Its taken years, but the Los Angeles area Neighborhood Councils may have finally found a common cause, the need for financial support, and perhaps will come to see their real political strength can only be achieved when they learn to band together.

The proposition to drastically cut the budgets of each neighborhood council by 80%, from $50,000 a year to about $11,200, and to prohibit the NCs from rolling over unspent funds, was floated at the recent Budget and Finance Committee by LA City Councilmen Bernard Parks and Greig Smith (while at the same time protecting their OWN offices' generous budgets) .. and it may be the best thing that's happened to NCs since their inception.

There has already been a predictable groundswell of irate NC Boards who have scrambled for a way to voice a complaint. The proposition may come up in budget deliberations at City Hall next week, and there will no doubt be multiple opportunities for residents to weigh in.

If its a platform by which the stakeholders come to understand that strength comes in numbers, and if they can see this phenomenon is the same no matter WHAT the regional or city-wide issue, Misters Parks and Smith may unwittingly become NC heroes, providing an integral part of what's always been missing in the neighborhood council system, namely, a clear, easy-to-understand, common cause .. a rally point.

Most Angelinos know we're in a bad financial crisis, and would probably accept the more modest 10% ($5,000) NC budget cut proposed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.  That could be sold as "fair" and would keep it possible for neighborhood councils to continue to support, among other things, local events, the arts, community improvements and small but meaningful contributions to non-profit and public safety groups.

Back in the late 90s, when the concept of NCs was first introduced, it was almost hastily added to a proposed new City Charter under the then-Mayor Riordan administration.  He'll tell you, as he once quite unabashedly told me, that the brand new concept was sketchily included as a bribe, an incentive to get the voters to pass the whole greatly revised Charter (the vote had to be all or nothing).  But it was deliberately described in the new Charter in such unclear and innocuous terms as to keep the community busy spinning it's wheels for a long time, figuring out how to use it effectively.

To be sure, a few City Council members back then had a genuine interest in giving the LA resident a more immediate say in the day-to-day workings of their City Hall government (a shocking concept, isn't it?) but their was no real "plan" presented about how to do so.  Even the entities BONC and DONE, created to assist the neighborhood councils, had to find their way virtually from scratch.

A lot of time and energy was spent (just as Riordon predicted) while neighborhood councils spun their wheels, waited for direction, and eventually came into fruition, some of them kicking and screaming.  And once again, when the dust settled, the City's NC structure reflected one of the biggest "problems" Los Angeles has .. the lack of a unifying identity. 

As it emerged the NC system still resembled LA's age-old description of 88 "distinct" communities searching for a city among them.  Perhaps the geography of Los Angeles does not readily lend itself to anything else.

But common issues can bring people together.

Almost as soon as the councils were created, a group of people from across the NC system, who understood that neighborhood councils' real strength would come only once they organized, began to find ways to gather together, and the Alliance, the Citywide Issues Group, the LANC Coalition and regional efforts in the San Fernando Valley, South Los Angeles and Northeast LA (and perhaps others) were formed.

With various degrees of effectiveness each has argued that groups of NCs taking common stands on the many many issues that are regional or city-wide in scope can find mechanisms (such as the Community Impact Statement, letter writing campaigns or by testifying at Brown Act meetings) that may impress upon City Hall and it's Departments the needs and desires of the community, as they arose.

Unfortunately the spark of no single issue over the years has set the neighborhood councils on fire.

But nothing makes people take a stand like a drastic financial upset, and now there's such a cause.

As one NC Chairman has put it in a letter he's prepared for City Hall, "Such a funding cut would effectively eviscerate .. every neighborhood council in the city's  mission and ability to function under the City Charter." And he further believes, " .. that Neighborhood Councils are local government at its most local …and that the relatively small amount expended annually by neighborhood councils is for the most part the most effectively spent and most locally accountable and overseen budget line in the City Budget."

If the Parks/Smith proposition does anything it provides an opportunity to prove the adage about strength in numbers.  Every NC Board Member and stakeholder from across the city needs to act as an individual following the "Call To Action" recently proffered by BONC/DONE (see: Call To ACTION) and showing up at City Hall during the Budget process.

Then neighborhood councils need to send representatives to participate in the various unifying NC groups (see: LANCissues.org).

Perhaps this "emergency" can become the rallying point around which the neighborhood councils can really coalesce.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bill Murray is a long time LA resident and community activist with an over 30 year career in film/TV and journalism.  He is perhaps best known as the founder and president of Los Angeles Community Policing, at www.LACP.org