August 24, 2007

Neighborhood Councils Out of the Closet!

By Greg Nelson

Who’d have thunk it? At this early stage in the development of our neighborhood council system, what percentage of the city’s population would you guess have heard about neighborhood councils?

Survey says: 47.5%.

Cal State Fullerton’s Social Science Research Center had earlier conducted a survey of past and present neighborhood council board members. Now it has followed that with a survey 640 people around the city who are at least 18 years old and the head of the household.

Of those, 13.3% said they have attended at least one neighborhood council board or committee meeting. And that doesn’t count those who just attended a neighborhood council sponsored outreach event.

Rounding off some complicated math, and accounting for the error margin, that 13.3% translates into 120,000 to 221,000 people.

The put that number in perspective, when the authors of The Rebirth of Urban Democracy studied the four “model” cities that have had neighborhood council-type systems for decades, they found that 16.7% of the people in those cities participated in either the meetings or programs of their neighborhood councils.

When contacted in Boston, a co-author of Rebirth said that our participation rates were “very impressive” especially when considered that our system is still evolving and growing.

The researchers concluded that this high level of awareness can provide a good foundation for outreach.

The survey discovered that what makes going to neighborhood council meetings most attractive were, in order: having a vote on issues they care about, being with participants who are polite and respectful to one another, and that the meetings were held at convenient locations.

The main obstacles, again in order, were: lack of awareness about the system, time constraints and other priorities, and apathy. Conflict with work commitments was significantly higher among Spanish-speakers.

In order, the issues that the respondents would like to see taken up at neighborhood council meetings was: crime, roads and streets, gangs, and safe places for children. This is consistent with an earlier study by USC researchers.

When asked which methods were the most effective in bringing people to meetings, advertising in newspapers was the least effective. The highest was an invitation from a board member. Flyers given to children at school rated highly among Spanish-speakers. The researchers felt that well-run meetings without petty squabbles, and relevant issues could attract more new people to the neighborhood councils.

And the Fullerton researchers found that their results closely matched the results from the Loyola Marymount and USC surveys. (Read the Citywide Survey Highlights by NCRC Executive Director Raphael Sonenshein and/or the complete City residents survey here. )