Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council – THE LACK OF PROGRESS
REPORT
By Alice Stek, District 7
representative
What has Grass Roots
Venice (GRVNC), our new neighborhood council, accomplished so far? A review of
the conduct of the Board meeting from this Progressive Candidate’s
perspective will illustrate the problems we encounter in accomplishing our
objectives as set out in our platform. Thanks to a minority of the Board, at the
last GRVNC Board meeting, a year of work by the Voting Methods Committee was
dismissed in 10 minutes.
At the last full Board meeting on November
25, the most important issue on the agenda was the discussion of the best voting
methods for our new council.
By way of
background: at the November 2001 GRVNC meeting, the attendees approved instant
runoff and cumulative voting for use in GRVNC election races where applicable.
In the weeks following this meeting, several members opposed to these more
democratic voting methods privately approached acting president Tisha Bedrosian
and requested a recall vote. She agreed with their request and the voting
methods were subjected to a recall vote at the next GRVNC meeting December 2001.
This vote resulted in a tie, which was broken by Ms. Bedrosian, who voted
against implementing instant runoff and cumulative voting methods, leaving GRVNC
with the familiar, but not very democratic, plurality voting system.
In part as a response to this
maneuvering on the part of the Bedrosian/Rose Avenue Working Group team, the
Progressive Candidates formed their platform and slate. At that December GRVNC
meeting, the Voting Methods Committee was created to study the various possible
voting methods and to make a presentation for a later discussion by the
Board.
The Voting Methods Committee was
open to all interested participants and met regularly over the course of the
next 10 months at open meetings. The committee decided which criteria are most
important for an organization such as GRVNC, studied various methods, ranked
them according to the established criteria, and prepared an extensive,
well-documented report (available on the GRVNC website at:
http://www.grassrootsvenice.org/Reports/voting_method_rep_102902.html#fn2). The
committee found that instant runoff voting is the most appropriate method for
single-seat elections, such as for GRVNC officers, and cumulative voting for
multiple-seat elections, such as the GRVNC at-large positions. Both of these
methods are quite simple and can be easily explained to the voters.
Instant runoff voting allows voters to rank their choices and was recently
adopted by San Francisco for city elections. If your first choice wins the
majority, this candidate is elected. If your first choice is eliminated as
receiving the least votes, your vote is applied to your second choice, and if
necessary, the same is done for your third choice. This encourages sincere
voting and avoids the current familiar “lesser of two evils” voting
strategy. (Example: with IRV, your vote for Nader would have helped elect Gore
if he was your second choice.) With cumulative voting, you can
“spend” your votes among the candidates as you see fit. For example,
in the GRVNC at-large race you can designate your 7 votes to 7 candidates or use
them all to support one (or 2 or 3 or 4…) candidates. This encourages
minority representation.
At the
November 2002 Board meeting, the Voting Methods Committee presented their
report, and recommended approval by the Board to send to the general membership
for approval, as required by the GRVNC bylaws. Unfortunately the meeting agenda
was filled with other items, and the chair conducted the meeting (perhaps this
was due to inexperience and intervention by some members rather than
intentional) so as not to allow adequate time for discussion.
Voting Methods Committee member Jason
Parry made a valiant attempt at an abbreviated presentation, and was rudely
interrupted by several Board members opposed to the proposed changes, including
untrue statements regarding the committee’s alleged bias and predetermined
decisions. Several Board members claimed they lacked the intelligence to
understand the proposed voting methods. (It works for George Bush, why not for
us?) More ominously, the District Representative for Oakwood implied that
these methods were too difficult for her intellectually impaired constituents,
and even brought a constituent to represent this view at the meeting.
A 2/3 vote of the Board is required to
send bylaws amendments to the general membership for approval. Eight Board
members voted for the proposed methods: Sheila Bernard, Phyllis Des Verney, Greg
Fitchitt, Yolanda Miranda, David Moring, Lydia Ponce, Alice Stek, Chris Wood;
and five against: Chris Bedrosian, John Caldwell, Rick Feibusch, Barbara Gibson,
Chris Williams. Tisha Bedrosian abstained. Bonnie Cheeseman, Mark Van Gessel,
Elena Popp, Kelley Willis and Laddie Williams were absent. Naomi Nightingale and
DeDe Audet left the meeting before the vote but both spoke out against the
proposed voting methods. The required two-thirds majority was not achieved, and
10 months of work by the Voting Methods Committee was negated. The remaining
option is to submit a petition from GRVNC members to present the methods to the
general membership.
In contrast, the
following presentation by the Parking Committee, which has been addressing the
issue of parking problems in Venice for a couple of months, made a somewhat
lengthy presentation without
interruption.
Since certification by
the City of Los Angeles in March and elections of the Board in June 2002, the
Board has spent much time and effort on procedural issues and bylaws. Several
committees, in particular the Conservation Committee, Voting Methods Committee,
Land Use and Planning Committee and Parking Committee, have been meeting
regularly, developing their agendas and preparing
reports.
A General Membership meeting
will be held in late February. Meeting announcements with agendas will be posted
on the Grass Roots Venice website at
<www.grassrootsvenice.org>.
Any
Venice “stakeholder” (live, work, own property in Venice) who is at
least 16 years old may register. You need not be a citizen or eligible to vote
for state elections or have a green card to register, but you must be able to
document stakeholder status. Register and have input into local
government!
Contact us at Progressive
Candidates: telephone 310-280-3411 or visit our website:
<http://home.attbi.com/~venicecandidates> or via the link at
<www.freevenice.org>.
Posted: Wed - January 1, 2003 at 08:38 PM