Fences & Hedges in Heavily-Trafficked Areas

Greetings all.

We live on the first street open to vehicular traffic south of Washington Blvd. Needless to say we get a lot of car and pedestrian traffic because of the beach and visitors to the bars/restaurants at the end of Washington.

I, too, share the desire to keep our neighborhoods friendly and open. I think that is attainable in the less-trafficked areas of our community. However, in a neighborhood like mine, lower fence/hedge heights is not the way to achieve that goal. In fact, enforcement of lower heights would definitely be detrimental to our safety and security.

Our front yard is frequently littered with fast food containers and beer bottles left by folks who come to spend the day at the beach. Most weekends we are awoken in the middle of the night by people leaving local bars and restaurants, coming back to their cars parked on our street. I've even seen more than one drunk partygoer from a Washington Blvd bar relieving himself on my neighbor's tree before getting in his car. If a higher fence can protect my two-year-old from stepping on broken glass or playing in human waste, I'm all for it.

Additionally, we've had UPS packages and some of our daughter's toys stolen from our front yard. Neighbors have informed us that we are not alone in this regard.

Furthermore, when the majority of the buildings on my block are apartments and condos, many of which are built right up to the sidewalk, regulating the fence/hedge height will do little to create a greater sense of physical openness.

I hope that the Task Force, in making its recommendations to the city, will take into account the fact that Venice is comprised of many different types of neighborhoods - walk street communities, the canals, commercial areas and the streets by the beach, to name a few - and there is no "cookie cutter" solution suitable for all our communities.

For example, a program that would better benefit my neighborhood would be the implementation of a residential permit parking program to encourage visitors to make use of the beach parking lots and free up much of the congestion.

Thank you for your time.

P.S. Is there a reason why this discussion board requires us to start a new thread each time? It would seem more efficient to allow us to post responses/comments to existing posts thereby keeping the discussion board more organized.