CommentsGELFAND’S WORLD--After years of intending to read Winston Churchill's A History of the English Speaking Peoples, I've finally gotten to it. Someday I'll talk about the work as a whole, but for the moment I'd like to mention something about the chapter I'm going through right now.
Churchill writes about the formation and treatment of the American colonies from an English perspective. He points out that the economic policies were rational from the home island's standpoint, particularly viewed from the economic theory of the time -- which is today referred to as mercantilism. Without going into the details, let's consider how English policies affected the colonies, and considering them, recognize how the attitude in City Hall is not a lot different from colonialism.
From the English standpoint, the colonies functioned to send raw materials such as lumber back to the home island. Manufactured goods were then shipped back across the Atlantic and sold to the colonies. The English masters limited the ability of the colonies to trade outside of the direct trans-Atlantic commerce with England itself.
Concentrating only on the attitudes displayed, it is clear enough that the English point of view was patronizing in the extreme. The colonists were viewed as fulfilling a particular function that served the interests of the home country.
The colonists could grumble about their second-class citizenship and (more usefully) could skirt the limitations of English policy by a little judicious smuggling and a little quiet trade with other countries. But the attitudinal relationship of master to servant persisted through 1775.
In reading the passages about colonialism in Churchill, it struck me that here was the word that best describes the relationship of City Hall to the neighborhood councils. They see us as -- at best -- a source of useful raw materials -- in this case volunteer hours. They don't want to see us develop into what we were originally conceived of, that is to say, an independent force that will stand up for the interests of the people as a whole against the interests of money and political power.
We're supposed to be good servants. They don't mean anything bad by this. They appreciate good servants. But they don't like the idea that we could organize ourselves to oppose the way they do business.
For example, most of us support the prohibition of city council members taking money from developers who have business before the city. It makes sense. But when we bring such suggestions to the centers of power, we get politely patted on the head and invited to do what good neighborhood council participants are supposed to do: take more training courses.
The System in Operation
The city's neighborhood council system is ostensibly overseen by a commission known as the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (BONC). In addition, day to day operations are overseen by a city department called the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE). The BONC claims the right under the city Charter to set policy for the whole neighborhood council system, with the understanding that DONE will then go ahead and turn the policy into actuality.
For example, at one time there was a problem with a neighborhood council that had descended into factionalism to such an extent that board members quit in droves. It actually got to the point where there were not enough board members to constitute a quorum for a meeting. That neighborhood council was dead in the water, unable to function, or even to appoint new board members (because that would require an official meeting which would require a quorum).
It took a couple of years of discussion but eventually the BONC created a new policy for such instances. DONE was empowered to hold a special meeting where the board could be filled out. I saw the new policy put into action at the North Hills West Neighborhood Council one evening some years ago, and it worked fine. BONC has its purposes.
But the original, fundamental purpose of the BONC was to oversee the creation and official certification of new neighborhood councils. This was largely accomplished by the middle of the 2000s. Establishment of new councils has slowed to a trickle.
BONC is also charged with removing neighborhood councils from existence in certain unlikely circumstances. That ability functions as a motive to dilatory councils that need a little prodding -- hey, if you don't actually hold a meeting this year, you're gone.
Fundamentally, the BONC doesn't really have a lot to do anymore. It's the old story of idle hands and all that.
BONC as a potential threat
In conversations with current and former BONC members (several of whom I consider to be old friends and acquaintances), I've tried to point out that the BONC is kind of a two-edged sword. Its members, particularly new members, are looking for problems to solve and looking to invent rules to solve them. Those of us who want to defend the freedom and independence of our neighborhood councils become worried about all these potential new regulations we will be facing.
The advent of neighborhood council funding in the early 2000s made this concern even worse, as the city has, bit by bit, added layers of requirements for simply existing as a neighborhood council board member. But it's not just the power to spend public funds. BONC members (and, to some extent, DONE staff) concern themselves about whether people shout at each other in meetings or say negative things about each others' personal characteristics.
And with these questions come the seemingly inevitable proposals by some BONC members to solve our problems by creating new training requirements.
Here is an item from last Tuesday's BONC agenda:
"Discussion and possible action regarding training for the neighborhood council board members. Discussion may include creating policies for mandated leadership and conflict resolution for board members and candidates. It may also include request to Department of Neighborhood Empowerment for arrangement of standardized trainings as outlined by Administrative Code 22.801(h)."
Is it any surprise that people came to the meeting from all over town to express their worries about a new round of rule making? We are already spending several hours a month in trying to do productive things, and now we are faced with a city bureaucracy that intends to impose totally unproductive demands on our time. They mean well, but they don't usually do very well.
Curiously, the members of the BONC don't quite understand why the rest of us (their subjects, so to speak) might feel a little threatened.
Joy Atkinson, the chair of the BONC, raised this issue at the February 5, 2019 BONC meeting. I've transcribed her remarks on this subject as best I can:
"This whole issue coming up in the last couple of weeks was like mob rule. It's like you hear one thing and all of a sudden it's become a big catastrophe and we're going to have all kinds of rules and we're going to tell the alliances what to do . . . I don't think on my part and I don't think on other commissioners' parts we are somehow going to have some onerous rules on how you would perform and there's no way we would do anything like that even talking about some kind of guidelines without conferring with alliances and neighborhood councils on how to make the alliances better. In a lot of instances, alliances and neighborhood councils could do a lot better in how they react with each other. . . . This was worded very strictly like we're actually going to create standardized guidelines and rules for neighborhood councils when we probably should have said that there's just going to be a discussion to talk about improvement of alliances or something like that, something a little bit more non-scary. I saw these emails and I said, "What the heck is going on?"
Fair enough, but why then did we read that above quoted agenda item from the April 2 meeting? The words include "possible action regarding training" and goes on to say "may include creating policies for mandated leadership."
If you don't want us to think you're looking to create a new set of bureaucratic hoops for us to jump through, then you might try leaving those items off your future agendas.
That April 2 BONC meeting also included an item regarding creation of a uniform rule that would enable governing boards to remove members they disapprove of. I've discussed this question before. Suffice it to say, the BONC could do something useful by guaranteeing a fair trial for the accused. They could do even better by including a requirement that before a board member is threatened with removal, there need to be signatures on a removal petition that include perhaps 1 percent of the district's residents. That would place board removal in the hands of the voters -- the people who should have such authority. In addition, the BONC should avoid attempting to impose removal language on those neighborhood councils which choose not to include such items in their own bylaws.
But no matter how you slice it, the BONC is functioning in a position of pretended superiority over a couple of thousand people who were elected by the voters. When you place seven appointed people in a position to rule over nearly two thousand elected board members, what do you call it? Colonialism is as good a word as any.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
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