Lemp Avenue Name Change Goes Limping Along : Studio City: Council committee is cool to the idea of a switch to Meadow as the petition drive runs up against neighborhood resistance and charges of forgery.

A man named Tomm Wells lived in Studio City and brooded about the name of his street.

Lemp Avenue.

A perfectly awful name, he thought. Often misspelled “hemp” or “lamp,” it sounded like “limp.”

From this seemingly innocuous observation sprang a neighborhood brouhaha, complete with charges of deceit and forgery, aired at a meeting Tuesday of a Los Angeles City Council committee.

The name--Wells thought back when all this began--was not an English word. It seemed to have no traceable history. If a Mr. or Mrs. Lemp had christened the tree-lined street, they left no record Wells could find.

Worse yet, Wells, a real estate agent, believed that the name might actually be holding down property values. People might think that buying a house there was going out on a lemp, so to speak.

Wells wondered, what if the street name were changed to something bucolic? Like, say, Meadow Avenue? That would reflect the neighborhood, Colfax Meadows, and perhaps boost the value of houses there.

And so last January, Wells sent copies of a neighborly sounding letter to his fellow Lemperians.

“Those of us living on Lemp Avenue have a golden opportunity to change the name of our street,” Wells wrote. He asked residents of a five-block section of Lemp between the Ventura Freeway on the north and Acama Street on the south--part of which is in North Hollywood--to sign petitions supporting a name change to Meadow Avenue.

To his surprise, he learned that some Lemperians like the name. And now some of his angry neighbors are urging an investigation of his campaign, saying their signatures were forged on dump-Lemp petitions.

“I’m not a vengeful person,” said Margo Rottner, a Lemp-dweller who opposes the name change. “But I think it’s wrong and I don’t think he should get away with it.”

Rottner and about eight other Lemp homeowners contend that their signatures were forged on petitions supporting the name change. Many of those same residents sent letters opposing the change to council President John Ferraro, who represents the area.

The alleged forgeries surfaced when Lemp resident Michael Vandever, suspicious of a letter from Wells saying that he had obtained the required 75% vote in favor of the name change, contacted Ferraro’s office and asked for copies of the petitions.

“Someone had gone to great pains making my signature look like mine,” Vandever said.

“There’s no question about it being forged,” homeowner Todd Speckel said of his supposed signature.

Those who opposed the change said they wanted to avoid the inconvenience of ordering new checks and documents, and notifying others of the new name.

“I have better things to do in my life than change my address,” said Speckel. “I can’t believe this person has gone to this much trouble to do this.”

In light of the forgery allegations, representatives of Ferraro and the Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering recommended at a meeting of the City Council’s Public Works Committee last Tuesday that the name-change request be denied. Councilwoman Rita Walters, who chairs the committee, said the recommendation would be passed on to the full council.

“That sounded like an awful lot of intrigue for a street name change,” Walters quipped.

Wells, who did not attend the meeting, denied in a telephone interview that he forged any signatures. He said he was “shocked and upset” by the allegations.

As chairman of the Change Lemp Name Committee, Wells said he received the signed petitions and submitted them to the city. He said he couldn’t explain why petitions supporting the name change appeared to have been signed by people who oppose the change. But when he began the name-changing drive, he said, he was told “by a couple of people, very determinedly, that they would do anything they needed to do to make sure this doesn’t go through.” He would not elaborate.

Wells said he dropped the campaign in the interest of neighborhood harmony, and did not attend Tuesday’s meeting because “the only reason for my showing up would be to try to get it through and call people liars. I just don’t want to create any more friction than there already has been.”

Maureen Melvin, a member of the name-changing committee, said she has never met Wells. “I talked to him on the phone a few times,” she said. “He sounded like a hard-working, normal everyday guy.”

Eric Bernt, also a committee member, said he did not believe Wells forged signatures. He attributed the pro-Lemper’s allegations to “some confusion.”

Erin Rodewald, a spokeswoman for Ferraro, said the forgery allegations could not be proved without a full investigation, but the city attorney’s office has advised Ferraro that “it’s not practical to pursue this.” If the alleged victims pursued the matter on their own, she said, Ferraro would support their efforts.

It looks like the banner of Meadow Avenue’s forces, which never quite made it up the flagpole, never will. Their flag hangs lemp, so to speak.