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Doing Whatever It Takes to Keep NCs out of Westwood (Video) |
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CityWatch
By Ken Draper
A cat fight is underway in Westwood over the formation of a Westwood Neighborhood Council. Home and property owner groups have openly … and some would say arrogantly … successfully fought the creation of an NC for their fair community from day one. (See video.)
Now comes a group of Westwood stakeholders who say they have the necessary signatures and met the Plan’s requirements and have filed for certification. The Board of Neighborhood Commissioners is scheduled to take up their request on January 19.
A week ago, I wrote a CityWatch column saying that the battle had come to a boil and that the formation effort had turned ugly.
I got a bunch of mail … not unexpectedly … from both sides of the battle line. To summarize, most of the angry emailers concurred on the following: I don’t know what I’m talking about. Don’t know Westwood. Don’t understand the dynamics in play. Don’t understand how shady the folks trying to form this council really are.
But what I do understand is this: The City Charter not only allows citizens to form neighborhood councils but, as I noted last week, requires the Plan for a Neighborhood Council System to “ensure that every part of the City is within the boundaries of a neighborhood council.” The Charter does not exempt Westwood.
This community fight has become about personalities but from the outset for these territorial home and property owner groups it has been about keeping a neighborhood council out of Westwood. Not about the qualifications of the members of the formation group.
Sandy Brown, one of the prominent leaders of the property owner faction, was undeniably clear about that when she spoke to the Citywide Alliance in July of 2007. (Video of her in-your-face comments.) [LINK]
Brown not only wanted no neighborhood council getting in her way in Westwood but said she would do what ever it takes to keep a neighborhood council out of her backyard. The Charter be damned.
This spitting match isn’t about the quality … or lack thereof … of the applicant, it’s about the battle to maintain longstanding control of the ‘hood.
As Terry Tegnazian … Westwood Hills Property Owners Assn … said in her desperate memo: her group has voted to oppose the new neighborhood council “because of the negative impact it will likely have on our ability to control our own destiny.”
Desperate enough that she also noted … in her “Heads Up Alert” … that 5th District Councilman Paul Koretz had “spoken out against the approval of this current NC application.”
Koretz had a different take on what he was for or against. He fired off a clarification memo after the CityWatch story saying “I firmly think that city council offices should respect and support neighborhood councils, but that we should stay away from neighborhood council politics, and that includes taking a stand on an application.”
He reiterated the point in his memo closing: “I have tried and maybe unsuccessfully in my comments last week to avoid supporting or opposing the particular group seeking certification (in Westwood).”
I’m not supporting or opposing the applicant either. The BONC can decide if their qualified or not.
I am however supporting their right to file an application and I am opposing anti-Charter efforts to keep an LA neighborhood NC-free. By doing, as Sandy Brown trumpeted, ‘whatever it takes’.
(Ken Draper is the editor of CityWatch. He can be reached at
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● Brown VIDEO
CityWatch
Vol 7 Issue 95
Pub: Nov 20, 2009
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