WestchesterParents

Over the past few months H. David  Nahai and his LADWP cohorts have made a concerted effort to misinform the public by referring to Tier I allocations in “percentages” and mixing into the public dialog that residents receive an ”average of 28 HCF” .  A recent flyer stating  stated:  “As an example, a typical two-month billing cycle for a single-family residential customer who is allocated 28 hundred cubic feet (HCF) of water pays $81.76, or 2.92 cents per cubic foot.”

Unfortunately for CD-11 (Councilmans Rosendahl’s) residents, not one resident in his district who lives on a 7500 sq ft lots (about 95% of its residents) or less really gets 28 HCF of water as advertised. With the new across the board restrictions, we’ll now have far less that most L.A. residents when the lowest Tier I is reduced to 22 HCF.

Rosendahl’s entire 11th council district happens to be in what is called a “low temp” region. Most single family households in our district have been getting far less than what LADWP advertises with only 24 HFC during winter months. With the new restrictions now in place,  our Tier I allocation is a 22% reduction over what the LADWP has been advertising.

Posted on June 3rd, 2009 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, MANAGING GROWTH, TRAFFIC, WATER
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Last week our neighborhood council was asked to re-approve the EIR for Playa Vista Phase II and on a vote of 18-2 the neighborhood council supported the 2,600 mixed use development. I was the only person on the council to speak against any further development and 1 of 2 that voted against it.

While my vote was on this project, my -real- message was towards the community, our city council and the mayor on future and soon to be heard projects.

Here are my comments:

On November 4th, 2003 our neighborhood council voted to support Playa Vista Phase II 13 to 10. At the time Playa Vista had greatly down-sized their original plans in response to the community concerns and we commended them for that.

I was one of the members of the board at the time that supported the EIR. I liked the plan because of the mix of retail and lower residential density than the original proposal.

The retail component was important to me because it completed the package giving the Playa Vista community their own local place to shop without having to leave the community and create an additional traffic burden on Sepulveda or Lincoln.

With our neighborhood council’s support, former council member Cindy Miscikowski took that project downtown where the Los Angeles City Council deliberated and with the Mayor they approved the project and work began.

However.., a lot has transpired since 2003 that has -challenged the notion- that we can continue to grow and grow and provide housing to meet Sacramento’s growth projections for Southern California. It is these growth projections that drive development. These projections are not based on reality and they ignore very real constraints to our regions infrastructure. Likewise, L.A.’s planning policies ignore the same restraints.

Since the time that –our– neighborhood council first approved Playa Vista Phase II, we’ve seen the rolling power blackouts and brownouts of 2004. We’ve seen soaring levels of traffic gridlock and impractical solutions to solve it. We’ve seen our reservoirs, lakes and rivers slowly draw down and emergency water conservation ordinances imposed on us and on residents from other cities throughout Southern California. And this was –without- the construction of Phase II.

Between 1970 and 2008, the population of the City of Los Angeles has gone from 2.81 million people to just over 4 million and our water deliveries have remained essentially static at less than 700,000 acre feet. The water supply has not grown with population growth and it won’t. In fact, between equal parts of below average rainfall, court ordered reductions and excessive growth, the best we can hope for is making do with much, much less.

The most recent projections by the California State Department of Finance is that Southern California’s population will double by 2050. According to the DOF, we will need housing for another 15 million people. If we build it… they will come.

Since 1997, the City of Los Angeles has been bending over backwards to meet the States projected population growth and housing requirements by approving permits for 10’s of thousand of new housing units each year. Even during this period of emergency water conservation enforcement, the City of Los Angeles still has not imposed a moratorium on development.

We’ve seen that growth here in Playa del Rey, Westchester and in Playa Vista. We’ve seen the loss of Acapulco Restaurant at Pershing and Manchester to a 49 unit housing complex. We’ve seen the arrival of a 288 housing unit complex at Manchester and Tuscany. We’ve seen L.A.’s first so-called smart growth project – the 539 unit Playa del Oro, and high density projects near transit stops such as the 37 unit complex that replaced B’nai Tikvah and the 43 unit condo project on Arizona. It’s happening here and it’s happening all over the city.

Neighborhood councils were created to give regular people like us a voice in the direction of their community. We are not expected to be rubber stamps for our elected officials housing policies.

If we don’t speak up…, One parcel at a time, our neighborhoods will slowly grind down to a halt as people are squeezed into smaller confines, traffic gridlock will extend longer into the day and evening, and more severe water conservation efforts will imposed on us. I fully expect the City of L.A to raise the enforcement level to at least a Phase IV or higher this year.

Having said this, Under today’s conditions, I cannot support large housing projects, let alone a project that proposes 2,600 new housing units. If this was 2003 I might have a very different position. However, it’s 2009 and the region is overdeveloped and the city has overcommitted our resources including water, power and streets. Unless there is a way for the city to resolve these infrastructure issues without further eroding our quality of life, I cannot support new housing..

We may not be able to control rainfall,  we can control growth. If you have the tolerance for more traffic grid lock, tightening water supplies and penalties for not meeting water restrictions vote yes.

If you want to send the city a message that unsustainable growth is NOT acceptable, Vote No.

David Coffin
Neighborhood Council of Westchester/Playa
Board member of Residential Seat 10

Posted on March 11th, 2009 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, MANAGING GROWTH, OUR ENVIRONMENT, QUALITY OF LIFE, TRAFFIC, WATER
1 Comment »

Editors note: Posted originally on 2-09-2009

Mail-in ballots are arriving in homes right now. City elections are coming up in March. Here is why Mayor Villaraigosa should not be granted a second term as mayor. Imagine another four years?

The report card for Antonio Villaraigosa’s first term as mayor.

F-    The city’s fiscal condition crumbles under his administration. Not enough money to fix sidewalks, hire police, keep libraries open. Next year, we expect the city’s deficit to rise to $400 million.

D- Villaraigosa’s spends only about 11% of his time dealing with city business. Refer to  L.A.Weekly – The all-about-me mayor and LA Weekly Story – The still all-about-me mayor.

F Villaraigosa continues to promote L.A.’s massive housing growth, policies that are largely responsible for increased gridlock and drought.  The California Department of Finance projects 19 million new residents in Southern California and the mayor is bending over backwards to meet L.A.’s  share. Even if it lowers the quality of life for L.A.’s current residents.

F Villaraigosa declares the Crane as the official bird of Los Angeles. Not the feathered sort. He was referring to the construction cranes throughout downtown and West Los Angeles used to build those multi-story high density housing projects that bring with them more vehicles and less water availability to L.A. residents.

F  Villaraigosa lamely attempts to capture the energy of angry grid locked motorists and translate that into his high density solution. What he doesn’t get is that with high density, we get more people and more cars thus more grid lock. Sorry but there will never be enough bus routes or buses to serve a city of  500 square miles and 4 million people.

F    Villaraigosa continues to remain mum on LAWA’s march to expand the airport despite promises in two mayoral campaigns to not allow airport expansion. Villaraigosa SIGNED the ARSAC Promise not to expand the airport, yet he keeps the door open to moving the run way 340′ north and leveling yet more of the Westchester business district and more homes.

F-    Villaraigosa asks city residents to use less water despite his own super-sized requirements of 386,716 gallons per year (L.A. Times Story) while the average Angeleno uses only 55,576 gallons.

F-    Going further, Villaraigosa imposes an emergency water ordinance that fines residents for watering their lawns during the day. However, he doesn’t impose new restrictions on developers while they add roughly 16,000 new housing unit a year. Each new housing unit connected to the water supply adds 100,000 gallons of water to L.A.’s fixed water allocation.

F    Villaraigosa quietly negotiates a “settlement” on the evening of Yom Kippur leaving L.A. residents on the hook for $2.8 million in ‘Dog food’ Tennie Pierce suit. This was $100,000 more than the first settlement he vetoed months earlier. Patterico’s Pontifications

C-  Villaraigosa’s LAUSD takeover bill AB1381 was found to be unconstitutional in court.  Villaraigosa still manages to obtain control of a few schools under the iDivision partnership.

F   Trash pickup fees were hiked 330% to add 1000 LAPD officers but only 1/3 of the 137 million raised went to hiring new officers. The rest went to police vehicles, raises and perks to the police union. L.A. Slams Residents With Stiff Fees and Taxes

F  Villaraigosa replaces an illegal phone tax with a new tax measure to replace it. He sells the new tax to the voters as a 10% cut over the old illegal tax.

F   Continues to support Special Order 40 which prevents LAPD officers from obtaining immigration status of detained suspects.

F   Two years after he campaigned as a family man, Villaraigosa leaves his wife and kids to begin dating a Telemundo TV reporter. He previously fathered two children out of wedlock with two different mothers. 

F    Jon Coupal give Villaraigosa an F.  “I think it’s one of the most poorly managed cities in the country,” Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said of Los Angeles.”

F   Villaraigosa, the “Green candidate” agrees to a settlement allowing billboard companies to “digitize” 877 billboards throughout the city in exchange for a list of billboard locations throughout the city, many that are illegal. Digital billboards threaten to alter the quality of life for all residents in the City of Los Angeles.

F  The digital billboard plan is clearly at odds to Villaraigosa’s ‘Green LA’ plan since each digital billboard, rated at 23,000 watts per hour uses enough power to supply 20 single family residents.

F   Villaraigosa agrees to more electricity rate hikes even though the city receives hundred of millions of dollars in power fund transfers from the DWP each year. Money deemed as ‘excess funds” by the DWP. So why is trash and electricity going up if there is too much money?

F   While promoting public transit and urging the council and other departments to cut usage of their take-home cars – the Mayor is driven around in a 2005 GMC Yukon at an average rate of 73 miles per day or that’s about $7,900 a year in gas ($4.19 using city government’s own fleet-fueling pumps).

F   Villaraigosa promised to help create an “emerald necklace” of parks throughout Los Angeles when he ran for mayor in 2005.  Los Angeles never got those parks.

F  The mayor doesn’t want to debate any of the candidates in this election. Shouldn’t L.A.’s residents have an opportunity to hear his policies debated side by side with the other candidates for mayor?

It’s time for CHANGE!

Posted on February 20th, 2009 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, LOCAL, MANAGING GROWTH, POLITICS, QUALITY OF LIFE, TRAFFIC, WATER
4 Comments »

Beware Westchester and Playa del Rey. Under our current mayors administration, little neighborhoods like this are being closely looked at to further not-so-smart growth.

This is what Jane Usher is talking about when she writes to Villaraigosa in her resignation saying “Please reject any proposed update that relies on the careless, sprawl-inducing approach of adding density at every Rapid bus stop; this would be unnecessarily hostile to many of our appropriately low- rise residential neighborhoods that also reside along our long, multi-faceted corridors.”

D.J. Waldie writes about Jane Ushers resignation from the city planning commission at KCET’s Where We Are Blog. (The emphasis in the following text is mine.)

Kevin Roderick (at his LA Observed site) nominates Jane Usher’s resignation from the city’s planning commission as the political farewell likely to resonate most in 2009. Her still warm seat on the commission was filled by Sean O. Burton. I don’t have to tell you that Burton is both politically connected and development smart.

But don’t mistake that as being smart about growth. Usher, as commission president, surely knew what sort of insider would replace her after she suggested that Los Angeles residents could sue the city over development policies hostile to their neighborhoods.

Roderick’s reading of Usher’s resignation letter is characteristically blunt: She “essentially called BS on the mayor’s approach to letting developers build wherever a bus might someday pass, in the name of transit friendly growth.” Blunt but also correct.

In a city that was essentially “built out” by the mid-1970s, the growth machine has struggled to find product to pitch. There are no more tracts of little houses to sell. Downtown redevelopment took up some of the slack in the 1980s and 1990s, but now there’s nowhere left but the city’s endless miles of older neighborhoods. In each of them, there are modest, low-rise retail strips, small commercial centers, and disused manufacturing sites that can be cynically reimagined to be ideal locations for “transit-oriented development.”

As Usher warned Mayor Villaraigosa in her letter of resignation, “Our shared goal . . . demands that we build vertically, but only in my view at major commercial or employment centers or within walking distance of locations where we have or will provide a substantial mass transit stop. We still need . . . to define these sites with precision, a controversial process because it requires us to identify land use winners and losers – an essential task that our government has shied from. Please reject any proposed update that relies on the careless, sprawl-inducing approach of adding density at every Rapid bus stop; this would be unnecessarily hostile to many of our appropriately low- rise residential neighborhoods that also reside along our long, multi-faceted corridors.”

Winner and losers . . . Usher’s coded phrase isn’t only about the fate of particular neighborhoods (which might be a winner or a loser in an unruly rush to greater density). It’s also about which developers (and consultants and lawyers and city council members) will win or lose in the high-stakes Monopoly game that is land use planning in Los Angeles.

The game has never had any place at the board for you. It’s always been the machine’s game.

The growth machine has been processing the landscape of L.A. for more than 100 years. Its practices are embedded in the DNA of the city. At times, the machine’s aims have appeared to be all that there is of the city – in each generation, what we want Los Angeles to be is turned into a sales pitch for the same old illusions about building a better paradise. The marriage of political juice and naïve utopianism has always made money for someone in L.A. using the same old bait and switch.

Posted on December 30th, 2008 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, MANAGING GROWTH, TRAFFIC
2 Comments »

Our elected city representatives don’t like it when residents criticize them for placing an expensive risky measure on the city’s March elections. In fact, Mayor Villaraigosa and the city council are suing them in what looks like an effort to intimidate them. I’m not a lawyer but it sound’s like an anti-SLAPP suit needs to be filed against the city.

Measure B –

There is plenty to criticize about on this measure. Measure B, the so-called The Green Energy and Green Jobs for Los Angeles Act purports that it will install 400 megawatts of solar panels on roof tops throughout the city. This is two and a half times the total solar installation of the entire state of California and they are estimating that they will do it for $1.5 billion with all work being done by IBEW employees and without competitive bidding.

A recent internal analysis by a city-hired consulting firm PA Consulting Group called the “called the solar plan ‘extremely risky’ and considerably more expensive than was being portrayed” by the DWP.”

The consulting firm reported that the LADWP cost estimate of the project was far too low and that a job of such magnitude should cost closer to $3.6 Billion.

If the price tag climbs that high, the pass-through costs to residents would have to climb 4% per year to a maximum of 12%. This is on top of the electricity rate hikes that have already been imposed on us to hire new cops. Cops that we are not going to see since the city is now $400 million in the red.

Same old talking points

Not surprisingly the city is pulling out many of the same worn out talking points used in other ballot measures. In this case they argue that the Green Solar measure will ‘Save Lives’ by reducing air pollution and smog by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

What they don’t tell you is they are not substituting green solar power in place of fossil fuel power, they are adding 400 MW of solar energy to the current grid to meet the needs of a projected 1.5 million new residents they want to shoehorn into the city. Whatever air pollution reductions ‘Green’ might be responsible for will be erased by the vehicles brought into the city by these new residents.

The city also argues that it will generate “new business” and “jobs outside of the area.” I don’t know why it is important that we generate new jobs outside of the area but again it’s what they don’t tell you in the talking points made for public consumption. That new business and those jobs outside the area are from the purchase of solar hardware coming from China.

That fact alone turns another talking point on its head, that the measure will make “Los Angeles a Center for Solar Technology” comparing it to Silicon Valley. If the technology is coming from China, how is it that L.A. will be the Center for Solar Technology? Additionally, comparing silicon and all of its offshoot technologies found in everything from cell phones, refrigerators, TV’s and cars to rooftop solar photovoltaic’s is a real stretch of the imagination.

Measure B’s proponents also claim that it will “create hundreds of good, family supporting jobs in Los Angeles with good benefits.” Hundreds of jobs? That’s hardly the kind of economic stimulus one might expect of any multi-billion dollar plan in a city of 4 million people. Those few jobs will be government jobs.

The residents alerting us to the fraud and targeted in the SLAP suit are those that signed the ballot argument against Measure (or Prop) B.

They are Jack Humphreville and Soledad Garcia (DWP Watchdog Committee), Humberto Camacho (former vice president of the United Electrical Workers Union), Kristine Lee, Nick Patsaouras (former head of the Water and Power Commission), Joe Pulido, James O’Sullivan and Ron Kaye (former Daily News editor).

Los Angeles Times story: Analysis calls ambitious L.A. solar plan ‘extremely risky’

[Read more →]

Posted on December 30th, 2008 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, MANAGING GROWTH, TRAFFIC
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Annoyed with the high density housing being forced into our community and the increasing traffic gridlock? Tired of streets and sidewalks in disrepair or double digit increases in water rates while the DWP admits that it has hundreds of millions of excess dollars!  Is your personal checking account getting raided by the city, time after time with back to back increases in trash collection fees?

Tired of elected officials failing to respect the needs of our community and treating you with respect?

Here is your opportunity to give City Hall a good S.L.A.P!

Ron Kaye, former editor of the Daily News is organizing something big that all of us could rally around.

At noon Monday, July 14, Bastille Day, We, the people who care about the future of Los Angeles, are coming together on the South Lawn of City Hall to protest the failure of our elected officials respect the needs of our communities and treat us with respect.

This is actually much more than a protest. It is the launching of our concerned citizens coalition that is intended to bring neighborhood councils, service clubs, residents groups, business groups, churches and activists of all types together. Our plan is to form a third force in L.A. politics that will have a unified seat at the table of power with the unions and the developers-contractors-lobbyists. We all have different neighborhood issues and we might not always agree on everything our city, as a whole, needs. But, we can support each other in our individual goals. We can spark public conversation that will lead to faster progress in solving our problems in order to help create a greater L.A.

The operating name of the group is the “Saving L.A. Project” or S.L.A.P. and the theme protest is “Take Back Los Angeles — Demand A Great City.” I’ve been writing extensively about local politics, and the July 14 rally, ever since I retired two months ago as Editor of the Daily News. I have since met with dozens of community groups and I have learned a lot that has better informed my own views about what’s wrong with the way City Hall operates, and more importantly, how we fix it.

Thousands of people all over L.A., like you, have worked long and hard for years to make our neighborhoods better. I believe what’s needed is for all our groups to unite and develop an agenda for a great L.A., to bring the Spirit of L.A. back to life, a city with healthy neighborhoods, good schools, safer streets and less congestion. Our Neighborhood Councils are vital in achieving this.

During our rally we plan to put forward a “Contract for a Great Los Angeles,” that challenges our officials to sign and commit themselves to a new way of doing business. We need your ideas for this!. We need your participation! We need the biggest crowd we can muster to send City Hall a message! A message that we are serious and we are going to go forward to build an organization that will change the politics of our city and offer hope to our apathetic, alienated and defeated residents.

The future of L.A. is in our hands! We have set up an email address for your responses. Please let us know if you want our printed flyers, if buses or other transportation is needed and what ideals you feel we need to emphasize, during our protest and in our future.

This is the first step in bringing real democracy to L.A., to truly empower our community, to make a difference in our lives now, and in our children’s lives in the future. I hope you will take a look at what I’ve been writing regarding our city on my blog, ronkayeLA.com. Please give me the feedback I need to help me understand what you see. I want to better articulate the frustration and desires of our people, who have already stepped forward and worked hard to make L.A. better.

Please share this information and the attached flyer with all members of your organizations. I would also appreciate it if you would post the flyer wherever it is appropriate. I am looking forward to hearing from you as soon as possible. For further information, and to respond, visit: www.ronkayela.com

Join the movement to save L.A.Sign up now.

Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News where he spent 23 years helping to make the newspaper the voice of the San Fernando Valley and fighting for a city government that serves the people and not special interests.

Posted on July 2nd, 2008 by westchester dad
Tags: MANAGING GROWTH, TRAFFIC
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Equity Office Properties is proposing two new office buildings totaling 487,000 square feet and two residential building totalling 600 units. The office buildings, each 5 stories tall will be located on the empty lots just south of the freeway access at Howard Hughes Parkway. 

More worrisome however are the two residential projects being proposed in the same package that will be located on lots the north side that include 325 lease-units and 275 for-sale units totaling 600 residential units. The residential building at 6055 Center Drive is proposed to be 24 stories tall dwarfing the Entrada commercial building in height.

These projects will substantially impact traffic in the area that is already graded ‘F’ and also impact Los Angeles’s limited water resources. Each of these projects market themselves as meeting LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards but when the city housing resources already exceed sustainable limits, LEED is really a moot point.

Westchester/PdR and Playa Vista resident need to join with Culver City residents and enlist city leaders to kill or reduce substantially this proposal.  It’s hard to criticize Culver City for approving the Entrada when Culver City council members can quickly point to projects across the street in the City of Los Angeles that are equally as large.

The projects is certain to make traffic significantly worse at the intersections of Sepulveda and Centinela as well as Sepulveda and Howard Hughes Parkway. Another serious concern is whether the project will require that Airport Avenue be “punched through” relieve traffic demands on Sepulveda.

Both Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Councilman Bill Rosendahl lobbied to reduce the scope of the Entrada project. Clearly, they need to be consistent in their concerns for traffic and vote to severly reduce the scope of this proposal.

Posted on June 24th, 2008 by westchester dad
Tags: MANAGING GROWTH, TRAFFIC, WATER
3 Comments »

Shouldn’t the Metropolitan Transportation Authority be just dealing with transportation?

Here is a recent example of the MTA foregoing it’s main mission in transportation and getting involved in… you guessed it, housing development.

Not surprising given our elected officials build at all cost mandate. They even go so far as recommending which developers to use and how many units (560) to build on a 9 acre site.

SUBJECT: METRO ORANGE LINE SEPULVEDA STATION JOINT DEVELOPMENT

ACTION: EXECUTE AN EXCLUSIVE NEGOTIATION AGREEMENT TO DEVELOP PROPERTY ADJACENT TO SEPULVEDA STATION

RECOMMENDATION: Authorize the Chief Executive Officer to enter into an Exclusive Negotiations Agreement (ENA) with JPI West to develop a residential project (as described in Attachments A and B) on the Metro Orange Line Sepulveda Station park-and-ride site. JPI West was selected as the most qualified in response to a Request for Proposals (RFP) ssued on October 8,2007.

ISSUE: We own a 12.45 acre parcel adjacent to the Sepulveda Station which is currently used as a park-and-ride lot for Metro Orange Line patrons. (Attachment C) Current transit parking demand is less than ten percent of the I,200-space park-and-ride. A highest and best use study of the site conducted by The Maxima Group for us in 2005 indicated the feasibilty of residential use as well as destination “big box” retail use. (Attachment D) In JulY 2007, our Board adopted conceptual development guidelines for inclusion in the RFP.

We wouldn’t be bringing this up except that ‘building at all cost’ wastes resources, creates more traffic, imposes more demands on our cities services and it hurts our families first. Even when it’s built at a bus site.

Posted on June 12th, 2008 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, MANAGING GROWTH, TRAFFIC
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Thanks to an group of outgoing city council members, the City of Culver City is being sued.

The local Argonaut Newspaper reports that “a public interest group comprised of residents from several Westside communities has filed a lawsuit against Culver City, alleging that it violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) when it approved the construction of a 176-foot-high building near the Westchester-Culver City border in April.”

“The Entrada Tower project is a 12-story, 342,409-square-foot edifice that was green-lighted by the outgoing Culver City Council on April 16th. Centinela Development Partners, the developer, is seeking to build the tower project adjacent to the Radisson Hotel in Culver City.

“Gina Koshak, a Westchester Bluffs homeowner and a member of United Neighbors of the Westside, the group that filed the lawsuit, took issue with the project’s height and what she believes are violations of the California Environmental Quality Act.”

“Residents of of Culver City and neighboring Los Angeles communities took exception to the fact that the development was approved a week before three of the Culver City Council members — Carol Gross, Steven Rose and Alan Corlin — were slated to leave office due to term limits.”

Previous Entrada articles posted on WestchesterParents

The Entrada office tower Massive project = massive headache
The Entrada Chokepoint
LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce opposes Entrada
Entrada opposition intensifies
Entrada – LAX Coastal Area Chamber Action Alert

Posted on May 30th, 2008 by westchester dad
Tags: MANAGING GROWTH, TRAFFIC
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There has been some community concerns whipping up about some properties in the Playa del Rey area and I was wondering how those properties were being identified. The fear is that properties include the stores between Tuscany and Gulana on Manchester Ave. might be redeveloped as mixed use commercial/residential like what is going up now at Lincoln and Manchester.

Then I remembered seeing a recently published map by the planning department that shows properties that are considered underutilized. I think this may be where it is coming from.

The methodology the planning departments used to prepare these maps looks pretty brain dead.

The planning department appears to have used a dumbed down computer scan of non R1 properties and checked them for densities of less than X number of units. Properties below a certain density were considered underutilized  and flagged as potential sites.

I don’t think they used actual people to assess the sites which is just plain stupid because not only were those Playa del Rey properties mapped as possible candidates for high density housing sites, they also flagged churches (Covenant Presbyterian, Westchester Lutheran, St. A’s, Our Saviors Lutheran, Visitation), schools (St. Bernard’s, St. A’s, Westchester Lutheran, Visitation), the Little Von’s in Kentwood, the stores across the street from it and the YMCA.

Other interesting properties flagged are the Westchester Medical Center, properties on Arizona St. that sit on hill sides, single family homes on Sepulveda Private, and Bristol Farms. [Read more →]

Posted on April 27th, 2008 by westchester dad
Tags: GENERAL, MANAGING GROWTH, TRAFFIC
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