DEL REY HOMEOWNERS & NEIGHBORS ASSOCIATION
BOARD MEETING OF MARCH 5th, 2007

Italicized remarks are post-meeting comments by the Recording Secretary.

Roll Call and Introduction of Guests: Janice Santos, Parliamentarian; Chris Nevil, President; George Gross, 1st VP and Webmaster; Wendy Averill, 2d VP; Michelle Rudo, Treasurer; Elizabeth Pollock, Recording Secretary; Marlene Savage, Director; Casey Anderson, Director & Membership Chair; Tobyann Mandel, Director; Mary M. Anderson, Director; Steve Knight, Advisor.
Guests: Donald Dombrowski; Gail Sharp of Venice Japanese Community Center; Nicole Velasquez, field deputy for City Councilman Bill Rosendahl;Winifred “Windie” Yancy, Andrew Kendall and Jerry Platt of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power; Veronica de la Cruz-Robles and Claudia Martin, Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office; Sharon Cummins, Mar Vista Community Council;Paul Davis; Devin Santos; Nancee Inouye.

Approval of Minutes: The minutes of the February 5, 2007, board meeting were reviewed and approved with changes in the entry regarding the Del Rey Neighborhood Council.
The approved minutes were sent to George Gross for posting on the website..

Approval of Treasurer’s Report: The Transaction Detail Report and Budget Summary Report for February 2007 were approved without changes. Discussion of the 2007 budget was postponed for one month.

Closing Remarks: This was Chris Nevil’s last board meeting as president, and he thanked the board for their participation.

Neighborhood Prosecutor: Claudia Martin is the Neighborhood Prosecutor assigned to Pacific Division. The City Attorney’s office handles crimes that are less than felonies, and she handles “quality of life issues” in our area, e.g. party houses, prostitution. She is a community liaison. Where no police report has been filed, she will refer the matter to a dispute resolution program outside of the criminal courts. Her number at the police station is: (310) 202-3861, email: claudia.martin@lacity.org. Her mailing address is: Los Angeles City Attorney, Safe Neighborhoods Division, 11701 S. La Cienega Blvd. Rm. 430, Los Angeles, CA 90045, fax (310) 643-0185.
The new Senior lead officer, Mr. Drake Madison, is scheduled to begin work on Tuesday, March 6, 2007. His cell no. is (310) 622-3972 (cell); SLO no. at the police station: (310) 202-4515
SLO Heidi Llanes will introduce SLO Madison at the Community Based Policing Meeting at Pacific Division on Wednesday, March 14, 2007, at 7 p.m..

Important “quality of life” issues in Del Rey are: access to the Mar Vista soccer park; Fourth of July fireworks being shot off in the alley between Juniette Street and Jefferson Blvd.. If there are people living on property illegally or construction being done without a permit, Ms. Martin would call the city’s Department of Building and Safety.

Los Angeles Department of Water & Power: Winifred “Windie” Yancy is the manager of the Government, Legislative and Public Affairs department within DWP and is the liaison between DWP and the Los Angeles City Council/Mayor. When there are widespread outages like the one that occurred in January, one should call 1-800-DIAL DWP to get up-to-date outage information. All repair crews report to that number.
She is also the Neighborhood Liaison between DWP and the Del Rey Neighborhood Council (“DRNC”) pursuant to the Intra-City Memorandum of Understanding Between Certified Neighborhood Councils and Department of Water and Power, which was agreed upon on April 5, 2005, and has a term of two years unless extended. The goal of the MOU is to improve communications between the DWP and the Neighborhood Councils.
Jerry Platt, manager of distribution and operations, is in charge of outages, power to street lights (the City’s Bureau of Street Lighting handles maintenance of the street lights) and power substations.
A bad windstorm January 3 – 7, 2007 caused about 200 circuit outages, and 200 – 1000 people are served by each circuit. The time needed to fix a problem depends on how long it takes to identify the problem, isolate, remove, replace and restart the equipment.
If one’s personal property, e.g. life support equipment, is damaged by an outage, one can submit a claim form to the DWP. In addition, one can ask the DWP for a surge protector that can be put on the consumer’s side of the power box for a particular property. See http://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/cms/ladwp000533.jsp#P12_634.
Andy Kendall is the supervisor of the Electric Trouble Section. The nearest reporting location for our area is the DWP office in West Los Angeles. (The DWP address in the phone book is 1394 S. Sepulveda Blvd, which is between Wilshire Blvd. and Santa Monica Blvd..) Three factors affect how repair crews are dispatched: (1) proximity of repair crew to problem; (2) urgency of the problem; (3) the type of problem. In the Summer 2006 heat storm, 800 of 200,000 transformers failed, and two crews are needed to repair an underground transformer.
DWP is currently implementing a program to replace/upgrade poles and cable as needed.
The Bureau of Street Lighting would decide when streetlights will be installed on Redwood Ave. between Washington Blvd. and Glencoe Ave..
Mr. Kendall agreed he would talk with the Bureau of Street Lighting to find out why the lights on Centinela Ave. still have not been turned on. Nicole Velasquez reported that contractor was still waiting for a part. Mr. Kendall will check to be sure that DWP has done everything it was supposed to do.
DWP did not put the utilities underground on Centinela Ave. because it costs about $5 million per mile to convert from above-ground to below-ground utilities. Stringing new lines above ground costs about one-tenth as much as it does to underground the utilities. Also, above-ground utilities have few problems and are easier to fix.

Use of Mar Vista Park for Soccer: Sharon Cummins is a member of the Mar Vista Community Council and also a leader of the Youth Soccer Coalition, to which 7200 soccer-playing families belong The park has not been fenced, but now, neighbors of the park are proposing that it be fenced and that people be required to pull (and pay for) permits to play soccer in the park. Ms. Cummins says behind the park dispute is a cultural conflict between the familes that live next to the park and the soccer players, a high percentage of whom are Latino.
The Mar Vista Community Council will have a board meeting on Tuesday, March 13, 2007, at 7 p.m. in the gymnasium at the park to discuss the proposal to build a locked fence around the field at a cost of $100,000.
According to Ms. Cummins, the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks will not permit AYSO or the Youth Soccer Coalition to use the park for soccer. Also, the Los Angeles Police Department has said that it will not patrol the park in order to prevent soccer players from playing there.

Traffic Committee: Due to have a meeting, but none scheduled yet. On February 28, 2007, CalTrans did hold a community meeting to discuss their plans for Lincoln Blvd. between Jefferson Blvd. and Loyola Marymount University.

Newsletter: All board members are again requested to submit candidates’statements to be published before the election. All text must be submitted to editor Mary Anderson by March 21, and she is planning to have the newsletter ready for distribution by March 23, 2007.
Nicole Velasquez will provide a “Councilman’s Corner” article that explains when one should call 311 and when one should call a field deputy in the councilmember’s office.

General Meeting: Scheduled for March 28, 2007. Chris Nevil has lined up the speakers: Grieg Asher, planning deputy for Councilman Bill Rosendahl; Steve Napolitano, field deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe; Mike Bohlke, Assistant Chief of Staff for Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Burke; Stan Wisniewski, Director, Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors; Culver City Councilman D. Scott Malsin; Todd Tipton, Culver City’s interim Community Development Director .
Devin Santos will help us to find a graphic artist to help us put a cartoon on the postcard announcing the meeting. Also, he works at Trader Joe’s, and a nonprofit can get one donation per year from Trader Joe’s, so we might be able to ask them for a contribution. As a 501(c)(4), rather than a 501(c)(3), we may not qualify.
Tobyann Mandel will set up the cookies and water table at the meeting. Wendy Averill and Marilee French will bring the cookies; George Gross and Casey Anderson will bring water.
George Gross and Casey Anderson also will bring the DRHNA notepads and magnets to the meeting. Before the meeting, Wendy Averill and Elizabeth Pollock will work on distributing the magnets to apartment dwellers in Del Rey by putting the magnets on metal mailboxes.

Website: Posting of minutes is up to date.

Del Rey Neighborhood Council (“DRNC”): Next meeting is Thursday, March 8, 2007, at 7 p.m. at the Westchester Municipal Building. A 6 p.m. executive session will consider the proposed budget expenditures. Next year, DRNC hopes to have more community outreach meetings (like our General Meetings). One can get onto the DRNC’s electronic mailing list by joining the “del rey council” group on yahoo.com.

Council District 11: Arnie Carlin, reserve officer, will be at the DRNC’s meeting to discuss the proposed surveillance camera for Slauson Avenue. The Slauson Avenue Community Outreach meetings (monthly) attract about 80 people. They requested (and got) a stop sign at Slauson and Braddock about three months after they requested it.
The Caltrans service road at Centinela and the Marina Freeway should be gated by Friday, March 9, 2007.
Although the work on the 90 freeway is almost done, there are backups where people turn left from Culver Blvd. onto the 90E and 90W. A left turn signal is needed. People are making U-turns at Centinela and Alberta in order to get on the 90E.
Is a “smart intersection” needed to prevent injury to jaywalkers who cross Culver Blvd. between Braddock and Centinela? There must be at least 100 people crossing at peak hours to justify a smart intersection.

Playa Vista Parking Fund: Nicole Velasquez distributed copies of Condition 125. Tom Coronda at the Department of Transportation said the money will be transferred to the DOT in late April 2007 and will not be spent until the community has weighed in on how the parking problem should be solved. Should street parking on Jefferson Blvd. be restricted during peak hours? A standard sidewalk is 10 feet wide, and there is discussion of cutting the Jefferson Blvd. sidewalks to eight feet wide.

Officer Elections: The bylaws call for the board candidacies to be publicized two weeks ahead of the election. The information will be “published” on the website and included in the newsletter, but the newsletter will be distributed less than two weeks before the meeting. The candidacies will be announced in The Argonaut. Nominations will also be taken from the floor. The nominating committee will be having one more meeting.

CERT: Twenty-nine people completed the Spanish language CERT class.

NEXT MEETING: MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2007

ADJOURNMENT: 9:15 P.M.