ValleyVote Update for 3-14-01 |
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THE Department of Neighborhood Empowerment deserves the heat it's getting for its indifference to getting neighborhood councils up and running by July 1 when the new City Charter takes full effect. After a year and $2.4 million, there ought to be more progress, and concern rightfully is growing that City Hall is deliberately dragging its feet.
The councils -- advisory as they are -- were a critical provision of the new City Charter approved in 1999 by voters wary of a city government that for a generation had put downtown first, ahead of the neighborhoods. Neighborhood councils need strong leadership from the mayor and City Council if they are truly to grow and become a force and voice for residents in city government.
And that hasn't happened yet. All the money to date has gone to bureaucracy to create councils. Where's the commitment from City Hall to actually provide the resources and the tools to neighborhood councils to make them meaningful and effective?
A lot of lip service and very little else has been coming from City Hall. Starve the neighborhood councils and it's the same as starving the neighborhoods, which is what City Hall seems intent on accomplishing.
DONE General Manager Rosalind Stewart said she agrees in part with criticism that her office hasn't done enough to get the word out to residents, community groups, churches, businesses, renters and the world that they're trying to organize something called neighborhood councils, which have no authority to do anything.
But there's more at stake. Unless the councils have control over their own budgets, unless they can make decisions on how that money is spent in their area, and unless they can rate how the city responds and delivers services, it matters little if there are five or 50 neighborhood councils. The end result will continue to be dysfunction, disappointment and disconnection to city government.
The true test is whether enough council members believe in the spirit of the neighborhood councils and the idea that power closer to the people leads to a better city and a more active, involved and empowered public.
The Charter Commission studied the issue for two years before bringing it to the City Council, which watered it down and presented it to voters in 1999.
Voters approved it, and still the city has found a way to drag out the process with repeated studies and public hearings. At some point, City Hall has to get off the merry-go-round and get them going.
Enough money for neighborhoods or watch the city shrivel up and break apart.
It's that simple. Starve the councils, starve the neighborhoods and watch secession grow and prosper.
By SUE FOX, Times Staff Writer
Callers who reach out and touch City Hall these days are likely to find themselves groping through a bureaucratic thicket. Take the recent experience of Jason Greenwald, a 29-year-old writer and political consultant.
Greenwald was cruising down La Cienega Boulevard, past the Beverly Center shopping mall, when he saw two delivery trucks parked in the right lane, hampering traffic. So he grabbed his cell phone and dialed 911. "I knew it wasn't a life-threatening emergency," Greenwald said, "but I figured I'd start there." Calling 911 from a cell phone rings the California Highway Patrol, which in this case informed Greenwald that his was not a life-or-death call.
Then, Greenwald remembered the city's handy 877-ASK-LAPD number, a new service for non-emergency calls to police that was intended as a stopgap measure while the city builds the 311 system. He got through, and an operator referred him to the city Department of Transportation. There, an employee told him he should talk to a different bureau of the department and gave him that number. Greenwald reached an argumentative clerk who questioned whether the Beverly Center was in the city of Los Angeles.
"I said, 'Look, I've lived in L.A. my whole
life.' Then, she said she had to code it based on some grid system, and she
would file a report and give it to someone else, but she wouldn't be able to
tell me if it was followed through on," Greenwald recalled. "Then I
asked to speak to a supervisor and was told the supervisor had gone home for the
day."
Four days later, the supervisor returned the call.
Greenwald's experience is a classic case, according to a customer survey commissioned by the city. Not only did he have trouble figuring out which agency to call--the most frequent complaint of the 1,800 residents surveyed--but he also was unable to track his request and the call was not followed up in a timely manner.
Greg Dexter, the city's 311 project manager, said that a 311 system would have promptly linked the frustrated caller to the proper agency, which would have been better prepared to handle his request. One kink yet to be ironed out, however, is that 311 may not be accessible from cell phones. Greenwald, for one, said he's looking forward to the 311 age.
"I did my honest best" to report a problem, he said. "Nobody was dying, but it was the sort of thing where it would be really nice to alert the appropriate person so that the hazard could be removed."
WITH the mayoral election only three months away, the major candidates have discovered the importance of the city's neighborhoods. They are stumbling over each other in their commitment to neighborhood councils.
Their belated attention is welcome, but inadequate.Neighborhood councils -- which are powerless and advisory thanks to the deal making of the downtown power brokers -- have their role. They can help make Los Angeles less oligarchic and a little more democratic.
But they will not save the city's neighborhoods. That effort must come directly from City Hall, and so far, none of the mayoral candidates seems willing to pay anything but lip service to the neighborhoods.
The plight of Los Angeles neighborhoods -- which we identified as one of the city's top areas of concern for the new year -- extends well beyond a lack of local representation. L.A. was once a beacon of middle-class comfort. It offered clean and safe neighborhoods, good schools and easy access to jobs in commercial and industrial zones.
Today, the neighborhoods are a testament to middle-class decline, with an ever-diminishing quality of life compounded by an ever-rising cost of living. Many neighborhoods are now marred by graffiti and crumbling sidewalks. The streets are increasingly dangerous, with crime rising and the Police Department in shambles. Traffic is worse than ever, and most public schools are abominable.
The central flaw in the planners' schemes has been a long-term goal of turning L.A. into a turn-of-the-century metropolis -- the 20th century -- built around a massive downtown. It was a strategy designed to satisfy the ego of city leaders and land speculators, convinced that bigger made them look better.
But it never took into consideration the reality of L.A.'s sprawl. L.A. is too big and too diverse for that sort of centralization, and most of its people have attained or seek a suburban, middle-class existence.
So for 20 years, L.A. neighborhoods have been ignored in terms of infrastructure and funding, while billions were wasted on downtown. Schools and other services have been run into the ground by a distant and unresponsive bureaucracy.
It will take a revolution in City Hall's thinking to spark a major revival of L.A. community life. It will also take an investment, in terms of vision and revenues, to renew some of L.A.'s most dilapidated neighborhoods, starting with the Northeast Valley and North Hollywood.
That's the sort of promise the mayoral candidates need to make to show that they're as committed to neighborhoods as they are to neighborhood councils.
;By Rick Orlov Staff Writer ;
;With neighborhood councils to be formed across Los Angeles in the next six months, the leading candidates for mayor in April's election pledged on Saturday to consult the groups and give them a major role in developing city policies.
In a forum before nearly 500 members of Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas' 8th District Empowerment Congress, each of the six pledged to provide whatever resources were required to make the neighborhood councils work, with budget estimates running from $3 million a year up to $25 million. ;
And, while the neighborhood councils are advisory in nature, the candidates also promised to give them wide leeway in decision-making.
Included in the session was a straw poll of which of the six candidates -- City Attorney James Hahn, Councilman Joel Wachs, state Controller Kathleen Connell, former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, businessman Steve Soboroff and Rep. Xavier Becerra -- the audience believed would make the best mayor.
Hahn collected 43 percent of the vote, which surprised some organizers as low. He has been considered a heavy favorite because his father, Kenneth Hahn, represented the South-Central area for more than 40 years on the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors.
But Hahn was far ahead of the others in the poll. Villaraigosa was at 18 percent, Connell at 12 percent, Wachs at 10 percent, Becerra at 6 percent and Soboroff at 4 percent.
The 8th District Empowerment Congress was formed by Ridley-Thomas when he took office a decade ago to try to bring more city services to his South Los Angeles district. It has been held up as a model for the new neighborhood councils.
As the candidates praised the new councils, some warned that the work would not be easy.
"Power is not given. It must be taken," Villaraigosa said, urging that the councils seek to find their own sources of funding. "Make yourselves independent of City Hall. When people give you money, they expect something in return."
Hahn said he wanted to institutionalize the power of the neighborhood councils.
"I wanted these to be elected councils with authority," Hahn said. "If I am elected I will seek a charter amendment to make sure we have neighborhood councils with real authority." Becerra said he would meet regularly with the councils to make sure they have a voice in City Hall and insisted they be consulted.
"It is time to change, to think outside of the box," Becerra said. "Let's have City Hall come to us instead of us having to go to City Hall. " Connell said she too would seek to get out of City Hall to meet with constituent.
"I will be in City Hall two days a week and the other three will be spent in the communities," Connell said, adding she wants to see neighborhood councils not bound by council districts. "We need to go down to individual blocks to get them organized."
Wachs, who campaigned eight years ago for mayor on the need for neighborhood councils, said he believes they are needed now more than ever.
"City Hall is too distant," Wachs said. "Powerful special interests rule City Hall. I see Los Angeles as a family of neighborhoods, working with other neighborhoods to set our top priorities."
Soboroff said he has proven his ability to work with neighborhood groups in his role as Parks Commission president by creating 154 park advisory boards.
"The time for talk is past," Soboroff said. "We don't need any more plans. What we need is action."
Even within the San Fernando Valley, there's plenty of thoughtful skepticism about the prospect of seceding from Los Angeles. That's why getting a fair and timely study by the county's Local Agency Formation Commission is so important.
More than 25 percent of the registered voters signed petitions seeking a comprehensive study of what a new city would be like so they could make up their minds about whether they would be better off going it alone or sticking with the city of Los Angeles.
Even in Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment, few of the leaders say they are for secession outright. The Valley VOTE leaders want the facts -- just the facts -- first.
Breaking up the city would be a massive undertaking. Is City Hall so corrupt and incompetent that we're better off without it? It's hard to say because City Hall stands in the way of the public's finding an answer.
And that says a lot about the kind of city Los Angeles has become.
In theory, the process of completing a secession study should be straightforward. LAFCO would get data about taxes and spending from the city, then conclude where the money comes from and where it goes. But in Los Angeles, nothing is that simple.
First, city officials dragged their feet for four months on providing LAFCO with requested information. Then, when the City Hall report finally was turned in, the numbers were bogus. City Hall officials, underestimating Valley sales-tax and property-tax revenues, produced figures that contradicted the estimates of their own tax consultant. They used outdated data. They rounded off numbers to skew the results in downtown's favor, creating discrepancies as large as 18 percent.
And, most astonishingly, they couldn't even account for about $1.1 billion -- a quarter of the city's own revenue. What's City Hall trying to conceal?
For Vals skeptical or dismissive of the secession question, this documented case of city intransigence should shed some light on why many of their neighbors are even considering breaking away:
They're fed up with the lies. They've had it with the lack of cooperation. They're tired of being mistreated and ignored.
And they suspect that the numbers that City Hall doesn't want us to see would confirm our very fears: that Vals pay the bills for sweetheart public contracts and overpaid downtown bureaucrats.
Many Angelenos think that if local communities controlled their own taxes and spending, they could do better. City Hall officials seem to fear that, so their strategy is to try to sabotage the fact-finding study mandated by state law.
Ironically, City Hall officials -- because of their lies and stalling -- have made the best case for Valley secession.
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