Sponsored Post
Dear Hancock Park and Surrounding Neighbors!
We need five minutes of your time today to read and act on this important message. We are very good at this! Our future in City Hall is at stake.
The Short Story. The City Redistricting Commission will vote on its final City Council redistricting plan on Thursday. See their latest email about this to us below. Their plan will be sent to the City Council for adoption. The Commission is still considering two plans. Its excellent Plan K2 has been exhaustively vetted and debated. We endorsed its prior version. It is now even better. Plan K2 keeps all of Greater Wilshire together in one Council district J, and pairs us with our like-minded “Community of Interest” to the west (Fairfax, West LA, Bel Air, Beverly Crest, Brentwood). However, an eleventh-hour Plan L will also be on the table Thursday night, at the request of Councilmember Raman. It throws the entire process, the weeks of public input, and most City Council districts into chaos.
Click on the blue links in the City’s announcement below to view Plan K2 and Plan L.
The Task for Greater Wilshire. The Commission has urged and warned Greater Wilshire to be vigilant, and to make sure that its voice is continually heard by the Commissioners. This means that we need a barrage of fresh emails from you to them — before Thursday at noon. We also need your fresh testimony at their Thursday 5 PM public hearing. This email provides step-by-step instructions for your emails and your testimony. We are asking you to raise your voices, yet again. Stand united behind Plan K2.
Step-By-Step Instructions.
1. Email. Send an email to the Commission. We need an outpouring of emails. Do this now. Scroll down below for a sample script. Personalize your email. Its central messages should be to thank the Commission for Plan K2, and to emphatically support Plan K2 with the intact Greater Wilshire located in District J with our “Community of Interest” neighbors to the west. Emails go to: [email protected].
2. Live Testimony – Thursday, September 30th – 4:50 PM. Click here for Zoom Link
Write down and rehearse your testimony in advance. You will only have one minute to speak.
On Thursday, log on EARLY to the 5 PM Zoom meeting. Click here to join the meeting via Zoom. As soon you join the Zoom, raise your Zoom hand. This puts you into the speaker queue, which becomes immediately full. If you join late or raise your hand late, you will not make it into the queue.
When they call your name, follow their instructions to unmute yourself. You will have one minute to speak.
Scroll below to see a sample script for your one-minute testimony.
3. Sample Scripts.
Sample Email Script. My name is (enter name). I live in Hancock Park, which is located in Greater Wilshire. It is vitally important to my family and to my neighborhood that our City Council member be responsive to us. We count on our City Council member for our traditional City services, and for all of the unique services that come with living in historic homes. Our City Council member must also understand and be responsive to our special diversity, including the needs of our significant Orthodox Jewish population. For these reasons and so much more, I want to thank the Redistricting Commission for Plan K2, which I support. We are grateful for the opportunity that you have given Greater Wilshire in Plan K2 to remain together with our like-minded Community of Interest neighbors in District J of Plan K2, where we belong and will be best served.
Optional Addition to Sample Email Script. I have followed the redistricting process. I am disheartened to see that an eleventh-hour Plan L is also before you. Greater Wilshire and I do not support Plan L, which throws much of the City into chaos. Plan L turns a deaf ear to your months of work and public testimony. It divides Greater Wilshire by severing Larchmont and redistributes neighborhoods at random. It ignores the Mulholland Corridor mandate. It divides the hillsides down Laurel Canyon and separates Spaulding Square from Sunset. It similarly removes the West Adams Heights-Sugar Hill and Harvard Heights neighborhoods from their longtime home in CD 10, and bisects both the Harvard Heights-Western Heights HPOZ and the United Neighborhoods Neighborhood Council area, including the Country Club Park, Angelus Vista, and Western Heights neighborhoods. And it cuts off Century City, Beverlywood, Carthay and Pico-Robertson from their Communities of Interest. But Plan L reserves its most cynical disconnect for the remainder Greater Wilshire, throwing us into a newly created district of renters, stretching from Park La Brea through us to Koreatown and up a narrow isthmus to Los Feliz and Silver Lake. We object to Plan L in the loudest possible voice, but surely Plan L is also not the vision of the Commission.
Sample One-Minute Testimony. My name is (enter name). I live in (enter neighborhood, e.g., Larchmont Village), which is located in Greater Wilshire. I want to thank the Commission for Plan K2 and its District J, which I support. District J keeps Greater Wilshire together, for which I am grateful. By contrast to the cynical Plan L, which is also before you tonight, Plan K2 places the historic homes of Greater Wilshire with our Community of Interest neighborhoods to the west. We share schools, churches, synagogues, parks, local newspapers, and sports leagues with our western neighbors. Please adopt Plan K2, which will provide the best City Council services to Greater Wilshire.
Letter from the LA City Council Redistricting Commission:
Hello all,
Thank you for you for attending last night’s Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Meeting and for your active participation in the redistricting process.
As a reminder, the next meeting of the Commission will be held this Thursday, September 30th at 5 PM. The purpose of this meeting will be to review draft maps and to select one or more of the draft maps for public consideration. You can find the updated agenda for the meeting here. I am also sharing Map K 2 (from the 9.27 meeting) and Map L (which references the publicly submitted draft Map ID #54277) for your consideration (these maps can be found by clicking the blue linked words throughout this email). All maps reviewed thus far by the Commission can be found here in the past meetings section of our website, titled “Redistricting Partners/Commission Staff Draft Plans,” “City of LA Redistricting Commission Second Draft Maps” and “Draft Plan K Corrected.”
The link and instructions for joining Thursday’s Commission meeting via zoom can be found here and in the linked agenda. A few reminders about public comment – the Commission is consistently receiving updates on the Community of Interest (COI) and Community Impact Statements (CIS) submitted via email, phone call and website. The Commissioners and Staff review and cite the data to help in their deliberations. All forms of public comment are weighed equally. We also want to remind the public that there will be four Public Hearings held in early October regarding the draft maps. At these hearings, the draft map/maps will be presented to the public for comment prior to the Commission submitting the Final Map to the Council on October 29th. You are more than welcome to attend and speak at one or more of these public hearings. All attendees will be called upon. You can find the dates and times of the upcoming public hearings here.
Also a reminder that The LACCRC has extended the deadline to receive public maps and COI testimony through Friday October 1st at 12pm. That said, we will still be taking public feedback on the Commission draft maps throughout the process. Please send your COI to [email protected]. Sending testimony to this email address guarantees that your COI will be shared with the Commission in a timely manner.
More materials for Thursday’s meeting will be shared with you in the upcoming days. Thank you again for participating in the redistricting process.
Sincerely,
Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission
200 N. Spring St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
213-263-5765
Sponsored Post
