Northridge Neighborhood Council 10-14-03 Update |
We are sending you this E-mail as you have requested to be notified concerning Northridge Neighborhood Council events and projects affecting it.
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)
DONE the destroyer | Nelson responds | Shabby treatment | Neighborhood Zine | Stay put, Dennis | Mission accomplished
This is opinion written by Charles Brink and a few Northridge Stakeholders.
Northridge has the dubious honor of being the first Neighborhood Council that DONE decided to destroy.
We demanded that the neighbors vote on all neighborhood issues. We gave up and made it a requirement that we poll the stakeholders before the council votes on an issue. DONE claims this was a “vote” and sent us an E-mail “prohibiting the council from even inquiring what the Stakeholders' opinions are on any issue”!
We demanded that the Stakeholders be the persons defined specifically in the voter-approved Charter. DONE wants to ignore the Charter and add new classes so that persons distantly removed from the community are stakeholders. Reportedly in one neighborhood they had a group feeding the poor in an adjacent city and DONE “determined that the poor, who were being fed miles away from the community, were “members” of the group and hence “stakeholders” and had them “vote” by signing a “ballot” when they were fed. This is a new all time low for DONE, Stakeholders that have never even set foot in the community.
DONE demanded Northridge shutdown our website and limit the posting of the agenda to 5 bulletin boards. They never explained why the community should not be able to access information about the council.
In West Hills, which was certified about 18 months ago, DONE demanded they NOT follow the election procedures in their approved bylaws. DONE now demands the council follow DONE's election procedures, which include voting without registration and without verifiable proof of the stakeholders' status. DONE also demands unverified absentee ballots. If West Hills follows their certified bylaws, DONE refuses to support their election. The DONE proposed election procedures state - if DONE does not approve the election procedure then DONE will not recognize the elected leaders and will appoint DONE “approved stakeholders” to take over the council!
Of course DONE ignores the Charter and the City ordinance which allow the neighbors to form and run the councils as they see fit.
And most importantly, DONE demands the residents on the community be limited to less than a majority on the council. DONE's goal is to destroy the power of residents and homeowners to control their communities. DONE wants the majority on each council to be controlled by the chamber of commerce and other self appointed organizations in the community.
A strict reading of the charter limits any group defined as residents, property owners or persons that work in the community from being a majority on the council. Note that a homeowner is in two classes of stakeholders, both as a resident and as a property owner, which shows how strongly the charter empowers homeowners.
And DONE's outrages go on and on - numerous council leaders have resigned in protest because of DONE's interference.
DONE continues to financially support only groups they can control or shut down. The so-called “Old Northridge Council” has not even met in the last year and refuses to provide any public information about its operation. But DONE and it's cronies have agreed to “give a significant portion of Northridge, including Sherwood Forest, to the do nothing DONE approved council.
This is why we are “the wrong people to lead Northridge”, because we will not allow DONE to control the community.
And remember, Northridge voted overwhelmingly to leave LA and many residents have left LA after the election because of DONE and LA City's actions.
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~21663~1694004,00.html
10-13-03 In its Oct. 8 editorial, the Daily News suggested the City Council investigate the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment to prove that it's living up to its name. My answer is a simple one: Anytime. Let's do it!
Our department is always ready to account to the public for its actions. We are constantly being scrutinized by the City Council in public meetings, and we'll attend as many meetings as we are invited to -- and we'll stay until the last question is answered.
[Then why did the Daily News have to sue under the public records act just to see a few documents?]
Greg Nelson General manager Department of Neighborhood Empowerment
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~21663~1692243,00.html
10-12-03 With the success of the recall election, maybe the City Council and the mayor's staff will awaken to the shabby treatment they have afforded the neighborhood councils over the past three years.
Charles E. Gremer Past president West Hills Neighborhood Council
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~21663~1692243,00.html
Re "Stay put, Dennis" (Editorial, Oct. 7):
As vice president of the Northridge Neighborhood Council, I am very familiar with the unlawful actions and abuse of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment in total disregard of the City Charter. While Dennis Zine is a city councilman, he is also a stakeholder in West Hills, where he is a resident and property owner.
Serving on the advisory neighborhood council will expose him to the failings of DONE and city government. He will see firsthand the neighborhood frustrations with the despots at DONE, and I am sure his displeasure will be handled at his day job at City Hall.
Charles Brink Northridge
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20951~1683080,00.html
Zine can best serve West Hills council in City Hall
10-8-03 Memo to Los Angeles City Councilman Dennis Zine: You already serve on the elected council in this city, and that's enough.
Zine, who fancies himself a man of the people, wants to bolster his populist credentials by joining the struggling West Hills Neighborhood Council -- the advisory group that's supposed to help the community get some respect in City Hall.
The problem is, Zine already is in City Hall. If he wants the West Hills Neighborhood Council to get some respect, all he has to do is give it.
Members of the neighborhood council, fed up with the city bureaucracy's failure to deliver on $50,000 in promised funding, have threatened to disband the panel altogether. That has Zine, who served on the commission that created the powerless neighborhood-council system, in a tizzy. Rather than let the West Hills panel die on the vine, he hopes to run for it, then vote for its continued operation.
"It was either (run) or stand by and watch it dissolve," Zine said.
But there's a more logical alternative, one that might not be as sensational as a city councilman's mixing it up with the little people back home, but one that would be far more effective: Zine could throw some of his clout around in City Hall.
Specifically, he and his colleagues on the City Council could launch an investigation into the city's Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, which, by most counts, has done little to live up to its name. DONE has exasperated members of the West Hills Neighborhood Council, as well as others. Its general manager, Greg Nelson, should be called in to answer for its obstruction of neighborhood empowerment, feeble as the City Hall power structure envisioned.
Of course, the same could be said for most every city department. Few have lived up to their responsibility to serve the public. That's why neighborhood councils were created in the first place -- to give communities greater say in City Hall, with the hope that a better, more responsive city government would result.
But neighborhood councils, as the experience of the West Hills panel illustrates, are failing to fulfill that promise despite the hard work and earnest commitment of thousands of ordinary people. And the blame belongs not only to DONE, but also to the mayor and the City Council for turning a blind eye to DONE's inadequacy.
If Zine wants to improve the lot of neighborhood councils -- rather than simply grandstand -- he'll take on the thornier task of getting DONE to become a vehicle for, rather than an obstacle to, community empowerment.
Anything less is meaningless posturing.
As Zine should know better than anyone, neighborhood councils need their autonomy. That's why City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo calls Zine's ambitions for lower office inadvisable.
The point of neighborhood councils was to give communities a voice in City Hall -- not to give City Hall a voice in the community.
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20951~1615752,00.html
City Hall makes the Valley as poor as the rest of L.A.
9-7-03 Soon after Lyndon B. Johnson launched the nation's "War on Poverty," Los Angeles City Hall launched its "war for poverty" in the San Fernando Valley.
Now, a generation later, it's time to check the scorecard: Little progress in ending poverty nationally, almost total success in making the once middle-class Valley as poor as the rest of the city.
The latest census figures show that even while poverty decreased throughout L.A. over the past two years, it has risen yet again in the Valley after a 55 percent jump in the 1990s.
The Valley now has poverty rates that are almost as high as the rest of the city's -- 15 percent to 18 percent -- when not long ago it was less than half the citywide figure.
What's happened to the Valley is no accident.
It's come from decades of City Hall's neglecting Valley infrastructure and services at the expense of downtown and other favored regions. Insufficient policing, the sorry state of public schools, punitive taxation on homeowners and the failure to enforce housing laws have driven the Valley's middle class to the outlying suburbs and replaced them with the poor.
City Hall has had little trouble eradicating the Valley's middle class. If only eradicating poverty were as easy.
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