Department of Neighborhood Empowerment news

July 19, 2002

To: Neighborhood Council Leaders
From: Greg Nelson, General Manager, DONE
E-mail: gnelson@mailbox.lacity.org

Re: Town Hall System

At it's special meeting on Thursday, July 25, the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners will consider the following recommendation as one of several items. The meeting will be held on the 10th Floor of City Hall, 200 North Spring Street at 10:30 a.m. If it is finished on time, the proposed Neighborhood Council Funding Program will be discussed. When this report is finalized, it too will be sent to you so that you can have the most amount of time possible to review it.

Another item on the agenda will be the report from the City Attorney entitled "The Ability of Neighborhood Councils to Further Define the Charter Terms of 'Lives,' 'Works' or 'Owns Property" to Identify Its Stakeholders." If you don't remember having received this report from us on June 18, let us know.

To ensure that you receive the official agendas at the earliest possible time, be certain to subscribe to the commission's agendas through the city's early notification system at www.lacity.org.

Now, the report ..........

To: Board of Neighborhood Commissioners
From: Greg Nelson, General Manager, DONE

Re: Town Hall System

The ordinance that the City enacted to create the Citywide System of Neighborhood Councils (#174006) assumed that all Neighborhood Councils would have a governing board, or similar group, that would make its final decisions.

Therefore, the Office of the City Attorney has opined that applications proposing a governance system through which final decisions can be made through a "town hall" system would not be permitted. Therefore, such applications have been declared "incomplete," and have not be permitted to proceed to a hearing before the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners.

The "town hall" system is one in which the final decisions are made by those stakeholders who attend the public meeting.

Critics of the town hall system charge that this system would lead to an ineffective Neighborhood Council because:

1. It would not be able to act quickly on urgent matters because the general assembly would likely not be able to meet frequently enough;

2. There would be so many items to be discussed, and so many people demanding an equal right to speak, that only a handful of items would be resolved at each meeting;

3. Confirming stakeholder status would be difficult, and the Neighborhood Council would have to be careful to not deny voting rights to a legitimate stakeholder who came to the meeting without being able to prove his or her stakeholder status. The universe of qualified stakeholders would be impossible know; and

4. It would be extremely difficult for stakeholders to fill out the disclosure reports that are legally required whenever decisions are being made that involve financial matters, such as hiring staff, and entering into contracts.

Nevertheless, the General Manager feels that applicants for certification should be permitted to propose town hall systems. With one exception, our laws and Plan should not predetermine that such systems are doomed to failure. We should embrace the spirit of empowerment.

The exception is that until the laws governing financial disclosure change, every Neighborhood Council should have a governing board or group that will make all decisions on matters involving the expenditure of City funds as long as they have filed all of the legally-required disclosure documents.

Therefore, the General Manager recommends that the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners recommend to the City Council that it direct the City Attorney to draft an amendment to Ordinance #174006, which is the ordinance that prescribes the Plan for a Citywide System of Neighborhood Councils, in order to permit Neighborhood Councils to adopt recommendations on community issues that are strictly advisory in nature through a vote of the stakeholders who are present at the town hall meeting. Examples would include issues involving planning and zoning cases, sites of city facilities, determining City budget priorities, developing bond issues, pursuing traffic mitigation measures, improving the conditions at schools, and an endless list of other issues.

The amendment should also permit stakeholders, through a petition process, to vote to override the decision of a governing board on advisory matters that were decided without a vote of the general assembly.