#12 Neighborhood Council Debate

Archive of Gerald Silver's News letters
Neighborhood Council Debate

All of the items below are self explanatory. If there is to be any merit in Neighborhood Councils, they should be open to public scrutiny and comment. I am sending along the following emails in the spirit of an open, critical dialog.

[RESPONSES TO #11 Neighborhood Council Debate

Monday, September 08, 2003 2:54 PM Good news for you....

I am now on the City Council's "Neighborhoods and Schools" committee along with Janice Hahn. Since we were both on the elected Charter Reform

Commission, we will be making many positive changes to the Neighborhood Councils. Janice and I both want to make the Neighborhood Councils work.

Council member Dennis Zine

Monday, September 08, 2003 1:43 PM This is WAAAAY too long to read. Whose got the time!

I got through most of it. Comment regarding the mail boxes. The NWSPNC

doesn't pay for our box. Councilwoman Hahn made one available at the San Pedro City Hall for all the neighborhood councils. See if your councilperson will do the same if you have a City Hall annex close by.

The City should provide some services to the NCs free of charge, at least I think so. Our councilperson has been very supportive. She has also made office space available for us at the City Hall.

Wednesday, September 10, 2003 7:02 PM Gerry, Thank you for sending me this. I recently got involved in the Sun Valley NC and it has not been enjoyable to say the least.

Thanks again, MG

Los Angeles Daily News - Sept. 15, 2003 Fact-Finding first re Van Nuys Neighborhood Council letters (Opinions, Sept. 11):

One wonders whom to believe involving the drastically different takes on the Van Nuys Neighborhood Council: the frustrated volunteers or grand lad Greg Nelson who needs to gloss up the progress to validate his paycheck.

Spending meeting time to schedule more meeting time seem "City Hall" enough, although I questioned Nelson's need for future discussion of 101 Corridor projects since the

101 projects do not run through Van Nuys. Let's schedule some time to do some fact-finding on that front.

Bill Larson Reseda

September 10, 2003 Los Angeles Daily News Van Nuys Council The Sept. 3 Daily News editorial began, "Peace has at long last come to the Van Nuys Neighborhood Advisory Council -- the peace of utter inactivity." If the past is a prologue to the future, we have never enjoyed such a "peace"

and never will. I, personally, do not want peace and never expected peace.

I want the continuous development of the neighborhood councils and realize that it will not be easy.

The VNNC experience parallels the experiences of all of the neighborhood councils of the city of Los Angeles, but the VNNC is the only one to be certified, to have held its elections and to have had its board of directors installed, but still to be inoperable.

All of the VNNC meetings held since the election, with two exceptions, have been convoked and organized by the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment staff. The DONE staff chose the persons who chaired our meetings. The DONE staff wrote the agendas and restricted those agendas to resolving the election challenges and installing the board of directors. In the past seven months, Greg Nelson and the DONE staff have received many communications, queries, requests and suggestions but have ignored most of them.

Our last meeting was held only after several stakeholders repeatedly and personally contacted and secured promises to attend from 11 or 12 of those due for installation as board members. The DONE staff members were apparently too few and too busy to achieve this.

We are doing our best to learn the ways of our city's government and earn its respect. We are and will remain active participants in Los Angeles city government, but it can get frustrating at times.

Daniel Wiseman VNNC stakeholder

Nelson responds The Sept. 3 Daily News editorial complained that the Van Nuys Neighborhood Council hasn't been meeting and that there is no schedule of meetings to come. If a Daily News representative had attended the Van Nuys Neighborhood Council's meeting on Aug. 28, that person would have known about the progress that is being made and could have reported the good news to the newspaper's readers.

After a tireless effort to find a meeting time that worked for the board members, which isn't easy to do during August, the council met, but it didn't have a quorum because one of its members was involved in a traffic accident.

Nevertheless, the council talked informally for 90 minutes about its plans, including when the next meetings will be held. The board members were installed. Councilman Tony Cardenas' office will start working with the neighborhood council in project-planning for the 101 Corridor, and one of the board members explained how the council will be getting involved in helping the mayor shape the new city budget.

The Van Nuys Neighborhood Council is making remarkable progress, and it deserves better treatment from the Daily News. Please find the good and

praise it.

Bungling in Van Nuys A recent Daily News editorial, "Democracy inaction"

(Sept. 3), pointed out the benign outcome of the Van Nuys Neighborhood Council: "Surely such pointless symbolism is not what Los Angeles residents had in mind when they voted to create the councils in 1999."

Residents wanted community inclusion. In Van Nuys we have had everything except that. One example is the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment's refusal to accept that the neighborhood councils need to be accessible to people with disabilities.

That leaves out 20 percent of the population right there. Throw in targeted -- exclusive -- outreach, a botched election and dictatorial "management" by the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, and you have the makings of another bureaucracy bungle. Silly me for believing in "by the people."

Thursday, September 18, 2003 5:57 PM Gerald:

I thought you would be interested in this attachment.

Re: Message from Miracle Mile Association-Pulling out of Mid City NC Wednesday, September 17, 2003 12:16 PM To: MC I came to understand that I had made the wrong choice in not backing West Wilshire, the competing council founded on Homeowner groups. I found myself beating my head up against a wall, trying to get Mid City to include the homeowner groups in Planning and Land Use decisions. They are trying to set up a system where all developers only come to the Neighborhood Council for approval. That is unacceptable to me. I have included an attachment which is my message in our soon to be released Newsletter.

MMRA PRESIDENTS MESSAGE - JULY 3, 2003 Neighborhood Councils vs. Established Neighborhood Groups Neighborhood Councils are up and running all over Los Angeles. Down at city hall they are being touted as the next best thing since sliced bread and given unprecedented access to City agencies, especially for groups with no track record. I don't know what is happening in the rest of Los Angeles but in the Miracle Mile the Neighborhood Council Certified to represent our area, the Mid City West Community Council, is causing a big problem and it is time to address it.

Quite simply they are not living up to promises they made to the Board Of Neighborhood Commissioners and the community, during their Certification process. Time and time again they promised, should they become certified, to continue reaching out to the long established Homeowners and Residential Associations in their area and include them in the decision making process.

That is not happening! This is a huge area that runs from Beverly Hills on the West to LaBrea on the East, with the North/South borders being West Hollywood and San Vicente. It is the home of many of the City's oldest and best-known Associations. They are all being ignored and we the stakeholders will eventually pay the price.

This problem had its origin in a battle between two competing philosophies and two different groups trying to become certified in the same area. One group, the West Wilshire Community Council was made up almost entirely of Homeowner and Residential Associations while the other group, the Mid City West Community Council had no affiliations whatsoever. West Wilshire could offer up several hundred years of combined experience and community service.

Mid City West had only the philosophy, one person, one vote. The belief that the community with no history to encumber it would somehow come together and govern itself. After many hearings and attempts at compromise the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners chose Mid City West, the group with no affiliations to represent our area. I have regretfully come to believe they made the wrong choice that night.

I say that because I was one of the founding members of the Mid City West Community Council. I believed then and I still do that no one should have to join a homeowners or residential group to be represented in a Neighborhood Council. As the President of the Miracle Mile Residential Association however I understood all to well that most people don't have the time to get involved in community affairs, not with the schedules we labor under today. The fact is that in any community it is always a small group of people that has the time to get involved. That in my mind meant the long established Homeowner/Residential groups; Beverly Wilshire, Burton Way, Melrose Neighborhood, Carthay Circle, Miracle Mile Residential would have to play a central role in this Neighborhood Council. It never entered my mind that they would be purposely excluded from this Council but that is what is happening today.

I resigned from The Mid City West Community Council in May when it became apparent that not only was their board of Directors not going to fulfill the promise made during the certification process, they were heading in the opposite direction. Recently their Planning and Land Use Committee made decisions about Zoning issues without consulting the communities that will be most directly affected by those decisions. Then 30,000 questionnaires were distributed throughout the community asking for opinions on a variety of issues.

The problem is they want people in the Miracle Mile to weigh in on a heated swimming pool at Pan Pacific Park. Sounds like a great idea unless you know from the residents in that area that this would cause a large influx of visitors with nowhere for them to park. In other words a problem for that community. Likewise how is someone on Melrose supposed to know what the impact to business and residents in the Miracle Mile would be if the Wilshire Boulevard subway were extended to Fairfax? Or what do those same people feel about the expansion of the LACMA campus by adding a new gallery?

Sounds like a great idea except that they forgot to mention that LACMA wants to close Ogden at Wilshire to accomplish it. That means 3000 cars a day going somewhere else to get North and South. That is going to impact someone. We need a discussion not a FIELD POLL!

This group has no idea what the community wants or how to find out. Here's a clue. If you want to know what is happening on Melrose, call the Melrose Neighborhood Association. If you want to know what is happening in the area of the Grove, call the Beverly Wilshire Homeowners Association. If you want to know what is going on in the Miracle Mile, call the MMRA. These groups have a historical memory of what has gone on in their neighborhoods and they have the means in place now to take the pulse of the community.

Until the Mid City West Community Council adopts such a policy and includes all of the stakeholders including the Homeowner/Residential Associations into the decision making process, I am urging you to join with me in resisting any attempt on their part to impose themselves upon our community.

You can do that by filling out and returning the enclosed membership application if you are not a member. If you are already a member get as involved as you possibly can.

Thank you for your support.

Homeowners of Encino (HOME) serves as a watchdog over community issues. It monitors the work of elected officials, Neighborhood/Community Councils, Van Nuys Airport, etc. HOME is NOT another form of Neighborhood Council, that by law must represent Chambers of Commerce, business interests, developers, apartment associations, high-rise building owners, homeless, and "anyone who lives, works or owns property" in a community. HOME's mission on the other hand is to preserve the single-family habitability of our community.

As such, it actively addresses issues of traffic, congestion, aircraft noise, over-development, sign blight and air pollution. While Neighborhood Councils seek to be all things to all people, HOME targets issues that specifically affect the residential quality of life, and is NOT under the control of the City of Los Angeles Department of Neighborhoods (DONE).

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Archive of Gerald Silver's News letters
Neighborhood Council Debate