from Jim McQuiston - LANC Citywide Issues Group
- on Inclusionary Zoning and fixing DONE / BONC

June 21, 2004

Dear LA Community Policing friends and readers:

I want to forward you this email which originally went to the LANCissues e-group and my own Arroyo Seco Neighborhood Council. It features the work of one of our LA Neighborhood Council Citywide Issues Group members, Jim McQuiston.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The LA Neighborhood Council Citywide Issues Group
now has a grassroots website of its own: www.LANCissues.org

I think you'll find Jim's work interesting, to say the least ...

Yours in service,

Bill Murray

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The LA Neighborhood Council
Citywide Issues e-group

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LANCissues

www.LANCissues.org

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from Jim McQuiston - on Inclusionary Zoning and fixing DONE / BONC

Dear LANCissues Participants:

I have just uploaded four important documents into our file cabinet on the LANCissues e-group site on behalf of Jim McQuiston, a founding member of the Citywide Issues Group who does not have access to the Internet.

For those of you who may not know him, Jim is from East Hollywood. He's a very active and respected community member who is regularly seen at City Hall. In fact, he's often there several times a week attending City Council and Committee meetings ... and he's not shy about speaking during Public Comment.

In the documents I've just uploaded, Jim offers us his thoughts on two issues ... Inclusionary Zoning and on how to fix the DONE / BONC system by changing the Ordinance and Rules that created it.

In terms of the Inclusionary Zoning issue there three files; two (dated 5/12 and 5/19) are short -- his public comments before a couple of City Committees. The third document (dated 5/25) is a slightly longer and more complete treatment on the issue.

Jim writes, "Devising a workable and productive inclusionary zoning ordinance ... the City must first study and repair its areas having substandard infrastructure. Maintaining the present patterns of segregation built into our General Plan will neither be proper nor adequate."

I find this work thought provoking and timely, to say the least.

But the forth file I've uploaded for Jim is perhaps even MORE important to the LANCissues e-group member and the many Citywide Neighborhood Councils we represent.

This is a lengthy, learned work, some 20 pages long. It's entitled "Comments on City Attorney Opinion No. 2004:7 -- Analysis of Neighborhood Council Legal Framework." Jim McQuiston presents a detailed treatise on the rules that govern the DONE and BONC in three parts:

I. ANALYSIS OF CHARTER REQUIREMENTS
II. RE-STRUCTURE ACHIEVING PURPOSE
III. COMMENTARY ON EFFECT OF RE-STRUCTURE

It's an extraordinary effort on Jim's part, to say the least, in which he offers a complete re-write of the Ordinance and Rules the City and we, the stakeholders, must follow while doing our Neighborhood Council business.

Jim says, "Presently, we have a Mayor who finds benefit in neighborhood councils... The next Mayor may not be receptive to reconfiguring neighborhood councils. Time is of the essence, for the Council to correct the ordinances and Plan ..."

Please ... take the time to download and read these important works. And by all means ... feel free to pass them on!

(or simply forward this email to anyone who might be interested in checking out and perhaps joining our LANCissues e-group)

Thanking you on Jim's behalf, I remain,

Yours in service,
Bill Murray

Arroyo Seco Neighborhood Council
http://www.ASNC.us

LANCissues Citywide Issues Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LANCissues