Officials Tout Neighborhood Councils

The key to consensus and cooperation on city issues will be a planned network of neighborhood councils, city officials told a summit of San Fernando Valley civic leaders Thursday.

The neighborhood councils, to be created under the new City Charter approved by voters this year, should help resolve disputes before they cause deep, lasting rifts, according to City Council members and appointees to the city’s new Neighborhood Empowerment Commission.

“In Los Angeles, all of us are struggling to revitalize a civic culture . . . to energize people in neighborhoods to participate in government,” Councilman Mike Feuer said.

Neighborhood councils can involve people in making “tangible quality of life changes,” Feuer told the 100 Valley activists gathered for the summit on “community building” at Cal State Northridge.

Some voiced skepticism on whether the neighborhood councils will be effective. Homeowner leaders from Valley Glen to Encino stood up to voice concerns that City Hall might handicap the councils by providing minimal resources and ignoring the councils’ advice.

“How are things going to be any different than they were before?” asked Gerald Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino.

Feuer and Councilwoman Laura Chick promised to fight for sufficient financial resources to allow the neighborhood councils to organize residents and be effective.

“Having a voice doesn’t necessarily mean you always get what you want,” Chick added. “But at the very least you are going to make it harder for your elected officials to not listen and not respond.”

Irene Tovar, who heads the Latin American Civic Assn., cited concerns the councils will be dominated by already well-organized homeowner groups to the detriment of minority and low-income residents who have lacked a voice in government.

“My greatest concern is how are we going to deal with the unorganized communities,” Tovar told the city officials.

Rosalind Stewart, the new general manager of the city Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, said she and the agency’s governing board will hold meetings throughout Los Angeles to get input on a plan for ensuring the councils are as representative as possible.

“I know this can be done,” Stewart said. “It’s about bringing the entire community to the table.”

The daylong summit, called “Building Community for the New Millennium,” was hosted at Cal State Northridge by the university’s Center for Southern California Studies.

The event, held a year after the center hosted a similar summit on Valley secession, focused on getting business leaders, politicians and the heads of nonprofit groups to find ways to foster more cooperation and community involvement in solving problems facing the city.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky set the tone by saying the key to resolving differences between diverse communities and then solving city problems is for residents to learn more about those who are different--both ethnically and culturally--through open communication.

In particular, Yaroslavsky called on residents to not be so quick to look at major policy differences through an “ethnic prism.”

Yaroslavsky said he is concerned about how much race has become a focus of recent controversies, from the size of the new County-USC Medical Center to the dispute between the Los Angeles school board and Supt. Ruben Zacarias.

A group of Latino parents and political leaders has called on the school board to back away from efforts to take control from Zacarias.

“It [the school dispute] is not the first racial or ethnic controversy we’ve had in Los Angeles, but it may be the biggest we’ve had in some time,” Yaroslavsky said.

He called on all sides to step back and take a break from the heated rhetoric. More sensitivity and communication on all sides is needed, Yaroslavsky said.

Unless people involved in such disputes stop seeing issues only from their own eyes and make an effort to understand those who disagree, Yaroslavsky said, “then civic life in this town will be intolerable, if not unmanageable.”