Quasi governments give a voice to locals
WILMONT Jeanne Dodson turned one corner, and then another, up and down the street, frustration slowly creeping in with every missed spot.
It was late at night and hardly the last thing that the Santa Monica resident wanted to do — find a parking space in an impacted Wilshire Boulevard- Montana Avenue neighborhood, where it appeared as though every single possible spot was already occupied.
“I literally could not get into my own home because there was no place to park,” Dodson said on Thursday of her parking adventure in 2005. “I had to spend a night with a friend because I could not get into my home.
“That’s just stupid,” Dodson added.
The experience sparked Dodson’s interest in bringing to light the issues of her neighborhood to city officials, working to alleviate street parking woes through becoming an active member and later chairman of the Wilshire Montana Neighborhood Coalition.
A voice of the community, a collective shout to City Hall is perhaps the unifying attribution of the organized neighborhood groups in Santa Monica, each representing the unique concerns of their residents and ensuring they have a presence when it comes to the decisions that affect them.
In some ways, they can be viewed as the eighth member on the City Council.
“They’re like a direct feed for coun-cilmembers and city staff on what resident concerns are,” Rachel Waugh, the publications coordinator for City Hall, said. “The more voices you get together, the louder the sound is.”
Many in neighborhood groups credit the strength of the unified voice for winning battles, staving off unwanted projects like a proposed mixed-use development on the edge of Sunset Park, or bringing more affordable housing in the Pico Neighborhood, whose association helped form Community Corporation of Santa Monica.
Diane Moss,who has owned property in Sunset Park since 2002, joined the Friends of Sunset Park (FOSP) last year because of concerns over pollution and safety at the Santa Monica Airport.
“There is strength in numbers,” Moss said on Friday.
There are currently five neighborhood organizations that are recognized by City Hall — FOSP, the Ocean Park Association (OPA), the Pico Neighborhood Association (PNA), the Officials Wilshire Montana Neighborhood Coalition (WMNC) and the North of Montana Neighborhood Association (NOMA). There was a Northeast Neighbors organization whose chair was listed as being Lewis Perkins, but Waugh, who acts as a liaison for the groups, said she believes the organization’s activities have ceased.
In order to be recognized as a City Hall organization, which would open access to city grants and other resources, a organization would have to be registered as a 501c3 or c4 non-profit organization, have an active board of directors, bylaws, public meetings and at least 50 registered members, according to Waugh.
Most of the groups have between 100 to 500 members, are fee-based and governed by a board of directors that is elected by members during annual general meetings. Fees for the organizations range, some as little as $7 for the PNA, others offering different options such as NOMA, which has a rate schedule that goes up to $125 for a lifetime membership.
The bylaws for the groups are pretty standard, dictating how the board is elected and how often they are to meet. Some bylaws were modeled after the other neighborhood groups, including OPA, which at three years old is the youngest of the bunch. Some bylaws, like for FOSP, are strict in requiring that members not speak for the organization unless an issue has been previously acted upon by the board.
City Hall offers one-half matching grants, requiring groups to put out $2,000 in cash or services in order to qualify. The money can be used to support communication or member-building efforts, such as block parties.
The three neighborhoods without organizations are Mid-City, perhaps one of the largest areas in the city, the Northeast and Downtown Santa Monica, which Waugh believes is most represented by the Bayside District Corporation, whose board includes residents.
“We all work really hard and LA is a fast-paced city so it’s hard to find someone to volunteer that time,” Waugh said, referring to the absence in representation in the three neighborhoods. “People willing to serve on boards are really dedicated... the five groups we have now are great because they all have two or three people to keep it rolling.”
As well as communicating with its members and city officials, the neighborhood groups also work together,meeting monthly in the Ken Edwards Center and briefing each other about news from their respective hoods.
During the most recent meeting on March 18, topics such as the Residents Initiative to Fight Traffic (RIFT), an update on the Fourth of July parade hosted by OPA, and efforts to landmark a 76-year-old apartment building in Sunset Park were discussed. Members of the group also communicate virtually through sm4residents.net Web site, a residents portal that was launched last year.
“It’s nice to have neighborhood groups in every area of the city,” Waugh said.
REPRESENTING THE NORTH SIDE The NOMA area is perhaps represented by some of the highest-income residents in the city, with multi-million dollar mansions sprawled on the northern part of the city, from Montana Avenue to the city’s border at the Pacific Palisades.
But issues know no economic boundaries. The neighborhood association has seen its share of battles, including a string of home burglaries and unwanted development in the past year alone.
One of the biggest projects that have galvanized residents is a proposed senior day care facility on the corner of 17th Street and Montana, which would include three luxury condos and seven apartments. The project is proposed directly across from the Montana Branch Public Library.
“That is a lot of development in that small corner,” group Chairman Elizabeth Riel said.
Residents were successfully able to lobby city officials to landmark the Teriton Apartments on San Vicente Boulevard, an old garden-style building in which the owners were proposing to tear down in favor of a home for Jewish refugees.
In both projects, NOMA was involved in endorsing the effort, helping to disseminate information to the public.
“NOMA advocates very well,” Riel said. Riel joined the roughly 200-member organization in 2003 after moving to the city from Laurel Canyon. Riel, who also serves on the Commission on the Status of Women, said she searched the Internet for a neighborhood group before moving into her new home.
“Sometimes people can feel unempowered or don’t know who to contact when they feel frustrated with a problem,” Riel said. “I think the great thing about our neighborhood association is we really do listen to the concerns of our members and try to not only advocate on behalf of them, but encourage them to take action.”
Aside from development, one of the biggest concerns for residents is preserving the tree canopy in the neighborhood.
“We want to preserve the tree canopy on public and private property,” Riel said.
PARKING IS HARD TO COME BY The WilMont organization formed about 17 years ago by a group of residents who are still members, one of whom is 90 years old.
The neighborhood is geographically the largest in the city, representing 24,000 residents in 84 blocks, bounded by 21st Street to Palisades Park. The organization has about 400 members. During a survey of residents conducted last year, WilMont residents identified their main issues as being homelessness, transportation and overdevelopment. But the king of all issues was parking.
“It’s a giant headache in our district,” Dodson, the chair of WilMont, said.
Dodson has made some progress toward alleviating the situation, working with city officials to see if a partnership could be forged to use the parking lots for the many churches in the neighborhood and the businesses along Wilshire.
Worsening the situation is the use of garages by some residents for storage, opting to park their cars on the street instead. One of the options being explored is to provide street permits for residents who don’t have assigned spaces in their buildings, forcing people with garages to use it for their cars, not boxes.
Dodson added that she has received interest from two Wilshire businesses to use their parking lots during the evening hours.
“During the day, the problem isn’t as severe because many residents go off to work,” Dodson said. “It’s when they come home at night and need a place to park cars that it’s really terrible.”
PROBLEMS FLYING OVERHEAD While the activities at the airport have taken center stage for FOSP in the past few years, when the organization formed in 1989, traffic caused all the rage. “The traffic was getting worse and worse and worse and at that time traffic wasn’t too bad (compared to now),” Emmalie Hodgin, a founding member, said.
Today the organization has grown to have about 650 members and is considered to be one of the most active groups in the city, its board meeting monthly.
Aside from the airport, traffic congestion and pedestrian safety concerns continue to plague the neighborhood, as well as crime and safety and the loss of affordable housing.
But safety concerns at the airport have been at the top of the agenda in Sunset Park these days as city officials prepare to decide whether they should ban the fastest jets from ever touching the runway, an action that is sure to be contested by the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA earlier this month made an offer to install some safety precautions at one end of the runway, which some residents say is not enough to protect against a possible jet overrun.
Zina Josephs, the president of FOSP, noted the group has been concerned about a rash of car and home burglaries that took place in the neighborhood last summer, as well as alleged drugs and prostitution at the Pavilions Motel on Ocean Park Boulevard where several arrests were made last year.
“FOSP tries to keep residents informed about issues that affect our neighborhood,” Josephs said. “We listen to residents’ concerns and amplify their voices at City Council, Planning Commission and SMC Board of Trustees meetings.
“In these ways, we try to improve the quality of life in Sunset Park,” she added.
THE OLDEST OF THE BUNCH The Pico Neighborhood Association was founded more than 25 years ago by a group of residents struggling to deal with the issues of youth violence and gentrification. The neighborhood is considered to have the highest concentration of low-income residents and single mothers in the city.
Those issues continue today, but have taken different angles.
“The sentiment of some residents is now that affordable housing is being built, there isn’t much preference for Santa Monica residents,” Maria Loya, who serves as co-chair with Wes Thompson, said.
She said the group is working with the city to address development and gentrifica-tion in the Land Use and Circulation Element update process, making sure that if there is change in the neighborhood, it’s mutually beneficial.
Loya joined the organization about five years ago, feeling there needed to be more representation for people of color and the city’s renters. Loya, who moved to the neighborhood two years prior to joining, pointed out that there has never been a Pico resident elected to the council.
“I felt I needed to address some of the social issues I didn’t feel were being fully addressed,” she said.
The neighborhood has also dealt with issues of youth violence, seeing shootings of two young men in the past few years.Loya said she believes violence in Pico has gone down.
Leaders in the organization are looking to the recent spurt in the entertainment industry on Colorado as a way to improve their neighborhood, hoping to forge a partnership with some of the studios to provide an avenue for residents to find employment. Some of those companies were represented during a Pico job fair at Virginia Avenue Park earlier this year.
“We feel if we have this vibrant industry in our backyard, we want to make sure residents, if they choose to, have access to that,” Loya said.
THE YOUNGEST OF THE BUNCH Lori Nafshun and a few of her neighbors were sitting around one day at a political fundraiser when they realized that they did-n’t have any representation in City Hall.
It had been a few years since the Ocean Park Community Organization had folded after giving the residents in the seaside neighborhood a voice off and on since 1979.
It was about 2004 and city officials were about to embark on a master plan and Nafshun felt a sense of urgency.
“So we got some people together and met at various houses and created a neighborhood group with the idea of giving Ocean Park a voice again,” Nafshun said.
The Ocean Park Association was born that day.
The biggest issue for the neighborhood during the days of OPCO was development and preservation of the character of Ocean Park and that continues to this day, residents here proud of the area’s history, from the surfing culture to the Third Street Historic District’s California bungalows.
“We really love our neighborhood,” Nafshun, who also serves on the Recreation and Parks Commission, said.
OPCO was headed by resident Rick Laudati during the 1990s, essentially carrying the organization until it died around 2002 after several residents started challenging him, according to Nina Fresco, a current OPA and former OPCO member.
“When Rick Laudati was in his prime, he was incredible,” Fresco said. “He had a lot of flaws,but that guy showed up at every meeting.”
In its brief history, OPA has spearheaded the Fourth of July parade, which will go into its sophomore year this summer, and has gotten City Hall to hire a consultant for a green street project on Ocean Park Boulevard, adding bike lanes and more trees to the barren corridor.
“Connection is vital,” Nafshun said. “The neighborhood groups have revitalized themselves and it’s been a good thing.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 22, 2008. Read the original PDF.