Brentwood Hills Homeowners Association

Welcome to the Brentwood Hills Homeowners Association home page. The purpose of this site is to provide our local homeowners with information relevant to the community as well as easy access to our association. Regular BHHA board meetings are generally held on the first Wednesday of each month and are always open to members. Please contact us if you are interested in attending. If you live in Brentwood Hills we invite you to join us.

Reminder: Save the Date for BHHA's Annual Meeting / Party

BHHA's Annual Meeting / Party will be held Sunday, September 12, from 3-5:30pm on Queensferry Road (at Bayliss Road). The annual meeting is a great opportunity to meet your neighbors, talk with the local Police and Fire officials responsible for our neighborhood, meet BHHA's Board of Directors, and express your concerns to our local elected officials. Invited guests include City Councilmember Bill Rosendahl and State Assemblyman Mike Feuer. Download a pdf of the flyer.

MCA Sponsors Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Training Beginning August 26

The Mandeville Canyon Association recently announced that they are sponsoring Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Training. The training sessions are FREE and will be held from 6:30pm to 9pm in the community room of Paul Revere Middle School for seven consecutive Thursdays, beginning Thursday, August 26.

To reserve a place e-mail your name and e-mail address to Carrie Crossman. Even if you have a conflict for one these Thursday evenings, Ms. Crossman encourages attendance, because missed sessions can be made up at other trainings.

What is CERT?

Our local government prepares for everyday emergencies. However, during a disaster, the number and scope of incidents can overwhelm conventional emergency services. The CERT program is all-risk, all-hazard training. This valuable course is designed to help you protect yourself, your family, your neighbors, and your neighborhood in an emergency situation.

CERT is a positive and realistic approach to emergency and disaster situations where citizens may initially be on their own and their actions can make a difference. While people will respond to others in need without training, one goal of the CERT program is to help them do so effectively and efficiently without placing themselves in unnecessary danger. In the CERT training, citizens learn how to:

manage utilities and put out small fires;
treat the three medical killers by opening airways, controlling bleeding, and treating shock;
provide basic medical aid;
search for and rescue victims safely; * organize themselves and spontaneous volunteers to be effective; and
collect disaster intelligence to support first responder efforts.

For more information, visit the CERT website or e-mail Ms. Crossman.

August 2010 Newsletter Available

BHHA's August 2010 newsletter has been distributed to mailboxes in the community, and is also available online here. The current newsletter contains information on:

Phase II of Sullivan Canyon Construction

Phase II of the gas company's Sullivan Canyon work is scheduled to begin on August 4, 2010, and is estimated to take three to four months to complete. The canyon will be closed to public access during the work. For more information, please see our August 2010 newsletter.

Brentwood Hills and Smoking

As most residents of Brentwood Hills are aware, not just from the posted signs, but also from the ongoing brush clearing and occasional BHHA newsletters, it is illegal to have open fires or to smoke out doors here, because we live in the most restrictive fire control zone within Los Angeles (called a "Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone")*. Despite this clear and common-sense restriction, smokers are frequently spotted throughout the community. Polite requests to "please put out your cigarette" are sometimes met rudely or simply dismissed. (I've even had the same conversation with a resident who says he has lived in the neighborhood for thirty years and has never heard of such a restriction, despite having had the same conversation with me only a few months before.) So, just as with speeding and stop-sign scofflaws, we will probably not be able to stop some of our own residents from putting themselves and us at risk.

Visitors to the neighborhood, on the other hand, are usually very responsive when asked to stop smoking, because they often have no knowledge of the smoking restriction, since they don't live here and likely missed the conspicuously posted signs, which are now faded and don't command the attention they should. Or they have seen scofflaw residents smoking and assume that it is permissible.

The bottom line is this: we are all collectively responsible for the fire safety of our community. If you see someone smoking where they shouldn't (basically, anywhere outside in the neighborhood), please ask them to put it out. You can mention that there are posted signs and potential fines for violations. You can try to call the police or fire departments if the smoker doesn't comply. You can call a business to let them know that you saw their employee smoking where they shouldn't. (The purpose of these calls is not necessarily to get a specific employee in trouble, it is to ask the company to tell employees not to smoke when visiting our community.) Lastly, you can contact BHHA to let us know. If enough community concern is expressed and anecdotal evidence collected, there is always the outside chance of convincing LAPD and/or LAFD to enforce the law, as LAPD has done with stop-sign-running and speeding in the neighborhood.

Please Clean Up After Your Dogs

We have received reports of some dog-owners taking strolls with their dogs and not cleaning up after them. This is, of course, illegal (see below), but it also rude and un-neighborly. None of our residents should need a reminder to clean up after their dogs (the pooper-scooper law has been in effect for more than thirty years!), but those that need such reminders should consider that if they don't want to do it, why would their neighbor want to? Many of us have children, but regardless: no one wants someone else's dog defecating repeatedly on their property without its owner cleaning up. Please, clean up after your pets.

PayPal Link for Secure Online Dues Payment Available

More information regarding dues payment, including paying dues online through PayPal, is available here.