Rosendahl Calls Town Hall Meeting on Homeless Issues

Councilman Bill Rosendahl's office has announced a Town Hall Meeting on Homeless Issues. We need all Venice stakeholders who care about this issue to please take time to attend this meeting and show express your support for enforcing existing laws and for finding solutions to the real quality of life issues that result from the current homeless situation in Venice.

Rosendahl's press release is as follows:

Public Invited to Discussion on Enforcement Strategies and Social Services
LOS ANGELES – Councilman Bill Rosendahl is holding a Town Hall forum September 23rd to discuss homeless issues in the 11th Council District. The event will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. at Westminster Elementary School in Venice.

The session will include a series of presentations on ongoing and new efforts to prevent people from living on the streets or in their vehicles. Those efforts include law enforcement strategies, parking enforcement and the “Streets to Homes” program.

Rosendahl will moderate the session, which will include questions from the audience to officials from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Office of the Los Angeles City Attorney, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which will manage the “Streets to Homes” program. The program will provide safe parking places and case management to eligible vehicle dwellers.

WHO

Councilman Bill Rosendahl, 11th District

Los Angeles Police Department representatives
Los Angeles City Attorney representatives
Los Angeles Department of Transportation representatives
Michael Arnold, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority

WHAT
Town Hall Meeting to Discuss Homeless Issue

WHEN
September 23, 2010
7:00 P.M.-9:00 P.M.

WHERE

Westminster Elementary School
1010 Abbot Kinney Blvd
Venice, CA 90291-3312

For more information, contact Arturo Pina by email at arturo.pina@lacity.org or call (310) 568-8772

Implementation in Venice of the “No Oversize Vehicle” Ordinance

Dear Mayor Villaraigosa, dear Councilman Rosendahl,

Starting last week, thousands of Venice residents began circulating and/or signing petitions to implement the new “No Oversize Vehicle” ordinance on their blocks to remove at night RVS and campers, which have been documented dumping and/or leaking sewage on our streets.

I am writing to address several questions about the process for authorizing the signs once the petitions have been submitted.

The City Attorney’s Office has advised us that under the petition process set out in the ordinance, no “implementing ordinance” is required, and that the City Council has the authority to unilaterally authorize the signage for six block areas by Council resolution. Nonetheless, Councilman Rosendahl claims that an “implementing ordinance” is required to install the signs. Any new ordinance is subject to the Mayor’s veto; the Council’s override of a veto is not a foregone conclusion. Thus, we would ask:

Mayor Villaraigosa, will you indeed sign the ordinance?

And, Mr. Rosendahl, have you spoken directly to Mr. Villaraigosa and secured his promise to sign the ordinance?

Finally, Mr. Rosendahl, if the Mayor, who has previously expressed his antipathy to the new Oversize Vehicle Ordinance by refusing to sign it, is not willing to sign your new Venice-specific “implementing ordinance,” why do you not take the City Attorney’s advice and pass several Council resolutions for six block areas that are most burdened by oversize vehicles? We are advised, again by the City Attorney, that this is the quickest means to authorize the signs and this procedure is immune to a Mayoral veto.

I am respectfully yours,


Mark Ryavec, President