Northridge Neighborhood Council 9-29-03 Update |
We are sending you this E-mail as you have requested to be notified concerning Northridge Neighborhood Council events and projects affecting it.
No agenda has been published but I assume it will cover traffic and other issues. On issue that should be raised is whether local students will get priority over other students. A rumor heard is that it will become a magnet school with no transportation provided overwhelming the 70 odd parking places provided for 800 students, spilling over into the residential area. Here is a link to files on this project.
The meeting will focus on traffic issues around CSUN and possible fixes. Also nominations will be received for Directors for the next election in November. (Our third election)
Sharing power | Panel: City is stifling its voice | DONE and finished?
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20951~1656633,00.html
City must stop meddling with neighborhood
9-26-03 The manipulation of the Valley Glen Community Council illustrates how Los Angeles city officials don't really want the neighborhood councils to have an independent voice.
To keep the group in line, the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment has tied the council members in knots with a bunch of confusing rules as it seeks to hold elections. Other neighborhood councils have complained that department officials have thrown up roadblocks when they felt the councils weren't following the city's script closely enough.
When Los Angeles voters adopted charter reform in 1999, they endorsed the idea of the neighborhood councils as a way to give power back to the people. But City Hall doesn't like to relinquish power if it can help it. And the actions of DONE, a city department overseen by the mayor's office, show that the neighborhood councils' path toward independence is riddled with pitfalls.
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200%257E20954%257E1652117,00.html?search=filter
By James Nash
Staff Writer
9-24-03 VALLEY GLEN -- Members of an advisory panel to speak for Valley Glen at Los Angeles City Hall say the panel is being undermined by the city department that is supposed to help it establish and have an election.
Officials at the city Department of Neighborhood Empowerment have knotted the Valley Glen Community Council in a web of confusing and seemingly arbitrary rules governing its election, according to some community council members.
Among other things, DONE officials are forcing the community council to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote, forbidding it from requiring photographs of candidates in the election, and restricting whom the council may choose to oversee its election.
Members of the Valley Glen group complain that the city is tightening the reins to ensure that the group is subservient to the city rather than independent.
Their complaints echo comments from several of the approximately 100 official neighborhood councils in Los Angeles, which were set up under a 1999 charter reform measure intended to bring more representation to neighborhoods.
"I can't help but feel we're being punished for wanting to clarify things," said Diana Lipari, co-chairwoman of the Valley Glen Community Council's elections committee. "They're trying to turn us into someone who is regulated by the city. That to me is a conflict (of interest)."
DONE officials acknowledge that they're holding Valley Glen to higher standards than many other neighborhood councils.
The Valley Glen Community Council triumphed over a rival group calling itself the College Center Neighborhood Council to win official recognition by the city last year.
But in agreeing to recognize the Valley Glen Community Council as the official advisory panel for the area, city officials insisted that the group reach out to all workers, college students, residents and property owners in the council's boundaries, said DONE General Manager Greg Nelson.
That has meant additional frustrations for the organizers of the Valley Glen group, Nelson acknowledged, but he said city officials aren't trying to control or thwart the panel.
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20951~1589335,00.html
West Hills Neighborhood Council tires of City Hall's betrayals
8-24-03 The West Hills Neighborhood Council was the first such panel to come into existence in the San Fernando Valley. Soon, it could be the first to go out of existence, too. [It voted to stay in business]
In 1999, neighborhood councils were the great selling point of City Charter reform. At long last, Los Angeles city officials claimed, the city's residents would play an active role in making policies that most directly affect their everyday lives.
But the promise was never more than just that: a cheap political ploy to satisfy the public's yearning for real reform with a faux substitute. Councils were given a strictly "advisory" (read: symbolic) role, with little funding and no authority.
Then, as if to make matters even worse, the city created the laughably misnamed Department of Neighborhood Empowerment to oversee the creation and operation of the councils. The department's true purpose, it seems, is to obstruct and hamstring the councils as much as possible -- a job DONE's done all too well.
Nowhere has the sham of the councils been more apparent than in the Valley.
In Van Nuys, DONE allegedly botched the local council's elections, failing to make sure only eligible voters took part, then showed preference to one set of candidates. In Northridge, DONE worked to successfully block the unofficial neighborhood council's certification, and some members think it's because they actively supported Valley secession.
DONE, of course, denies the allegations, but what's undeniable is that neighborhood councils are not living up to their billing.
And so we now have the prospect of the West Hills council being the first, although probably not the last, to consider pulling the plug on itself. At its meeting Sept. 3, the council will vote on its own dissolution.
Council members are fed up with their inability to take care of even the most basic procedural responsibilities, such as securing their $50,000 in funding and office space. DONE has been little help, offering an office in Panorama City or Reseda, but West Hills' representatives hang on to their belief that the seat of their government should, in fact, be in West Hills.
Member Ed Youngblood sums up the council's frustration when he complains about two years of bureaucratic delays: "It's a long time to be listening to the promises of what it can and should be versus what it really is."
Surely the West Hills community leaders aren't alone. There are already some 100 neighborhood councils in Los Angeles, all dealing with DONE, and many are, no doubt, every bit as frustrated by the experience. As the neighborhood council experiment fails on an ever broader scale, more and more L.A. residents will be left feeling betrayed and disappointed.
This is the sort of alienation that breeds the apathy and low voter turnout on which City Hall thrives, and the city withers.
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