Van Nuys Neighborhood Council Votes To Rename Erwin Street Mall After Zev Yaroslavsky
VAN NUYS, CA — At this month’s council meeting in Van Nuys, the local neighborhood council voted overwhelmingly to rename the “Erwin Street Mall” at the Government Center after Zev Yaroslavsky. The mall runs right down the middle of the Government Center, and is the heart and soul of civic life in the Valley. Yaroslavsky served on the Los Angeles City Council for years before being elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Yaroslavsky also ran for Mayor of Los Angeles, and has been a fixture of Los Angeles politics and government for decades.
“I am very excited about this opportunity to honor former County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky by renaming the “Erwin Street Mall” after this great statesman and dedicated public servant. It is personally near and dear to my heart, as I volunteered and worked in Supervisor Yaroslavsky’s Van Nuys Office for years. And when I was elected Council President in Van Nuys, Supervisor Yaroslavsky was the first elected official to come and participate in our “Distinguished Speaker Series.” Supervisor Yaroslavsky and his office also co-hosted our first “Public Safety Summit” and was always there to support our council efforts in Van Nuys. I look forward to seeing Zev at the renaming ceremony, and thanking him for his decades of service to our community,” said Council President & Honorary Mayor of Van Nuys George Thomas.
Zev Yaroslavsky is a politician from Los Angeles County, California. He is a former member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors from District 3, which includes the San Fernando Valley, the Westside of Los Angeles and coastal areas between Venice and the Ventura County line. He was first elected to the board in 1994. Yaroslavsky served on the Los Angeles City Council from 1975 to 1994. He has been active in the areas of transportation, the environment, health care and cultural affairs.
Zev Yaroslavsky, the son of David and Minna Yaroslavsky, was born on December 21, 1948, in Los Angeles. He and his older sister, Shimona (married name: Kushner), were the children of Jewish immigrants from Russia and grew up in a Zionist household in Boyle Heights. His father was a founder of the Hebrew Teachers Union in Los Angeles, and both parents, who were born in Ukraine, were founders of North American Habonim, a Labor Zionist youth movement. Yaroslavsky recalled that his parents spoke to their children only in Hebrew to prepare them for emigrating to Israel. They took their children to that country when Shimona was thirteen and Zev was five. Shimona later emigrated permanently.
Yaroslavsky is married to the former Barbara Edelston, whom he met as a student at UCLA. In 1985, when Yaroslavsky was a City Council member, a newspaper reporter described their home in the Fairfax District as “a drab yellow structure with peeling paint and a dirt-patched front lawn.” The reporter noted that Yaroslavsky was known for frugality in his public and private life, spending much of his spare time following world events in newspapers and on television. Barbara Yaroslavsky was first appointed to the Medical Board of California in 2003 and has subsequently served multiple terms as its President. The couple has two children.
Yaroslavsky’s 1975 election to the City Council’s 5th District on Los Angeles’ Westside stunned the city’s political establishment, which had supported his opponent, Frances M. Savitch, a former aide to then-Mayor Tom Bradley. Savitch had secured endorsements from, among others, California’s two U.S. senators, members of Congress and an assortment of state office holders—”some of the strongest political muscle ever assembled in a City Council race,” as the Los Angeles Times put it in a post-election analysis. In the primary, Yaroslavsky ran second to Savitch, eliminating from the race Rosalind Wiener Wyman, who was seeking to retake the seat she held from 1953 to 1965. Wyman endorsed Yaroslavsky in his grass-roots general election campaign. When Yaroslavsky was sworn in as the council’s then-youngest member at age 26, Mayor Bradley quipped: “Congratulations. Now you’re part of the establishment.” “Yes,” Yaroslavsky recalled retorting, “but the establishment is not part of me.” (http://zevyaroslavsky.org/)
Van Nuys Neighborhood Council
PO Box 3118
Van Nuys, CA 91407
Telephone (818) 533-VNNC (8662)
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.VNNC.org
