in response to:

"Scientologists Overwhelm Hollywood Neighborhood Council Race"
"At-large" representation and organizing a Neighborhood Council

by Andrew Garsten

You may know that the organizing effort to bring a neighborhood council to my area, Echo Park, had it's own controversy pointing to the Church of Scientology. With two groups submitting bi-laws for certification over almost identical boundaries, one group accused the other group of being, to paraphrase, "infiltrated" by church members.

This was such a difficult issue, first of all because even denying it is bigoted, and also because at the same time it really did appeal to some people's fears. I believe that those fears are still alive to this day, and will affect the way the community views the NC for some time to come.

Religious affiliation should never, ever, be an issue in our democratic and ostensibly non-sectarian society. And we should all be careful about EVER portraying any religious belief in a negative way, as we should all feel free to believe (or not believe) in whatever we want to.

That said, the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council (GEPENC), the group that was certified (and accused) was very cognizant of the threat of being overwhelmed by a religious group (and not Scientology). The reason is that believers will often do as they are told by their spiritual leaders, and voting is a pretty easy thing to do.

The only real problem with one interest group overwhelming a council is if they have an agenda that the majority of the community is against - like a real estate development agenda for instance. Both Mt. Washington and Echo Park have seen this rear up with their resident religious groups.

Fortunately for Echo Park it appears that the local church leaders listened to the community and modified plans based on suggestions, and the situation never became too public, or nasty in any way.

We are still leery though.

The best way to prevent any special interest group from easily overwhelming an NC election would be to not make the mistake that it seems HUNC (Hollywood Unified Neighborhood Council) and the Historic Core Neighborhood Council (Chinatown) did. Each had a great deal of "AT-LARGE" representation.

At-large representation, from what I gather, is how all of the NC positions were for Hollywood, and the majority for Historic Core.

Most NCs have a minimum number of "at-large" or "executive" positions, i.e. President, VP, Treasurer, etc. But after that, the more at-large positions you create the more you increase your vulnerability.

The GEPENC had NONE, beyond the executive committee. No "business" representatives. No "faith-based." No nothin'.

Instead of this, we had 5 geographic districts, and limited voting of stakeholders to those geographic zones. So a church would only be able to direct it's worshippers to vote for candidates representing the geographic zone where the church is located.

While this system is not unhackable, it sets that bar quite a bit higher.

What we did do to make sure that there was sufficient "diversity" in the council body was allow the council to make "appointments," that is, pick people to be on the council. These could be based on constituent groups, or also to make up for skills deficits.

Now this pisses off some elected members. They say, "we ran and won our seats though votes."

They are right of course. It's not completely fair.

But it is a way of allowing a special interest resistant council to achieve the same things that councils do with their at-large positions, namely, have as full and rich a mix of views on issues as the stakeholder base.

Otherwise, even a council that was not packed by any particular interest group can take slanted positions, and worst of all, do so naively.

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Andrew Garsten

andrew.garsten@sbcglobal.net

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Other works by Andrew Garsten, a frequent contributor to LA Community Policing who resides in Echo Park, can be found through the following LACP link:

Andrew Garsten
Echoing about community involvement