Not-So-Neighborly Councils Debated

Lining up at the podium, Oxnard residents urged the City Council on Tuesday not to touch the neighborhood council program, arguing that only a minority of the civic activists wants changes.

The City Council voted Tuesday to support neighborhood councils that choose not to participate in the umbrella organization, called the Inter-neighborhood Council Committee and to allow the committee to decide whether to revise its own bylaws.

The City Council directed staff to prepare a report in January after more than a dozen residents walked out of a committee meeting, charging the organization had become too contentious and political.

“These few unhappy people are attempting to gain advantage over democracy,” said Ray W. Gonzales, vice chairman of the citywide committee and a representative for the Fremont South Neighborhood Council. “The neighborhood did not want these changes.”

The report recommended that the City Council appoint a special group to review the committee’s bylaws, which have been a source of debate among committee members. The report also reaffirms that the city will support neighborhood councils that decide not to send delegates to committee meetings.

Neighborhood council representatives who walked out of the Jan. 3 meeting said they did not like the direction they believe the citywide group was taking, but do not want to destroy the group.

“We have never as a group collectively wanted to undermine [the committee],” said Denise Paul, chairwoman of the Orchard Park Neighborhood Council and one of the delegates who left the Jan. 3 meeting.

Established in 1973, the 36 neighborhood councils give residents a way to approach the city with a unified voice when asking for help in areas ranging from street improvements to more after-school programs. The Inter-neigborhood Council Committee later became a forum for all the groups to meet.

But Tuesday, delegates from different neighborhoods singled out other representatives for causing dissension in the group.

“This to me is a little disheartening,” Councilman Tom Holden said. “In a way, it has been reduced to verbal attacks to justify one position over another.”