Venice resident Mark Ryavec, president of the Venice Stakeholders Association (VSA), has officially announced that he is a candidate for the Los Angeles City Council seat now held by Councilman Bill Rosendahl. Previously announced candidates for the seat include Mar Vista resident Mike Bonin (presently the chief of staff for Councilman Rosendahl) and educator Odysseus Bostick of Westchester. The election will be held in March of next year.
Mark Ryavec
From the “Mark Ryavec for LA City Council 2013” press release:
Mark Ryavec, president of the Venice Stakeholders Association (VSA), announced today that he is a candidate for the Los Angeles City Council seat now held by Councilman Bill Rosendahl. The election is in March 2013.
Ryavec, formerly a legislative analyst for the City Council and chief deputy tax assessor for Los Angeles County, said he is running to return the City’s focus to traditional municipal services.
“Most residents just don’t believe we are getting the services that we are paying for,” Ryavec said. “And they’re right.”
“My first priority is to be an advocate for residents and neighborhoods,” Ryavec said. “That means preventing crime, repaving streets, fixing sidewalks, trimming trees, putting rangers back into parks and keeping libraries open.”
Ryavec, whose career has spanned both government service and the private sector, said it would be difficult to provide traditional municipal services while also addressing the City’s chronic budget deficit and unfunded pension liabilities, but, he said, “the first step is to get our priorities straight – and the first priority is to provide the services residents expect in a timely manner”
Ryavec also pledged to protect neighborhoods from overdevelopment, crime and public nuisances. “All residents are entitled to the quiet enjoyment of their homes,” he said. “Too often the City bureaucracy loses sight of this. My job will be to keep reminding everyone in the City family that the City’s main purpose is to protect and improve the quality of life of residents.”
Calling Coastal District 11 LA’s “coastal district,” Ryavec promised that as councilman he would follow in the footsteps of former Councilman Marvin Braude, who led the fight against coastal oil drilling in the Pacific Palisades and authored Proposition O, which banned oil drilling on LA’s coast. “Our challenge today is to more aggressively attack the sources of urban run-off, which every winter dumps a toxic soup into Santa Monica Bay,” Ryavec said. One of the founding directors of American Oceans Campaign, a leader in the fight against the Oxy project, and a member for many years of the Ocean Council of Oceana, Ryavec feels passionately that coastal protection should be a top priority of the CD 11 representative.
Ryavec was born in Santa Monica, attended local schools, UCLA and Occidental College, and has lived in Venice for 23 years in a 105 year-old house, which he has painstakingly restored.
