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Suing the City: Electeds Leaving No Choice |
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GuestWords
By Harold Katz
On April 17 a California Superior Court Judge issued a stay against the banning of plastic bags in Alameda County until there is a full environmental study performed.
 He stated that the evidence presented indicated that the banning of
plastic bags would cause more environmental damage than it corrected.
The point of an article I wrote earlier in CityWatch. The major point
to be made is that people should be slow to rush to judgment before
acting.
Which leads me to the two lawsuits which were discussed by Ken Draper. I for one do not generally believe in the use of legal actions to tie up projects that have been approved through the governmental process. However, in these two cases it would appear to me that the action taken by our elected representatives were so egregious that there was no choice but for lawsuits to be filed.
I congratulate the leaders of the two groups who instituted the two lawsuits, one being Jay Handal, for either finding the money to fund these law suits or convincing attorneys to take this cases pro bono, which ever the case may be.
I agree with Raphael Sonenshein, when he offered a word of caution on the surge to sue. Draper paraphrased him as saying it is important to distinguish between suing because a vote didn't go your way and suing because you believe some law has been violated. In both these cases I believe strongly that a law has been violated and if in either of these cases a law had not been violated, then good judgment certainly has been.
How can ignoring the city of Beverly Hills on the Olympic/Pico plan can be considered good thinking?
How can the plan succeed without their cooperation? What about all the unanswered questions that were raised and ignored? Allowing developers to reduce parking in neighborhoods where parking is all ready non existent also fails the test of good thinking.
It also appears to me that instead of creating affordable housing the law (Density Bonus Law), as written, will reduce affordable housing. So, governmental agents need not have broken a written law to have broken the laws of logic. But like Professor Sonenshein, I caution the use of the legal system to truly egregious cases of wrong thinking.
Finally, as to Gregg Nelson's piece, there was one part that stood out. He said that in a city of 1.4 million people, 300,000 citizens were active participants. At this point, while Gregg and I agree on a great number of things, my concern is that the neighborhood councils, at least on the Westside, have minimum participants. Three hundred people out of 150,000 citizens is considered a whopping turn out.
How do we get 750,000 people in Los Angeles to participate? How about 325,000? Even 100,000. But not the usual attendance at a typical neighborhood council meeting.
By the way the attendance should be taken at each NC meeting and the total number reported and posted so people can see what the real numbers are that are speaking for the community.
Every organization I have ever belonged to, with a few exceptions, has a small number of doers, a some what larger group of followers and a larger membership that sends in their dues annually but do not participate. That applies to non profit and for-profit organizations.
Every time you pick up the financial section of a newspaper and read another story of overpaid incompetent executives, you will find a case of a board of followers and shareholders who do not participate. That seems to apply to neighborhood councils as well. (Harold Katz is a citizen activist and lives on the Westside.) _
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