Critical Letter From the President | Election | CPR & First Aid

HOW CITY HALL IS LIMITING
GRASS-ROOTS DEMOCRACY

A critical message from the President: A little over a year ago, I coined the phrase "Chatsworth Cares" in the aftermath of the Metrolink train wreck. The community had responded to this emergency with such swift and amazing action, that the entire world needed to know what great neighbors we have here.

Today, I have a new phrase: "Chatsworth recognizes horse excrement when the city slings it our way."

On November 1, 2008, the Chatsworth Neighborhood Council (CNC) entered into what we consider was a legal contract with all of our stakeholders and our board members for representation on our board of directors. The City Clerk has decided to ignore that contract -- and ignore your wishes as indicated in the election you participated in on November 1, 2008. In that election, half our board was elected for 4-year terms. The rest of the board had terms that expire in 2010.

Arbitrary Action

The City Clerk has arbitrarily decided that all 21 board members must stand for election on March 2, 2010, despite the fact that we held a legal election and the results were certified by the city in 2008, with all candidates and stakeholders understanding that the term of office was 4 years. This outrageous ruling by the City Clerk is contrary to our Bylaws, our wishes and the decision by our neighbors on what is best for our community.

As a stakeholder, your will is going to be subverted. Your vote will be nullified.

The City Clerk's election procedures even stipulate that if there is any discrepancy between the bylaws and the procedures, "the Election Procedures shall be revised to reflect the DONE approved bylaws." So, not only is the City Clerk ignoring our bylaws, they are also violating their own stated policy about how to resolve a conflict in the rules. DONE is the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment.

Once again, someone sitting in an office downtown is trying to tell us what is best for our community. We recognize horse excrement. We don't like it thrown at us.

If this action is allowed to stand, it means that 11 board members legally elected to a 4-year term will instead have only a 17-month term. It will mean that CNC will have to recruit at least 21 quality candidates for our election, rather than the 12 we expected to be electing. It will mean that 21 board members will have to decide immediately if we are still willing to put up with a constant stream of horse excrement thrown from city officials downtown.

Difficult Decision

Half of the board made the difficult decision to run for a 4-year term in 2008 to maintain a stagger. Although most of us had been on the board for many years, our previous elections entailed a commitment of only 2 years. A lot can happen over a 4-year span. Not everyone is willing to commit to volunteering with one organization for that long, no matter how much we care about our community.

It is possible that many board members have waded through enough horse excrement from downtown that they will opt to retire now, including some who would have been committed until 2012 but now have to re-consider sticking around until at least 2014.

It's definitely not that we don't care about you and our community. We renewed our pledge to serve you for 4 years in 2008 -- but we weren't asked to commit until 2014. We may well be willing to continue serving, but we committed to 4 years, and we believe we should have the option after that 4 years to make a new decision based on our circumstances at that time.

And, perhaps more importantly, you voted for us for 4 years. You should have your vote count for the specified term, not a reduced term that someone downtown has arbitrarily decided for you.

The City Clerk's decision comes literally on the eve of the opening day to file as a candidate. If we don't manage to get 21 candidates, we will have open seats for the first time in our history. Unless there are more than 21 candidates, you will have no choice in who represents you because anyone who gets even his or her own single vote will become a board member.

If you don't like that prospect, please support our protest of this change that directly conflicts with our bylaws and our assessment of what is best for our community. Don't just settle for someone downtown slinging horse excrement at us.

Quick History

Let me give you a quick history of the Chatsworth Neighborhood Council. We were certified by the city in April 2003 and held our first election in October 2003. Eight of the 21 current board members were part of the organizing group and have served on the council since the beginning.

For six years, CNC held its own elections, with only one challenge in all those years. That challenge was quickly resolved. (Other Neighborhood Councils across the city have had challenges that shut down operations for months or required a re-vote.) CNC has always had more candidates than seats in an election. (Other NCs have had open seats because they couldn't find enough candidates.) In all our years, we have had only two board seats open between elections, once because a board member passed away, the other because a member resigned for personal reasons. In both cases, we held special elections for the remainder of the term and attracted more voters for that one seat than many NCs get for a scheduled election for their entire board.

A couple of years ago, the City Council decided to turn over the task of conducting all Neighborhood Council elections to the City Clerk's office, which conducts all other city elections. The City Clerk studied the situation and concluded that they could handle the NC elections in even-numbered years because they had a full staff that was overseeing city elections in odd-numbered years but no elections in the off years.

CNC used to spend less than $3,000 for an election. With the change to the professionals conducting NC elections, the cost for the 89 councils in the city is a total of $1.5 million, which works out to almost $17,000 per Neighborhood Council.

CNC used to call for candidates a month before election day, with write-ins allowed up to about 24 hours before voting started. With the change to the professionals conducting NC elections, candidate filing closes 2 months before the election and write-ins must file a full month before the voting.

$1.5 Million

The City Clerk originally told City Council that the 89 NC elections, which are clustered into 11 regional voting days, would cost $1.5 million. In the midst of the worst financial crisis the city has ever experienced, the City Clerk decided in the spring that the elections would, instead, cost more than $4 million. City Council initially responded by suggesting a drastic cut in the NC allocation, with the trims transferred to the City Clerk for election expenses. But, after hundreds of NC representatives, including some from Chatsworth, arrived at City Hall to testify and protest, the City Clerk was told to go back and figure out how to hold the elections for the original estimate.

Each NC was allocated $45,000 this fiscal year instead of the anticipated $50,000 to serve their communities.

So, the City Clerk worked on their numbers and assured City Council they would manage to do the job for $1.5 million. It turns out that they didn't mention that in the process they would be abrogating major portions of their job as election professionals.

In every other election the City Clerk has conducted, a major function is to notify all voters that there is an election and who or what is on the ballot. That's their outreach to all registered voters. We all get those booklets in the mail with sample ballots before an election. For the Neighborhood Council elections, the City Clerk is doing zero outreach. They won't tell you when, where, who, why or even that there is an election.

Your Tax Dollars

NCs have been told that we must do our own outreach. When some of us asked the City Clerk for a mailing list to be able to communicate with our stakeholders, we were told that is proprietary information that the City Clerk can't release to us. But we are welcome to use your tax dollars to buy the information we need from a private business, which will be making a profit in the process, of course.

Let me remind you that your Neighborhood Council is part of the "city family." We are an arm of city government. Every penny we spend comes from the hard-earned tax dollars you pay to the city.

In addition to all the issues related to our election, we have been deluged with problems related to our city funding. CNC has been very careful about how we spend your tax dollars. I believe that we spend more money helping more different groups than any other Neighborhood Council in the city. The CNC finances pass muster, yet, DONE freezes funds and thaws them without notice, only to freeze them again.

We believe that the city is raiding our coffers and taking money that should be available to spend in Chatsworth, for Chatsworth and instead diverting it to that black hole known as the city General Fund, from which you are likely to derive no direct benefit.

But that's another story for another day -- and another pile of horse excrement to plow through.

I urge you to let City Clerk June Lagmay, Department of Neighborhood Empowerment General Manager BongHwan Kim, the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners and Councilman Greig Smith know how you feel about your community and your tax dollars. Let them know that you support the CNC position that they must abide by our Bylaws and our wishes and allow us to elect only half our board during this election cycle.

Let the city officials sitting in downtown LA know that we recognize horse excrement and we don't appreciate it being thrown at us. When used properly as organic fertilizer, horse excrement is a good thing. When it is slung at you, well, you get the idea.

Judith Daniels
President
Chatsworth Neighborhood Council

City Clerk
June.Lagmay@lacity.org
Department of Neighborhood Empowerment General Manager
BongHwan.Kim@lacity.org
Board of Neighborhood Commissioners President
Michele.Siqueiros@lacity.org
Councilman Greig Smith
Greig.Smith@lacity.org
Contact for all Board of Neighborhood Commissioners members
Bianca.Vite@lacity.org
Chatsworth Neighborhood Council President
President@chatsworthcouncil.org