For my first post I thought I would tell you a little about myself and my experience in Westchester. My wife and I moved to Westchester in January 2016 after living for years in Santa Monica where we both worked. Living in a cozy apartment, we watched large residential units popping up throughout the City significantly altering its atmosphere and personality. We were eager to move to a residential neighborhood with a diverse culture, engaged residents and reasonable commute to work. After looking for over a year with our great agent Claire Lissone, we found Westchester and have felt increasingly fortunate since moving every day. We were fortunate enough to be able to find a single family residence that was move in ready. A beautiful house we’ve loved from the day we first set eyes on it.
A first look at our new living and dining room nicely staged in mid-century furniture.
Since moving in, we’ve added solar and converted our gas heater into a heat pump offering air conditioning and heating that is all electric. These are part of a broader theme of mine to try to do our part to tackle increasingly extreme weather conditions.
In our search for a new home, I resorted to my early career in geographic information systems (GIS) and developed various maps of the communities surrounding Santa Monica looking at real estate costs, commuting times, crime and safety, access to services and more. Rekindling my excitement for performing geospatial analysis, I found the tools available today have improved remarkably over what was available when I first began. The primary tools in my chest today are an open source GIS desktop software called QGIS and the nimble programming language, Python.
After living in Westchester for a few years I noticed an increase in burglaries in the blocks neighboring our home. I found the Los Angeles crime data mapping website and started tracking these burglaries and found that 6 in a row happened to homes that immediately abutted active or recent construction sites. The website is useful but I thought we could have more meaningful understanding of the patterns and trends with more data. Through a circuitous route, I was introduced to Pat Karasick, the volunteer coordinator for the LAPD (volunteering is a great opportunity for retirees or anyone with free time in their schedule – the department needs all the help they can get). I proposed to her that I’d like to work with the team that does the GIS work in the department. I thought that with additional data one could try to develop predictive models of criminal patterns and behavior to help inform where the very constrained patrol officers should focus their efforts. Unfortunately I learned 2 things: I didn’t have the time to offer the commitment needed during the workday but more problematic was that even in working with the detectives, I could not get access to any more of the data.
The upside of this experience is that I met several people who eventually steered me to the Neighborhood Council where I wanted to engage in public safety but also became interested in planning and land use. I started attending Planning and Land Use Committee (PLUC) meetings in 2018 where I became more broadly intrigued by the council. Thanks to encouragement by my neighbor, Kimberly Fox, I ran for the District 9 residential district director seat on the board and was elected unanimously in June 2019. Okay, so I ran unopposed, but at least 250 people checked the box next to my name which felt encouraging. So, here I am, a board member on the neighborhood council and sitting on the Outreach, Public Safety and Government Affairs committees where I am learning the ropes working with incredibly selfless people giving service to our community.
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Exploring Westchester / Playa Neighborhoods with Data 