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BID lacks funds to pay off creditors

By Brian Sullivan

Nov. 11, 2002 9:00 p.m.

Westwood Village merchants and property owners continue to feel
frustrated with their Business Improvement District, which, among
other problems, appears to be missing money and is having trouble
paying off creditors, including UCLA.

Board members said Westwood’s now-defunct BID, an
organization formed to improve Village business conditions, cannot
account for hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding collected
for “capital improvements.”

Each year approximately $220,000 was supposed to be deposited
into this account to be drawn upon for capital improvements, such
as new park benches.

But three years worth of this money is unaccounted for, and
upwards of $750,000 may be missing, according to board members and
community activists.

At present the BID is barely operating with the small amount of
money it has left and, to compensate, has been making cuts in
personnel and Village services.

One of the services eliminated on Oct. 31 was the Community
Service Center on Broxton Avenue, manned by a UCPD officer and
three UCLA community service officers.

Though the UCPD paid for Officer Robert Sadeh to be stationed in
the center, UCLA fronted the wages of the students working as CSOs,
who managed the office on rotating shifts 35 hours per week.

UCPD spokeswoman Nancy Greenstein said the BID owes the UCPD
around $15,000 for the CSOs.

“We believe we will be paid,” Greenstein said,
adding that the BID has always been behind in payments.

“A really good service will not be provided in the Village
anymore ““ that’s my issue,” Greenstein said.

The Westwood BID was formed in 1995 in order to improve business
conditions in the then economically staggering village. Some of its
goals were to provide clean-up services such as street and sidewalk
sweeping and tree trimming.

Despite meeting these goals, the BID failed to find ways to
alleviate the Village’s desperate lack of parking.

There had been many other problems within the BID, including a
violation of the Brown Act, a state law prohibiting secret
legislation by public organizations, in September.

In early September, after hearing numerous complaints through an
investigation lasting several months, Los Angeles City Councilman
Jack Weiss, whose fifth district includes Westwood, decided not to
endorse the BID’s renewal, effectively killing its
charter.

Since then the BID’s management staff and board of
directors have been trying to wind operations down, but are
scheduled to continue providing services until June. But the BID
was ordered to stop collecting assessments from properties within
its district, thereby restricting it to spending money already
collected.

Some board members said being behind in payments to UCLA is only
symptomatic of a flawed institution. They blame the BID’s
management staff for not conducting independent audits for the past
three years, which it did every year before 1999, and for working
with only a handful of board members when deciding to close down
operations.

“Those who were doing things without the knowledge and
consent of the rest of the board didn’t know what they were
doing,” said Jeff Abell, board member and manager of Sarah
Leonard Fine Jewelers.

Bob Walsh, the BID’s executive director, resigned in
October, and since then, most of the BID’s administrative
staff have been laid off.

During a meeting on Oct. 31, exasperated board members advocated
conducting an independent audit to determine if all assessment
funds collected by the City of Los Angeles were deposited into the
BID’s account.

Properties within the district paid fees to the city government,
which then dispersed the funds back into the BID’s expense
account.

This Wednesday at 3 p.m. some members of the board and other
interested parties are holding a meeting at Jerry’s Famous
Deli to discuss forming a new BID.

But doing so will require the confidence of Village merchants
and property owners involved, which could prove to be a difficult
task, Abell said.

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