Date: Monday, February 18, 2008,
Time: 6:45 PM - 8:15 PM
Place:Galpin Ford - 2nd Floor meeting
Room,15555 Roscoe Blvd. [at the 405]
Parking: Free parking in the Galpin Lot on the West side of Orion
Please do not park in the customer service areas.
Agenda
6:45PM- 7:45PM Valley VOTE
Introductions
Reports by Valley VOTE Committees
Housing Vic Viereck
Land Use Pauline Tallent
Financial Richard Bort
Universal City Polly Ward
Neighborhood Councils George Truesdell
Membership Richard Leyner
LAWA Denny Schneider
7:45PM - 8:15 PM
Special Guest: Zev Yaroslavsky
Zev Yaroslavsky is a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, representing the western part of Los Angeles County and a constituency of two million people. He was elected to the board in 1994 and has been re-elected three times, most recently in 2006. He previously served on the Los Angeles City Council (1975-94) to which he was elected and re-elected six times. He earned an M.A. in British Imperial History and a B.A. in Economics and History, both from U.C.L.A. He is a graduate of Fairfax High School in Los Angeles.
As a member of the County Board of Supervisors, Yaroslavsky quickly emerged as a leader on fiscal, health care, transportation, cultural and environmental matters. He authored the 1996 Proposition 'A' park bond which resulted in the preservation of rural open space and the development of urban parks throughout the County. He authored the 2002 Proposition 'B' trauma tax, approved by over 73% of County voters, a measure which is largely credited with stabilizing the County's perpetually unpredictable health care finances. Zev was also the driving force behind the Orange Line bus way across the San Fernando Valley which opened in 2005 to record ridership (22,000 daily boardings.) He is regarded as the County's fiscal watchdog, insisting that it live within its means.
As a Los Angeles City Councilman, Zev earned a reputation as a politician who was willing to take on issues that others would not, including the highly controversial excessive use of force and intelligence gathering policies of the Los Angeles Police Department. As Councilman, he also co-authored two landmark initiatives with his colleague, the late Councilman Marvin Braude: Proposition U (1986) which cut by half the commercial development rights adjacent to residential neighborhoods, and Proposition O (1988) which repealed a drilling permit previously issued to the Occidental Petroleum Company.
Since 1991, Yaroslavsky has also been associated with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), a non-governmental organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., that promotes the development of democratic institutions in burgeoning democracies. He has monitored three elections for NDI: Romania (1990), Mexico (2000), and Ukraine (2004). He has conducted seminars on democratic institution-building in Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Bosnia/Herzegovina.
We are very pleased that Zev has found the time to bring us up to date on some of the current issues facing the City and County of Los Angeles.
Questions from the audience, as time permits, will follow each speaker's remarks. The public and press are invited to the meeting.
The next regular Valley VOTE meeting will be on Monday, March 17, 2008.
Valley VOTE Mission Statement:
Valley VOTE, a diverse coalition of San Fernando Valley residents, business people, educators, community activists, and organizations, is committed to exploring and fostering the implementation of programs that empower the people of the San Fernando Valley and the City of Los Angeles, to improve local governance, education and public participation on policy matters.
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