Ven-Mar Neighborhood Association

Ven-Mar N.A. Meeting on May 6, 2003

May 07, 2003

About 50 people came to the Auditorium of the Walgrove avenue elementary School to her three excellent speakers on the subject of ?“Trees?”.

Ronald Lorenzen, for the Street Tree Division of the Dept. of Public Works said that the Division was concerned that the shade providing trees it our streets would keep the public way clear. This was a matter of safety. In answer to a question he stated that the parkway adjacent to a residence belonged to the residence owner who was therefore responsible for tending to it, even if the parkway was at the back of the property (-as is the case on the north side of Palms Blvd., west of Centinela). But the ?“public way?” is the City?’s responsibility. The Bureau of Street service of the Dept. of public Works repairs 7 miles of walkways annually for each of the Council Districts. Street trees are trimmed at intervals of 6 to 7 years. The 13,000 miles of streets in the City have 6,800 street trees. The urban forest of LA contains about 12 million trees. Ron is involved with the senescence of street trees and their end-of-life removal. He asked that the removal of any tree on public property without a permit from the City be reported to him promptly at 213-485-5675. (Also another number: 800-996-2489 ?– AU)

Regarding Palms Blvd. Ron mentioned that because the parkway narrowed to 3 ft in places, more than one species would be recommended. He estimated that on this street, between Walgrove and Centinela, about 70 trees could be accommodated at the usual spacing of about 30 ft. He promised to look into the condition of the white fence on the south side of Palms Blvd, east of Beethoven, which needs restoration. Ron is also involved in plantings on street medians.

Jim Summers of TreePeople (818-623-4600) mentioned his organization?’s many educational projects and its expertise in organizing citizens, providing guidance, supervision and assistance with panting and caring for trees. Treepeople can also provide tools and have arborists available. Fruit trees are within their scope.

LeiLani Johnson runs the PWD?’s program (213-473-3652), which furnishes shade trees in 5 gal containers not only to schools, parks and public places such as the new Mar Vista Post Office, but also to residences free of charge ?– up to 7 per residence. LeiLani brought excellent instructive literature to the meeting and information about the free 2-hour long courses available in the neighborhood on planting and caring for trees.

All three organizations work together and interested neighbors need to contact only one of them. Their websites are, respectively: www.lacity.org/boss/StreetTree/index.htm;
www.chaminade.org/chatswr/service/Tree/home.htm;
www.GreenLA.com.

Amanda Seward and Evelyn Dravecky, newly elected to the 13 member Board of the Mar Vista Community Council were introduced and spoke about their future roles representing our area. Our District Directors on the Board of the Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council (GRVNC), David Moring and Chris Williams, reported on GRVNC activities including those concerning the Lincoln Center project, parking and traffic mobility issues. They also mentioned the June 28 GRVNC elections.

Cyrus Voris spoke about our first Community Emergency Response Team(CERT) training course which is to start on July 7. About 30 people have signed up so far.

There was no time to deal with elections to the first elected Board of the Ven-Mar Neighborhood Association.

Sgt. Crawford of the LAUSD Police attended.

AU