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WESTSIDE - The role of this grass roots democracy known as Neighborhood Councils here in Los Angeles is supposed to bridge city government back to the ninety-nine or so neighborhoods of the city. It was a political pacification and reaction to the failed cityhood initiative that would have created San Fernando Valley City, which was approved by those residents in 2002 only to be denied by the rest of LA., restraining them to exit.
For the purpose of the neighborhood councils and specifically DONE (Department of Neighborhood Empowerment) was to build stronger communalities by encouraging civic pride and building meaningful relationships through volunteerism and the general public. A key function was to link residents with the Neighborhood Council system, which serves as that bridge between the community and City Hall.
But for whatever reason, the opposite has occurred.
With neighborhood council elections just completed this spring, a morbid 7,491 residents bothered to vote in a process that was held hostage with no in-person voting and the heavily bureaucratic task of having to apply for a ballot, a system almost "Jim Crow" in delivery and function! For the results were anti-democratic and puts into the question the whole legitimacy and credibility of those who were actually elected.
Ted Henderson, a first-time candidate in the Venice NC elections described the process as "harder to vote for neighborhood council than it is for President of the United States."
The net result was a participation rate of 0.3% when you consider Los Angeles has some 2.1 million registered voters!
For why does a resident need to apply for a ballot when the LA City Clerk can just mail every registered voter?
And even at the height of participation in 2014, only 26,045 residents took part in these grass roots elections.
For the City Clerk to continues to treat these elections as second class and will not mail a ballot to every voter! You get the feeling the embedded downtown bureaucracy has decided to use its own fiscal budgeting incompetence to kill off these volunteer boards once and for all!
Others believe the Los Angeles City Council has been suspect of neighborhood councils since their inception, as they see these as political stomping grounds, a niche for those interested in government and politics, and a potential breeding ground for a possible opponent down the road.
For how do you conduct elections without an election day?
How do you expect anyone to vote if they are required to seek out a ballot in what can be regarded as a secretive process?
And to add insult to injury, Carmen Chang who serves as General Manager of DONE receives a bloated and outrageous salary of $240,621.12 in a department whose entire budget is roughly $3 million dollars according to city sources.
As for the neighborhood councils, they operate on an annual shoestring stipend of just $25,000, a 22% cut from $32,000 year over year.
And all of their work is done collectively on a volunteer basis!
They serve for free.
While these individuals are to be admired, they are being systematically undermined by DONE in investment and effort.
For as long as these bureaucratic obstacles remain in the way of developing the neighborhood council system into a vibrant governmental ally and partner of their downtown peers, the losers are Los Angeles taxpayers with an archaic council makeup of merely fifteen members when New York City, twice the size of Los Angeles has fifty-one council members across the five boroughs representing about 157,000 residents. Here is Los Angeles, each district is roughly 260,000 people.
For the results of these neighborhood council elections indicate a clear lack of no confidence in the system, it's GM and a process that turns this grass roots democracy into a mockery and a joke.
(Nick Antonicello is a thirty-two-year resident of Venice where he exclusively covers the deliberations of the Venice Neighborhood Council. He has served the Venice Neighborhood Council on multiple committees and currently on the Oceanfront Walk Committee. Originally from New Jersey, he served as a legislative aide to the General Assembly and the County of Bergen. He can be reached at [email protected])
