Third in a series
Re “Will a New Border War Flare During Clarke’s Project?”
[img]1792|right|Jim Clarke||no_popup[/img]When City Councilman Jim Clarke was talking about his strategy for making Culver City’s crazy-glue borders with the city and county of Los Angeles more uniform, he sounded like an airline pilot barking commands in code.
What would be required to clean up the confusing boundary lines?
“First, I have been working with our IT people to get some good GIS so we actually know where the boundaries lie,” Mr. Clarke said.
“The boundaries are not consistent in any way.”
There is no relief for cartographers or plain citizens.
“Messy on all four sides of Culver City,” the Councilman said.
“We have issues with (L.A. City Council members Mike) Bonin, (Paul) Koretz and (Herb Wesson and their districts.”
Mr. Clarke said he is committed to pursuing border uniformity to a satisfactory Culver City conclusion.
“In my informal discussions with all three of those Council members, they indicated they were interested in seeing if we could make borders go down the middle of the street,” he said.
“For example, take Atlantic Avenue. (Former Councilman) Alan Corlin’s backyard was in Los Angeles. The interesting part is a 200-foot strip of Atlantic where the street is Los Angeles, and on either side it is Culver City.”
Mr. Clarke said it will be necessary to “sit down and negotiate some kind of joint powers agreement with Los Angeles as to how you do parking enforcement and street sweeping when there are two different jurisdictions.”
Lately Mr. Clarke, the quintessential hands-on elected official, wants his Council colleagues to be deputized to do much more of the spadework that now is routinely being assigned to City Hall staffers.
When officials themselves are negotiating and navigating, chances are strongly improved for efficient, swifter outcomes.
