City Agency Rejects Decertification of Venice Neighborhood Council; Calls for New Election


By Jim Smith
During April, it became clear that the Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council (GRVNC) is not DONE. Instead, some of the major critics of GRVNC got BONC-ed when they least expected it.

This semantic foolishness is possible because some of the city agencies ruling over the neighborhood council system have rather interesting acronyms - DONE is the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment which was created to assist the 80-odd councils in the city of L.A., while BONC is the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners which oversees DONE's behavior. It is made up of seven appointed commissioners who apparently have taken an oath that they will never all appear at the same meeting. Must be a national security thing.
On April 24, many Venetians found a flyer on their front door that was not from a Thai restaurant. It was from DONE, announcing three community meetings which it believes must precede a new GRVNC election. Many other Venetians, particularly apartment dwellers did not get the flyer. In any case, the first meeting will be held May 4 at Westminster school.
For the past several months, Venice Forvm (which doesn't really stand for Financiers Organized to Ream Venice Mercilessly) members and friends have been on a campaign to decertify GRVNC. These solid citizens - who include Marta Evry, renown for expediting a vote by her dog; Richard Myers, who received only 28 votes in last year's GRVNC’s election, but succeeded in getting it overturned on a technicality; shopping center developer Greg Fitchitt; Joe Sheilds, who has something to do with the law firm of Latham & Watkins which also represent Trammel Crow developers; Rick Feibusch, who calls his email rants, The Watchdawg; and other assorted developers and absentee property owners have been pleading with BONC for months to decertify GRVNC. No matter that no neighborhood council has ever been decertified and there are no discernable reasons to abolish the council, except that people they don't like beat them badly in the last two elections.
Decertification Nixed
The decertification strategy hit a brick wall at the April 5 when an outpouring of Venetians determined to save their neighborhood council showed up at the BONC meeting in West L.A.
After hearing from about 30 articulate defenders of the Council, and about half as many who promoted decertification, the BONC Board reached a consensus for going ahead with a new election that will put GRVNC back in business. The Commissioners unanimously rejected decertification. Two of the seven Commissioners, Pat Duran and Tony Lucente, who had supported decertification at a previous meeting, reversed themselves and joined in supporting an election.
In spite of much agitation by a small but determined group, the decertification option now seems at a dead end. It wouldn't even have been on the April 5 agenda had not DONE pushed it as an option. At a meeting last month, the Commissioners had asked DONE to return with a plan for a new election run by some other entity since DONE had a biased reputation in the community.
Instead, the DONE staff report claimed that it could not find anyone else to run the election, and again presented decertification as an alternative. In fact, when DONE staffer Jamiko Bell read the staff report to the Commissioners she skipped over the election option and began with the second option, decertification. She did state that DONE was not advocating decertification, but her presentation seemed to belie her disavowal of it.
BONC Commissioners oversee DONE, which has constantly interfered with the Venice Neighborhood Council. However, since DONE staff work full time, while the Commissioners only come together once or twice a month for meetings, BONC is often dependent on DONE for information on the neighborhood councils.
DONE also ignored the urging of front-running Mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa, who in a letter to DONE General Manager Greg Nelson said, "I encourage you to bring together the remaining duly elected GRVNC board members, your staff, the City Attorney and anyone else you feel is appropriate, determine a path forward for reconstituting GRVNC, and help them to get it done in the most expeditious manner possible." Although Villaraigosa sent the letter in January, DONE has yet to act upon it.
Other neighborhood council leaders, including Mar Vista President Tom Ponton and Tarzana President Leonard Shaffer, have also expressed concern to BONC.
By the end of the meeting, BONC Commissioners were convinced the election should proceed. BONC President Ron Stone volunteered to oversee the election. By this time, BONC had heard about two hours of testimony from a variety of community leaders who noted that Venice needed the Neighborhood Council's voice on issues such as evictions at Lincoln Place, the upcoming Lincoln Center project and other developments, problems of homelessness and increasing rents, and preserving the historic mix of peoples and income levels.
At a BONC meeting in March, some decertification advocates had scornfully observed that the GRVNC had no support beyond its board members. This time they were proven wrong as many other prominent Venetians not connected with GRVNC came to its defense, including Eric Vollmer (Imagining Venice); Artists Janet Gervers, Lance Robertson, and Zed and Alayha Aquarian; Prof. Arnold Springer; Lincoln Place residents Ingrid Mueller, Carol Beck, Rose Murphy and others; Venice Community Coalition members David Ewing and Mindy Taylor-Ross; Realtor Sylviane Dungan; and a Ballona Wetlands Land Trust leader Paul Herzog. Activists on opposite sides of the Ocean Front Walk permit controversy - Carol Berman and Peggy Lee Kennedy - both spoke in defense of GRVNC.
Advocates of the failed decertification effort included Developer Frank Murphy; Property Investors C.J. Cole and Barbara Gibson; as well as former losing GRVNC candidates Richard Myers, Rick Selan and Kelly Willis.
Also dead on arrival were the proposed bylaws for a new neighborhood council in lieu of GRVNC. Although it was the product of a small group of decertification advocates, the DONE report termed it the product of “the stakeholders of the Venice community.” The proposed bylaws would have severely restricted who is eligible to vote and would have balkanized Venice into 19 districts. No one being elected by all of Venice. Without decertification, the bylaws are moot.
On the down side, BONC did not restore the GRVNC’s quorum so that it can conduct business before the election, nor did it take steps to overturn the one-sided arbitration that invalidated GRVNC Board members elected in 2004.
DONE was instructed by BONC to return at the next meeting with a timeline for a GRVNC election. Many of Venice speakers said the election should be held in June in accordance with the bylaws. Commissioner Lucente suggested July.
On April 19, supporters of GRVNC were disappointed to find their trip to Mission Hills for yet another BONC meeting anti-climactic as DONE again seemed to be dragging its feet. The DONE staff claimed an election could not take place before August or September.
DONE’s proposed election timeline violates the BONC’s newly approved “Policy to Remedy Non-Compliance of Neighborhood Council Elected Boards with Timely Elections Requirements.” In the policy, it states that DONE will use a process of “Finalization of Election Procedures consistent with the Neighborhood Council’s approved bylaws.” GRVNC falls into this category since DONE refuses to allow it to function, claiming lack of a quorum.
Several Venetians pointed out during “public comment,” that GRVNC bylaws call for an election in June. Suzanne Thompson outlined a timetable that would allow the election to take place in June.
“This is bullshit!”
When questioned by BONC Commissioner Jimmie Woods Gray about the requirement for a June election, DONE staff member Jamiko Bell flippantly replied that the election could be held the following June (2006) if that was what the commission wanted. "This is bullshit," Woods Gray exploded.
DONE’s credibility is at an all-time low, and not just with BONC. Even those who want to decertify the neighborhood council seem to be fed up. In an April 21 statement, Marta Evry complained, “We wrote a new set of bylaws at the invitation of DONE’s Greg Nelson and had those bylaws vetted by BONC’s (Commissioner) Bill Christopher. Yet we were denied a chance to implement them.”
Nelson seems to have been very active in working with the decertification faction. He also wrote a letter to the Argonaut newspaper, April 14, complaining about the (goofy) elected GRVNC leadership.
Now his department is proposing an election that violates GRVNC bylaws, leaves it without any officers after June 30, and nearly guarantees another round of challenges after the election.

Posted: Sun - May 1, 2005 at 03:06 PM          

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