| 1. Describe Boundaries |
North: The south side of Sunset Boulevard from Veteran Avenue in the west to Hilgard Avenue in the east.
East: The east side of Hilgard Ave from Sunset Blvd in the north to Weyburn Ave in the south ; the south side of Weyburn Ave from Hilgard Ave in the west to Malcolm Avenue in the east; the west side of Malcolm Ave from Weyburn Ave in the north to Wilshire Boulevard in the south; the east side of Westwood Blvd from Wilshire Blvd in the north to Ohio Avenue in the south
South: The south side of Wilshire Blvd from Malcolm Ave in the east to Westwood Blvd in the west ; the north side of Ohio Ave from Westwood Blvd in the east to Veteran Ave in the west.
West: The east side of Veteran Ave from Wilshire Blvd in the north to Ohio Ave in the south; the eastern side of the I-405 Freeway between Sunset Blvd in the North and Wilshire Blvd in the south, excluding the Veteran’s Administration property.
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| 2. Attach a map of the Neighborhood Council |
Proposed+NC+Boundaries.pdf
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| 3. Explain why these boundaries were chosen. For example, the boundaries may be based on census tracts, on historical landmarks, on existing community planning areas, etc. |
The North boundary is based on the existing Westwood Neighborhood Council's boundary with Bel-Air Beverly Crest and is also the northern boundary of UCLA's campus.
For the East boundary, it was important to include both sides of Hilgard Ave to keep the UCLA community intact, since all of UCLA's sororities, two of its grad student housing complexes, as well as Hillel at UCLA and University Religious Conference are on the east side of Hilgard between Strathmore and LeConte. Between LeConte and Wilshire, our Eastern boundary was primarily informed by the boundaries of the Westwood Village BID http://www.thewestwoodvillage.com/reports-and-studies/ though we also worked to use streets as boundaries instead of cutting streets in half. We also worked to respect the boundaries of the Holmby Westwood Property Owner's Association by dividing it as little possible while including as many apartments as possible since these largely house the UCLA community; and since the Holmby Westwood Property Owner's Association only offers Single family homeowners full membership rights such as voting and eligibility to serve on the Board of Directors and, as such, could not be truly said to represent these areas. http://www.holmbywestwoodpoa.org/?page_id=183
South of Wilshire, Westwood Blvd down to Ohio was a natural division with predominately multifamily homes serving the UCLA Community to the West, and single-family home areas that expressed little interest in joining our new Council to the East. Since Westwood Blvd itself is a contiguous center of business, we did not want to split it up and since numerous stakeholders representing the Persian Community, such as Alex Helmi, wanted to be included, we opted to include both sides of Westwood Blvd.
For the south boundary, between Westwood Blvd and Malcolm, the Executive Director of the Westwood BID suggested that we should explore including the entire BID area, since many businesses in that area would be excited about a pro-business Neighborhood Council. He was right and the owners of numerous buildings in that area such as Douglass Emmett have signed our petition, as have numerous BID members including its outgoing chair Jessica Dabney (the full BID will consider endorsing our movement in January). Between Westwood Blvd and Veteran, we chose Ohio Avenue as our southern boundary because that's a major street and also approximates where apartments that mostly serve the UCLA community end and single family homes begin. We confirmed this with the UCLA Police Department which stated that our boundaries are a "very accurate" approximation of the boundaries of the residential areas that mostly serve the UCLA community.
For the east boundary, we chose Veteran because it roughly marks the end of where apartments serving the UCLA community end and single-family homes that have not expressed much interest in joining our new council begin. While this area has not expressed interest in joining the new council, we are happy to accept the areas north of the Veteran Cemetery, east of Sepulveda, and west of Veteran if the DONE would rather this area not be geographically isolated.
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| 4. Do the proposed boundaries affect any other Neighborhood Council boundaries? |
Yes
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| 5. If the answer to Question 4 is “Yes”, list the Neighborhood Councils which are affected by the boundary overlap. |
Westwood Neighborhood Council (WWNC)
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| 6. If the answer to Question 4 is “Yes”, explain how the boundaries affect other existing Neighborhood Council boundaries. Do the proposed boundaries include any shared assets, such as a park, a school, a library, a facility, a building of historical significance, etc.? |
There are no shared assets in the proposed boundaries. Facilities such as the Westwood Public Library, the Homlby Hills park and Westwood park would remain the the boundaries of the original Westwood Neighborhood Council.
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| 7. Does the Neighborhood Council area contain at least 20,000 stakeholders? |
Yes
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| 8. If the answer to Question 7 is “No”, mark the space or spaces below which apply: |
Neighborhood Council represents an historic neighborhood or community AND includes City service providers such as a library or a police station
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| 9. If the population in the Neighborhood Council contains more than 20,000 stakeholders, estimate the total: |
70000
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| Why are you seeking a Neighborhood Council subdivision? |
On behalf of Westwood Forward, a coalition of UCLA graduate and undergraduate student leaders, faculty, staff members, Westwood Homeowners, Renters, and Business leaders, we are petitioning for subdivision because when we see Westwood’s lack of affordable housing; sky-high rent prices; ong-vacant buildings; and a complete lack of places to dance, listen to live music, or play pool, you’d think our elected representatives would do something about it. You’d think they’d see a problem with the fact that residents of one of the largest college towns in the country have to go all the way to Hollywood or Santa Monica to have a night out. You’d think they’d be jumping to change or offer variances on regulations that have prevented numerous popular businesses from coming into Westwood. You’d think they’d work to better to engage with their stakeholders when their voter turnout is far less than 1%. And you’d think they’d feel a humanitarian sense of urgency to bring significantly more housing into our community when our crippling housing shortage is forcing students into homelessness or deep into debt just to live in squalid conditions with numerous roommates. You’d think – but unfortunately our Westwood Neighborhood Council has done the exact opposite:
They have repeatedly opposed UCLA’s housing projects (1,2), fraternity houses (3), and private
housing development projects (4) that would considerably alleviate our housing crisis, citing the fact that these projects have “too many units” as if we weren’t in desperate need of more units, “too few parking spaces” even as these projects would diminish the number of cars driven into Westwood by allowing students to walk to class rather than drive in or bus in from afar, and alleged negative aesthetic impacts that they somehow find more important than addressing the basic human need of providing a roof over our heads (5). They have also opposed allowing accessory dwelling units which could sustainably provide housing for hundreds in our units in structures that are already built (6).
They have also stifled business in Westwood by opposing places like Rocco’s (7) over nonsense complaints over their design and operations, opposing the alcohol selling permits of a range of establishments from Spireworks to Target and even opposing a liquor permit to D1 Café over the owner’s status as an Iranian immigrant with imperfect fluency in English (8). Restaurants like Barney’s Beanery/Q’s offer real entertainment at all of their locations except for Westwood because they know our Neighborhood Council will fight them; indeed, when they even just suggested offering reduced price drinks to attract students in the middle of the great recession, the Neighborhood Council not only opposed them (9), but went on to fight the City of Los Angeles’ policy of not enforcing such conditions as those prohibiting Happy Hours (10). Most businesses that would want to offer nightlife in Westwood realize it’s not worth wasting all of the time and money on land acquisition and design to try to come to Westwood because they see that even before they’d need to go to the City and State for approval, they’d have to go through the Neighborhood Council’s Land Use Committee. This Committee has a default list of 32 conditions posted on their front page prohibiting everything from Happy Hours and Dancing to Pool Tables and Pitchers and mandating that the establishments always operate primarily as a restaurant and only secondarily as a place that sells alcohol (11). Most businesses that do come into Westwood have to voluntarily accept these conditions so that the Neighborhood Council doesn’t oppose them, since City Commissions tend to uphold the judgments of the neighborhoods and these businesses don’t want to risk not opening over dancing; but the result is that our community is left with no place more exciting than mere restaurants at which we can order drinks with our meals. They’ve also opposed numerous popular restaurants such as Lemonade (12) from coming into Westwood over antiquated and infeasible parking expectations that make no sense for venues that would primarily serve students and other residents who live in walking distance. In those cases City administrators took the rare step of ignoring them, they’ve supported appeals (13, 14) of these decisions that cost these businesses further months of time and litigation and drove places like Lemonade away from Westwood altogether. They also opposed the Business Improvement District’s suggestion that food uses be redefined in the Village Specific Plan (15) in a manner that would allow more popular fast casual and incidental uses to open in the Village (16); it’s rare that City Councilmember expresses such an eagerness to make ad hoc changes to a Specific Plan rather than wait years for a comprehensive overhaul and it’s absurd that our community would pass on this opportunity and keep turning businesses away for year, in the meantime! They have also opposed measures that would make Westwood more accessible and inclusive to our community such as efforts to install bike lanes (17) and a pedestrian plaza (18).
They have also operated in a fundamentally undemocratic manner and sought to marginalize the voices of students and renters (19). They voted to extend their terms to 4 years even though roughly half of their stakeholders are students and doing so would make it far harder for most students to serve (20), since most students are here no longer than 4 years and elections are not held until May or June. When the City asked them how to go about moving Neighborhood Council elections to odd years starting in 2021, they undemocratically asked the City to Extend their current terms by a year to 201921 even though all of the city’s other recommended options would have involved holding a 2018 election as planned (22) and even though none of their stakeholders elected them to serve for the 2018-2019 year. Once their bylaws committee and leadership put forward an amendment that would have limited students to voting on just one out of nineteen seats; and they brazenly admitted they were doing so over concerns that UCLA students could drown out homeowners with their numbers if they were ever rallied to vote (23). Though that measure was defeated because it blatantly violated the City’s guidelines in arbitrarily discriminating against classes of stakeholders, members of the Council’s leadership have continued to publicly state that students and renters shouldn’t have as much say in what happens in Westwood because we don’t pay taxes on multi-million dollar homes or to stay in Westwood as long as they do (24).
They have also shown their contempt for students giving public comment at meetings by shouting them down, chastising them, calling student statements “disgusting” and the Daily Bruin “fake news,” and refusing to consider their proposals. Perhaps worst of all, they have repeatedly suppressed the student vote by refusing to follow the majority of Neighborhood Councils (25) in allowing the City to facilitate secure online voting (26, 27) despite our community’s insistence that this poses a significant barrier to student participation (28). This created a perfect storm to disenfranchise UCLA’s students in the 2016 election, as they offered just one in-person polling place all of the way on South Sepulveda from 9am to 3pm on just one day (29) that happened to be during UCLA’s Finals Week (30). Of course this location had plenty of free parking for homeowners; but it was more than a 30 minute walk each way for UCLA students living on the Hill and was about as far as one can get from the majority of the student body while still being in Westwood (31). The result is that in our community of likely more that 90,000 stakeholders, only 496 people voted and a homeowner majority was elected with just 87 homeowner votes with 5 members getting elected to seats for which students weren’t eligible with just 1 to 10 votes; indeed, 2 members only got one single vote that they likely cast for themselves (32).
Yet, this council claims to represent our community and the City will continue heeding their recommendations as if they do until we do something about it. This is incredibly dangerous not only because it means businesses and housing developments are being turned away, rather than welcomed as they should be; but also because Westwood has an opportunity over the next few years to change its specific plans and also because there will be immense interest on the part of the City to get Westwood ready for the Purple Line Extension and hosting the Olympics. If the community shows it is ready to embrace the future, we have a real shot at zoning for significantly more housing and revitalizing our nightlife and business community; but if the Council representing our community continues to fight this change, then we will be left behind. Unfortunately, there is no way to recall our Neighborhood Councilmembers or hold referenda on their decisions; so we are on course to not have any way to democratically influence this council until 2019, and that election would again not be online and the apportionment of its seats would continue to guarantee homeowners a disproportionate share of power that nearly guarantees their majority in perpetuity .
Thankfully, there is a way for us to break this cycle and secure the representation our community deserves this year. We are petitioning to start our own Neighborhood Council that would represent UCLA, the areas that are predominantly housing for the UCLA community, and the business area that is primarily frequented by the members of this community. This plan would include all stakeholders within these boundaries, from homeowners to students to commuting employees to renters and business owners. But because our proposed bylaws would mandate online voting whenever possible, and because the composition of the board would accurately reflect the composition of the community, we have no doubt that this neighborhood council would reflect the values of the community. It would work to respect the interests of all and clean up and preserve the historic beauty of our community while boldly charging ahead to fight for the housing and entertainment we need to revitalize the amazing place that is Westwood.
1 http://dailybruin.com/2017/09/16/westwood-neighborhood-council-recap-sept-14-2/ 2 http://www.wwnc.org/assets/agenda-minutes/Minutes-06152011.pdf
3 http://www.wwnc.org/general-board-meeting-minutes-april-2016/
4 http://www.wwnc.org/assets/agenda-minutes/Minutes-12102014.pdf
5 http://dailybruin.com/2017/10/02/editorial-housing-for-ucla-students-should-be-prioritized-over-village-aesthetic /
6 http://www.wwnc.org/general-board-meeting-minutes-may-2016/
7 http://www.wwnc.org/general-board-meeting-minutes-august-2016/
8 http://dailybruin.com/2017/01/22/westwood-business-owners-struggle-to-obtain-liquor-licenses/
9 http://www.wwnc.org/assets/agenda-minutes/Minutes-02082012.pdf
10 http://www.wwnc.org/general-board-meeting-minutes-december-2015/
11http://www.wwnc.org/assets/committees/WWNC%20LUPC%20SAMPLE%20ALCOHOL%20CONDITIONS.pdf
12 http://www.wwnc.org/general-board-meeting-minutes-may-2015/
13 http://www.wwnc.org/general-board-meeting-minutes-november-2015/
14 http://www.wwnc.org/assets/agenda-minutes/Minutes-12102014.pdf
15 http://www.wwnc.org/general-board-meeting-minutes-september-2017/
16 http://dailybruin.com/2017/09/22/update-to-westwood-village-plan-may-fill-vacancies-with-new-restaurants/
17 http://www.wwnc.org/assets/agenda-minutes/Minutes-03192014.pdf
18 http://www.wwnc.org/general-board-meeting-minutes-november-2015/
19 http://www.wwnc.org/general-board-meeting-minutes-november-2016/ 20
http://dailybruin.com/2016/11/16/editorial-new-westwood-neighborhood-council-terms-inhibit-student-involvem ent/
21 http://www.wwnc.org/assets/agenda-minutes/Minutes-05102017.pdf
22 http://www.wwnc.org/assets/agenda-minutes/Motion-2019-Elections.pdf
23 http://www.wwnc.org/assets/agenda-minutes/Board%20Minutes-05112011.pdf
24 http://dailybruin.com/2017/06/11/westwood-community-polarized-over-improving-village-nightlife/
25 http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2015/15-1022-S2_rpt_DONE_08-03-2017.pdf
26 http://www.wwnc.org/general-board-meeting-minutes-may-2017/
27 http://dailybruin.com/2015/09/25/westwood-neighborhood-council-contests-removal-of-vote-by-mail-option/ 28
http://dailybruin.com/2017/04/12/editorial-online-voting-would-increase-turnout-in-neighborhood-council-electi ons/
29 https://empowerla.org/elections/region11/wwnc16/
30 http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/Portals/50/Documents/calendar-archive/academiccalendar15-16.pdf
31
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Hedrick+Hall,+De+Neve+Drive,+Los+Angeles,+CA/1350+S+Sepulveda+Blvd,+Lo s+Angeles,+CA+90025/@34.0630004,-118.4621194,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x80c2bc926ea 25447:0x6b58b1ab67a6dc2e!2m2!1d-118.4523152!2d34.0731836!1m5!1m1!1s0x80c2bb7bbca20adf:0xf7c0660c2 56d6a03!2m2!1d-118.4481111!2d34.0531294!3e2
32 https://empowerla.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/WWNC-2016-Official-Canvass-of-Votes.pdf
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| Describe the residential profile of the proposed Neighborhood Council. Examples: ”Mostly single family homes”, “Mostly apartments”, “Mixture of single family and multiple family dwellings”. |
Mostly apartments.
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| Describe the commercial or business profile within the proposed Neighborhood Council. Examples: “Mostly businesses with less than 10 employees” “Mostly businesses with around 100 employees” “Mostly businesses with hundreds of employees” “Mostly industrial or manufacturing businesses” “Mostly retail or service businesses” “A mixture of different types of businesses” |
Mainly restaurants and small retail businesses with the exception of a couple large grocery stores and a few large office buildings.
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| Describe the economic profile of the proposed Neighborhood Council. Examples: ”Affluent”, “Middle income”, “Mostly unemployed”, “A mix of upper, middle and lower income people”. |
In the existing Westwood Neighborhood Council about 1/4 of households are $20k or less annual income, about 1/4 of households are between $20k-$60k, and the remaining 1/2 are $60k and over. This subdivision is marked by mostly lower income students, and middle income faculty, staff, and business workers.
Source: http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/neighborhood/westwood/#income
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| Describe the types of employment that are available within the proposed Neighborhood Council. Examples: Retail / Wholesale / Manufacturing / Entertainment / Art / Government / Health Services /Banks / Finance Companies / Insurance / Construction / Public Utilities / Communication / Computers |
Education / Health Services / Retail / Banks / Dining / Entertainment/ Art/ Construction
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| 1. Describe in detail the outreach process used to identify community stakeholders. |
Outreach consisted of a substantial amount of social media marketing. We created a facebook page and a website in which our statement with reasons for subdivision and our petition were made easily accessible to anybody with access to the internet. We reached out to various student groups on the UCLA campus which include, the Graduate Students Association, the Undergraduate Student Association Council, On Campus Housing Council, various staff and faculty members, and various student organizations on campus. The outreach was conducted via emails, announcements, social media blasts, and even flyering in various locations on campus. We also conducted substantial outreach with various non-ucla entities such as the Business Improvement District, the Westwood Neighborhood Council, our respective city council member Paul Koretz's office, Daniel Tamm of the mayors office, and a multitude of individual businesses located within the proposed boundaries.
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| 2. Describe or list the types of outreach activities used to inform stakeholders about the existence or formation of the Neighborhood Council. What types of outreach activities were employed? Examples of outreach activities include mass mailings, telephone calls, public meetings, and door-to-door visits. |
Because lack of engagement was one of our biggest qualms with the current Westwood Neighborhood Council, we made outreach and engagement our #1 priority. We organized two public Town Hall meetings that were advertised widely to all members of the Westwood community, the first was held in the UCLA Student Union and the second was held at Skylight Gardens in Westwood. The campus town hall drew out members of the greater Westwood community, and the Skylight Gardens town hall drew our student members as well. There were more attendees at these town halls than any of us had ever seen at any Neighborhood Council meetings. Each Town Hall included a presentation of the proposed Neighborhood Council, provided opportunities for Q&A, and invited attendees to share public comment. In addition to our public town halls, we engaged in wholesale petition gathering on campus engaging hundreds of stakeholders who had never been engaged before. Additionally, we build intentional relationships with leaders of different stakeholder communities including but not limited to the Westwood Village Improvement Association, leaders of the Persian community in Westwood and UCLA administrators, faculty members and student governments. This petition was formally endorsed by the Graduate Student Association, as well as the President, External Vice President, and Facilities Commissioner of the Undergraduate Students Association. Recognizing the important role of the internet and social media in democratizing leadership and governance, we placed a heavy emphasis on online engagement. We created a website (http://www.westwoodforward.com) and Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/westwoodforward/). One of our hopes for the new Neighborhood Council is that it will better utilize online presences -- via the usage of online voting and online engagement -- to better serve its constituency. It was for that reason that we thought it was important to put our petition online. A more extensive list of our outreach efforts can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18Qk2RaPZ-AZUS4w0bEJRUEFT52JcRwN0N2bFZooANGM/edit?usp=sharing
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| 3. Approximately how much time was spent on actual outreach activities prior to submitting this application? Examples include “one hour per week for six months”, “an hour every day for one month”, “at least three months”, “every week since July 2015", etc. |
20 hours per week for 6 weeks
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| 4. Were public meetings held on behalf of the Neighborhood Council? On average, how many people attended each meeting? |
Yes, there were two town hall meetings. One was on UCLA's campus, and one was at Skylight Gardens in Westwood Village. The former had 45 people sign in, and the latter had 55 to 75 people in attendance. After brief presentations, participants were invited to sign up to give 2-minute public comments as many times as time permitted (about 3 times per meeting) to offer their feedback on our proposed bylaws, and boundaries, as well as the proposal in general.
Here are articles describing these town halls:
http://dailybruin.com/2017/11/17/westwood-forward-talks-proposed-new-neighborhood-council-at-town-hall/
http://dailybruin.com/2017/11/28/local-business-owners-share-opinions-on-westwood-forward-proposal/
Here are videos of them:
https://www.facebook.com/westwoodforward/videos/285915131929184/
https://www.facebook.com/westwoodforward/videos/281439132376784/
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| 5. Did you contact the affected Neighborhood Council? What outreach, or public meetings were held outside the proposed Neighborhood Council boundaries while still within the existing Neighborhood Council boundaries. |
We have spoken about our proposal with many members of the existing Neighborhood Council; 4 of them have come to privately support our petition. We also began speaking at the existing council's meetings as early as April in the hopes that we might encourage them to make changes from within rather than have to form a new council. Finally, we spoke briefly about our proposed new council at the existing council and expressed our sincere desires to work with them, starting with working with them on an additional town hall meeting that will likely take place in February.
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| 6. Attach to this application the original signatures of at least 500 stakeholders within the proposed Neighborhood Council boundaries. Keep a copy of the signatures collected for your records. Signature amounts in excess of 500 will be retained on file by the Department as additional outreach documentation. |
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| 7. Signatures shall, to the maximum extent feasible, reflect the broadest array of community stakeholders who will be active participants in the Neighborhood Council. Please explain how the signature collection process was used to include, inform and educate the widest possible variety of stakeholders. |
Our petition was embedded within our website, WestwoodForward.com, where potential supporters could read up about our efforts, our grievances and our proposals at which point they were invited to join our movement by signing the petition. Each of our volunteers received training before they went out into the community to collect signatures so that they were equipped to answer any and all questions. One of our many modes of communication was social media. We strategically included different media articles and testimonials in sharing the petition to ensure that community members could make informed, educated decisions.
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| 8. Outreach activities are a very important part of all Neighborhood Council operations. Outreach activities should be performed regularly in order to share ideas and to communicate news, events and information. If certified, lease describe below how you plan to continue to conduct outreach activities within the proposed Neighborhood Council boundaries. |
Outreach and engagement should be the number one priorities of the new Neighborhood Council. A few ways who plan to continue to engage the community are: a) by providing more than one polling place during elections, b) by allowing for online voting and online feedback mechanisms for those who cannot physically attend meetings themselves, c) hosting mixers for all Westwood community members frequently to provide a more informal setting for Neighborhood Council members to engage with the community, d) by posting meeting agendas in 5 diverse Westwood locations, and e) by working complimentarily with the existing Neighborhood Council to ensure that we are all best serving the Westwood Village community.
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| Attach samples of your outreach materials |
Skylight+Gardens+Town+Hall+Event.pdf, Restaurant+Table+Flyers.pptx, Westwood+Forward+Business+Presentationv1.pptx
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| Attach copies of sign-in sheets for any outreach meeting held |
Skylight+Gardens+Town+Hall+Attendance.pdf
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