Palisades PRIDE’s efforts to revitalize and beautify the Marquez Avenue business block got off to ‘a great start’ last Friday morning when three aging rooftop signs were taken down, reported project leader Bob Jeffers. Engineers from Tako Tyko sign company cut through the steel supports and lifted the signs off with a huge crane as several local officials watched. ‘For not much money, we got maximum impact,’ said Jeffers, a vice-president of PRIDE. ‘The block looks so much better already.’ Other improvements to the business district, which will be named Marquez Village Shops, include new signage, antique lampposts, benches and trash cans, as well as landscaping of the sidewalk and the island triangle at the corner of Sunset and Marquez, which is currently covered in cement. The retaining wall on the opposite side of the street will also be planted with flowers and shrubs. In addition, a stop sign will soon be installed at Marquez and Bollinger ‘to slow down traffic and allow pedestrians to cross,’ said Jeffers, who won a Golden Sparkplug Award last year for his role in creating landscaped medians on Sunset at Chautauqua. Total cost of the project is estimated at $95,000. In early January, the Los Angeles City Council passed a motion that allocated $89,000 in City discretionary funds for the Marquez beautification project and waived associated planning fees for the median. ‘We’ve had such great support from everyone’the landlords, the merchants, Marquez homeowners and, of course, Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski,’ Jeffers said. He credited Monique Ford, the councilwoman’s chief deputy representing the Palisades, with working ‘really hard with us to get things moving. Now, we’ve got the money in our pockets and are dealing with several different City departments,’ including Street Lighting, Building and Safety’s Sign Inspection Division, the Bureau of Street Services, and Public Works. PRIDE, which will maintain the improvements until a formal maintenance association is formed, envisions that the block will ‘become a quaint commercial hub for the Marquez area,’ Jeffers said. ‘It’s a big project. Within six months the block will be transformed and look more like Swarthmore and less of a time warp with the 1950s signage gone. The ‘Drugs’ sign is very retro.’ Landlord Don Haselkorn remembers the ‘Drugs’ sign being there when he bought Knoll’s Pharmacy in 1961. If there is enough interest, PRIDE will hold a public auction in the next week to sell the vintage sign. Anyone interested in purchasing it should contact Jeffers at 230-8914. (Editor’s note: Moving into the prime retail space at the corner of Marquez and Bollinger formerly occupied by Marquez Market, which closed down at the end of December, is a childhood education center which will provide tutoring and after-school enrichment activities. That space is owned by the Wilson Family Trust. A martial arts academy is expected to occupy the former D & T Studio, which also closed down in December. Accessed through the alley, below Marquez Avenue, the space is owned by Haselkorn.)

The 16-member Potrero Canyon Community Advisory Committee will hold its first meeting next Wednesday, February 16 at 7:15 p.m. at the Palisades Recreation Center. At this meeting, which Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski will attend and is open to the public, ‘everyone will be brought up to speed,’ said George Wolfberg, head of the advisory committee. ‘We can then lay the groundwork for the work that needs to be done.’ Two major tasks face the advisory committee, which was selected by Miscikowski and Community Council chairman Norm Kulla to work with advisors and the city. One is the completion of Potrero Park itself, a mile-long expanse which extends from the recreation center to Pacific Coast Highway. Currently, plans call for a riparian habitat and a hiking trail with limited amenities to be built. This final part of the project (Phase III) is expected to cost from $7 million to $12 million. The second challenge for the advisory committee will be how to handle the sale of the city-owned lots in Potrero. To date, the city has spent at least $13 million to acquire 35 landslide-impaired lots and another $17 million to buttress and fill the canyon. However, work was brought to a halt over two years ago when the city lacked the $1.2 million needed to complete Phase II. In an effort to break the logjam, Miscikowski put forth a motion which was approved by L.A. City Council in December to sell two of the lots’both of them on Alma Real (at 615 and 623), both with houses that the city currently leases. These lots have now been declared surplus by the city, with 100 percent of the net proceeds to be deposited in a designated Potrero Canyon Trust Fund. The proceeds, expected to be as much as $4 million, will be used exclusively for completion of Phases II and to ‘begin’ Phase III, explained Miscikowski at the motion hearing last fall. However, the city cannot offer the two lots, which will be sold at public auction, without California Coastal Commission approval, which is currently pending. When the Coastal Commission originally approved Potrero in 1986, it placed restrictions on the sale of the city-owned lots until all three phases of the project were complete and funding for inspections and maintenance had been identified. When it became clear last year that these conditions would be impossible to meet, negotiations began with Coastal staff to clear the way for the immediate sale of the two Alma Real lots to finish Phase II, where work is 95 percent complete. Two landslides still need repairing and there is final grading to be done. The other 33 city-owned lots, which were condemned starting in 1964 when the canyon was first found to be too unstable because of landslides, are located on Earlham, De Pauw, and Friends Street, where nine buildable pads already exist. ‘As soon as all the lots are deemed to be stable [a two-year process], they can be certified by the city and gradually sold off as funds are needed for Phase III,’ Miscikowski said Wednesday. ‘Not only are we going to have to look into the existing deed restrictions and CC&R’s for each lot, but we will have to ensure that they are sold off in an orderly fashion so as to not create problems in the neighborhoods where they are located.’ Another question is whether developers will be permitted to buy the lots and what kind of houses can be built on them ‘so as to not affect existing views,’ said Wolfberg, former chairman of Community Council. ‘Will they still step-down the hillside, as was originally discussed with the Civic League? The advisory committee is also going to look into how best to divide the public from the private space. Where do we end the plantings for the park, for example? There is also the larger question of who is going to be responsible for maintaining the park. As you can see, we have a lot of work ahead of us.’ The park was purchased in 1964 by the Department of Recreation and Parks to provide coastal access to and from Palisades Park. The canyon historically included a natural watercourse through which run-off from the Santa Monica Mountains and runoff from the Palisades community was carried to the Pacific Ocean. Abnormally high runoff from storms in 1978 and 1980 caused extensive erosion, landslides and slippages that led the City of Los Angeles to acquire the privately-owned properties along the canyon rim. Since then, the Departments of Recreation and Parks and Bureau of Engineering have worked with the California Coastal Commission to remediate the problems, which included the installation of a storm drain and subdrain system, as well as landfill to support the canyon walls. (Editor’s note: Ron Weber, an attorney who lives adjacent to the Recreation Center, is on the community advisory committee. His name was inadvertently deleted from the list of members in last week’s article: ‘Advisory Committee to Tackle Potrero.’)

Palisades Charter High School’s petition to the Los Angeles school board to renew its independent charter for another five years has cleared a vital hurdle. The draft petition was delivered to the LAUSD Charter Office on January 31 with the signatures of 73 percent of the permanent teachers (52 of 71), far exceeding the required 50 percent support by permanent teachers, according to Jack Sutton, the school’s executive director. Another 47 non-permanent teachers and staff members also signed in support of the petition. ‘Our board of directors’three teachers, three parents, three community representatives, a classified employee and myself’committed itself to successfully renewing the charter as well as addressing important issues raised by teachers when it passed the following motion at its January meeting,’ Sutton said. The motion read: ‘The PCHS Board of Directors is committed to charter renewal being submitted as a 501(c)3 California nonprofit public benefit corporation. The PCHS Board of Directors is also committed to, through the amendment process prescribed in the Charter, examining the governance structure once the charter has been renewed and labor negotiations are completed.’ In the weeks leading up to the vote, teachers union representative Alex Shuhgalter rallied a small contingent of faculty in criticizing the school’s current governing model. They argued that the board under the 501(c)3 structure did not give teachers enough say in governing the school. At a public meeting in January, Sutton argued that the backbone of the school’s governance is the seven standing committees, each comprised of 50 percent faculty members. But, Sutton added, if the faculty wants to make changes to the governing structure, there is a mechanism to do so in the charter. The amendment process requires 75 percent of teachers and two-thirds of the board support. The teachers have also criticized the board for making no headway on class-size reduction. While there is no dispute over the need to reduce class size, doing so necessitates more long-term considerations, Sutton said. For example: Should there be a new building? Should there be more on-line courses? What would each option cost? The next step in charter renewal is for the LAUSD charter office staff to review the draft and send it to other departments (e.g., budget, special education, and facilities) for review. After feedback is received, changes will be made in the final draft that is submitted to the school board for approval. Sutton estimated that the board will take up the charter renewal sometime in April or May. ‘We hope that all the stakeholders will recognize the value and responsibility of remaining an independent charter high school,’ said Sutton, quoting from a January 27 Palisadian-Post editorial. ‘We ask that the community support our efforts toward that end.’

VIEWPOINT

By NAHID MASSOUD Special to the Palisadian-Post I heard Ustad Mahwash’s splendid voice on Saturday, January 15, at the Getty Center’s Harold Williams Auditorium. The sound took me back to my adolescent days in Afghanistan. Tears rolled down my eyes as memories of Kabul flooded my consciousness. The first song, ‘Mullah Mamad Jaan,’ was one of the most popular numbers of its time. It was always played during Afghani New Year, Nowrose, which is the 21st of March and the beginning of spring season. Radio Kabul played this and other Afghan songs over and over. The sound of music filled streets of the city and the narrow lanes of the bazaars, while shopkeepers hustled and hawked their wares. You could hear the voice of Ustad Mahwash everywhere as part of a kind of perpetual background music to the activities of men, women and children, all wearing colorful native Afghan clothes as part of the seasonal festivities. Nowrose is a particularly exciting time. The smell of spring was in the air, the scent of plants and budding trees mingled with the smells on the streets, everyone making mewai (our special Nowrose fruit dish). In the streets, farmers in from the country seemed excited, ready for the new planting season. All that seems a long time ago, the peaceful Kabul of my youth when people listened to music and lived peacefully despite their differences. It has vanished into a landscape devastated by war and destruction. Yet musical experiences can take you to a past that has gone, as Ustad Mahwash did for me, bringing what was repressed so vividly alive in the present. The powerful lyrics of her songs of god, love, and loss touched another part of me that I had forgotten. The ghazals penetrated my soul, made me remember my favorite composer, Ustad Naynawaz, who wrote wonderful songs that were often sung by the handsome, great and very popular Ahmed Zaher, whom I heard in person many times (he was the brother of my best friend). Unfortunately, both Naynawaz and Zaher were casualties of the Soviet war, assassinated while still in their prime. The melodies sung by Ustad Mahwash at the Getty in both Dari and Pashto languages were representative of popular Afghan music of the sixties and seventies. Their beauty was underscored by the excellent musicians who accompanied her’Aziz Herawi on dutar, Ehsan Ahmadi on tabla, and Ahmad Khalil Rageb on harmonium. As the first woman Ustad (maestro) in Afghanistan, Mahwash is not only a master musician but was in those days a role model, a strong woman who managed to turn her talent into a brilliant career against all the obstacles that usually prevented women from succeeding. I left the Ustad Mahwash concert full of sorrow over the years of war and destruction of my homeland. It’s so hard to imagine how, during the Taliban regime, such a musical people had to live without music. Mahwash’s powerful voice was a reminder of how much the Afghan people have suffered and lost in this last quarter century. The concert taught me how in exile you can come to appreciate in a new way the meaning of a past that is forever lost, but can be resurrected momentarily through the power of music and song. Palisadian Nahid Massoud, a native of Kabul, is a psychiatric nurse who works at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. She came to America on a student visa in 1977 and was given political asylum in the U.S. after the Soviet invasion endangered her family, all of whom later escaped to the U.S. With the aid of her husband, history professor and author Robert Rosenstone, Nahid directs Sharq, an art space at her home devoted to contemporary works by artists from the East. The next exhibit, ‘The Fire Next Time,’ opens March 5 and will feature Persian artist Kamran Moojedi.