In a four to one vote the City Council has given the green light for a parking study to gather data on the situation on Farragut Avenue. Grace Lutheran Church, the immediate neighbor on Overland Avenue, has been seeking to change to parking restrictions on the nearby street, which are among the most stringent in the city.
Grace Lutheran Evangelical Church, which dates back to the 1940s, was constructed without a parking lot, forcing parishioners to leave their cars on nearby streets.
Only vehicle owners with parking permits are allowed to park on Farragut Drive, the only street with restrictions during the week.
The church asked the city to change the street’s parking into two-hour increments from Monday to Saturday. According to NBC LA, residents are fighting the church to make sure that does not happen. “I think some people are expressing their ‘not in my backyard’ attitude,” said Brian Mark, a parishioner.
Les Greenberg and his wife Paulette, who have lived on Farragut Drive for four decades, have battled the city for years to keep Farragut a permit-only street.
“We’ve all grown old together, we’re senior citizens. Why can’t the city just let us enjoy our golden years?” Les said.
“We feel it’s our right to have peaceful enjoyment of our property,” Paulette said.
Some Farragut residents have served the City with a open-government Brown-Act “cure or correct” demand letter. It is a prerequisite before filing a Brown Act lawsuit to nullify the City’s action. In substance, the City amended the Procedure and Regulations for Residential Permit Parking Districts without placing that issue on the public agenda, i.e., no proper public notice. Had it done so, 4,000 irate Culver City residents would have appeared at the hearing.
The central issue for me and my neighbors or Farragut Dr. is the threat posed to all residential areas when an entity that is not a resident is allowed to have a voice in changing parking policy in opposition to the desires of the people who live on the street in question.
In our opinion, parking on residential streets should reflect the will of the residents and not outside business interests, even if the business is a tax-exempt non-profit one.
We are certain that this move for a parking study by the city council is a pretext for doing away with residential parking restrictions in favor of a uniform parking policy regardless of its impact on the affected residences.
Remember this: Grace Lutheran enjoys unrestricted parking on Saturdays and Sundays, has never provided any evidence that it needs parking space on Farragut Dr., and has never make a good faith effort to find offsite parking other than its appetite for Farragut.
The essential issue is this: Who determines the character of residential parking in Culver City? The tax-paying residents, or outside entities. Shame on Grace Lutheran, but shame even more on a city council that always seems more beholden to a powerful Chamber of Commerce ever ready to promote business interests (the Ivy Station parking disaster is another example) over protecting the quality of life for city residents.
I urge city residents to support candidates for the city council who are not endorsed by the city’s chamber of commerce in order to put protecting and preserving the city’s quality of life as the fundamental goal of city government.