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GELFAND’S WORLD - Twenty-five years ago, the people of Los Angeles passed a series of amendments to the City Charter. Spurred by mayor Dick Riordan, they were largely intended to give the mayor more power over hiring and firing department heads, but there were a few other issues that came up. One amendment, added, more or less in passing, was section 9, which created a system of neighborhood councils.
Technically speaking, it created a system of rules and ruling bodies which would eventually create that system of neighborhood councils. And so it came to be, after 3 years, that the city of Los Angeles officially recognized its first two neighborhood councils -- specifically the Wilmington and Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Councils.
So if you want to count on your fingers, you can determine that we are now in the 23rd year of that system, although we are 25 years into the Charter amendments that allowed for that birth.
So of course the City of Los Angeles held a celebration for the 25th anniversary of the neighborhood council system the other night. You might decide (wryly) that the city mothers are as good in counting the years as they are in figuring out the city budget numbers, but what the heck, we did have the party (up at City Hall) and it came with free parking and refreshments.
The highpoints were talks by Professor Raphael Sonenshein ("Raphe") and by mayor Karen Bass, along with a good bit of socializing among people who had been in the system for as many as 22 years or as little as 2 years.
Let's consider a few things Raphe talked about. I will be referencing and paraphrasing because I don't have a transcript, but those who were also there will, I think, attest to the general tenor of what I am typing.
Back in the late 1990s, Raphe became the director of the appointed Charter commission, which was tasked to come up with proposed changes to a Charter which had grown moldy over the decades. We might mention in passing that the City Charter is sort of the constitution for the city of Los Angeles, and L.A. is a charter city under California law.
We should also take note of the fact that there were two competing Charter commissions in those late-1990s days, the other being elected. So these two groups worked separately to come up with their respective proposals. People at the time figured that maybe both proposals would end up on the ballot and the predictable result would be that neither would pass. It wasn't a guarantee, but it was a pretty good guess.
But then a miracle happened -- at least some people considered it in that light -- and the two commissions got together and created a single merged document that went on the ballot all alone.
And was passed by the voters.
An aside: There I was, having moved back to the city of Los Angeles in 1999, after a goodly number of decades away, and just in time for the new Charter. Now living in San Pedro, I ran into people who were laboring away at the idea of designing a brand-new neighborhood council. We worked at it for about a year and a half starting sometime in 2000, which is why we were ready to apply for certification on the first day that it became possible.
The reality of 2002 under mayor Jim Hahn is worth explaining in comparison to the reality under mayors Villaraigosa, Garcetti, and now Bass. But first, let's consider a few more remarks made by Dr Sonenshein at Friday night's party.
What Raphe pointed out was that at the time, there weren't a lot of people who expected the neighborhood council system to survive. Would it develop at all? Who was to know? But would it last even three years? Raphe points out that lots of people would not have given the system good odds of lasting even that long.
Therefore, Sonenshein explained, the big accomplishment is that the system still endures in this 25th year, that the city of Los Angeles is almost completely covered by its 99 neighborhood councils, and that we continue to function.
That's the good part.
Now let's consider the complications. As Sonenshein reminded us, the City Council and mayor are interested in doing another round of Charter amendments. We can imagine that the City Council members and the mayor are more interested in things like the balance of power between the mayor and Council, along with a few good-government ideas about the workings of commissions and city departments. The big deal change would be to enlarge the City Council, just as the county's Board of Supervisors will now be enlarged due to the recent ballot initiative. That sort of thing.
But as Raphe pointed out, a new Charter amendment process would likely take up the workings of the neighborhood council system. He mentioned that the Charter amendment process could take up (paraphrasing here) the purpose and functioning of the neighborhood councils along with the specific authority they have.
Any such reconsideration of Charter language (me speaking here) would presumably take up the way the whole system is governed, which involves a city department called the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) and a city commission called the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (BONC).
Neighborhood council participants who remember the old days have reason to be concerned. Let's consider. Back in the early days under mayor Hahn and General Manager Greg Nelson, the city's attitude was that they would help neighborhood councils do what we wanted to do. Thus the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment under Nelson had staff members who took it upon themselves to assist us in cutting through red tape. The Department did its best to avoid encumbering us with silly rules or with interfering either in our elections or our meetings.
Fundamentally, the neighborhood councils were supposed to be there to reflect the feelings, thoughts, and concerns of individual neighborhoods. That was the whole point -- the system was developed as a counter to an outspoken secession movement in the valley and the harbor, which was based on peoples' feeling that government was distant and uncaring. By providing a system in which we -- the neighbors in each community -- could elect our own representatives, we could create a voice that would be heard by the City Council representative. Whether he wanted to listen or not was up to him, but at least he would be aware that there was such a voice.
Implicit in this model is the idea that neighborhood councils are independent of city government in terms of how we choose our leaders, what subjects we choose to take up in our discussions, and what we think. Freedom of thought has to be an essential element in this model of neighborhood level participation.
That's the system that was handed to us by Jim Hahn and with the help of City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who oversaw a lot of the City Council side of the newly developing system.
Over the years, new mayors and their appointed General Managers have done what they could to whittle down our independence. Villaraigosa was probably the worst. He brought in a political hack to oversee our elections (and then made her acting General Manager) and the result was a quiet little political war that finally erupted when even the City Council became outraged at overreaching by DONE and its GM.
Mayor Garcetti was just a little better, but between Villaraigosa and Garcetti, there was a slow but steady authoritarian movement against the neighborhood council system that was supported by the City Council. We began to feel that the intent was to take us down a peg, to make our lives move difficult, and to burden us with wholly unnecessary training requirements. In the meanwhile, the appointed members of the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners became obsessed about writing a Code of Conduct which gives the city enormous power over us in a way which is fundamentally un-American. It denies due process to anybody that DONE or the BONC chooses to target.
So there we were at the 25th anniversary celebration of the Charter amendments, and who should appear to cap off the celebration but Mayor Bass.
She is always smiling.
It is an endearing characteristic, to be sure. She has an essential charm that carries to any audience. But what did she say about our neighborhood council system?
Basically, she talked about the challenges the city will face in hosting the World Cup, then a Super Bowl, and finally the 2028 Olympics. This was legitimate, but then she offered the neighborhood councils a chance to participate at this level:
Cleaning the streets.
So let me remind you that the original and ultimate purpose of creating a system of neighborhood councils is to bring the citizens closer to city government. It includes giving individual neighborhoods the chance to comment on how the city government is working for them and ultimately it gives neighborhood councils the chance to comment on important policy issues.
So what could be a more important policy issue than how Olympic events are apportioned among different parts of the city, or among the different cities in southern California?
Will these Olympics be limited to those who can afford an enormous ticket price?
And what of the transportation issues, which have been given lip service so far, but not a lot more?
What we the neighborhood councils have, so far, is an invitation to participate in monthly street cleaning exercises. In other words, we the elected officials who make up neighborhood council boards are relegated to some sort of cub scout status.
I will give the mayor a score of B-/C+ on this effort. She did show up at our 25th anniversary event. But then she missed the point entirely. We are not a collection of unpaid volunteer window cleaners and dusters. We are supposed to be policy setters and critics. We should be invited to participate in the planning of the World Cup and the Olympics, at least in terms of governmental decisions. The alternative is to turn the whole operation over to a self-selected group from the private sector who will make sure the spoils go to their best friends.
And to come back to the Charter amendment process for a moment, we are badly in need of a self-created neighborhood council movement that will look at the current Charter in all its inadequacies and offer an improved version. More about that later.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
