Gary Slossberg For LA City Council District 13

When I first got involved, I was under the impression that the main function of the neighborhood council was to serve as a platform for neighbors to take real ownership of their community and not just rely on city servants to take care of everything.

Last week I was at Heliotrope and Melrose for an ArtCycle meeting. Heliotrope and Melrose is the hub for ArtCycle, a neighborhood-based, arts event that we are hosting in East Hollywood on 2/28/09. We hope ArtCycle will raise the profile of our neighborhood and ‘shed light’ on the developing arts businesses that have sprung up around East Hollywood.

After the meeting, just as it was starting to get dark, I walked over to introduce myself to one of the local businesses, a bicycle store, to see how the owner might want to participate in the event.

He said, “You’re on the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council? Let me show you something.”

He took me outside the front door of his booming business. “Look at these streetlights,” he said. By now it was fully dark and all the streetlights were dark too.

Ahhh wonderful, I thought. Here I am trying to promote an Art Crawl to this business owner and he’s showing me that until we take care of serious public safety problems this is no place to host an arts event. It’s too dark. We should host a light bulb changing event instead. In fact, at one of our planning meetings, a young woman seriously suggested we have a fund raiser at the ArtCycle to raise money for streetlight bulbs.

A year ago, a spokesman for the Department of Public Works came to an East Hollywood Neighborhood Council meeting. I think he was a bit surprised that board members and stakeholders were respectfully taking the opportunity to hold his feet to the fire. But it was worth it because it worked. For a brief period of 9 months or so, the lights went back on, the potholes were being repaired and when I called 311, it was as if they knew me.

Lightless in East Hollywood

Edgemont at Melrose, a street without light

Melrose between Vermont and Normandie is again blacked-out at night. Normandie between Rosewood on the South and Monroe to the North is also blacked-out. Normandie just South of Melrose, is totally dark. These dark streets are unsafe for motorists and pedestrians.

My initial impression that people around here needed the neighborhood council to help them take ownership of their space has changed. People from all over the neighborhood are calling, emailing and inviting City agencies to meetings. Although it is dark on the streets of East Hollywood, I can now see that it is the City who needs to take more ownership of this neighborhood. Nearly 4 acres of prime East Hollywood land are being used to house city lamp posts for the rest of the city. How do we motivate our city servants to fix the installed street lights so that the good people trying to run businesses, plan ArtCycles, walk and drive the streets of their neighborhood can get on with their work?

~Jennifer Moran

Written by Stephen Box, Hollywood Resident and Bike Activist http://SoapBoxLA.blogspot.com

One of the simplest things we can do to support mass transit in our community is to make sure that transit stops are comfortable, clean, safe and aesthetically pleasing. it seems like a no-brainer that if we want people to become transportation solutions by getting out of their cars we’ve got to make the choice attractive and at least competitive in terms of convenience and comfort.

Unfortunately, we’re far off the mark.

The Metro has its focus on getting people from point A to point B. As for the transit stop amenities, the “no-man’s land” approach from the Metro and the local authorities leaves the average mass transit patron feeling like a second class citizen.

The Metro holds that the City is responsible for the streets, the sidewalks and the amenities along the way. The City looks at the wear and tear on the transit heavy streets and asks the Metro for maintenance money and the standoff starts. Meanwhile, transit patrons throughout the City of Los Angeles stand on narrow, filthy sidewalks, looking for little respect.

The Metro holds that the sidewalks are not their responsibility and that the City is responsible for street furniture. The City turns and contracts out with CBSDecaux who then installs bus shelters with advertising, paying the City for the privilege. The money is split so that our City Councilmembers all end up controlling some of this revenue, ideally to be spent within the respective Council District.

CBSDecaux provides everything from the traditional bus shelter shown above to the automated public toilets (APTs) such as the one located at the Santa Monica and Vermont Red Line station. Along the way they put up advertising, on the bus shelters and on two and three sided sidewalk-sized kiosks and billboards.

Missing from this relationship is a simple commitment to supporting mass transit with an overall plan for streetscape beautification, a plan that would improve the aesthetic of the neighborhood, complement the local architecture and streetlife and encourage pedestrians and transit patrons.

The picture above is of a bus shelter on Hollywood Boulevard at Western. It sits on a narrow sidewalk, forcing pedestrians to squeeze past. The sidewalk is sticky, the area smells and the solid wall of the shelter hides the activities on the other side. It’s evident here that the standards for architectural security are non-existent, that the placement of transit stops is not part of a larger commitment to mass transit and that maintenance is low priority.

The sidewalk just beyond this shelter is sinking, leaving two plates that don’t line up. A simple misstep results in a tumble as pedestrians squeeze past the shelter and passengers who are jockeying for their bus.

On the west side of Western, the sidewalk is not just uneven and patched with asphalt, it has a meter hole covered with plywood.

At least mass transit passengers suffer no delusions of equality. It’s painfully apparent that in the grand scheme of things, mass transit is for people who have no choice. It’s evident that it’s a bare-bones service for those who can’t afford a car. A comfortable, walkable environment that is safe and pleasant is not something to be wasted on a public street.

It’s a sad commentary on our community that the most popular streetscapes are fake, created by developers who study Great Streets and then imitate them, drawing people in cars to the Grove, Americana and CityWalk, all so people can walk on faux boulevards. enjoying something they should be able to find in their own neighborhoods; walkable streets.

As for our neighborhood, it’ll change when we work together and demand big sidewalks, clean sidewalks, street furniture and a commitment to making our streets pedestrian oriented.

“See you on the Streets!”

This past weekend, I helped host a community tree event. The event was to do follow-up maintenance on trees we planted 10 months ago. Each time I do one of these events, I think about how it relates to community issues.

In case you are wondering, follow up tree-care is a vital step to ensuring trees make it in the urban environment, which is very difficult for trees. Also, the city does not have sufficient funding to maintain all the trees in the city. Someone has to ensure the trees planted actually make it. This is where the community comes in. Not only can they keep the closest eye on trees in their neighborhood, their participation helps the social health of the community.

During the event, I found myself conversing with other event volunteers about how wonderful it is to do tree care as a community event. Not only are community members invited to attend the event to check up on their street trees and to learn how to care for them, but when we work on the street, people cannot help but notice what we are doing. Sometimes they stop and join in the activity. Sometimes they stop to talk, find out more, and thank us for what we are doing. Sometimes they just look, but it probably gets them thinking. For everyone who participates, it builds a sense of belonging, responsibility, and connection to the people around us and to the streets on which we live.

We all know that the government cannot, and probably should not, do everything for us. The government extends only so far. In our city, it will pay for trees to be planted, but does not have the resources to take care of them all. At the same time, we notice social problems in our urban environments. What if we had well established systems of community participation where all residents actually did their part to contribute to improving the neighborhood, especially to compensate for lack of governmental resources/services? I think this would go a long way to improving social responsibility and connection in our neighborhoods. Could our City Council Representative do more to encourage this type of activity?