Neighborhood Councils

A coalition of liberal activists and homeowner associations' representatives reportedly are promoting the notion that the city of Los Angeles should create 15 neighborhood councils as part of charter reform. Among other things, these councils would have jurisdiction over land use decisions including commercial, industrial, retail and residential building and rebuilding; "social uses"; private schools; AIDS hospices, and community care centers for battered children.

HOW IT WORKS Neighborhood-oriented communities would catalyze around innovative community centers, possibly on school grounds. Community councils, with bona fide powers to resolve local planning issues and liaisons with city government, would blossom at these sites. A library with computer learning centers, lectures, concerts and plays would be the centerpiece of each. The landscaped grounds would include a park and other small-scale recreational facilities.

Mayor James K. Hahn provided a debit card to the Reseda Neighborhood Council as the first step in a plan to give advisory bodies throughout Los Angeles $50,000 annually for operating expenses. Hahn said 65 neighborhood councils have been certified by the city. When the councils elect a board of directors, each will be given what the mayor called a "Stored Value Card" they can use to purchase office supplies, publicize meetings and cover other incidental expenditures.

The first duty of the the charter reform commissioners--elected and appointed--is to devise systems that work. A city charter that contains too much proscriptive detail will tie our hands as we confront the inevitable unforeseen challenges of the coming decades.

The first draft of a citywide plan for neighborhood councils was released Tuesday with little fanfare. A thin 11 pages with many holes, the guidelines nonetheless are an important first step and open a discussion of the trade-offs and problems of Los Angeles' grand experiment with grass-roots civic action. The charter that voters passed in June 1999 encourages formation of voluntary community councils across the city. Such groups in Portland, Ore., and St. Paul, Minn.

When dozens of neighborhood council leaders trooped to the microphone in the Los Angeles City Council chambers Jan. 14 to complain about the Police Department's new burglar alarm policy, several council members heralded their presence as a turning point in the evolution of local government. For the first time since voters approved the creation of the neighborhood groups in 1999, members of the nascent organizations packed City Hall to speak out on an issue, and the council promised to listen.

The Los Angeles Ethics Commission recommended Tuesday that members of the city's 84 neighborhood councils be exempt from having to disclose their personal financial interests. The decision came despite opposition from political reform advocates who note that allegations of conflicts of interest have already arisen in some panels.

With a mixture of enthusiasm and some frustration, about 1,000 members of Los Angeles' burgeoning system of advisory neighborhood councils met Saturday for their twice-yearly congress, where much of the talk was about a campaign to boost their clout at City Hall. Mayor James K. Hahn announced at the Congress of Neighborhoods that the city budget he will release April 18 will add $2 million to the $6.2 million provided this year for the advisory councils.

For Helen Coleman, Los Angeles is not a sprawling metropolis of interstates connecting the blue Pacific to the San Gabriel Mountains. It is not a place of gleaming skyscrapers, sidewalk coffee shops and movie stars. To Coleman, daily life in Los Angeles is a seemingly endless line of rundown 24-hour motels, halfway houses and liquor stores.