July 2022-NEWS and Zoom Meetings of Interest |
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Community involvement is at the heart of what we are trying to do. With that said, check out the news and dates for meetings that may be of interest to you below. |
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MAJOR ISSUES GOING ON IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD Candidate Caruso meets with the Melrose Wednesday Walk crowd! Temporary Road Diverters Installed on Willoughby ~ The Project continues to evolve as more people ignore the diverters. Stop the Bleed - Take the 2 hour emergency survival course Your neighborhood council votes to support a bill allowing vans and campers to avoid paying parking fines.
Zoom meeting dates, times and links: - Melrose Action & Melrose BID Crime Meeting
- Mid-City West Board Meetings dates and times
- C-PAB. Community Police Advisory Board meeting
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Candidate Caruso Meets with the Melrose Wednesday Walk Crowd |
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The Melrose Wednesday Walk crowd were met by candidate for Mayor, Rick Caruso at the corner of Melrose and Gardner last week. This was an impromtu visit that lasted about 15 minutes on the street corner. Yes, that's correct. Rick Caruso caught up to us on a street corner and got out of his car to talk to us with only one member of his staff there to assist. After answering neighbors questions, he heard that his signs were being stolen in our neighborhood and he just happened to have a bunch ready to hand out. We took some pictures and gave him a lot to think about. He even got to witness first hand someone driving down Melrose making a lot of noise in a high performance car with the passenger hanging out the window acting like a fool. Plans are in the works for Mr. Caruso to come back for another visit to Melrose but with more notice next time. Details to be emailed once we have a date. |
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Temporary Road Diverters ~ The Project continues to evolve as more people ignore the diverters. |
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The City of West Hollywood seems to be doubling down on this project adding more barricades as needed to see if they can get the driving public to heal and obey. Posts on NextDoor still seem to lean more towards people who think the whole thing is a waste of time. However, there are a few "residents" who are claiming that traffic on Willoughby is getting calmer now. But guess what? Waring is taking the brunt of this diverted traffic. So the City of West Hollywood is doing a great job diverting traffic into Los Angeles instead of fixing Santa Monica Blvd to handle more traffic. Info from the City of West Hollywood: Due to the ongoing refinements of the traffic diverter located at Willoughby and Ogden, staff has postponed the workshops until late-August to ensure the public is able to experience the installation to its full extent. Virtual Workshops to provide Community Feedback: Staff is hosting a workshop for the community to provide feedback about the three temporary installations in an effort to inform the final recommendations and decisions for a safer Willoughby in the future. Meeting links coming soon. August 25th: 5:30 p.m. August 27th: 9:30 a.m. [Zoom Links Coming Soon] |
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Someone got $200,000 for submitting the plan, according to the RFP (Request for Proposal) drawn up in 2018. The problem with this "traffic diverter" is where is it diverting traffic to? WARING AVE, that's where! What was thought of as a way to get traffic back to Melrose, making Willoughby more bike & pedestrian friendly, is only making a different neighborhood street crowded now. Drivers heading east during the evening rush by using Willoughby are using Waring instead. But there are plenty of drivers just going around the barricade too, either by driving on the LEFT SIDE of the street or by zig zagging around it or worst of all, turning right, entering someone's driveway, blocking traffic as they turn around and head back to Willoughby! If you were trying to drive home on Thursday the 14th at around 6:30 you got a taste of what would happen during an emergency when the LAPD closed off about 6 blocks, Melrose to Waring and Fairfax to Genesse, because of an officer involved shooting at Orange Grove & Melrose. Traffic on Willoughby was at a standstill since if you made the right turn at Ogden, you got down to Waring and it was CLOSED so you had to figure out some way to turn around with a whole line of cars in back of you and head back up to Willoughby! It should also be mentioned that the bollards that were recently added at Spaulding are now getting destroyed by delivery trucks too. You can TEXT your input to show you are against this element of the project by following the instructions below: Your input is vital to this street design project and may influence the types of permanent installations that are installed in the future. To submit input text the following to (844) 300-1624: "I do not like the Diverter at Ogden/Willoughby" - Text "B" Additional Feedback? To provide additional written feedback to staff, click here to submit your comments. Or contact City of West Hollywood Senior Transportation Planner Bob Cheung at BCheung@weho.org or by phone at (323) 848-6346. Here's the original postcard most of us received in the mail: |
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Stop the Bleed - A 2 hour emergency survival course. |
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Do you know what to do if your child, spouse or partner is bleeding? A bad cut could happen from something as simple as getting injured from broken glass to something as serious as a knife wound or worse. The 2 hour class will teach you techniques on what to do in order to quickly Stop the Bleed and maybe even save a life! The Magen Am non-profit group works with emergency responders to bring you this course. They only need 8+ people to schedule a class. Let us know if this is something you'd like to learn more about. Drop us an email with your name and contact info and we will pass this on to Magen Am to contact you with details. STOP THE BLEED® is a national campaign to encourage bystanders to become trained, equipped, and empowered to help in a bleeding emergency before professional help arrives. It is a public/private partnership led by the Department of Defense and many other stakeholders. Here's a link to more information about how Stop the Bleed courses help with a layperson's willingness to respond during a traumatic medical emergency. |
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Mid-City West Votes to support $1,500 fine waviers on parking tickets - Vans and Campers on our streets just got a free pass! |
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Not that this is even going to pass the State Assembly since if you read the text, it gives one class of people a free ride while anyone else who's ever gotten a parking ticket still has to pay! Isn't that called discrimination or selective enforcement? So here's the deal, AB 1685 (Bryan) / Parking Ticket Relief Program / Homeless Persons would mandate that jurisdictions and parking enforcement agencies forgive up to $1,500 in parking fines annually for people experiencing homelessness. But it makes no provision to help them find shelter off the streets. There is no provision to even advise them where they can park legally. There's also no provision to prove your experiencing homelessness once you get into court! So, vans and campers can park in front of yours and my home, dump their sewage on the street, get parking tickets all day long and then move a few feet down the road after 72 hours. This Assembly Bill is saying all of that is OK with them! Mid City West Neighborhood Council is also saying that's OK with them too! But here's the part that irks me the most, the board member making the most noise defending this letter of support at the board meeting lives in the protected, fenced in neighborhood of Park La Brea and has probably never had to experience the problems this creates. One more thing, if you think the City of L.A. will lose out on revenue, nope, guess again! The bill has a provision for the State to reimburse cities for the lost revenue. (Does anyone really believe those fines would ever get paid in the first place? Now you know why this is so popular with the Cities!) FOUR members of the public spoke out against this letter of support but our Neighborhood Council, who's supposed to be looking out for our best interests, decided to ignore all of us. Sorry neighbors but these are the people who got voted in. The next time your local meth lab catches fire in front of your home, go have a word with our Neighborhood Council! |
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WATER RESTRICTIONS ARE NOW IN PLACE IN OUR AREA! Click on the image below for more details from the LADWP |
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MELROSE VILLAGE Wednesday Walks Would you like to meet some of your neighbors? Maybe you want to get off the couch and improve your cardiovascular health. Maybe you would just like to feel safe with a group walking our neighborhood. We'd like to make this happen! Typically we are joined by a member of the LAPD and Jill Kline from Councilmember Koretz's office who are there to meet the community, answer questions and talk about what concerns us. Regardless if you want to walk 1 block or 1 mile, it's up to you. We want to make this an enjoyable and no stress walk so we will start with a walk down Waring beginning at Spaulding and head in a different direction each week. The route is planned on Tuesday and you can email us for details. You can join in at any location on the route or meet at Spaulding and Waring at our start time of 6:30 p.m. Anyone is welcome to join the fun and feel free to bring your dogs, children, parents, opinions and concerns. If the group wants to walk further, we can extend this in any direction after we circle back to the starting point. (As with any type of exercise, consult your physician before to make sure this is the right thing for you to be doing.) Last year, we even made the CBS local news! The video link is below. |
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Mid City West Neighborhood Council & Melrose BID Meetings: |
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Melrose BID Crime Prevention MeetingThis meeting is combined with the Melrose Action Monthly Crime Meeting. It is on the 1st Wednesday of the month at 7 p.m. You need to email kim@urbanlegendpr.com to get on the list and receive the zoom link details. This is an opportunity to speak directly to the people who help shape Melrose Ave. Get on the list! |
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We have brought this up before, but feel it's worth mentioning again... What brought you to sign up for our newsletters? We want to believe it is because you wish to learn what's going on and to participate in advocating for a safer and cleaner neighborhood. Most of you who receive this email live in Zone 2 or are affected by what happens on Melrose. This newsletter contains links to the meetings to sign up for the Melrose BID Crime meeting, most of the Mid City West Neighborhood Council meetings and the LAPD C-PAB meeting. Here's the important part: Neither the Melrose Bid or the MCWNC meetings have neighbors, referred to as 'stakeholders', attend very often. Most of the sub-committees for MCWNC have NO 'stakeholders' attend. So what happens when elected representatives get no input from those they are voted to represent? They go off and turn their attention to their own pet projects instead of advocating for the people and the neighborhoods they serve! So PLEASE get involved! If you find a meeting topic in the list above that you are interested in and if you can attend just ONE meeting to make a comment or offer support to someone making comment, it will make a difference! Tell them you are part of The Melrose Village Neighborhood Alliance! |
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C-PAB (Community - Police Advisory Board) |
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Thursday July 21 at 7:00 p.m. This is a great place to listen to your police officers discussing issues with the community advisory board. You may even be given the chance to raise your hand and speak on an issue. | | |
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If you would like to help us with the newsletter, write an article or comment on our newsletters, LET US KNOW! This is a community effort! |
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