Traci Park Needs Our Support 💪

This publication first appeared as a Concerned For Westchester Playa newsletter.

Traci Park Needs Our Support 💪

Dear Fellow Concerned Neighbors,

Ever since Traci Park was elected as our Councilperson, I’ve been increasingly impressed. She is a breath of fresh air in a sea of progressive influences on our City Council.

Traci has been particularly outspoken on our zoning issues and pledged her support to help us grow our community the way we want it. I believe she’s a huge reason we’ve experienced the successes we have so far fighting against the high-rises and density zones in our plan area.

It can’t be easy for her to stand in the minority on our Council, but with every passing week she is more and more outspoken for common sense, and she is getting a lot of grief for her trouble from groups who don’t want to hear common sense solutions to the problems plaguing our city. She came out very strongly calling for new homeless strategies after the recent Supreme Court ruling in the Grants Pass case.

On Saturday, there is a Gratitude Rally planned for Traci in Venice from 2-4 pm. While it is always nice to show up and express gratitude, it’s even more critical right now to show the rest of the city that she is firmly supported in her district and that we are here for her common sense solutions.

Can you join me Saturday to say thank you? The details are below. Please rsvp to connie_brooks@verizon.net or reply YES to this email and I’ll send our RSVPs Friday night.

Something Fun!!

Based in large part on our work on the Community Plan Update, my Alliance colleague Cory Birkett and I were named Neighborhood Council Stars of the Neighborhood and got to ride in last week’s 4th of July Parade. It was a hoot! This honor is an honor for all of us who came together to make our voices heard. Cory and I thank you for your support over the last year. 😍😍

Separately, Cory and I have both been invited to join the Westside Community Planning Advisory Group, joining 58 other community leaders across the westside to advise on the four Community Plan Updates for West LA (“Planning The Westside”). We’ll be reporting on that process as it unfolds. We are in orientation meetings this week. We’ve been told to expect two meetings for the remainder of the year, so it will probably be awhile before you hear from us again on this topic.

Traci Park Speaks Out On The Westchester Park Shooting

I imagine you probably heard about the shooting incident at Westchester Park on June 17th. Traci held a safety forum for the community three days later. The venue was packed with concerned neighbors and I was in the third row capturing the proceedings on my cell phone. Below is Traci’s portion of the program.

Reminding You What We’re Up Against

The Legislature is on break, but once they get back, the heavy shenanigans commence. I’ll be trying to cover and report on the process for you. Have you heard of “gut & amend” bills? They are innocuously named bills that proceed along mostly unnoticed and at the last minute, they are literally gutted and the language is replaced with controversial bills that are suddenly in the last stages of approval. It is a process that we should be very, very concerned with.

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The image above depicts the number of housing bills working their way through our state legislature right this minute. 😱 Why do we need five new ADU laws?

And that is only the housing bills.

This situation is unacceptable. No representative could possibly be reading all those bills. They end up horse trading votes without even knowing what they’re voting for. Sadly, the burden is on us to track all of this and do our best to shine a light.

I’d like to say we can vote the worst offenders out of office, but they are not even our own representatives. But they definitely push bad laws making our lives more untenable.

Find the bill descriptions from the graphic at this link. And please consider throwing a few dollars at LivableCA, a statewide group that has been hard at work for several years trying to keep us all in the know on these mostly terrible bills.

Another worthy group to support is Our Neighborhood Voices. They are the group behind the initiative to bring land use planning and legislation back to local control where we, the voters, can keep a closer eye on it. If they prevail, we won’t have to watch the State Legislature and their housing policy shenanigans so closely.

Both groups are pushing out expensive public awareness campaigns and hiring lobbyists to fight for us. Please help support them if you can.

🚨 Please take a minute right now to forward this email to 3 neighbors or local friends. 🚨

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Concerned For Westchester Playa - Sharing upzoning and housing policy information and guidance to residents in Westchester, Playa del Rey, Ladera and Playa Vista

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