Dear Petition Authors,

I thank you for your continued advocacy on the matter of the proposed Home Depot project in the Granada Hills community. As the representative of Los Angeles’ Twelfth Council District, and a resident of the Northwest San Fernando Valley for well over 40 years, I believe deeply in community engagement when it comes to issues impacting the community and feel that outreach and input is a critical part of the City’s land use process. In this case, Home Depot is proposing to construct a prototype store in an established shopping center that is vastly out of scale, without regard to the impact that it would have on the surrounding community. This approach is counter to everything I have fought to preserve in this community.

I attended the Granada Hills South Neighborhood Council at their February 2, 2023 meeting to discuss myriad subjects impacting the Granada Hills community including the potential Home Depot project. At this meeting, I expressed the very same sentiments and concerns that most petitioners have expressed in this petition and did so substantially before any ‘Community Working Group Presentation’ and notably before the Granada Hills South Neighborhood Council South (GHSNC) EIR recommendation vote on August 2nd 2023 (you can find the minutes of this meeting, linked here: https://ghsnc.org/wp-content/uploads/docs/Minutes_2023-02-02.pdf).

As you may find within the attached minutes, I suggested to the neighborhood council that they request an Environmental Impact Report and reconfirmed my support for the community’s and its concerns by stating, “I'm asking for a complete [Environmental Impact Report] of this project".

As your representative, it is critical to help guide residents toward effective advocacy, which is what I have done on this matter to date, and I will continue to fight to ensure that the concerned voices of the Granada Hills community are heard.

JOHN S. LEE
Councilmember, Twelfth District
City of Los Angeles