Angels Gate Board Seen as Haven for Incumbents

When Jack Walser, owner of Walser’s art supply store in Torrance, received a ballot in the mail early this month from the Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro, he was perplexed.

The ballot for the nonprofit organization’s board of directors’ election was broken into two categories. The first section listed 13 incumbent board members seeking reelection with the instruction: “Vote for 13.” The second section listed three challengers with the heading: “Vote for 2 only.”

Handwritten on a cover letter attached to the ballot, Walser said, was an unsigned note recommending which challengers he should vote for.

“I belong to several professional associations, and this kind of ballot would be totally inappropriate,” said Walser, who said he threw away the ballot and cover letter. “I am not an active member, and I didn’t know the individuals on the ballot. . . . But it was inappropriate to get a ballot like that. It tends to prejudice what is supposed to be an impartial election.”

Last week, Angels Gate Cultural Center Inc., which is licensed by the City of Los Angeles to run cultural and arts programs for the city at Angels Gate Park, held its election. The 13 incumbents were elected as were the two challengers promoted in the note Walser received.

Anne Alberts, a San Pedro legal secretary who takes dance classes at the center, was the only candidate to lose. Shortly after the election results were announced, Alberts accused the board of orchestrating the outcome--a charge the board has denied.

“The truth of the matter is that they consider this their private little club and anyone that tries to join is quickly invited not to,” Alberts said later in an interview. “I am incensed that they don’t want me to join the club.”

Alberts and about half a dozen other members of the 340-member organization have written letters complaining about the election to the board of directors, harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores and the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks, which last month granted the organization a three-year lease to operate the center rent free. The group, which was first licensed in 1981, runs an art gallery and offers various art, dance, theater and other classes in converted Army barracks at the former military base.

Alberts and the others said the election violated the organization’s bylaws, and they asked the city to intervene. Flores’ office said it would ask the city attorney to look into the matter.

Tom Towse, outgoing president of the Angels Gate board, said in an interview that the organization’s bylaws governing elections are confusing, but he said the ballot did not violate the bylaws’ intent.

Towse said the ballot was structured--in accordance with the spirit of the bylaws--to guarantee the reelection of the incumbents to “ensure that there is a continuity on the board.”

“With a new three-year license on the property, (the city) needed the assurance that the majority of those people whom they were dealing with at the beginning of the contract would be the same people who were responsible throughout the contract,” Towse said.

George Beck, who was elected by the board Tuesday night to succeed Towse, agreed.

“We are going to redo the bylaws and try to take away the area of confusion,” Beck said. “But we want to keep a continuous level of experience on the board.”

‘Dumb Thing to Do’

As for the handwritten notes accompanying some ballots, Beck said, “it was a dumb . . . thing to do.” He said the notes were written by Executive Director Roberta MacFaden Miller, but no one on the board was aware of them until after the election.

“I told her there would have been nothing wrong with her writing to people as long as she sent it in a separate envelope and she did it on her own,” Beck said. “It gives the wrong impression to put it in the ballot envelope.”

In an interview, Miller offered no apologies for the notes, saying she wrote them only to about two dozen “very close friends.” She said she did nothing wrong, although she acknowledged that “it could have been a mistake” to send the notes with the ballots rather than separately.

“I think people are giving me an awful lot more power than I have,” Miller said. “People will vote their heart no matter what you tell them.”

Late last week, in response to complaints about the election, Flores’ office sent a letter to the city attorney’s office asking for a review of the organization’s bylaws and the city’s lease agreement, said Flores Deputy Mario Juravich. Juravich said Flores wants to know if the city has any jurisdiction in the dispute.

“Our office feels the ballot should have been structured much better to reflect the bylaws,” Juravich said. “The bylaws and the ballot are not compatible.”

Diane Gill, who oversees the organization’s lease for the Department of Recreation and Parks, said the department joined Flores in requesting the review. Gill said, however, that the department rejected requests from Alberts and others before the election to stop the balloting.

“I can only enforce things that are not in accordance with their license with the city,” Gill said. “They have a set of bylaws that they are ruled by. The bylaws may stink, but that is the way they are. . . . The members need to change them if they don’t like them.”

According to the bylaws, the board of directors is required to nominate a candidate for each board vacancy. The bylaws state that “additional nominations not exceeding two” may be submitted by the general membership. In addition, they state, “those candidates receiving the highest number of votes shall be declared elected as directors.”

The bylaws require that the ballot be complete--that is, members must vote for someone for each seat up for election. Twenty of the 104 ballots in the Tuesday election were declared invalid because members did not vote for a candidate for each of the 15 seats.

March Beagle, a member who on Wednesday wrote a letter to Beck contesting the election, said the regulations do not allow the board of directors to separate the ballot into two sections and mandate votes for the incumbents. She said the ballot should have listed all 16 candidates and instructed members to vote for 15.

The board of directors, however, disagrees.

Revised 18 Months Ago

Towse said the bylaws, which were revised about 18 months ago, should probably have stated that two “seats” on the board--not two “nominations”--can come from the general membership. Towse said the bylaws were intended to reserve two of the board’s 25 seats for general members--not allow two candidates from the general membership to run for each seat up for election, as others have interpreted the rules.

“The bylaws indeed are confusing,” Towse told a general membership meeting Tuesday night just before the ballots were tallied. “It is clear that they need some clarification.” Even so, Towse allowed the election to proceed, saying the ballot was written in good faith and followed the intent of the bylaws.

Beck, the new board president, said a committee will be set up to clarify the bylaws. Both he and Towse said the organization, while eager to give members a voice on the board of directors, was never intended to be truly democratic. Certain seats, for example, are reserved by the board for a representative from Flores’ office and some community groups involved in the center.

“I say to people, when was the last time you got a ballot from the L. A. County Art Museum to vote for its directors?” said Towse, explaining that the museum and many other other nonprofit groups appoint all of their directors. “It is not effective for any kind of long-term program to have (directors elected). You can really be quite vulnerable to a raid on the board or to people with a different agenda.”

But Alberts, Beagle and others said the board’s interpretation of the bylaws is a poorly disguised effort to keep the board unresponsive to the membership.

“I don’t know how they can expect to spread their roots out in the community when they treated me the way they did,” Alberts said.