Why I love neighborhood council meetings

A couple of nights ago, I braved the blistering rain that barraged the Valley to make it to a neighborhood council meeting I was scheduled to write about for the paper. I like driving in the rain. It's a challenge. The blurriness, the intensity of the wind shield wipers, and the necessity of being fully awake and aware, are all exciting to me. Of course there are a fair share of thoughtless drivers who speed accross puddles in the intersections, and bridges with staled rainwater, thereby covering my windshield with a temporary avalanche.

After some confusion over the location of the meeting, I finally made it to Colfax Elementary School - nothing fancy, and probably the perfect location for a run of the mill neighborhood council meeting. Of course, this wasn't Studio City, whose neighborhood council meetings are held at the CBS Radford Lot. This was the neighborhood council meeting for Valley Village - Studio City's "adjacent" neighbor further north of the boulevard. Of course, homes in Valley Village cost considerably less than homes in Studio City. And higher incomes make for higher.....egos....or more interesting personalities! Let me explain.

I attended Studio City's Neighborhood Council meeting last November for a news item in the Studio City Sun (the story is posted to the right). It was held in a room at the CBS Radford Studios - which felt like a city in itself filled with little streets and alleyways and what looked like condominiums. In fact, I even asked a security guard whether people actually lived in there. Dale Thrush, a representative for Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, attended that meeting to discuss the charette process for a stretch of Ventura in Studio City.

After speaking for a pre-designated amount of time, the board unleashed a hoard of questions and comments. At first, this attack made me uncomfortable, especially since it was all monitored to the minute by the board president, lest any one speaker took hostage of the time. I saw why Greuel herself was a no show. This board was fierce! And you know what? It made it for interesting community politics and interesting democratic participation. That's why I stayed around for over an hour and half, ate some pizza, grabbed a soda - over twice the length of time I stayed after the Valley Village meeting had finally started.

Wendy Greuel did attend the council meeting at Valley Village (I'm glad, since that was the only reason I wrestled the rain). And I could see why. The Valley Village board was much more polite than the Studio City crowd. They were much more apt to let someone finish talking before interrupting (although Greuel herself did talk over someone in the audience). And since Ms. Gruel herself does live in the Valley Village area (I believe), it seemed only fitting for her to be there.

But there were a lot of loose strings left over on the topic of public transportation, development, and especially on the issue of mansionization and a community of homeowners on Morella who are facing a troubling developer. Greuel gave her speech, the floor was opened briefly to a few innocuous comments, she replied with some innocuous and distracted answers, and that was it. Luckily, she was asked, very nicely, to stay around and listen to the Morella homeowners, but she failed to step up to the plate and take hold of the situation with any promised results. She referred the homeowners to stay in touch with one of her staffers, a gentleman who was acknowledged as the main liasion between her office and her consituents. Greuel actually seemed pretty eager to leave.

And that's exactly what I saw when I left the meeting about 5 minutes after Greuel did (although the meeting was still in process). Was that her I saw speeding off in a huge white SUV? If that was indeed her, I now understand a couple of the comments she made during the meeting.

For example, in making a case for public transportation and a more "seamless" system where people don't have to wait hours for bus connections, she mentioned that it takes 8 minutes to get from the west valley to the east valley, whereas a bus, filled with inconvenient connections, could take 40 minutes. Eight minutes? really? Now I know how she got that number. Ms. Greuel is a speeder! If that was indeed her, speeding off and taking a left turn on rain-soaked streets, then that all makes sense. I'm glad that by that time, the rain had ceded, otherwise, I'm sure she may have (unintentionally, I'm sure) splashed some water on an unsuspecting driver's windshield. Now if that was someone else and my eyes mislead me when I looked through her window, I apologize.

Maybe I'll see her at the next Studio City Council meeting. I don't think so. But this is definitely true - some of the best drama can be found at the local public elementary school (or CBS lot) where politicians show their true colors, homeowners get heated up over pizza, and community journalists try and find something interesting to write about it.