September 21, 2007

NCRC Final Report Ready for Prime Time
73 Recommendations. Something for Everyone to Love...or not

912 Commission
By Ken Draper

Fifteen months. Days on the regional workshop road. Hundreds of meeting hours. Hundreds surveyed. Research, review and rehearsal over. Time now for the NC Review Commission to take its act to prime time. The final report is due out at mid-day today. The report, a PowerPoint presentation and the commissioners are due on the City Council stage on Tuesday. It's show time.

The 67-page Final Report contains 73 recommendations and something for everyone to love … or not. One thing is certain, however, what the City Council decides to do with the Commission’s advice will affect stakeholders and board members alike, throughout the neighborhood council system. For example, the NCRC wants the City Clerk to organize and run neighborhood council elections and do it on a citywide or regional basis. If that were to happen, NC elections would have to be held every two years on non-city election years. That would dramatically alter the terms of current and future board members and would amend the election procedures of roughly 98% of the city’s certified NCs.

There are other examples. Replacing the Brown Act with a Sunshine Law. Turning the policing of NCs over to the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners, a body that a recent Cal State Fullerton survey indicated few council activists know anything about. Requiring neighborhood councils to adopt procedures that provide informed and consistent land use decisions. The formation of regional grievance bodies.

The Commission’s proposals range from the redefinition of ‘stakeholder’ to requiring the BONC to adhere to the same rules it sets down for NCs to support for Council File Numbers to eliminating term limits. For board members and stakeholders, with a modicum of passion for the neighborhood council concept … or participation in it … this is not a report to be ignored.

Led by Executive Director Raphael Sonenshein, Commission Chair Altagracia Perez and Vice Chairs Jason Lyon and Jackie Dupont-Walker, the NCRC Final Report will be delivered to City Council next Tuesday. A PowerPoint presentation is expected, questions and comments from City Council members and then assignment of the report to various council committees. Education and Neighborhoods, Rules and perhaps Budget are likely. There may be others who want in on the review and vetting.

The NCRC Commission term ends in a few days. The commission was composed of 29 members, appointed a year ago last June by the Mayor and the City Council. A majority of the members had neighborhood council backgrounds.

Phase Two … for the Commission and neighborhood council activists … begins next week: making sure that the report is given serious attention by the City Council and that something positive for neighborhood councils results from the work that went into it and the expectations of thousands of others who watched and hoped. As one commissioner noted: “The Review Report is now in the hands of the City Council, but the ability to advise and to influence remains in the hands of the city’s empowered neighborhoods.” (Need to Know: City Council meets at City Hall on Tuesday, September 25 at 10 a.m. The agenda will be available at www.lacity.org . The NCRC Final Report will be available at www.ncrcla.org )