Comments
NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCILS - It is hard to underestimate the stupidity and contempt the City Council has for the people of Los Angeles. It is also hard to overestimate the largess they confer on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for the Homeless and the accommodations they give developers intent on destroying neighborhoods. It is off the scale.
In 1999, when the San Fernando Valley and the Harbor areas attempted to become their own Cities, the Los Angeles City Council (CC) came up with the excellent idea of having Neighborhood Councils (NC). NCs were supposed to be the eyes and ears of the Councilperson. The NC would have meetings, discuss pending issues in their neighborhood, and communicate them to the Councilperson so they could make informed decisions.
My experience in attending the Encino Neighborhood Council as a board member and the planning and land use chair and visiting other neighborhood councils is that they take their role very seriously. NC perform a remarkable amount of due diligence, and ask intelligent questions about pending projects in their backyards. NC thoroughly vet projects by having committee meetings and then a general meeting where all the sides have time to present their side of the issue. Democratic votes would take place to approve or reject the project(s). Often, an NC offered suggestions that improve the project for the surrounding area and sometimes even for the developer. A carefully crafted motion transmits the vote on the project(s) to the Councilperson, the CC, and the relevant City Department as a well-reasoned and thought-out judgment. This was where we, the people, are supposed to have a seat at the table. The NC opinion is supposed to be respected and have considerable weight. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It took a little while for Council offices to use the NC for extended monthly campaign commercials and political grandstanding. The NC quickly became disrespected, and a large, hostile bureaucracy was created to make NC members' lives miserable and generally rein in meaningful dialogue or critical motions to the City of LA. The councils became a charade, where people could blow off steam or deliver criticisms to the Councilperson's Field Rep. It served the Councilperson very well as this meant that they had to take fewer unpleasant meetings with homeowner's associations, and disgruntled people from their districts who opposed having the council persons will (favored donors project) or abhorrent project shoved into their area. In the comfort of their council offices, they always found convenient ways to ignore the motions and judgments of the neighborhood councils that were democratically voted on.
These neighborhood council representatives were voted on by the Community and Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), which oversaw elections and ensured they had the right to sit on the neighborhood council just as much as those on the City Council. DONE’s criteria for being elected to a volunteer position, on a NC are far more rigorous than voting in a Federal Election.
Now that charter reform is all the rage at the City Council; they would like to expand their club to have another three or four council districts because, according to them, each Councilperson warding over 250,000 people creates a disconnect between Councilperson and citizens. They should consider redoing the NC functions and giving them a more prominent seat at the table. Who else is closer to our 99 neighborhoods? Who else knows we're a good spot for a shelter or a rehab center? The neighborhoods know where a good location for an apartment building is, and how much parking there should be, what the traffic impacts will be, and how an area will be enhanced or disrupted by the new construction. All this top-down planning and the Councilpersons' kowtowing to the homeless industrial complex, large developers, and investment banks are continually making the city less livable. The City Council has given so much money to the homeless industrial complex that we can't have adequate police protection, proficient schools, or decent roads.
Adding a few more Councilors to the City Council club will not make any difference in having a cleaner, safer, more livable city. It will probably make it worse due to having longer, more troubling decision-making, more strife between council makers looking for scarce resources, and a more significant budget deficit due to having to staff and locate new council districts in communities. Ethics reform certainly will not make the city a better place. It may give some officials a little pause not to be so corrupt, but in the end, it will not make a difference in how the city runs. If the neighborhood councils were given a seat at the table, they could help mitigate the problems LA is facing without adding more bureaucracy.
The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment should be turned into a help desk, and neighborhood councils should have real power, including veto power, over pending developments that are outside the scale and scope of the community's common-sense judgment and stretches the intent of existing real estate and zoning laws. More Councilmembers will slow down meaningful change and add more expenses to a budget in the city that's already exploding in red ink.
Having local control via NC would be an actual exercise in representative democracy, as it comes from the people and is not an authoritarian top-down edicts, where there is no recourse. However, Charter Reform is another exercise that excludes the people who know what's best for their area. As the great American philosopher George Carlin said, “it's a big club and you ain't in it.”
(Eliot Cohen has been on the Neighborhood Council, serves on the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, and is on the Board of Homeowners of Encino and was the president of HOME for over seven years. Eliot retired after a 35-year career on Wall Street. Eliot is a critic of the stinking thinking of the bureaucrats and politicians that run the County, the State, and the City. Eliot and his wife divide their time between L.A. and Baja Norte, Mexico. [email protected].)
