CODE VOLUNTEERS PROCLAIM VICTORY IN VALLEY CLEANUP.

Byline: Yvette Cabrera Daily News Staff Writer

The goal was to shape up neighborhoods. Now, after a test run in the Valley, the city's Neighborhood Codewatch volunteers can say they did just that - with the help of the communities themselves.

It was the work of volunteers like Jeannette Clark that convinced the Los Angeles City Council on Friday to expand the pilot program citywide to help overworked city inspectors track down health and safety code violations.

Clark, a Reseda resident and one of 32 trained Neighborhood Codewatch volunteers, spent 40 hours over two months scouring a portion of Reseda for nuisances. While other volunteers forwarded addresses to the city's Volunteer Bureau, which then mailed violation notices, Clark typed up 90 notifications and mailed them herself. And when her violators came into compliance, she hand-wrote thank-you notes on city cards.

All told, 32 of 35 residents and businesses complied and corrected their nuisances - the program's highest compliance rate.

``I think it's going to help the appearance of the community tremendously,'' Clark said. ``There are always a few people who won't comply, but I think it's going to wind up less than 5 percent.''

Neighborhood Codewatch was created in March as an eight-week pilot program using volunteers to monitor communities for nuisance code violations.

The city trained 32 volunteers, half of whom hit the streets of Van Nuys, Reseda and Woodland Hills in early August. The balance began monitoring the neighborhoods of West and Central Los Angeles more than a month ago.

The Valley volunteers sent 207 notifications to property owners, and 102 complied, for a 49.3 percent success rate. There were 17 referrals made to the Building and Safety Department for further attention, and the remainder will continue to be monitored.

The department puts a $400 cost on each complaint handled by staffers so the program saved $40,800, officials said.

Overall, volunteers have completed 511 hours of monitoring, sent 782 notices, and identified 671 properties with 814 violations.

The top violations were cars parked in front yards (23 percent), inoperable vehicles (21 percent) and excessive trash/vegetation (21 percent).

Not all the targets of the program are happy with it.

Paul Seaman, a 79-year-old Reseda man, said he loved traveling the state in his beloved van conversion but had to sell it after getting a notice that it was illegally parked on his front lawn.

``(The van) was on my property - that I own. Why can't I park it where I damn well please? It's not taking up city space,'' said Seaman.

He didn't want to pay to store the van and found street parking troublesome.

Some violators see merits in the program.

Chief Auto Parts on Reseda Boulevard in Reseda got a graffiti notice that said it could be removed by calling a city hotline.

``I think it's an excellent program for the community because if there's no graffiti it makes the community look better,'' said Robert Santos, who was unaware of the removal program.

Restoring the image of decaying neighborhoods was precisely what City Councilwoman Laura Chick had in mind when she suggested Neighborhood Codewatch.

``Sometimes the little problems lead to the bigger problems and I think we're going to see over the long term that the program will be preventive from allowing serious blight problems to take over our community,'' said Chick.

With an estimated 90,000 nuisance locations that go unreported to the Department of Building and Safety, Chick sees the program as a way to free the department to work on more severe complaints.

``Just building grass-roots participation in the neighborhoods has a value beyond the dollar sign.''