At its monthly board meeting on Thursday, September 9, the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council continued a discussion begun at an August 28 city council redistricting meeting for CD 10, which raised the issue of which city council district neighborhoods along the eastern edge of the GWNC’s coverage area (including Ridgewood-Wilton/St. Andrews Square, Western-Wilton, Oakwood-Maplewood-St. Andrews, and Country Club Heights) should belong to.
More specifically, the issue is what constitutes the western border of “Koreatown” – is it Western Ave., as ordained by a 2009 city council action, and which also serves as the official border between the areas represented by the GWNC and the Wilshire Center-Koreatown neighborhood councils? Or is it Wilton Place, several blocks west of Western?
It’s a complicated question, and the answer depends on who you talk to.
At the August 28 redistricting meeting, a large number of people representing and sympathizing with a group called the Koreatown Redistricting Taskforce complained that for the last 10 years, Koreatown has been split among three or four (depending on how you define Koreatown boundaries) city council districts, which reduces the overall representation and voice of the community in city government. These speakers at the August 28 meeting urged the city’s redistricting commission to reunite all of Koreatown within a single city council district, and asked that the community’s western border be defined as Wilton Place instead of Western. This would likely remove those neighborhoods from CD 4, which has long represented most other GWNC communities.
But GWNC’s official position on the current redistricting effort is that instead of being split among two city council districts, as it is now (a small portion of the GWNC’s northwest area is in CD 5, while the rest lies in CD 4), the full GWNC territory be reunited in a single city council district. And the Koreatown Redistricting Taskforce’s request to split off the eastern neighborhoods into yet another district not only runs counter to the GWNC’s request, but could put the GWNC area in the same overly-split condition that Koreatown has faced for the last 10 years.
So GWNC President Conrad Starr invited representatives of the Koreatown Redistricting Taskforce, which had not previously contacted GWNC, to come to this month’s board meeting to clarify their goals.
James An, president of the Korean American Foundation, and Sara Rohani, a staff attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice, accepted Starr’s invitation, and explained at last week’s GWNC meeting that Koreatown’s 10-year split into multiple city council districts has made it more difficult to coordinate city services and effectively diminishes the voice and power of this very distinct community.
An said the Koreatown Redistricting Taskforce met with several Korean, Latino and Bangladeshi groups and organizations in the Koreatown area, and worked with them to define the area that residents would like to see reunited. An said there is no effort to re-write any official neighborhood boundaries, but “we just want to keep the neighborhood whole within those boundaries.”
But several GWNC board members, including Patricia Carroll, who lives in and represents the Ridgewood/Wilton-St. Andrews Square neighborhood, said they felt “blindsided” when first hearing about those proposed boundaries at the CD 10 redistricting meeting. And they said they were very much against moving any GWNC neighborhoods into another new city council district.
A few other board members, however, including several relatively new to the GWNC board, were more curious about the kinds of definitions and community “markers” used to include the neighborhoods in question in the definition of “Koreatown.” And one board member, Juan Portillo, who represents the Western-Wilton neighborhood just east of Western and south of 3rd St., said his neighborhood does indeed seem different from many within the GWNC boundaries, and – like Koreatown – is much denser and has more renters than homeowners.
While the boundary discussion was heated, however, most GWNC board members did seem to agree that Koreatown’s current split among several different city council districts is “horrible,” and that it should be re-united in a single district…as long as the reunification does not require a similar split of the GWNC area into multiple districts.
After further discussion, Carroll moved that the GWNC support Koreatown’s effort to be united within a single city council district, while also strongly opposing the extension of the area defined as Koreatown into “the 100-year-old GWNC community.”
The motion was followed by more discussion, along with several suggested amendments and alternate motions. These included an amendment to re-state support for a united Koreatown as defined by the city’s official 2010 borders…a suggestion to not take a stand at all on the issue…a motion to postpone a vote until a special meeting to discuss the issue further…and a motion to postpone a vote until the next board meeting. But all the alternate suggestions were eventually voted down and, in the end, the Carroll’s original motion passed by a margin of 13 votes in favor, 1 opposed, and 3 abstentions.
Other Business
In other business this month, LA Homeless Services Authority representative Corinne Ho told the board that LAHSA will resume its annual homeless counts this year, beginning in October. The counts happen in different parts of the city on different dates, and our local count will be held on January 27, 2022. GWNC usually participates in and helps coordinates the local counts, and several people expressed interest in resuming that involvement, though no votes were taken at this meeting.
Also, the GWNC board voted at this meeting to reestablish its Neighborhood Purpose Grants program, and voted to allocate up to $2,000 for grants to local non-profits and public schools. An ad hoc grants committee will work with the GWNC Outreach Committee to establish and publicize an application window, with the goal of making grant recommendations at the board’s November meeting.
In personnel moves this month, board members Josh McCloskey and William Schneider were removed from the board by the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment for failing to complete their required Code of Conduct training within 60 days of their election to the board. Board member Julie Stromberg was appointed Assistant Secretary for the board. And the board voted to confirm the hiring of Denise Shiozawa as its new webmaster and Julia Christiansen as its new administrator.
And last but not least, in land use issues, the board voted, at the recommendation of the GWNC Land Use Committee, to support an application for a new 63-unit residential and retail development at 7000 W. Melrose Ave. (at the SW corner of Melrose and Sycamore)…and to support an application for the demolition of a single-family home (now used as office space) at 507 N. Larchmont Blvd., and its replacement with a new 3-story office building, with one small retail space on the ground floor.
While the first of these two votes was unanimous, however, the second prompted a lengthy discussion about whether the board should support this or any project on which the local neighborhood association has not yet weighed in. The Larchmont Village Neighborhood Association has not yet voted on this proposal, and several GWNC board members argued that their vote should be postponed until the LVNA gives a thumbs up or down. But several others argued that because this is a “by right” project (needing no special approvals from the city to proceed) and building permits may be issued very soon, the the board should weigh in as soon as possible or it will be too late. In the end, those arguing for speed came out on top, with 7 board members voting in favor of supporting the project, five members voting in opposition, and one abstention.
The next GWNC board meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 13, at 7 p.m. How and where the meeting will be held is not yet set, as both the city and local Neighborhood Councils are weighing the options for a possible return to in-person meetings at some point in the near future.
