Relief for Venice Homeowners Fed Up With Rogue RV's

Councilman Bill Rosendahl Monday offered petitions for Venice residents wanting to ban recreational vehicles from parking in front of their homes overnight.
  
Residents can petition to ban vehicles more than seven feet high or more than 22 feet long from parking on a block from 2-6 a.m., Rosendahl said.
  
Two-thirds of the residents on a block must agree to have signs posted informing recreational vehicle owners of the overnight parking ban.
  
"For too long, residents of Venice have sought relief from the proliferation of RVs, campers and other oversize vehicles in front of their homes,'' Rosendahl said. "The California Coastal Commission has wrongly denied Venice the same parking restrictions other communities have. This is one of the few tools we have at our disposal.''
  
The commission has twice denied the city's attempts to establish resident-only ``overnight parking districts'' in Venice -- even though most other coastal communities are allowed such restrictions, an aide to Rosendahl said.
  
The City Council responded by passing an ordinance prohibiting vehicles of a certain size from parking overnight in Venice. Such a law does not require commission approval.
  
Rosendahl said Monday he wants to go even further, seeking to direct the Transportation Department to install the street signs on any block where two-thirds of the residents, businesses and property owners support the restrictions.
  
Residents who own recreational vehicles will be able to get a non-transferable, $10 per day, three-day permit to load or unload the vehicle.
  
Before the signs can be installed, the council will have to approve a secondary ``implementing ordinance'' that would flesh out the new regulations.
  
Residents who want to sign the petition can download it from www.councilmanrosendahl.com.
  
Tensions boiled over last week when city officials took several days to summon cleanup crews to three Venice intersections where human waste was alleged dumped.
  
``Don't dump on Venice is our demand,'' said Mark Ryavec, president of the Venice Stakeholders Association. ``We are asking that the city post signs against oversize vehicles parking in front of our houses, and we want the cops to finally start enforcing the city ordinance that prohibits sleeping in parked vehicles.''
  
Venice has long been a beacon to free spirits, but the burgeoning number of people living in recreational vehicles in recent years has tested the community's reputation as a live-and-let-live zone.
  
When the municipal parking lot on the beach at Rose Avenue closes around sundown, dozens of recreational vehicle dwellers fire up their rigs and limp a few blocks inland to find overnight parking -- along Venice Boulevard, off Rose Avenue at Fourth, Fifth and Sixth avenues and throughout the Oakwood neighborhood.
  
People are living in as many as 250 recreational vehicles around Venice, according to Ryavec.
  
While some beach areas are set up to accommodate recreational vehicles -- such as Dockweiler State Beach, where overnight camping is allowed and holding tank pump-out stations are available -- Venice is not.
  
Ryavec's group has been working to ban the overnight parking of oversize vehicles on residential streets, but he claims city officials have been dragging their feet, while Rosendahl scrambles to set up an overnight recreational vehicle parking program modeled on a successful one in Santa Barbara.
  
The Venice Stakeholders Association has sued the California Coastal Commission, which declined to assert its jurisdiction over the parking issue, saying it was primarily a social problem.