Second in a series
Re “Clarke Hopes to Tailor Culver City’s Boundary Lines”
[img]1792|right|Jim Clarke||no_popup[/img]City Councilman Jim Clarke has set an ambitious goal for himself – standardizing Culver City’s notorious zig-zag boundary lines.
Like yesterday’s stories about potentially changing the name of Washington Place, restoring order to Culver City’s crazy-glue border requires the cooperation of the city of Los Angeles, surely no cinch.
“Normally, boundary lines would go down the middle of the street,” said Mr. Clarke. “As you know, we have all kinds of crazy things.
“We have people who have their front yard in Culver City, their backyard in Los Angeles. Lines go through the middle of Helms Bakery.
“More importantly, though, we have some streets on the edges where instead of the boundary being in the middle of the street, it is on the other side of the sidewalk. So the city of Los Angeles is responsible for the trash pickup, for parking enforcement, for sidewalk repair.”
The oddity, said Mr. Clarke, “is that the home that is facing all of that is paying its property tax to Culver City.”
And here is why split custody of a homeowner is a negative for governments:
“With this kind of division,” Mr. Clarke said, “there is not really an interest on the part of Los Angeles to maintain trash and parking and sidewalk repairs if they are not collecting any property taxes in return.”
(To be continued)
