The Board of Neighborhood Commissioners Declares Itself a Failure

In this exercise, which involved passing a Draconian punishment for rules infractions, they presided over a comment period that tried to argue the depressing point that the system as a whole is dysfunctional. I think the BONC is missing the main point, which is that the city's Charter and BONC's own deliberations have always been confused and ambivalent about the purpose and proper functioning of the neighborhood councils. Meanwhile, those of us who came into the system a dozen years ago have been busy making lemonade out of all those lemons ever since, and we resent being called names by appointed officials. 

As readers of a previous column may remember, the issue at hand was whether the BONC should rationalize the rules about posting meeting agendas. It's really that trivial. The appropriate way to do this would be to replace all the previous policies with a rule that demands compliance with state law.  

State law requires the posting of one meeting notice at least 72 hours in advance, in a place that is accessible at all times. This rule works for city councils all over the state. 

Instead, the BONC, full of newly appointed people, chose to use the posting rules as a way of whipping recalcitrant neighborhood councils into line. 

So on Tuesday, May 6, 2014, the other shoe dropped. The BONC went ahead and voted to impose everything but flogging on neighborhood councils who miss posting meeting notices. Technically, they passed a full package of requirements, very reasonable by itself, running from email notifications to website placements. In return, your diligent unpaid volunteers won't have to drive all over their districts with paper copies of agendas to nail up. 

It was the rest of the motion that is truly objectionable. Otherwise known as paragraph 9, the new policy punishes any neighborhood council which misses 3 postings. Board members will be required to undergo training that will be determined by the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. I noticed that the BONC didn't offer to pay us for our time (OK, that was sarcasm), but also failed to put any restrictions on what DONE can demand of us. In other words, the punishment is effectively open ended. This was just the beginning of the BONC's folly. 

As CityWatch has warned previously, any additional rules violations would engender the use of what the city calls "exhaustive efforts," which is another undefined term that effectively gives DONE open ended authority to hijack the functioning of a neighborhood council. For some reason, the BONC has been hesitant to define exactly what procedures -- and restrictions on those procedures -- can be invoked in DONE doing "exhaustive efforts." 

It's funny that the BONC, for all its bravado about being the policy setting body, has never been willing to think about setting policy limits on itself or its subordinate agency. 

What happened Tuesday night was, in effect, a major power-play by the city, in that it invented and extended a pretend right to order neighborhood council representatives to do unpaid work, to attend mandatory classes, and even to have their neighborhood councils taken over by the city. 

Since the original reason for neighborhood councils was to give local residents the chance to talk back to government, these actions go a long way to undermine the essence of the neighborhood council function. 

What are the immediate and long range consequences? 

I think it is clear that the current management of DONE is generally sensible, and probably wouldn't do anything too drastic. But we should also remember that under the previous mayor, a political hack was inserted as acting General Manager of DONE, and did all sorts of damage which included cancelling or postponing about half the neighborhood council elections for a whole year. Thousands of volunteer hours were wasted in fighting off all the outrages. 

In addition, that GM presided over an infamous investigation and published document that contained all sorts of scurrilous and sometimes unproven allegations against neighborhood councils from all over the city. It was only the fact that this document was attacked for racist language that ultimately saw it scuttled. 

And by the way, the BONC has never formally disapproved of that document. I guess that former BONCs felt that it was best to keep stuff like that swept under the rug. 

There is nothing in the Charter or city ordinances that would prevent a new mayor from doing something similar. We've recognized that some City Council members don't really like the idea of having neighborhood councils, their pious words notwithstanding, and if some such mayoral candidate should develop the proper allies and raise enough money, we might have a new mayor who is hostile to our existence. It's happened before. 

What was most interesting about the meeting was that some of the BONC members managed to raise real concerns, but they couldn't attach the right prescription to the diagnosis. What emerged was the usual political sentiment that we have to do something. There was something of the kangaroo court about the proceedings, because one BONC member obviously wanted to offer an amendment or a comment, but was, figuratively speaking, pushed aside by the chair. On a 6-1 vote (with new commissioner Victor Medina casting the no vote), the BONC has now officially claimed power over our lives. 

BONC commissioners argued that the problem has existed for a long time, and they had to do something. In other words, all previous editions of the BONC and of DONE have failed significantly, and only this group is up to doing the job. 

In public comment and testimony from the BONC commissioners themselves, a case was made that there is a problem. Whether it is really a problem is another question, as we shall see, but let's give the other side its due, and consider the arguments pro and con. 

I would say that the best argument that something needs to be done was delivered by Glenn Bailey, speaking for himself. Many of us know Glenn through Lancc and lots of commission meetings, and he is someone I would view as level headed. With a little paraphrasing, I'll summarize his argument. The city (through the BONC) has had a policy going back to 2010 that requires neighborhood councils to publicize their meetings by forwarding a copy of their email notifications to DONE. It seems like a simple enough task, since it only involves adding one email address to the list. Nevertheless, according to Glenn, fully 35 percent of neighborhood councils fail to fulfill that task. Glenn argued that this has been a problem for him because he wants to keep up with what is going on, and the fact that an agenda is posted physically is not sufficient, considering that there are neighborhood councils all over the city. 

It's a reasonable enough argument if you really believe that there should be a policy that any human being with internet access should be able to get timely information about each and every neighborhood council board and committee meeting. Personally, I'm not interested in reading all those announcements, but that's my problem. If the city wants to have such a policy, then Glenn is most likely correct in asserting that it is commonly violated. 

It's certainly not the philosophy enshrined in the Ralph M Brown Act, which binds all city councils and neighborhood councils in the state of California. After all, the city of Stockton is not required to email residents of Los Angeles or its civic agencies about Stockton's agendas. The original idea of the Brown Act was to ensure that people who live in a particular region have a chance to know what their governing agencies are doing. The Brown Act implies that your neighborhood council has to make its agendas available to you, but is not required to go out of its way to tell me. 

I think that there is a workable compromise between Glenn's issue and neighborhood councils that have been sloppy about posting requirements. But it's not the approach taken by the BONC. First off, all of that language about DONE being able to order training should be erased. If the city wants to make neighborhood council rules violations into criminal offences with defined penalties, then it should take care to do things right. I suspect that the vast majority of us would oppose such actions. 

The easier way is to have the posting and email policies, and in the case of inadvertent violations, have DONE staff follow up with a phone call and, in the more egregious cases, a visit to the monthly board meeting. Explaining the rule in public, to the board and the stakeholders, should alleviate much of the problem. In even more extreme cases, the neighborhood council should be urged to spend some of its stipend on paying somebody to do the postings and the emails. All of the San Pedro area neighborhood councils adopted that technique long ago and without prompting from the city, and it has turned out to be a cheap and effective solution to a perceived need. 

As I said above, I don't think the proper purpose of the posting and email policy is to inform people from all over the city about your next neighborhood council meeting. It's to inform your own stakeholders. For that reason, the requirement for sending an email to DONE is largely superfluous when a neighborhood council is otherwise effective in outreach. Still, I suspect that as neighborhood councils begin to take advantage of the new posting policy, the failure rate will fall. 

We should also remember that not all neighborhood councils are as technically proficient as others. Some go through cycles where new people get elected to positions of responsibility without being internet experts. It is fully possible that a neighborhood council can do a good job for its own stakeholders, but fail to hit the mark on citywide notification requirements. 

Tuesday's BONC meeting was characterized not only by its extreme politics, but also by its contempt for the rights of the public under the Brown Act. I would remind BONC officers that the law (and case law in particular) gives wide latitude to public comment, and the fact that one member of the public was repeatedly interrupted by a BONC member showed ignorance on the part of the commission. 

In previous years, I noticed that BONC members were substantially ignorant of parliamentary procedure. In this, the BONC showed itself to be less adept than the average neighborhood council. In terms of Brown Act compliance, which includes the right to public comment, the old cliche applies: Physician, heal thyself.

(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

CityWatch

Vol 12 Issue 38

Pub: May 9, 2014