Councilman David Ryu has successfully proposed that $800,000 be included in the Fiscal Year 2017-2018 City Budget for repairing our concrete, with concrete. Thanks go to the Association’s Street Committee: William Newby, Tim Allyn, Jon Vein, Cindy Chvatal and Jim Wolf for tirelessly pushing the City to follow its own regulations. The Hancock Park Preservation Plan explicitly calls out that our concrete streets be maintained.
A few years ago the City had started repaving concrete streets in our area with asphalt. As we all know the asphalt looks good for about a year and then pot holes start forming, the ground becomes uneven, and the streets are actually in worse shape than they were before being covered with asphalt. Concrete lasts for at least 50 years; Hancock Park’s streets were paved in the 1920’s so we’re coming up on a 100 year anniversary, and many of these ancient streets are in better shape the newly paved asphalt ones.
Los Angeles is a big and diverse city and it is often difficult to get a focus on the specific issues of a small area. This is where your Homeowners Association plays its part. By pushing, demanding, investigating and more pushing the Streets Committee was successful in challenging the original, highly overinflated numbers estimated by the City, forced the City engineers to do some real analysis and design work and encouraged our Council Office to support this effort. Remember, don’t give up; dig in!
The block captains met at Marlborough School and one of the biggest items was safety. Crime is up and the best defense is our block captain network. Do you know your block captain? If not, contact the Association and we’ll let you know. If your block doesn’t have a block captain please consider becoming one. An alert network of homeowners keeps crime down. If you are the unfortunate victim of a crime, be sure and file a police report by contacting Officer Dave Cordova. Call his cell phone, 213-793-0650 or send him an email, 31646@lapd.lacity.org with all the information, including your name and telephone number.
The HPOZ Preservation Plan — http://www.preservation.lacity.org/hpoz/la/hancock-park regulates our HPOZ. Contact our City Planner, Kimberly Henry (kimberly.henry@lacity.org) and use the online form (http://preservation.lacity.org/hpoz/initial.screening.checklist) if you plan on making changes to the exterior of your house. Report graffiti sightings by calling 311 or at the City’s Anti-Graffiti Request System – http://anti-graffiti.lacity.org/welcome.cfm?CFID=1007&CFTOKEN=411CDB4F-0FC3-4EE1-89DE58DCCB435538 and by calling Hollywood Beautification, 323-463-5180.