Primrose Path Paved With Thorns — Commentary

June 2004  

The Signs Were There

When the Government offers the people a way to become more involved in how they govern, watch out. It’s probably too good to be true. When a city entity says, “Make us accountable”, it just doesn’t pass the smell test. Yet, many people lack the sensitive olfactory nerves of Jack Allen.

Jack Allen, retired attorney and one of the founders and leaders of the Pacific Palisades Community Council saw more holes than Swiss cheese when he first visited the Charter Reform hearings back in 1998. That was at a time when various elected leaders gathered to discuss how to create a neighborhood council system in the new Charter for the City of Los Angeles.

This new Charter promised many things such as giving the mayor more power and changing our planning and land use approach citywide. Many argue that the insertion of neighborhood councils into the charter was no more than an effort to hold back the growing rumblings of the secession movements and cause folks to say “yes” to the new city Charter. So disenchanted were people in L.A. that three separate areas of the city were gathering petitions to appeal to the State for independence. They were saying that the City of Los Angeles was just too big to care for its people and infrastructure.

Jack’s antenna was raised when it was decided that neighborhood councils would be part of the City structure – they would be a City entity much like the City Council only with advisory rather than decision-making power. He told the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (a new City entity created to help neighborhood councils form and operate) in a letter dated November 21, 2000, “I believe that many have unrealistic perceptions about Neighborhood Councils and what they are capable of doing.”

If only those of us that were empowerment junkies at that time would have listened to this seasoned leader, it is possible that the plan for neighborhood councils could have been written to be truly empowering.

In that document, Mr. Allen outlines the problems. The full text of his letter is posted on our website under Ear To The Ground.  He questions the influence that neighborhood councils can have since they are not “significant campaign contributors and the governing boards are composed of only a fraction of the voters in the community.”

In a letter from Jack Allen posted to a NC online discussion board dated March 10, 2004, he takes issue with the actual Charter definition of the term stakeholder saying, “Another serious problem is the definition of what is a “stakeholder” in the Charter as anyone that “lives, works, or owns property” in the council area. That is an extremely broad definition because the word “works” can mean any kind of work and it does not mean it is paid work. Any volunteer is included. If a person is just passing through the neighborhood and stops to fix the car, it is work legally. Owning property is not limited to real property. The term “property” also includes personal property so any person that is in the neighborhood who is not naked qualifies as a stakeholder.” It’s no surprise that only 3% of the “stakeholders” in our local certified NC come out to “vote” for their representatives.

Meanwhile, the NC’s claim they have collective power. Recently, reps from several NCs decided to gather to tell the city not to allow an 18% hike in DWP rates. City Controller, Laura Chick had already done her homework, launched an audit and found that the DWP had been squandering money on a PR firm while it has one of its own. A full audit is now underway. The City Council has decided that the DWP could raise the rates 11% for one year while this review is being done. That wasn’t what the NC leaders asked for. While NCs  bragged about their “power”, they were helpless to actually get their way. In fact, if not for the City Controller’s report before the City Council, the rate hike would probably have been imposed unchallenged. Now the NCs must face the worst of all truths of what they have bound themselves to; they are part of the city and are merely advisory. The city will do what it wants in the long run.

In that same March 2004 communication, Mr. Allen says, “There are other problems caused by the ruling of the City Attorney. The City Attorney has ruled that Neighborhood Councils cannot participate in City hearings and cannot appeal Commission decisions and that they do not have the right to sue the City or anyone else.” So, if NCs are unhappy (and many are) with the 11% rate hike, they must swallow it since they share an attorney with the DWP and the City – the City Attorney. If, instead of going forward as a coalition of NCs, they had gone forward as a coalition of concerned citizens of Los Angeles, they could now be filing a lawsuit against the city placing an injunction on that rate hike. Now that’s power.

Meanwhile, Jack Allen continues to participate in his Pacific Palisades Community Council (an independent neighborhood council). He says in his recent letter, “We frankly told DONE to take a flying leap. Certification would have substantially interfered with our ability to represent our community. We don’t want City money. It would better go toward funding City services. We don’t need an office and we never had an office. We don’t have any employees. We never have had a problem finding a place to meet. We meet in a City library but when that was not available, we found banks and a restaurant that offered us meeting space.”

“Despite that we are not certified, we still get the Early Warnings and we participate in the City-wide Congress of Neighborhood Councils. It is my opinion that too many of the Neighborhood Councils are looking too much to the City when they should look inward at themselves. If they can’t do it themselves, then they have no business being neighborhood councils.”

Well, Jack, we at Franklin-Hollywood Hills Community Council wholeheartedly agree. Keep up the good grassroots work.  

Watch What You Sign 

Breaking News: Someone decided to see if the database of “stakeholders” that each neighborhood council maintains could be accessed using the Public Information Act process. It worked. The Mar Vista Neighborhood Council was forced to share their entire database as instructed by their attorney – the city attorney. The list was used for advertisement (spam) and there was nothing that the NC could do to prevent it. Their promise to keep the information in their database private had to be breached because the NC is part of the city and thus all their files are open to the public.

Databases for all community groups come mainly from the sign-in sheet at the door when you attend a meeting.

If your name is on one of these Neighborhood Council lists, your information is not held sacred and you could easily find your information given away to anyone with an interest in getting your attention.

At the same time, you have the right to obtain a complete list of all the stakeholders on any and all lists held by your neighborhood council simply by filling out a small form available from the First Amendment Coalition at www.cfac.org.  

Local Control 

Your local neighborhood organization has no burden to share your information with anyone including the city of Los Angeles. This means that the information you share with your local group or neighborhood watch is indeed private. This gives the term local control more meaning than ever.   

— Theresa Foster, political writer for The Beachwood Voice