By Jeff Hall
It was wall-to-wall people at the Brentwood Homeowners Association annual meeting, held at University Synagogue on February 24.
Brentwood Homeowners Association (BHA) president Kathleen Flanagan introduced LAPD officers Jonathan Tom and Matt Kirk. Tom is the new captain overseeing the West Los Angeles station; Kirk is Brentwood’s new Senior Lead Officer (SLO).
Former Senior Lead Officer Maria Gray wasn’t there, but a special statuette thanking her for her service to the Brentwood community was given to Tom and Kirk for delivery to Gray.
Mike Bonin was BHA’s keynote speaker. His focus was on firefighting. Bonin showered praise on members of LAFD in attendance for the job they did combatting the Getty Fire in December.
Fire protection has been a prime cause for Bonin since he took office in 2013. Early on, he championed giving firefighting teams iPads in order to make it easier to navigate streets.
Prior to the iPads, each truck carried a supply of printed Thomas Guides (printed maps, for those readers born in the digital age).
In recent years and months, Bonin has been pushing for increased funding for LAFD, including a new fire-fighting helicopter that became operational just prior to the Getty Fire.
An experiment a while back – a fire evacuation drill in Mandeville Canyon — didn’t go well. Electronic communication was a real issue. But, said Bonin, the lessons learned made LAFD far more prepared to handle the Getty Fire with dispatch.
One lesson from the Getty Fire: homeowners need to communicate with their gardeners, nannies, house cleaners and others, letting them know they don’t need to report to work until the danger has passed. Many tried to enter the fire zone during the evacuation, for fear they might be let go if they didn’t report to work.
Bonin urged everyone to down names and numbers of those they need to contact on a notecard and stash it in their “go bag.”
Bonin said, in the “new normal” of climate change, we need to keep evolving in our firefighting techniques. Bonin said new technology allows airplanes to locate, via infrared technology, smoldering hot spots in need of extinguishing.
Bonin also said buildings like Barrington Sunset on Wilshire – scene of a recent fire – need to be retrofitted with sprinklers.
Former LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky also gave a presentation; it felt like a homecoming of sorts. He goes back a long way when it comes to representing the Westside, first, as a city councilman, followed by many years served as a county supervisor.
When introducing Yaroslavsky, BHA President Kathleen Flanagan said, like Bono and Sting, the former supervisor was universally known by a single name: Zev.
Zev is now director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin
School of Public Affairs. He described some recent polling research that indicated traffic actually isn’t the number-one issue for most Angelenos.
Everyone abhors traffic, noted Zev, but most feel like that issue is beyond their control, so they accept it as a fact of life.
People are much more focused, he said, on issues of affordability. Housing prices in particular, are rising much faster than wages.
This led to a discussion of homelessness. Zev said mental health centers needed to be a big part of the solution, which means hiring more counselors, social workers and doctors. Giving a mentally ill homeless person a place to sleep is fundamentally important, he said, but that’s not enough.
Zev said that many homeless individuals aren’t mentally ill when they first become homeless – but after several months or years on the street, most individuals will be negatively impacted.
Zev also talked about what he saw as the folly of SB50, a Sacramento bill that would allow more high rises near transit corridors. To many, Zev said, this sounds like common-sense.
But what many didn’t realize, he said, is that the proposed law would have allowed rezoning in single-family residential areas within a half mile of mass transit, which, according to the proposed law, includes buses.
Given that scenario, any home within a half mile of San Vicente, 26th Street, Wilshire, Barrington, San Vicente or Sunset – where buses run all day long – would be subject to rezoning and the introduction of high-rise development in areas formerly zoned as single family residences. This is one of the reasons homeowner leaders were so vehemently opposed to the measure.
Zev thanked so-called NIMBYs for their leadership on this issue. SB50 ultimately failed, and Zev said he personally always liked hearing from homeowner associations as they kept him informed – and kept his feet to the fire.
Last but not least, Ray Klein – who, unlike Zev, must go by his full name – was given special appreciation for his 15 years of service on the BHA board.
