBLIC-OPINION RESEARCH IN WESTSIDE VILLAGE
1. On September 6, 2006, the governing board of the Palms Neighborhood Council adopted a resolution that stated, in part:
“Petitions favoring the merger of the Westside Village area with the Palms Neighborhood Council having been presented to concerned city authorities and no action having so far been taken by any city official or city agency on said petitions —
“It is the sense of the Palms Neighborhood Council that an Outreach Program should be conducted in the Westside Village area to determine the wishes of the stakeholders there as to the proposed merger . . . The Mar Vista Community Council is hereby invited to attend and to participate in all meetings of the Palms Neighborhood Council concerning this endeavor before the Palms Neighborhood Council goes forward with outreach.”
2. On March 5, 2007, the President of the Palms Council sent a letter to the President of the Mar Vista NC requesting that the Mar Vista NC “authorize a committee to work with us” in such a project.
3. On April 10, 2007, the governing board of the Mar Vista Council rejected a motion to that effect by 6-3 vote.
4. Therefore, the governing board of the Palms Neighborhood Council requests the general manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment to direct the staff of the Department to work with the Palms Council (and the Mar Vista Council if possible) on a method of accurately determining the wishes of the stakeholders in the Westside Village area (Zone 1 on the map of the Mar Vista Council) concerning their preference of neighborhood councils.
6. A copy of this resolution shall be mailed to DONE General Manager Carol Baker Tharp.
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'CLOSED' MEETING
IS FORCED OPEN
MATH TUTOR GETS A CHANCE TO AIR HIS STORY IN MAR VISTA; HE CHARGES CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND A COVER-UP, AMONG MANY OTHER CLAIMS; NO DECISION
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Rick Selan of Venice (below) made his complaints against the Mar Vista Community Council known at an unprecedented daytime public hearing Tuesday afternoon May 29, 2007, in the Mar Vista Library.
 The first hour of the hearing, beginning at 1 p.m., was supposed to be closed to the public, but The Sun's editor appeared at the meeting and told the grievance panel that closing a public meeting usually violates the state's open-meetings law, known as the Brown Act.
Grievance Committee Chair Roseann Herman refused to rule that the meeting would be open but did allow the editor to remain, as well as anybody else who came in during what had been listed on the agenda as "closed."
An attorney who specializes in family law and mediation, she said she had "never read" the Brown Act.
The Sun's editor cautioned the panel against any kind of "private" deliberation. That was the word used on the agenda, but the Herman ended the meeting at 3:30 before the deliberation began.
Selan is known to many as a gadfly. He calls himself an educational advocate; he is a free-lance tutor in mathematics.
Herman had taken all of Selan's complaints and grouped them into categories.
One by one, the panel took up the complaints and heard from Selan. No decision was rendered. When one is made, it will be as a recommendation to the governing board of the Mar Vista council.
Jean Ushijima and Audrey O'Donnell were the other members of the committee.
Two of Selan's grievances were against the Venice Neighborhood Council (these were withdrawn by him); the rest were supposedly against Mar Vista, but some of them actually
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raised complaints against a neighborhood association called Ven-Mar (straddling the Mar Vista–Venice border).
The series of grievances began on Jan. 11, 2007, when Selan complained that no minutes had been filed by the Education Committee of the Venice Neighborhood Council.
The most recent was on April 30, when he made yet one more complaint about Ven-Mar.
Below are some of the other grievances he has raised. Of course The Sun has no way of knowing if any of them are justified or not. That's what the committee will be pondering.
Jan. 22, 2007: Mar Vista Board member Keith Lambert assertedly said he did not know "anything about" a publication being issued by Ven-Mar "when, in fact, he was the editor."
Jan. 25, 2007: MVCC Board member Tom Ponton, a member of the Neighborhood Council Review Commission, sent an e-mail "requesting I back off on my grievance." At the meeting, Selan used that e-mail to claim that the Ven-Mar group was controlled by the MVCC.
March 13, 2007: Stephen Boskin, chair of the Mar Vista Government Outreach Committee, "is attempting to put through" an allocation "to VenMar / Friends of Walgrove" to help publish a community newsletter. (Such a grant was later ruled unlawful by the city attorney's office.)
March 20, 2007: J.D. Gaydowski, chair of the Mar Vista Education Committee, allegedly did not post notices of meetings "and appears to be working unilaterally with no oversight."
March 27, 2007: An omnibus document alleged 13 separate points. One asserted that Grievance Committee member Steve Wallace had a conflict of interest (he later left the committee). Other points dealt with the grievance procedure and with a supposed lack of public notice in the holding of meetings.
There were several more complaints from Selan about Ven-Mar and about what he called violations of the Brown Act.
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OTHER PAGES
Click on the underlined links to bring them up
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HOME PAGE
Background of The Palms-Village Sun
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CULTURAL ACTIVITIES
Thursday afternoon jazz livens post office area
Actors Gang is resident theater company at the Ivy Station
Colorful art installation covers two sides of a Washington Blvd. building
Theaters and museums in and near Palms
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DINING OUT
Indonesian, Mexican, Ethiopian, Indian, Chinese —
you name it; we got it
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CULVER CITY
Link takes you to the Culver City home page
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