Oaks Annual Meeting Sees Strong Turn-Out

A record crowd of over eighty-five Oaks residents turned out at Immaculate Heart High School’s beautiful cafeteria for our neighborhood’s Annual Meeting on March 3rd.  

Association President Kelly Lynch welcomed everyone to the meeting and introduced our City Councilmember Nithya Raman. Ms. Raman noted the progress being made on the numbers of homeless people on the streets in Hollywood and answered questions about the homeless shelter on Riverside Drive.  She directly addressed the long-standing problems Oaks and other neighborhoods have had with poorly maintained streets and with streetlight outages (caused by thieves stealing copper wire), telling us that the City has mismanaged its finances, paying out so many millions for slip-and-fall lawsuits that there’s not sufficient money for basic services like street repair and streetlight replacement.  

Nithya finished on a happy note, awarding a City Certificate of Merit to longtime Oaks resident Mike Lyons (of Alto Oak Drive) for his decades of volunteer service on our Neighborhood Association, the Los Feliz Improvement Association, and the vestry and school board of St. James Church.  We were all delighted to see Mike recognized and honored. 

Three of our LAPD Senior Lead Officers, John Negrete, Heather Mata, and Gabriel Ruiz attended the meeting to talk with residents about recent mail thefts, package thefts, and car break-ins in the Oaks. The officers reminded everyone to take proactive steps to avoid these kinds of crimes and to report all crimes, no matter how small.

Dante Cornejo of FireWise and David Barret of MySafeLA told all of us who have older homes (any house over forty years old) how important it is that we take positive steps to make our homes more fire-resistant – particularly taking care of open attic and crawl-space vents and dead/dry vegetation nearby.  

Oaks Boardmember and attorney Jason Breen of Hill Oak Drive explained to all in attendance that the Neighborhood Association is making its application to the IRS to change the Association’s tax status from a 501(c)4 which is defined as a social welfare organization to a 501(c)3 which is defined as a public charity. Jason described the reasons for the change, principally that (a) we can apply for grants that will help pay part of the expenses residents may want to undertake to make their homes more fire-resistant, and (b) contributions to the Association by members would be tax-deductible.  

Kelly Lynch took a vote of the members for the change of tax status and to re-elect the members of the Oaks board.  

And who would have guessed that the notary public brought by board member Holly Purcell would be the hit of the night! The notary, Marcy Tatman was there to notarize the Trespass Arrest Authorization forms required by LAPD to give them permission to arrest trespassers when the property owner is not present. We had a line of fifteen people all night long waiting to get their forms handled by Marcy!



Thanks to all who attended our Annual Meeting. We’ll see you at the Summer Picnic!