Mr. Greg Nelson, Manager Los Angeles Department of Neighborhood Empowerment

305 E. First Street Los Angeles, CA 90012

Phone (213) 485-1360 fax (213) 485-4608 e-mail gnelson@mailbox.lacity.org

18 March 2002

Dear Greg:

The Northridge Community Council  hereby files this formal protest against DONE for the cancellation of our Certification Hearing from the March 19, 2002 agenda.

We did receive a DONE memo dated 2-22-02 about our bylaws, and responded in writing. Since then, DONE has provided all the notices for the Certification Hearing, and has continued to work with us on boundary issues until 2:00 p.m. on Friday, March 15, clearly showing the Hearing as going forward.

On 3-15-02 NCC’s Charles Brink received a rejection of our Application buried in an attachment of an attachment to his e-mail. The DONE letter is full of misstatements which totally mischaracterize our response. Our first notice that our Certification Hearing was removed from the agenda is when we reviewed the agenda on Friday’s e-mail and discovered our Hearing is not on it, despite the fact that DONE has repeatedly informed us that our case would be heard on that date. We believe you cannot remove us from the Agenda at this late date.

You can resolve this problem by calling for a special meeting to place us back on the Agenda. This requires only 24-hour notice (by 6:30 p.m. tonight), which will correct your failure to follow your own ordinance.

If you insist on violating your own ordinance and disenfranchising our community stakeholders by actions designed to prohibit public participation on local issues, then we will take appropriate action to restore our rights under the law.

We will be watching your actions very carefully, along with many other neighborhood councils in formation and residents throughout the city who demand input and decision-making rights within their neighborhood councils.

How you violated the law

All quotes refer to Article IV (Certification Process) of the city’s Plan for Citywide System of Neighborhood Councils ordinance.

We submitted our Application on November 20, 2001. A few days prior, Old Northridge submitted an application that had a boundary conflict with our application. This invoked Section IV.2.b, which states:

"(b) If DONE receives two or more certification applications within said 20 business-day period that identify the same, similar, or overlapping proposed Neighborhood Council boundaries, DONE shall immediately notify, in writing, all contacts for all affected applicant groups in an effort to work with affected parties to produce a unified application. Applicants of the proposed Neighborhood Councils shall have 20 business days from the date notification is given by DONE to develop a unified application."

This resulted in a meeting 17 days later, on December 7^th, with DONE and the two proposed councils, to deal with the overlap. We agreed at that meeting, based on DONE’s comment that Old Northridge would meet the 20,000-person requirement, to re-draw the boundaries to resolve the conflict, and further agreed to share a portion of the business areas that encompass both proposed councils.

Since consensus was reached at the December 7th meeting, Section IV.2.(b)(i) then became effective:

(i)If consensus is reached at any time within said 20 business-day period or at any time during an extended time period pursuant to Article IV, Section 2( b)( ii), said period shall be terminated and all applications shall be deemed received by DONE for evaluation. In the event that all affected applicant groups agree in writing to terminate, for any reason, the process of developing a unified application within the 20 business-day period, all applications, as originally submitted, shall be deemed received by DONE for evaluation. If no consensus is reached within or at the end of the 20 business-day period, the applications, as originally submitted, shall be deemed received by DONE for evaluation.

As we agreed (and even if we had not agreed), this section mandates our application "shall be deemed as received by DONE" as of December 7, 2001.

There was no written request by all groups to extend the 20 days, as described in Section IV.2.(b)(ii), shown below:

(ii) The 20 business-day period described in (i) above may be extended by DONE if all certification applicants make such a request in writing within the time period in (i) above. If no consensus is reached within or at the end of the 20 business-day period, the applications, as originally submitted, shall be deemed received by DONE for evaluation.

Therefore, December 7, 2001 was the absolute last date our Application could be "deemed received" by DONE. At that point, DONE had 10 business days to evaluate the Application and submit it to the Commission, per Section IV.2.(b)(iii). The 10 days ended on December 21, 2001.

Section IV.2.(b)(iii) states

(iii) Once an application has been deemed received by DONE for evaluation through the processes described in (i) or (ii) above, DONE shall have ten business days to evaluate all applications as submitted. At the end of its ten business-day evaluation period, if DONE determines that all or some of the applications are complete according to DONE's evaluation, DONE shall forward the application, any accompanying information, and its recommendation to the Commission for consideration. If DONE fails to evaluate or forward the application (and any accompanying information, including its recommendation) to the Commission within said time period, DONE shall automatically forward the application without a recommendation to the Commission for consideration.

This section requires DONE action within 10 business days, and says that if DONE fails to evaluate our application within the mandatory period, it must automatically forward the application to the Commission without recommendation.

Please note that your failure to act within 10 days prohibits you from making any recommendations to the Commission, including the recommendation to reject our Application.

The DONE memo commenting on our bylaws was an 2-22-02 e-mail copy sent to the NCC 2 months after the December 21 cutoff day, with the following header:

Hi Charles and Walter, 
Please find attached the DONE review of Northridge CC's by-laws.
Can you make any amendments as indicated and return to me as soon as possible? 
Thanks for your help. David Larkin

Attached was an internal e-mail dated 2-22-02 stating:

To: David Larkin, Project Coordinator 
CC:Romerol Malveaux, Field Division Director From:Rita Moreno, Senior Project Coordinator
 Re:Proposed Northridge Community Council Attached is my review of the group's bylaws.
 Please forward to them ASAP. Let me know if you or they have any questions

This E-mail never rises to the level of rejection, as required by Section 2.© of Article IV. Our application was never returned, nor was there ever any statement that "the application was incomplete".

(c) If, at any time during the processes described in this section, DONE determines that an application is incomplete, it shall return the application to the applicants along with a detailed list in writing of the missing components required in a certification application and suggestions on how to incorporate missing components. Applicants whose certification application was determined to be incomplete and returned by DONE may at any time re-submit the application after amending it to meet all the necessary criteria.

This section requires a recommendation within the 10-day evaluation period. The 2-22-02 e-mail does not state that our Application is incomplete, and in any event is time barred as it was issued 2 months the 10-day period expired.

DONE continued to publicly act as if our hearing was going ahead, by doing ministerial functions required under Section 3 of Article IV to produce copies of the notice of public meetings that announced our hearing would be on March 19^th.

Once these public notices are issued, Section 5 of Ordinance Article IV requires the commission to hold the hearing. This is not an option. The Ordinance says "shall", and requires the Commission to take testimony from members of the public.

On 3-15-02, hidden in an attachment to an attachment of an e-mail sent at approximately 4:00 p.m. last Friday, is a rejection letter dated 3-15-02, almost 3 months after the 10-day period expired on December 21, 2002.

It appears DONE, and city attorneys, have decided to play fast and loose with the Ordinance and the Charter. All of this apparently because our group has committed the ultimate sin of allowing our neighbors (stakeholders) to vote on issues concerning the community, instead of being told their only right is to elect another level of bureaucracy that will make all decisions for the community.

The most significant statement in DONE’s 2-22-02 letter on our bylaws is:

DONE COMMENT - The Directors will vote on all affairs before the Board. These matters shall not be voted on by Community Stakeholders not on the Board of Directors.

The demand that we disenfranchise our stakeholders and prohibit them from voting on issues that concern them is directly contrary to the City Charter.

We ask that you place us back on the Agenda for the March 19 meeting, and ask that DONE follow the City Charter as regards allowing a Town Hall concept to be established as an appropriate format for a Neighborhood Council.

Cordially yours,

WALTER N. PRINCE

Acting President

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