Board Suddenly Disbands Praised Wilmington Group

The board of directors of the Banning Park Neighborhood Assn. in Wilmington decided unexpectedly last week to disband the widely praised group.

Members said they had no inkling that the board was considering such action and only found out about it in terse notices they began receiving Wednesday. They received refunds of their association dues but no explanation for the action, the members said.

“We all feel kind of violated,” Evelyn Romberg said. “We thought we had an organization here, and we come to find out that they set it up in such a way that they can dissolve it with no explanation.”

Board members said Thursday that they chose to disband during a Sunday meeting rather than continue a long-simmering dispute over a neighborhood preservation plan. They also feared the membership was going to oust them from the board.

“These people were planning on coming in to a February meeting and overthrowing us,” said Simie Seaman, who was president of the association. “And we weren’t about to resign when there was nobody else qualified to take the reins.”

Elections for board members had been scheduled for Wednesday night.

But angry members scoffed at such charges and said the unilateral decision to dismantle the group was characteristic of a board increasingly unwilling to listen to its members.

“If there was disagreement within the group, they did not want to hear it,” Romberg said.

The association of 89 households was organized in 1987 to protect the area from crime and graffiti that was then spreading to the neighborhood from other sections of gritty, industrial Wilmington. Over the past two years, police and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores have praised the association for its aggressive stance against drug-dealing, litter and graffiti along the area’s streets.

Despite those successes, rumblings of discontent began to surface last year over a proposal by the board to turn the four-block area south of Banning Park into a Historic Preservation Overlay Zone.

Under Los Angeles planning ordinances, residents can propose such zones to protect and enhance local features “that are reminders of the city’s history.”

Those opposed to the zone argued that aesthetic provisions of the proposal would have restricted remodeling and landscaping by homeowners and might have made it difficult for them to sell their homes. There were also complaints that the board had forged ahead with the proposal without seeking approval or input from the membership.

The first draft of a board-approved plan for the preservation zone was presented to city planners last August.

Board members said Thursday that bylaws approved by the directors in 1989 allowed them to act without direct approval of the full membership, but they said members could have discussed the plan at regular association meetings.

“We gave them the information about the meetings, but they didn’t respond,” said Seaman, an assistant to a clothing designer. “We don’t have to vote on anything; we don’t have to have a majority.”

Some members criticized the directors for adopting rules such as requiring members to attend a certain number of meetings before they could be elected to the board. Such rules gave the incumbents an insurmountable advantage, the members said.

“The way the bylaws were written, the board gave itself an awful lot of power,” said Leon Larson, who resigned from the association last year.

Some opponents of the proposed zone concede that they did not regularly attend association meetings when the plan was discussed, but they said the board should have provided more information to those who were not at the meetings. Some of the members also said they stopped attending meetings last year because they thought the board was not listening to their concerns.

The board was composed of five members elected by the membership. Two of the directors are related to Seaman: Lana Hollis is a sister, and Theresa Hollis a sister-in-law.

At a closed meeting in January, two spokesmen for those opposed to the preservation zone were allowed to air their grievances about the proposal and the association’s bylaws.

But when Seaman denied permission to Rich Roberts, editor of the association’s newsletter, to publish an article about the meeting, Roberts resigned and sent a personal account of the meeting to all association members.

Roberts, a sports writer for The Times, concluded that “officers were derelict in not advertising or consulting the membership (and that) the membership was equally at fault for not seeking to be better informed.”

Board members said Roberts’ “editorialized” version of the meeting had caused “previously apathetic members” to oppose the historic preservation zone.

“The January 29 meeting was like a commando raid, like a SWAT team coming in,” Lana Hollis said. “We didn’t want to squabble over this.”

Despite the bitter split, dissidents and board members say they will continue Neighborhood Watch and cleanup activities as individuals. Board members also said they intend to pursue approval of the controversial preservation zone as individuals. Though Seaman has retained use of the group’s name and logo, she said there are no plans to resurrect the association.