I want to wish the residents of East Culver City good luck tomorrow.
The fifth annual Art Walk Culver City will be held from noon to 8 p.m. along Washington Boulevard.
Good luck finding parking in your neighborhood.
As you have observed for the last four years, the Art Walk will impact your neighborhood. Some of you may have been paying the city for Preferential Parking Permits for the privilege of trying to keep non-residents from parking in your residential neighborhood during the year. The permits are supposed to prevent intrusion parking by business employees and customers.
One business owner at a past City Council meeting even went so far as to call a person who circulated a petition for Preferential Parking, “crazy.” The Council never disputed the owner’s use of the term, and Councilman Scott Malsin wanted to explore how businesses could get permits to park in residential neighborhoods. The seventh annual Culver City Car Show was a month ago. It has been stated that 15,000 people attended. For the last six years, the Downtown neighborhood has been greatly affected.
Some parts of our neighborhood have Preferential Permit Parking. In 2008, I called the police because a car was parked in front of my house for over an hour without a permit. It is an hour zone. It took Parking Enforcement seven hours to come out, chalk the tires and return to ticket the car. Seven hours!
The city only had one Parking Enforcement officer working on that Saturday for the whole town. I was informed that this year they would have 2 P.E.O.’s assigned to the Car Show to protect the Downtown neighborhood. As part of the Conditional Use Permit for the Car Show, the Exchange Club placed 32 signs in the neighborhood. The large 2-foot by 3-foot signs were placed a week before. The signs read,
“Resident-Only Parking on Sat., 5-8-10.”
Allegedly, 400 residential parking permits were given to the neighborhood. The yellow slips of paper said,
“Display this permit on your dashboard Saturday, May 8th, 2010 5AM to 5PM.”
What happened the day of the Car Show for the 6 hours from 9 to 3?
One ticket was written in the 4200 block of Lafayette for a time zone violation at 2:45. Sounds like there was no intrusion parking or problems? Wrong.
Observed by a resident in neighborhood before noon: Six wrong-way drivers on Irving Place. Four were in just 20 minutes. The P.E.O.'s that assisted with “traffic control in the area”… were not in the neighborhood area.
Four red zone violations on Irving Place and two other vehicles blocking driveways. Residents who lived on the 4000 block of Lafayette were forced to park two blocks from their homes due to intrusion parking on their block.
A person from the city's Engineering Dept. observed 75 percent of the vehicles without parking permits on Irving Place. He never saw a P.E.O. in the neighborhood.
Downtown employees who park in the neighborhood on a daily basis had a tougher time finding parking in the neighborhood because of the Car Show attendees. So they just parked deeper into the neighborhood.
One officer double-parked on Irving Place and talked with an old friend for 30 minutes before leaving the neighborhood. We were promised protection, and we got none. Promises were made and then blatantly ignored.
Good luck, East Culver City, with the 8-hour Art Walk. Non-residents who will park in your neighborhood are more important to Culver City than you are.
Mr. Anderson may be contacted at Cary@CulverCity.TV
