BEACHWOOD CANYON NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION

MEETING MINUTES
September 26, 2002

Board Members in attendance:

Fran Reichenbach
Ed Hayek
George Abrahams
Diana Knoll
Byrd Holland
Tina Roman

President Fran Reichenbach called the meeting to order at 6:45 p.m.   All board members were introduced to the community members present.   President Reichenbach reminded the community of some of the quality of life activities that our board members are involved in; such as preserving r-1 zoning, repainting of red zones, repaving of the roads, installation of no parking signs for the public safety, policing of parking violations in the restaurant district, graffiti removal, and removal of ugly flyers from our telephone poles.

The minutes from the last meeting were approved with typo corrections. 

Diana Knoll reported on the treasury and that the membership drive has been successful so far.  A schedule of table-manning for further membership drive efforts up at the Beachwood Market will be organized by Diana Knolls.  Diana made a motion that the Beachwood Voice be paid $300 for the fall issue’s operating expenses.  Fran asked that another payment of $200 be made at the beginning of the year.  The motion was unanimously approved. 

Present also was Officer Bill Solle who gave a crime status update, emphasizing that crime in our area is, number one, burglaries from vehicles and, number two, residential burglaries; noting that there were only six burglaries in two weeks in our area, which is very good.  Officer Solle also related that the most complaints involved transients and transient camps. For some reason, L.A. is becoming inundated with transients; and the biggest concern in our area is, of course, the fire hazard.  The present reaction to the problem is that once a month for two days, the LAPD raids the campsites, moving the people out and giving referrals to appropriate agencies.  Twice a month all senior leads conduct an outreach program to get rid of the camps and sanitize those areas, including working with a cart service to pick up all the grocery carts on the streets.  Officer Solle also informed us that the biggest social service location is on South Vermont, not in Hollywood.  Everyone is referred there.  Unfortunately, there are few services for adults in our area; most are downtown.  Officer Solle announced the town hall meeting for West LA, Pacific, Hollywood, and Wilshire Divisions to occur on October 3^rd at 7:00 p.m. at 11960 Sunset Blvd.  Officer Solle left pamphlets of important 800 numbers for various City Departments and services. 

The next issue reported on were the status of the cottages and the impending condo development.  The meeting at Council LaBonge’s office with Rory Fitzpatrick and Renee Weitzer was not very optimistic.  However, the entry to the condos will definitely not be on Gower.  But now the problem is all the traffic that will be on Beachwood.  The feeling is that if the community puts up too many roadblocks to the development, the developer will put up apartments, for which they need no approval from the City.  The next step is to try is to get the support of  LAUSD, first meeting with the school principal. A committee was formed to approach the principal.  Other suggestions were made that would affect the commencement of the condos, such as indigent trees, zoning, tourism, and an environmental impact report. 

The next issue was a status report on the Sprint tower.  Hollywoodland Homeowners Association has joined with the BCNA to fight this project.  A combined meeting with Tom LaBonge was planned.

Our guest speaker was Gregory Randall, a patrol officer with the Los Angeles Animal Regulation.  Mr. Randall gave us very useful information about the wild life in our Hills and a variety of problems that we have in this area.  Mr. Randall left us very useful brochures regarding this subject.  There was a lively discussion among community members on this subject.

The last issue on the agenda was a discussion of code enforcement of the yard sales on our public sidewalks.  We will report to Code Enforcement with a list of addresses of yard sales that take place up and down Beachwood to see if we can’t get rid of that unsightliness.