LA’s Neighborhood Councils can Learn from Airbnb’s Defeat of Prop F in San Francisco

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER-News Flash: San Francisco’s Proposition F results are in and by a margin of 55% to 45%, voters rejected it. How did that happen? First of all, the Airbnb folks spent over $8 million to defeat the proposition; supporters spent only $500,000. Second, and related to this article, Airbnb contacted every one of the 138,000 SF city residents who had either stayed in Airbnb rentals or hosted guests themselves in the past year. 

I mention these election results because our own Neighborhood Council system, flawed as it is, is one of the very few vehicles by which citizens can obtain knowledge – and share it with friends and neighbors -- to actually cast intelligent votes in LA City elections. And hats off to CityWatch, the only real news source for what is happening in our city. 

It’s always nice to be validated, and last Tuesday’s article by Denyse Selesnick pointing out the cowardice of the BONC at least made me feel better. If BONC itself can’t even get an item of their own on its agenda, it makes me think that Neighborhood Councils might be swirling around in the same Rube Goldberg machine as their Commission. 

Anyway, until someone comes along that cares enough to sue the City Attorney for failing to disclose statutory conflicts of interest and/or malpractice, we don’t really need the BONC. We should ask it to change how it operates. The commissioners should decide to have quarterly meetings -- and only togo over the certification and decertification of Neighborhood Councils. This is all they should be expected to do, until they can claim authority over their staff – but, hey, that dog won’t hunt: These unpaid commissioners are not part of the classified service so they’re not allowed to supervise real city employees -- like the staff of DONE. 

As for the rest of it…no one cares about the BONC’s silly rules since they don’t enforce them anyway. Maybe this would free up some deputy city attorneys to do something useful -- like gang injunctions or helping the homeless. 

I’m told at the LANCC meetings that there are a number of very active, politically astute Neighborhood Councils out there in the City. However, I haven’t seen one in Northeast LA where I live. To the extent that our NCs act like good little doggies and obey their elected officials, some goodies do get handed out. For the rest, not so much. Recently, at theBoyle Heights Neighborhood Council, there was a carefully orchestrated, almost successful attempt to remove a Board member for failure to kiss the ring of the councilmember. 

TheLA32 Neighborhood Council (El Sereno) is always on the brink of “Exhaustive Measures,” and has even been reconstituted, like a cup of freeze dried soup. You wonder if it would be better to just put them out of their misery, or maybe set them up in an office in one of the non-profits funded by the Council District. Maybe they could run it! Oh, wait…I think they tried that. 

Of course, for the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council, where they can’t even spell Brown Act much less follow it, the goodies flow forth. The dividing lines between that NC, TERA, and the Council District Office is so thin it resembles a semi-permeable membrane. Reverse osmosis? Outsiders need not apply. 

In Glassell Park it’s getting as hard to drive around as it has been in Echo Park, thanks to all of the new construction and gentrification. Of course, when your Neighborhood Council is effectively controlled by land use professionals focused on feathering their own nests, what can you expect? 

And while I haven’t been back to the Cypress Park NC for a while (their NC meets at the same time as the GPNC,) I am told that they continue to have their difficulties, even as Metro puts the finishing touches to their latest “affordable housing” tract that looks suspiciously like a housing project -- built in a railway yard. 

My old neighborhood council in Lincoln Heights seems to have missed the gentrification bandwagon for some reason, but the last time I checked in, it looked like the City was handing out liquor licenses like carrot sticks…no matter if they were close to schools. The neighborhood council tried to fight this to no avail.  

For some reason, the east/west dividing line in my neighborhood seems to be the hills around Mt. Washington. From there to Highland Park, there isn’t much political crossover between the various communities. In fact, the Neighborhood Councils in Northeast LA all seem to be isolationist – they don’t even talk to each other. While I don’t know if this insularity was created on purpose, I’m sure it wasn’t part of the original Plan for Neighborhood Councils. 

Actually, when you think about it, something is rather odd when you consider that the Charter and the Plan both called for neighborhoods to interact and use outreach, providing checks and balances to the City Council. Instead, the NCs in my area seem to operate as a co-opted set of substations to the Council offices. Somebody sold cheap. 

Of course, maybe I shouldn’t complain. After all, someone might take umbrage and throw the Glassell Park Neighborhood Council out of its digs -- replacing it with some even tamer NGOs. Oh wait -- that’s already been done in Sunland/Tujunga. But I heard the City Attorney left on vacation when they called for help. 

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So, back to the point of the news flash about Proposition F. If we, the citizens of LA, stand any chance at all of defeating the bad policies of the LA City Council, including tax rate increases for City Hall, illegitimate special interest initiatives, and the buying and selling of the Council by billboard companies, then we’re really going to need functioning neighborhood councils – NCs that can and do use outreach to achieve their primary purpose as outlined in the Charter. 

But clearly, folks, we don’t need the BONC.

 

(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

-cw

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 90

Pub: Nov 6, 2015