COMMUNITY SERVICE

By Jim Knight

A list of my community service

I have always been an advocate of responsible development and I think the city should serve as a leader in that capacity. One area of recent interest is building in a sustainable, energy and water efficient manner. I embarked upon an effort in conjunction with the RPV Planning Dept. to put forth a Green Building Program ordinance that encouraged such goals. The program was designed to be voluntary and utilized incentives to encourage participation.

As a part of developing this program I networked with many other planners and cities in California with similar programs and did extensive research to help develop the best possible model. I also reached out to Rolling Hills Estates, Palos Verdes Estates and Rolling Hills in an effort to encourage a trans-jurisdictional coordination of green building programs so that the process would be more user friendly to architects and contractors. At one such meeting we invited Marilyn Lyon of the South Bay Environmental Services Center and, building on this networking model, she developed a Green Task Force for the South Bay Council of Governments and expanded the idea to other cities in the South Bay. I have been an active member of the SBCOG's Green Task Force since its inception.

GREEN TASK FORCE

I have been contributing to the SBCCOG Green Task Force since its inception. Cities across the South Bay share their energy and water conservation programs with a first hand look at what worked and what didn't. I have brought this knowledge to RPV in an effort to find ways to run our operation more efficiently, saving our resident's tax dollars.

RPV LEADERSHIP ACADEMY

In 2011, the City of Rancho Palos Verdes brought together community leaders to discuss topical issues the City is currently facing and explore possible solutions. Subject matters included: Community Development; Public Works projects; Recreation and Parks; Finance; Legal Issues; and Police, Fire and Emergency Management. It has been a very rewarding experience and a great opportunity to delve into the issues with senior staff present and work with our local Fire and Sheriff departments to understand their needs and how they can better serve the community.

ABALONE COVE LANDSLIDE ABATEMENT DISTRICT (ACLAD) 2011+ Present

The Portuguese Bend area has seen an area of landslides for many years. In addition to many homes lost in the 1956 Portuguese Bend Landslide, between a period in the late 1970s into the early 1980s, many homes were damaged in the Abalone Cove Landslide. The City felt there needed to be something done to help abate the landslides of the area not only for the residents but to also protect PV Drive South, a very important arterial road.

ALCAD was formed in 1981 and was the first Geological Hazard Abatement District in State of California and to this day implements mitigation such as dewatering wells, GPS data to monitor movement as well as monitoring water levels, and conducting geo-hydrological studies to understand watershed drainage patterns, depth of water and isotope analysis for sources of the water.

I am presently Vice Chair of the District and work closely with our Chair, Bob Douglas who is our resident geological expert, continually searching for practical solutions to abating the landslide.

OPEN SPACE PARKS AND RECREATION TASK FORCE 2002 - 2004

A while back I had a chance to sit down with former Mayor Larry Clark and discuss the PVPLC efforts to acquire the Hon property for the Portuguese Bend segment of the Palos Verdes Preserve. I told him we needed to plan for the transition of the City's open space policy from acquisition to a use/management model. Not long after, the city formed the Open Space Parks and Recreation Task Force of which I was Vice Chair, Chair of the Open Space Subcommittee and a member of the Upper Point Vicente Subcommittee.

Despite the challenges of running a very large, diverse community based advisory committee, the Open Space Task Force provided extensive public input and final recommendations that assisted the Council for important subsequent open space decisions.

For a while the committee seemed to be pulling apart at the seams as divergent views of land use were emerging. The division seemed to be between active sports use vs. passive uses. I worked hard to find a common ground and tried to guide the group leading them in carefully looking at each area of open space and reasonably come to a consensus as to use. I spent a lot of time looking for alternatives solutions to issues that seemed to be at an impasse but in the end my research paid off and we were able to find the right location for the community needs.

Land use decisions can have long term effects to the character of our city. I am always in favor of reaching out to the community and using the model of making sure there is full disclosure and public workshops to help shape an outcome that meets the needs of the community while preserving the beauty our natural surroundings.

NATURAL COMMUNITIES CONSERVATION PLAN (NCCP)

More than a decade ago, I was involved with formation of the NCCP. The NCCP is a California solution to conservation planning. It was designed to overcome problems of existing conservation planning under the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). The project by project piecemeal ESA model only created long delays and financing challenges for developers, too many applications for the resource agencies to handle and it ultimately created fragmented patches of habitat diminishing the value of those ecological systems.

An NCCP is a better urban planning model and takes input from all stakeholders including developers, conservationists and the public to create a master conservation plan. Under an NCCP, ESA delays were resolved for developers, conservationists could plan functional habitat and connecting corridors and the public could be assured of recreational enjoyment of the preserved open space.

Another important advantage to adopting an NCCP is that our funding request to purchase and add lands into our Preserves is placed on top of the thousands of other requests being made of the Wildlife Conservation Board. Again, having studied urban planning, I was in support of Rancho Palos Verdes forming an NCCP for these reasons and volunteered many hours to the shaping of that plan.

I did have one other selfish reason I wanted to make sure it succeeded. The meetings took place when I had to baby-sit my then 2 year old daughter. I reminded everyone at the meeting that she, as well as all future generations, were the reason we all were engaged in this long term conservation planning process.

I believe that any acquisition of private lands to be included in the Preserve should be a voluntary contract relying on an industry standard fair market appraisal process. I contributed funds to the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy (PVPLC) toward the purchase of the Hon property to be included in the preserve and have been a PVPLC Mariposa Circle member from the beginning.

As a result of my efforts to preserve the city hall property, shape an environmentally sound project at Terranea and participation in the NCCP process, in 2002-2003 I received:

The Conservation Award from the Palos Verdes/ South Bay Chapter of Audubon Society

Certificate of Recognition from Senator Betty Karnette for commitment to conservation efforts in RPV

The Conservation Service award from the Sierra Club

For this campaign I am endorsed by the Sierra Club

TERRANEA 1998 - 2009

During the course of battling to preserve the City Hall site from becoming Destination Hotel's golf course, I had maintained a respectable relationship with the owners of Destination Hotels and was able to share an alternative vision I had for their hotel on their own site. Later called Terranea, I believed this project could create an enriching resort experience in an environmentally sound manner that embraced the tremendous natural resources found in our beautiful coastline.

I continued to work with the development team and I took a course at UC Irvine at my own expense about bioswales (a natural process of water treatment) and storm drain biofilters so that when I met with the developers I had the knowledge to help shape their water quality plan to protect our precious coastal tidal waters.

I, along with other conservationists, encouraged low water, native plantings and an increase of buffer to the bluff edge to further protect the endangered El Segundo Blue Butterfly. I took the opportunity to show the developers and their landscape architects the wonderful colors of Peninsula natives at the White Point Preserve.

At the June Terranea opening ceremonies, I had a chance to talk with Terranea VP Todd Majcher and he told me that I was instrumental in shaping the final vision of the resort. When I heard that, I felt my work and vigilance was all worthwhile.

With the help of many in the community, and by my respectfully keeping a line of communication open with the Lowe development team, and their willingness to listen, I think the hotel turned out to be a model project. Their most recent Heal the Bay water quality report shows a grade of A+, the best possible under their guidelines and the water quality is better now than before construction. An admirable feat indeed.

Despite the downturn in travel business the Hotel is thriving today. Being an environmentally sound, sustainable business operation does have its benefits and I think Bob Lowe and his team has shown that with Terranea.

COMMUNITY EMERGENCY RESPONSE TEAM (CERT)

In many large scale emergencies, our public servants in Fire and Police can only do so much. People will have to rely on each other for help in order to meet their immediate life saving and life sustaining needs. In recognition of this limitation, the L.A. City Fire Department (LAFD) in 1985 developed the CERT program + citizens providing citizens with the tools necessary to help in an emergency. The program has spread across the nation.

Several years ago I went through the CERT training course at Hess Park. I was very impressed how professional the L.A. County Fire department conducted all of the training. Subject matters covered were as broad as:

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS: Addresses hazards to which people are vulnerable in their community. Materials cover actions that participants and their families take before, during, and after a disaster. The CERT concept and organization are discussed as well as applicable laws governing volunteers in that jurisdiction.

DISASTER FIRE SUPPRESSION: Briefly covers fire chemistry, hazardous materials, fire hazards, and fire suppression strategies. However, the thrust of this session is the safe use of fire extinguishers, sizing up the situation, controlling utilities, and extinguishing a small fire. And yes, we were required to put out a fire with professional equipment!

DISASTER MEDICAL OPERATIONS: Participants practice diagnosing and treating airway obstruction, bleeding, and shock by using simple triage and rapid treatment techniques, evaluating patients by doing a head-to-toe assessment, establishing a medical treatment area, performing basic first aid, and practicing in a safe and sanitary manner.

LIGHT SEARCH AND RESCUE OPERATIONS: Participants learn about search and rescue planning, size-up, search techniques, rescue techniques, and most important, rescuer safety.

DISASTER PSYCHOLOGY AND TEAM ORGANIZATION: Covers signs and symptoms that might be experienced by the disaster victim and worker. It addresses CERT organization and management principles and the need for documentation.

I highly encourage everyone to take the training, if not for the community, then to protect your family in an emergency.