CommentsGUEST COMMENTARY-After meeting with the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) last October, the Budget Advocates recommended that they implement regular Neighborhood Council (NC) member training programs on meeting protocols and methods, and that they establish a workgroup of NC members to discuss NC system issues and concerns.
They have done neither.
And implicit in the recommendations is the need to improve the NC system and, by extension, DONE itself.
The Neighborhood Councils were established by City Charter to promote citizen participation in government and make government more responsive to local needs through the development of a citywide system.
DONE was formed at the same time to educate Angelenos about grassroots participatory democracy and set minimum standards to ensure that Neighborhood Councils represented the interests and desires of all stakeholders in the community by conducting fair and open meetings.
Instead, its recent actions seem to emulate those of the Trump administration rather than working to further an inclusive democracy.
In the wake of the appointment of a new General Manager and still suffering staff shortages due to DONE’s increased focus on micro-managing, the Budget Advocates also recommended there be a wait and see period before DONE recommend any major operational changes.
However, and before the new General Manager had completed her Listening Tour of all the Neighborhood Councils, her staff set out to overhaul the bylaws of every NC, ostensibly to make them consistent across the City.
They sent out draft language.
They set a date for approval.
There have been ongoing concerns that NCs in some neighborhoods were primarily self-perpetuating special interest groups with limited if any participation by a majority of stakeholders.
Rather than addressing this significant impediment to democracy first, DONE moved forward to set up meetings, often in conjunction with these very NCs, to discuss proposed bylaw changes, changes that could further erode the ability of many stakeholders to participate in the NC system.
And then those meetings – which in too many instances were scheduled for the convenience of DONE staff and not Angelenos – were disrupted by the pandemic.
However some NCs have moved forward on codifying their power through amended bylaws using a patchwork of call-in and virtual meetings that are patently discriminatory in areas of the City where people don’t necessarily have access to the necessary technology, especially the homeless, and may not be technologically savvy.
Yes, these are skills routinely used in the modern world and, yes, it is wonderful that communities have this opportunity to connect and discuss local concerns during the pandemic.
But there is a world of difference between watching an NC board approve funds to feed neighborhood seniors and their using the current situation as an opportunity to ram through bylaws changes without those pesky protests that erupt when an entity tries to abrogate stakeholder rights.
There is a world of difference between walking to a neighborhood meeting to protest a disenfranchisement, and having to contend with finding a computer, getting internet, learning new skills, and applying them only to be locked out.
And not having the first idea of how to troubleshoot the problem.
Some of the draft language provided by DONE regarding committees seems intended to specifically exclude participation by the very stakeholders the NC system was set up to INCLUDE.
Was the language vetted? If not, why was it distributed?
Why didn’t DONE pull the plug until such time that people’s worlds achieved a new normal?
Complaints are surfacing.
Not only about how changes are being rammed down the throats of stakeholders but also in how the virtual meeting format facilitated by DONE allowing NCs to operate during the pandemic is patently discriminatory.
Those who work for DONE are by-and-large educated, younger and make a good salary. The decisions they’ve made reflect their own point of view and DONE’s political perspective. Which certainly reflects those of a number of neighborhoods and parts of most. More power to them.
But it excludes many other legitimate stakeholders – older Angelenos, the homeless, those who may not have the tech chops, people without the time or hardware to join virtual meetings, those who are kicked out or can’t join by virtue of the technology itself. And those who are, however accidentally, cut from the meeting by the host.
Now we need more than just a pulling of the plug.
At least on the bylaws and on all material matters affecting stakeholders, we need a reset back to January 1 and a decision on how and when to restart broader NC proceedings based on a full opening of the City and the ability for any stakeholder who wishes to attend meetings and safely protest unfair proceedings.
While I applaud the work of many NC board members, their decisions are often made through the perspective of their own life experiences, further reinforced when boards are made up of like-minded people, and not necessarily those of all of their stakeholders.
Votes on good proposals will easily be passed again. But revisiting other issues will at least give every stakeholder the opportunity to speak. That is democracy.
It also gives NCs time to address realigning their relevance in our new future.
The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment?
It really needs an overhaul to ensure that it is fully responsible to ALL the people of Los Angeles as intended when it was established, not to their own insular interests.
It needs its bureaucracy disassembled and rebuilt with stakeholders, not the City Council, in mind.
It needs to be re-envisioned with democracy and as a facilitator of democracy as its primary, its only, goal.
DONE needs to “Do the Right Thing” not in the divisive manner of the Spike Lee film, but in the name of inclusivity and democracy for all Angelenos during this time of crisis.
(Liz Amsden is an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She also writes on behalf of the Budget Advocates’ mission regarding the City’s budget and services. In her real life she works on budgets, for film and television, where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today’s world.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
