Neighborhood Councils Get Off to a Slow Start

For Helen Coleman, Los Angeles is not a sprawling metropolis of interstates connecting the blue Pacific to the San Gabriel Mountains. It is not a place of gleaming skyscrapers, sidewalk coffee shops and movie stars.

To Coleman, daily life in Los Angeles is a seemingly endless line of rundown 24-hour motels, halfway houses and liquor stores.

Like many other residents here, Coleman believes her Southwest Los Angeles neighborhood of Hyde Park has become a dumping ground for the things the city doesn’t want--the things it wants to hide.

“The liquor stores, the sober living houses, the drug selling on the street,” Coleman said. “We get it all here.”

Coleman hopes a new approach--neighborhood councils--will change that, giving her disconnected neighborhood a voice in the city’s decision making.

The neighborhood council concept, approved by voters in June 1999 as part of a citywide charter reform, is supposed to begin in June.

A newly created agency, the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, is developing a plan for a system of advisory neighborhood councils. The councils will be notified about proposed projects in their neighborhoods and given a chance to tell the mayor and City Council what they think.

The councils will be advisory, without the power to approve or kill projects. But advocates say they will still be political powers in City Hall.

But as the start date for the program gets closer, a troubling trend is emerging.

The proposed neighborhood council in Hyde Park, a mainly African American working class community, is a rarity.

Many predominantly minority neighborhoods in Los Angeles, especially the poor ones that need representation most, are being left behind.

“There are clusters of neighborhood councils popping up all over the place with a lot of excitement, but most are in the more affluent neighborhoods,” said Terry L. Cooper, a professor in the School of Public Planning at USC. “I am becoming more and more concerned with areas that are not organizing, especially immigrant neighborhoods where English is not the primary language.”

Large pockets of Los Angeles, particularly South-Central and Central Los Angeles, have made no effort to organize, said Cooper, who is studying the implementation of the neighborhood councils. He has been meeting with community leaders to try to figure out how they might get more neighborhoods involved.

Greg Nelson, chief deputy in Councilman Joel Wachs’ office, said he believes neighborhoods that aren’t involved will become active after they see what the councils can do.

He said it will be especially helpful if the city provides resources, particularly for those in struggling communities where buying something as simple as a fax machine can be a hardship.

“If the plan starts providing resources, like full-time staff, money for newsletters, computers, e-mail, it won’t be too long until the adjacent neighborhoods, which may not be organized, will look and say, ‘I want that too,’ ” Nelson said.

But Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas said he thinks some neighborhoods aren’t eager to join the program because they fear it won’t work.

Ridley-Thomas’ district already has an active neighborhood group called the Eighth District Empowerment Congress. The district is made up of mostly working class Latinos and African Americans.

Citizens in the Eighth District are elected to the Empowerment Congress, an advisory group, for two-year terms. One-third of Ridley-Thomas’ budget goes to finance the organization.

Proponents of the neighborhood council concept point to the Ridley-Thomas organization as an example of how they can work, especially if given resources. But while supporters of the councils are enthusiastic about Ridley-Thomas’ approach, he’s not so hopeful about theirs.

“We are doing what we need to do to get our business taken care of,” Ridley-Thomas said. “If the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment’s plan, which is yet to be done and proven effective, has favorable results, I suspect it to be integrated [into his organization]. If it doesn’t, it won’t.”

But Coleman said the reason why many poorer areas aren’t involved is that “in many of these neighborhoods, people are working two and three jobs just to survive; going to a community meeting is the last thing on their mind.”

A Time of Increased Hostility to the City

Voters approved the neighborhood council concept as part of sweeping charter reform, which also gave the mayor’s office more power.

The vote came at a time when there was growing hostility toward the city of Los Angeles. There have been calls to break up Los Angeles, with new cities proposed in the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood and the Harbor area.

Residents have complained that they are ignored when controversial projects are suggested for their neighborhoods.

It remains to be seen whether neighborhood councils will solve the problem. The idea is modeled after similar programs in cities such as St. Paul, Minn.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Portland, Ore. But those cities are less diverse and are much smaller than Los Angeles.

During the past several months, employees of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment have been holding workshops around the city.

The department recently released a draft of its plan and is now working on a final version. The City Council will have six months to approve it. After the plan is adopted, the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment will begin certifying councils around the city.

To be certified, the groups must set their own geographical boundaries and the groups’ representatives must reflect the diversity of a given area. There is no time limit on when a neighborhood council can be formed.

The draft recommends that, after they’re certified, the city provide the councils with computers, Internet access and timely information about projects that could affect their areas.

Nelson said he believes the councils can become as influential as lobbyists and unions are in Los Angeles.

“It really is sad when you see neighborhood leaders coming to the City Council on the very day an issue is being discussed as if the City Council members haven’t made up their mind, as if lobbyists have not already worked them over,” Nelson said.

“If this works as conceived, and they’re given money and resources, they’ll have people who are just as skilled as the lobbyists but they’ll be working on behalf of their community.”

Residents in the South Robertson neighborhood, which has gotten a head start, hope that proves to be true.

South Robertson started a neighborhood council three years ago, long before the charter reform passed.

The council, SoRo, has been working to revive the business district along South Robertson Boulevard. SoRo’s leaders, however, complain that they still aren’t getting enough information.

“I have great expectations down the line as this gets up and going that information will be more forthcoming and quickly received, and we’ll be able to react in a timely manner,” said Susan Bursk, SoRo’s president.

Tisha Bedrosian of Venice is also hopeful. She says she believes the councils will help her connect, not only with her neighbors in Venice, but also with those around the entire city. That, in turn, she says, will give her community more power.

“The idea is not just a coalition in our own community, but we’re also connecting with all the neighborhoods all over Los Angeles,” Bedrosian said.

Coleman, who became active in Hyde Park after watching the 1992 riots from her living room window, said her neighborhood has already been affected by the program.

Members of her community have gone to workshops that have taught them everything from how the city works to when the city’s budget is put out.

She said something as simple as understanding the budget process can make a big difference.

“Now that we know how it works, we’ll be watching where the money goes,” she said.

But she said getting her community organized is a constant struggle because many of her neighbors have grown skeptical.

“People have been lied to and let down so many times they have given up,” she said.

“I try to tell them that instead of complaining, this might be their chance to do something.”