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As a member of the MAC, there are several priorities I would want to address.

Wildfire preparedness is always a topic of great importance. During the Woolsey fire we evacuated at night. One of my greatest concerns is if the next fire evacuation were to take place during the day. All of our resident families who no longer have school age children would be trying to get out of Oak Park while our resident parents as well as out of district parents were trying to get in to the schools to get to their children at the same time. Currently we have no evacuation plan in place for this. As a member of the MAC it would be a top priority for me to facilitate a meeting between Supervisor Gorell’s office, the fire department, the police department and OPUSD to put a plan in place as soon as possible and communicate it to all of our residents.

Safety is another area that is a priority for me. Currently we only have one patrol car assigned to our area of 14,000 residents. I am grateful to Supervisor Gorell’s office for the recent addition of a traffic light that can scan for out of area license plates and I am always grateful to our sheriff’s department for the hard work they do but I believe we can do more to keep our community safe. Recently there was an attempted break in on Deerhill that prompted Deerhill residents to create their own neighborhood watch program. They created contact lists with street captains that would allow them to look out for one another and easily communicate in the case of an emergency. I would love to invite them to a future MAC meeting to speak to how they organized this and help other neighborhoods in Oak Park to do the same. As a member of the Measure S committee I was able able to work with and learn from Di Starzak who has done so much important work for Cert Oak Park. It would be great if we could get our neighborhood watch captains cert certified as well.

Another priority for me would be expanding and reinvigorating community in Oak Park. I believe communication builds community. We are lucky enough to have a student board member on the MAC. As a member of the MAC I would love to work with her to create a social media presence for the MAC and build an email database that could help to get the word out about community events. Everyone should be aware of and invited to the boat parade, the Friends of Oak Park Open spaces clean up days, Rancho Simi Parks community events, school district musical and theatrical performances, athletic events and more.

These are just a few of the things I would want to address as a member of the MAC.