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VENICE - John Clark Brown Jr., commonly known as Clark Brown, is a longtime Venice resident, retired attorney, and one of the more active members of the Venice Neighborhood Council. He has become well known locally for his advocacy on homelessness, encampments, and neighborhood quality-of-life issues. He recently authored a motion that seeks to ticket permanently parked recreational vehicles along Washington Boulevard in front of businesses such as hotels.
Brown has resided and owned property in Venice since 1969 and served on the original Venice Town Council before the current neighborhood council system was created. A retired land use and municipal attorney, Brown graduated from Stanford University and the UCLA School of Law and practiced his trade for decades before retirement.
Here's our conversation and Q&A on the neighborhood council system and his overall assessment of this elected, all-volunteer advisory unit of local government as established by the Los Angeles City Charter.
The Venice Neighborhood Council has often been criticized as being long on debate but short on results. From your perspective, what are the structural flaws that have made the council ineffective, and is the problem with the board itself, the City Charter, the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), or the way City Hall responds to neighborhood councils?
The problem is entirely with the Board itself for several reasons:
First, the Board spends most of its time on arcane procedural matters which have zero impact upon the streets of Venice and its residents. For example, a recent “Stakeholder Petition to Amend the Standing Rules of the Venice Neighborhood Council.”
The Petition was 3 pages of single spaced, mind-numbing technical rule changes.
At the Board’s July 21st agenda, there was 2 hours of debate on the Petition even though no one knew what it was about.
Unfortunately, there are four members of the Board who are disruptive of Board meetings. They are Treasurer Helen Fallon, and Board Members, Lisa Redmond, Sarah Mahir, and Erica Moore.
They insist on speaking at length on every single motion that comes before the Board no matter how picayune. And they refuse to abide by rulings from the Board’s presiding officer, VNC President David Feige to cease and desist. There is now pending before the Board a censure motion against Board Member, Lisa Redmond, for her conduct at the Board’s July Administrative meeting.
Third, and as further example of this disruption was in May 2025, Fallon and Redmond walked out of a meeting to deprive the Board of a quorum to vote on a Motion to ticket and tow the RVs and OVs on Washington Blvd.
Their conduct prompted the previous resignations of past VNC President, Brian Averill, and two VNC Board Members, Steve Bradbury and Christopher Lee who concluded these ladies rendered the VNC Board a waste of time.
Fourth, the Board spends at least an hour near the start of each meeting listening to “Government Reports” from the LAPD. LAFD, and the deputies for US Congressman Ted Lieu, Los Angeles Mayor Bass, Councilwoman Traci Park (CD-11), and Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath.
These reports are almost entirely announcements about mundane matters to which no one pays attention or remembers. A more efficient way to handle this information is to require these persons to put their reports in writing, which the Board would post and publish and afford Venice’s citizens (called “stakeholders”) to ask specific questions about them.
The Board should also follow this procedure with respect to the financial reports of its Treasurer.
The Board’s failure to adopt an efficient procedure for presentation of routine reports prejudices stakeholders who show up at every Board meeting to address matters that directly affect them.
These are often property owners and residents who live near a project under consideration that directly and often adversely affects them. Yet, they can’t be heard until everyone, including the Board, is exhausted and can’t wait to go home. Hence, these stakeholders don’t get the attention they deserve.
Who bears the greatest responsibility for the Neighborhood Council's inability to influence policy? Is it individual board members, DONE, Los Angeles City and County?
It’s the Board and its individual members.
Former VNC President, Brian Averill, used to say the City and the VNC Board are like "a tugboat and an ocean liner." The job of the VNC is like the job of the tugboat which is to nudge the City to take action on matters important to Venice.
Like the tugboat, the VNC can’t force the City to do anything, but it can nudge it to do the right thing. This analogy is even stronger with respect to the County of Los Angeles.
The reason the Board is usually ineffective in nudging the City to do what it wants is that it does not focus or spend its time identifying specific problems with specific, workable solutions.
By contrast, specific problems with specific solutions are:
--The decaying Pagodas on Ocean Front Walk, the dangerous e-bikes and motor bikes on Oceanfront Walk, the unsanitary bathrooms at the beach. The VNC’s Oceanfront Walk Committee has either passed or has motions before it urging the City to remedy these conditions with specific remedies. In the case of the bikes on Ocean Front Walk they are installing signs prohibiting such bikes and barriers to stop them.
--The RVs and OVs parked on Washington Blvd. The VNC’s Parking, Transportation & Infrastructure Committee (“PTIC”) and its Public Health and Safety Committees have passed resolutions which identify the specific RVs and OVs, their locations on Washington Blvd. the specific provisions of law they violate and the agencies responsible to enforce those laws.
--The Walkway Plaza beneath the Venice sign at the end of Windward now under consideration by the Oceanfront Walk and the Parking, Transportation and Infrastructure Committees.
--A giant arch at Washington Square and Oceanfront walk to celebrate and mark the start of that entranceway.
You've spent years working to reduce street homelessness in Venice. Looking back, which strategies have actually worked, which have failed, and what lessons should Los Angeles apply as it continues to spend billions of dollars on homelessness?
There is no magic solution. But the following steps are essential:
1. Identify a specific homelessness/RV/OV problem and develop a specific solution for it.
Two examples are the Board, and its Homelessness Committee failed to do this with respect to homelessness.
--At its June 2026 meeting the Homelessness Committee passed a resolution which stated in part:
”The Venice Neighborhood Council authorizes the Homelessness Committee in partnership with the Venice Library to organize and host a Stakeholder Resource Event Day to connect community members with information, services, and local organizations. The Homelessness Committee shall coordinate the planning, logistics, and outreach for the event and return to the Board, as necessary, for approval of any expenditures or additional actions requiring Board authorization.”
--For several months the Board and its Homelessness and Outreach Committees have been planning an OV/RV “Town Hall” to address that huge Venice problem.
But nothing has been done.
Both efforts are a total waste of time because they do not involve specific problems at specific locations and don't provide specific solutions to those problems by people who know how to implement the solutions.
They only involve talk.
2. The residents and people around the problem have to address and develop solutions to it.
This was true on Flower, 4th and Rose, Marr and Washington Blvd. Nothing would have been done at any of those locations without local involvement.
3. Identify the City resources to address the problem and get the City to apply those resources to the problem.
Illegal RV encampments have become one of the most contentious issues in Venice. Why has the city struggled to address this problem consistently, and what legal, political, or bureaucratic obstacles continue to prevent a lasting solution?
The City lacks the determination and persistence to deal with the problem.
So, it uses endless excuses to enable it to do nothing.
A prime example is the vacant city owned lots at LAX which the City could use for the homeless and their vehicles. Hope the Mission has established hundreds of tiny homes in the Valley and has offered to manage facilities at these lots for that purpose. But the City claims it cannot be used because the FAA will not permit it.
Yet both the City and the FAA ignore the fact that they admit in their legally binding responses to my document requests under State and Federal law that they know of no documents which allows the FAA to prevent the City from using those lots for that purpose.
If you had the opportunity to rewrite the Neighborhood Council system from the ground up, what specific powers, accountability measures, or structural changes would you implement so neighborhood councils become effective advocates rather than advisory bodies that many residents feel can simply be ignored?
I would not bother to rewrite them.
The VNC’s problems are procedures which can be remedied without structural change.
(Nick Antonicello is a thirty-three-year resident of Venice who exclusively covers the deliberations of the local neighborhood council. A member of two standing committees (Rules & Oceanfront Walk), he can be reached via e-mail at [email protected])
