CommentsEASTSIDER-No sooner was my recent article, “The City Ponders Neighborhood Council Reform…”
published than some more information was revealed about the remaining part of my article, the god-awful Subdivision Boundary Policy and Online Voting.
Thanks to a CityWatchreader, I found that the Subdivision Boundary Policy is still alive, sorta. However, after reading the documents, to say that BONC and DONE demonstrate incompetence would be a disservice to incompetent people everywhere.
I apologize in advance for the detail, but this is how the City Council really works, burying us in file numbers and documents, trusting that we will never actually go look at what they are really doing.
Back to Basics
Before looking at the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (BONC) letter, let’s go back and see what the framers of our NC system meant when the originalOrdinance was passed in 2001. According to Ordinance 174006, under Section 2(B), dealing with Qualification and Criteria for Neighborhood Council Certification, we find certain pertinent parts:
(1) “The proposed area has a minimum of 20,000 residents.”
(2) “The proposed area represents an historic, identifiable neighborhood or community and includes local City service providers, such as a public library, park or recreation center, fire or police station or public school.”
(3) In section 2(b) “Signatures shall, to the maximum extent feasible, reflect the broadest array of community stakeholders who will be active participants in the neighborhood council.”
Under the Section on Boundary Adjustments, the 2001 Ordinance only included three significant reasons to makeanyadjustment:
(1) Incorporating an uncertified adjacent community into the neighborhood council;
(2) Reconfiguring the size of the neighborhood council based on a decrease or increase in population;
(3) Increasing or reducing the size of the neighborhood council to increase effectiveness and efficiency.
BONC’s New Recommendations
With that background, back in November 2017, after all kinds of deliberations, Garcetti’s defanged BONC issued a “serious” and full set of proposed amendments to the Policy.
Here’s exactly how serious and full they were:
(1) No change to the base requirement that “the petition may propose boundaries that are within one or more existing certified Neighborhood Councils”;
(2) However, BONC recommends that the Department should notice the heck to all “affected certified Neighborhood Councils” when a petition is filed and/or amended, and further DONE should put the petition documents up on their website, and even notify the Board members of “affected” Neighborhood Councils;
(3) DONE becomes “responsible for outreach,” but that “shall not relieve the proponents of the proposed subdivision of any outreach requirements...”
(4) As to review, within 90 days of final approval of the petition by DONE, they will now send the packet to BONC for a hearing and decision;
(5) Finally, within 90 days from BONC’S decision, the election will take place, with BONC being the ultimate arbiter of certifying the mess.
For those into pain, you can find the actual November 17, 2017 BONC letter here.
Reading between the lines, the only practical changes here are to get the City Council Committee off the hook, and push the decision-making process onto BONC, where the Mayor makes all the appointments. BONC has even less staff than DONE, and their meetings are held during the working day when almost no one can attend. Mostly an embarrassment anyway.
Huizar’s Original Motion
I have to hand it to Huizar. His 2012 motion triggering all these Boundary Adjustments, came out of nowhere and was a masterpiece of total obfuscation:
“There is a need to allow neighborhood councils that same the capability to petition for a boundary adjustment at the same time the Commission considers new council certification for the area being removed if desired at the grass roots level; so long as no orphaned area would be created and the emerging neighborhood council(s) remained in compliance.”
I defy anyone to tell me what this motion actually means, which was probably Huizar’s intent. You will notice that nowhere in here is any mention of eliminating any of the 2001 requirements for having a Neighborhood Council, like the 20,000 residents requirement…even though he did eliminate the requirement.
Grayce Liu’s ‘Report Back’ to Ryu’s Committee re Online Voting
If you thought BONC was full of it, check out DONE’s Report back to the Health, Education, and Neighborhood Council Committee on Online Voting. It consists of a two-page cover sheet, and 9 pages of a Report about the Skid Row NC Subdivision Election. You can find it here.
So, what does DONE think about the “success” of their Skid Row Online Voting experiment? According to DONE there were 1388 votes cast, of which 1186 were cast via online voting, and this shows how wonderful it all was. Wow. Of course, they ignore the real questions about online voting in Skid Row.
I can see how the online voting worked now. Up comes a real no bullshit Skid Row person, and the DONE people say, not to worry, just grab your iPhone and we’ll show you just how simple it is to do this thing. Oh, you don’t have a smartphone? Step over here, and staff will guide you through our clever verification system we have so you can send electrons through the cosmos. What, you’re leaving? Wait...
Of the 1186 online votes cast, how many were by the affluent BID and surrounding NC Council people, who know all about how to use this system, as opposed to the troops the adjustment was really for? Is there any way to statistically identify the actual people who really voted this way, as in, was there a paper ballot trail that can be analyzed to see who was what type of voter?
I’m betting that we will never find out the truth.
And in a monument of hubris, Grayce Liu proudly proclaims:
“Because of this success, the Department requests online voting for any subdivision elections in 2018 to allow for further perfecting of the online voting platform to prepare for possible use in the 2019 Neighborhood Council elections.”
Success? The Skid Row elections blew up in DONE’s face, even as Jose Huizar admitted that his staff put in the fix. You can read all about it here. I am not making this up.
As to the “success” of online voting in other NC elections, it’s been a travesty. Don’t believe me, check out a very nice article by Laura Velkei of DONEWatch, who gives a compelling reason that this stuff is not ready for prime time. You can read it here, and the article is definitely worth a look.
The Takeaway
So, what does this huge pile of dried cowchips mean? The real guts of the BONC proposals would simply insulate the Councilmembers from whatever real deals they make to trigger a boundary adjustment, and push the process of handling petitions to DONE, with the BONC bozos becoming the final decision makers.
I can see it now. Under this deal, Huizar, for example, has his staff call Grayce, and issue instructions as to how BONC should proceed. “You betcha,” says Grayce, and viola, due process is served, even as the deed is done!
As to online voting, if there is ever going to be online voting in LA, it and the entire election process should be handled by the City Clerk and under no circumstances anyone else. The City Clerk actually runs real elections, can be trusted, and will absolutely notuse online voting for anything until they are satisfied that they can find a way to legitimately do it. Until then, this turkey is best cooked.
Compare the City Clerk’s stance with the kindergarten DONE version. It’s pretty clear who knows what they are doing. And I have to point out that in realCalifornia elections, like for Councilmembers, online voting is currently flat illegal. Wonder why.
(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.
