Report on the July Venice Neighborhood Council Meeting
By C.V.
Beck
I attended the monthly meeting of
the Grassroots Board of Officers, July 17, at Westminster
School.
As usual, the agenda was, in my
humble opinion, about twice as long as it needed to be and allowed for the
minimum of public comment divided into two parts, widely separated in time.
There were about 20 members of the public
present and about 21 officers of the Board, Mark Grant from Councilperson
Rosendahl's office, and a policeman from the Pacific Division. There were a few
small bottles of water available. Some of the more heated items on the agenda
were the proposed “Eruv” for the boardwalk, an accomodation for the
more orthodox people within the Jewish
community.
When I looked at this online
at the GRVNC website, I was only able to get a few fragments of this proposal to
appear. I don't know if this would be a technical problem on my computer or from
the GRVNC. It would not be the first time that something is supposed to be
online and is not or only partially present.
An “Eruv” is a kind of
line of demarcation within which activities can occur on a religious day for
Jewish people. Some persons were opposed to this because of the possibility of
bird injury. Sylviane Dungan, a board member, was objecting to the supporting
poles which would hold up the monofilament as unsightly visual clutter although
I was not convinced of this. I personally was not opposed to it.
The other hot topics were: a letter
from Food Not Bombs which had as an attachment our Bill of Rights. Peggy Lee
Kennedy spoke about the Boardwalk matter as being constitutionally very
important. Linda Lucks, from the Boardwalk Committee, seemed more concerned with
the rights of the merchants on the east side of the
Boardwalk.
In the matter of the Ray
Hotel, Marta Evry spoke in opposition, stating that this variance in the height
restrictions would set a very negative precedent for Venice. Arnold Springer
also spoke on this matter as bad
precedent.
Emily Winters spoke of the
need for public restroom facilities in Venice, saying that we really need to
address this positively. There was some discussion of the Santa Barbara
procedures for “helping” people who have to live in motorhomes. DeDe
Audet felt that we should implement this here in Venice. I left the meeting at
10 p.m. and they were not yet through the agenda.
Posted: Wed - August 1, 2007 at 11:00 AM