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LA Needs a Clearer Vision for NCs |
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Empowerment Report
By Greg Nelson
Imagine if there were to be a time when any agency that receives governmental funds must allow the public Internet access to all of the organization’s internal operations in order reduce the opportunity for corruption and improve collaboration between all stakeholders.
 Imagine using the Internet to allow the public to vote on proposed governmental laws.
Neighborhood councils would be created through e-votes. In Los Angeles
this would eliminate the slew of restrictions that have resulted from
the fact that the councils are created by an action of the governmental
agency, the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners.
The councils would have the authority to improve parks, roads, and run community programs using money that each one would get from the city based upon their population.
Using the Internet, the public would be able to help design community plans, transit lines and stations, and watch for government overspending.
Carpoolers would be matched up on a daily basis.
This vision was developed as part of a creative exercise at a think tank, nGenera. Three interns were asked what they felt life and government would be like 10 years from now. Read here.
Whether or not any of this could or should happen, LA needs a clearer vision for neighborhood councils and government. The problem is an apparent lack of desire to have one.
You won’t find an elected official with even a one-year public vision for themselves or the city.
Without a vision, the lack of results is more difficult to prove. And the ability to lose focus in order to chase PR opportunities becomes easier.
It’s highly unlikely that the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment will initiate efforts to shape a vision for the neighborhood council system. It doesn’t even have one for itself. Anyway, the last thing neighborhood councils should want is for City Hall to lead the way on this project.
A valuable workshop at the upcoming Congress of Neighborhoods could be one in which people could share ideas about what a neighborhood council vision would look like, and what the next steps should be.
The vision could be drafted primarily through the Internet with all neighborhood councils and their stakeholders having the ability to contribute. DONE could contribute by creating that communication tool.
The Congress of Neighborhoods could therefore become a place where the drafters meet face-to-face as opposed to being a trade show where, at the end of the day, little is accomplished.
With a stated vision in hand, neighborhood councils could work on developing lists of specific demands. The demands could be trotted out whenever neighborhood councils are asked to support ballot measures, ordinances, bills, and the whole array of politicians’ pet projects.
Some could be the result of a citywide consensus of neighborhood councils, and a good starting place would be the guarantees that are included for neighborhood councils in the City Charter, but which have been routinely ignored by a City Hall that knows the councils aren’t organized well enough to stand up for their rights.
Other demands could reflect special regional needs.
But all will have been generated from the bottom up. And that’s why neighborhood councils were created.
(Greg Nelson participated in the birth and development of the LA Neighborhood Council system and served as the General Manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. Nelson now provides news and issues analysis to CityWatch.) You can reach Greg Nelson at
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CityWatch
Vol 6 Issue 70
Published: Aug 29, 2008
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