About Time! Neighborhood Councils, NC Alliances: More Comment Time at City Council

GUEST WORDS-On Saturday, Council President Herb Wesson gave the keynote speech before the 100+ Neighborhood Council board members and stakeholders gathered for NC Budget Day in City Hall. He announced that in the next Council term he will be folding in neighborhood council related issues under his Rules & Elections Committee, partly to help shepherd through a series of proposals he has made related to funding, protocol for testimony before City commissions and the Council. 

One of these proposals (CF#15-0389) is to extend the time for NC reps expressing an official board position from the current two minutes to a longer, undefined period. Mr. Wesson also suggests that representatives of NC alliances be afforded this opportunity, presumably upon verification by the Clerk that there indeed was a vote on the matter. Alliances like the LA Neighborhood Council Coalition or those covering different geographic areas do not currently have the ability to submit Community Impact Statements. 

The Council allows the chair of a committee up to five minutes to explain a recommendation, so this might be the limit on time allotted for NC reps. Those of us used to public speaking know that five minutes is a long time, almost a speech, so I would recommend that if time is extended for routine matters it be increased to three minutes, with five minutes reserved solely for NC speakers representing the locations of a proposed land use project, as these items are often very complex. 

One other idea that the President should consider, along with the Clerk, City Attorney and the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment who are advising him, is to place NC reps immediately behind representatives of the Mayor, Council offices, and other City officials when holding public hearings in committee. My NC's PLUM Chair had to wait hours to testify on the Millennium project, even though we were the only group testifying that had held numerous public meetings, open to all, as part of a City sponsored process. 

While I applaud the Council president for moving to empower NCs, I can't help but note as a long-time Council observer that opportunities for public comment have in certain ways diminished since he has been sitting in the center of the horse shoe. Whereas the Council used to allow public comment on many, if not most, items where members of the public attended a meeting, now if they show up they are regularly told that they should have participated at the committee level. 

This does not work for many folks and particularly not for neighborhood councils. I used to scour Council referral sheets for a living for four different Council members, but I refuse to exert this much effort for free as a volunteer. The loss of City Maven's morning report has made it harder for those who don't work in City Hall to know which items are being submitted and scheduled for any of the Council's 15 different committees and when they might be scheduled for City Council. 

Just in the past week my neighborhood council caught wind that our outgoing representative, Tom LaBonge, had put in a motion concerning expanding preferential parking near the Hollywood sign, a hot topic that we had spent significant time discussing last year. The office, apparently in an effort to please a homeowner's association before a new administration took over, gave us no indication about the motion or that a hearing was scheduled in the Transportation Committee. 

If that wasn't bad enough, at committee, a verbal amendment was made to include an area adjacent to a business area in the study, with the presumption that this zone would be covered in the future. Our board was able to vote on the matter two days before the Council's action, but our only recourse to addressing the issue was adopting a Community Impact Statement (CIS), which given that it was submitted the day before the vote I doubt was even read. The businesses' only option was letters. 

The Council has the ability to suspend its rules and allow for a public comment by NC reps at its own meetings and should. If other stakeholders complain it can be explained that as (mostly) elected public officials participating in a City-sanctioned process, NCs have greater access. We deserve a few privileges as we cannot sue or appeal land use decisions like non-City sponsored groups. We also have to take ethics and financial training and comply with the Brown Act, just like the Council.   

Ultimately, the best way to ensure proper communication between Council representatives and their NCs is to hold elected officials accountable for utilizing their staffs to notify stakeholders about what they are up to and not to expect them to track their every action in hopes of finding something of interest. Inevitably, items will fall between the cracks, either by accident or by design. Allowing for greater flexibility around public comment will help alleviate this problem.

 

(Erik Sanjurjo is the vice president of the Hollywood United Neighborhood Council. He served for a decade as a policy deputy for various City Council members, including Tom LaBonge. Erik is an occasional CityWatch contributor.)

-cw

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 53

Pub: Jun 30, 2015