Who Speaks for You at City Hall? Is Anybody Listening?
DEEGAN ON LA-Many attempts have been made over the decades to empower the voice of communities, often with some success through Homeowner Associations (HOA.) That community voice was organized and amplified fifteen years ago with the creation, through Charter reform, of the Neighborhood Council (NC) system. There are now 96 NC’s with 1,800 board members, representing every area of the city, and there are also countless HOA’s ranging from coalitions of a few members to huge alliances of multiple HOAs. The NC’s often work closely with the HOA’s, and some even share board members.
Every voice in these NCs and HOAs is important as the city experiences a growth spurt unseen since the end of World War II, when LA’s population exploded and the city went through massive densification.
Post World War II, it became evident that Los Angeles was experiencing a population boom, and that the formerly quiet neighborhoods would expand, and outlying areas, such as the San Fernando Valley, would also grow. Homeowners began to voice concerns that their well-manicured and sometimes “non-inclusionary neighborhoods” (i.e. neighborhoods in which covenants and conditions, now illegal, were attached to land deeds spelling out “who” could own property) would either be invaded by growth or bypassed for attention as newer communities sprang up to house a growing population.
In a reaction to this, city officials made a series of attempts over the next twenty-five years to empower communities, starting in the 1950s when the County Department of Community Services created “community coordinating councils” as a way to identify specific neighborhoods, in effect giving them a “pedigree” separate from the “new growth” areas. It also created a system to coordinate county services to those community councils. Significantly, those “councils” were not activist initiators of change, but rather, passive receptors of services who were not called on for advice.
Following the Watts Riots of 1965, the school board created a system of “neighborhood advisory councils,” to serve as a platform for public calming and give voice to distressed communities after that epochal upheaval. This was more like a super-PTA than an advisory body.
It was not until 1969 that there was any attempt to add teeth to the empowering of neighborhood communities when Mayor Sam Yorty tried to change the City Charter to create specific neighborhoods that would have what he called “elected neighbormen” to act as local governments. Not surprisingly, because this would cut into their jurisdictions, the City Council vetoed this.
In 1977, City Planning Director Calvin Hamilton created thirty-five “citizens advisory committees” to be a type of participatory democracy to help develop community plans that would eventually become a new master plan for the city’s growth. The City Council retired the idea, and its originator, leaving a vacuum for how to deal with growth issues. That vacuum was filled by developers who began working directly with councilmembers to get what they wanted.
The most successful scheme to encourage participatory involvement of communities in city government has been the Neighborhood Council system, now in its fifteenth year, now with 95 NC’s that come under the direction of the City’s Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. DONE is led by General Manager Grayce Liu on its mission of “leading the EmpowerLA team as they support Neighborhood Councils in engaging the community and make government more responsive to local needs.”
What then is the difference between a homeowner’s association (HOA) and a Neighborhood Council (NC), if both are dedicated to advocating for their respective communities and often work in tandem to meet those goals? In a word: training.
Every fall, EmpowerLA (the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment) hosts a Congress of Neighborhood Councils that focuses on training board members to be more expert in land use, transportation, public safety and a host of other topics, including many administrative trainings to help NC’s function. On Saturday, September 24, 2016, the annual Congress of Neighborhoods was in session at City Hall, where nearly 1,000 neighborhood council board members assembled. They met first in council chambers and then attended a series of workshops that focused on specific community issues as well as topics addressing how to administratively run an NC.
The very well attended workshops included “Meet Your City Officials,” “Planning and Land Use 101 and 102,” “How To Make A Difference at City Hall (Lobby Like a Pro),” “Community Partnerships for Better Outcomes,” “Unlocking the Traffic Grid,” “Public Safety in LA,” “The Future of the Neighborhood Council Movement,” “Code Enforcement-Solving Code Violation Problems,” “Persuasion in a Nutshell,” “LA 2040-Our City, Our General Plan, Our Future,” and “Emergency Preparedness.”
While advisory only, NC board members are elected in City Clerk-run elections, and must meet the same kind of ethics and financial training standards as all city employees. Workshops like “Ethics,” “Leadership Skills,” “Parliamentary Procedures,” “How to Run a Successful Meeting,” “NC’s and the City Attorney's Office,” “Outreach and Events,” and “Board Basics 101,” all provided a basic training curriculum to strengthen the skills of NC board members.
What differentiates the two groups (NC’s and HOA’s) is the holistic approach to neighborhood and community concerns taken by the NCs -- they look at the bigger community picture with multiple issues that go beyond the traditional concerns of preserving property values. (That’s how HOAs started and it’s still a valuable function of these organizations that often do additional helpful work for their members.) The workshops at the Congress provide valuable training and tools to people who are newly empowered (through election by their community to board seats) but arrive in office often unprepared to deal with the complicated details of land use, public safety, transportation, and education issues. Votes can be squandered by board members who do not take the time to be trained -- one of the truly great advantages of attending the Congress.
The Congress this year was a success. According to Cindy Cleghorn, Chair of the Neighborhood Council Congress 2016, “…803 registrations and 150 walk-ins signed in. Attendance exceeded 850 throughout the day. Most all workshops were at capacity. This is the sixth consecutive Congress for NCs. There have been others but not consistent. We are anxious for feedback and making the NC Congress better each year.”
Empower LA General Manager Grayce Liu added, "I love the Congress of Neighborhoods because it brings together all of our amazing Neighborhood Council volunteers across the City to share their successes and to learn how to overcome the obstacles they are facing in their work. It is this type of collaboration that has made LA's Neighborhood Council system so successful and is a big part of the reason why we'll still be here to celebrate the 15th year anniversary for the first Neighborhood Councils in December."
Looking at the arc of the past six decades since WWII, and the various attempts to bring communities to the table, it’s apparent that having a seat is not the same as having a voice. Having a voice is not the same as having a trained voice. This is the critical advancement of the NC system: it brings professionalism to bear.
What can you do? Start attending your Neighborhood Council meetings and make public comment. Join a board committee as a stakeholder. Run for a board seat. And become one of the people in the community with the loudest, trained voice.
(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
Well, maybe so. But Weinstein experienced the same fury and frustration that thousands of powerless Angelenos feel when they wake up one morning to see a tower under construction next door on land that wasn’t supposed to allow such structures. If they investigate, they likely discover that – surprise! – a deal was cut in City Hall.
Art Leahy: “When I came to Metrolink, not only did we have a board that was ready to break up, but within the management staff, we had a culture of avoidance, deferral, and concealment or denial. 
