July 6, 2007

Empowerment Report - Greg Nelson Pleads Guilty
By Greg Nelson

I hope that you have time to read the survey that Cal State Fullerton just conducted of 258 current Neighborhood Council board members and 172 former members.

If you want to glance at it, it’s as easy as clicking here [insert link], and then you can skip the rest of this column.

As a disclaimer, I plead guilty to being an optimist when it comes to the Neighborhood Council system, and any surveys relating to it.

I realize that we are going to hear from the cranky people who don’t want the Neighborhood Councils to succeed. No sweat. I’ve been dealing with them for over 10 years now.

The researchers noted that the current board members are more positive about the system than the former ones. But it’s not clear to me how well the survey reflects the opinions of current board members because only about 16% of them responded.

It might be revealing to know why the others shined-on the survey. What if these were the super-active ones who are putting in more than the average 25 hours a month?

What we seem to have gotten out of the survey is that most board members felt that their Neighborhood Council is about the right size, their boundaries are fine, the relationship with their City Council member is good, being a board member is time-consuming, more and more relevant training classes are needed, the city’s Early Notification System needs to be pumped-up, meetings are more likely to be calm and civil than contentious, and bylaws and election procedures are complicated and need work.

Regarding the makeup of boards, only one-third of the members are employed full-time, and Latinos and Asian Americans were underrepresented, but this data is being refined. Three-fourths don’t have children at home, which may not be a big surprise given the time commitment. This may also be a problem experienced by all volunteer organizations.

Board members have had lots of contact with DONE, but the quality of the relationship has much room for improvement. There has been little contact with BONC, and few know what BONC is.

The Neighborhood Council Review Commission is in the middle of a series of community workshops at which several of these keys issues are discussed in a collaborative environment – commissioners, Neighborhood Council leaders, and total strangers sit as equals and brainstorm their way to solutions. (For the workshop schedule, visit: www.NCRCLA.org )

When the commission gathers together again, I hope that they don’t fall prey to a couple of temptations that have plagued government for eons.

One of the main generators of bureaucracy comes from legislators who feel compelled to solve an isolated problem by blanketing everyone with new, restrictive laws.

A preventive measure is to first determine whether or not you’re discussing a real problem. I remember one Neighborhood Council in the Valley that insisted that its bylaws include provisions that would prevent a takeover by Islamic terrorists. I think they wanted to be able to require stakeholders to produce passports and income tax returns.

And second, I hope that the commission fights the temptation to recommend citywide regulations that would force all Neighborhood Councils to govern themselves in a certain way because a few commissioners feel that it would be the best way.

Mandating the “best way” to do anything creates tension with empowerment. Such sweeping rules should be limited to situations in which the goal is to prevent a wrong that would clearly be a wrong if any neighborhood council adopted it, such as denying stakeholdership to a particular ethic group.