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# Neighborhood Council Congress: What Worked, What Didn’t
September 28 2026
Written by Bob Gelfand.
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GELFAND’S WORLD - Most of us understand that the City of Los Angeles is in trouble and needs to do some serious self-evaluation. Nobody understands this better than neighborhood council participants, who gathered at the L.A. City Hall in our twenty-fifth year of existence for a meeting that is oddly referred to as the neighborhood council congress. I say “oddly” because our annual meetings, governed by a group of self-appointed insiders, have turned these meetings into propaganda pieces for the establishment rather than a real chance to discuss what ails the neighborhood councils and, indeed, the city as a whole.
An aside: In conversation with a few of my fellow CityWatch columnists, there was agreement that neighborhood council participants – board members in particular – need to have some sort of self-representation when it comes to the way the rest of city government tries to rule over us. In short, we need the equivalent of a bargaining unit or union representation. All the other city employees, staffers, and elected representatives have some way to bargain over the demands that the city tries to place on them. The congress organizers don’t seem to be interested in entertaining some discussion about how we can protect our own interests.
Back to the congress:
There was a little bit to be learned in some of the breakout sessions. Let’s consider the lessons, both good and bad, that came out of those sessions, including what I would refer to as a substantial faux pas on the part of the organizers.
In recent years, the congress has opened with speeches by various celebrities. Karen Bass appeared and spoke a few words (as she usually does) about the Olympics and how the World Cup was a preview. There was little in her speech to indicate that the Olympics are well organized or even on-schedule, but we can at least give the wider L.A. area credit for moving the World Cup games through. The other issue that was never mentioned was the possibility that Bass is just filling the chair for a few more months, considering her second-place status in the polls.
It was also obvious that Nithya Raman (currently at a pace to be the mayor come January) was not going to be present. I didn’t hear an explanation for this lapse. Perhaps she was invited (since all serving City Council representatives are) and chose not to attend. Whatever the explanation may have been, the lack of communication was indicative of the haphazard nature of the event.
One other issue was the choice by the organizing group of the keynote speakers. The morning group included District Attorney Nathan Hochman, a clearly partisan attendee unless you imagine that he won’t run for reelection. Hochman gave the usual Hochman speech, which took credit for cleaning up MacArthur Park. He did give credit to law enforcement for doing the heavy lifting. We heard a little about attempts to shut down the takeovers of streets and intersections as well as the mob attacks on stores. We should appreciate the fact that his office took note of the problem, and we’ll await the long-term results of their efforts.
There were keynote talks by the general manager of the vector control district (this is a group that deals mainly with mosquitos) and from the sanitation district. Both gave credible addresses. The vector control director was candid enough to mention that climate change is making the problem worse.
And then there was the keynote that I would classify as a faux pas on the part of the organizers. Siymak Khorrami (the program lists him as Khorrani, but the internet sources refer to him as Khorrami) is the editor of Epoch Times, a [significantly conservative publication](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/05/media/pro-trump-epoch-times-money-laundering-charge) that has joined itself to Donald Trump since 2016. Here’s one excerpt from the linked article:
“While The Epoch Times receives little media attention in comparison to other pro-Trump outlets, such as Fox News, its reach and support for the disgraced former president and his MAGA movement cannot be overstated. The New York Times [referred to it](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/technology/epoch-times-influence-falun-gong.html) as “one of the country’s most powerful digital publishers” and The Atlantic [flatly called it](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/inside-the-epoch-times-a-mysterious-pro-trump-newspaper/617645/) a “pro-Trump propaganda machine.”
The former CFO of Epoch Times (a different person) [was indicted](https://apnews.com/article/epoch-times-cfo-indictment-money-laundering-caad358778bb6b73e32e9f989f3b9665) in 2024 for money laundering (over $60 million) -- funds that were funneled into Epoch Times. He [pled guilty](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-epoch-times-cfo-pleads-guilty-in-67m-money-laundering-scheme/) just a couple of months ago.
It was thus of some curiosity that Epoch Times was brought into this meeting, particularly at the keynote speech level. There may be ways to accomplish such a feat in an acceptable way – for example by also featuring a strongly anti-Trump activist – but no such effort was made. There is also the point that this annual congress has traditionally tried to avoid getting itself into national politics.
You may also recall that just a few years ago, an identifiably radical left-winger gave the keynote at that year’s neighborhood council congress.
What could possibly have been going through the organizers’ heads?
One colleague suggested that I name a few people who would better serve the function of keynote speaker. That’s a hard one, because it is never obvious that someone you want to invite is going to accept, but here are a couple of people I would like to hear from:
Rick Caruso
The head of the LA28 group that will run the Olympics
Whoever is in charge of city finances
Jack Humphreville
Mihran Kalaydjian
You get the idea. People with serious ideas about what we need as a city.
Still, the Breakout Sessions Were a Little Better
For some reason the congress organizers don’t use the term “breakout sessions” for all those smaller meetings. They prefer to call them workshops. So be it. The workshops ranged over all manner of government related issues with one important exception (see below).
Here are a few examples of workshops that were presented:
The new land use: state policy, local rule
Keeping L.A. water strong: a community conversation on resiliency and infrastructure
Strategic thinking for public organizations (not entirely clear what this was all about)
Cracking down on crime: How the DA’s office tackles organized threats (more about this below)
And so on . . .
The second time period included similar topics
In other words, almost all of the workshops involved the city’s establishment telling us worker bees what we can do to make their jobs easier.
With one or two exceptions, the post-lunch workshops looked to be intensely boring. I’ll share the exceptions with you.
The Emergency Management Department had several of its staff members presenting information on how to protect ourselves from the dangers of a major earthquake, heat event, flood, fire, or other major disaster. The presenters were savvy enough to make this session into an interactive event.
And then there was my favorite session, titled “A neighborhood council role play: Tips on effective meetings.” Basically, this was a chance to demonstrate all the mistakes and bad conduct that we are likely to run into in our meetings, both from our fellow board members and from the public. You can imagine the fun we had. But the lessons did get communicated as to how to deal with disruptive members of the public and the ignorance of our fellow board members. My observation: Very few people in the room actually knew Roberts Rules well enough to participate smoothly. It’s a continuing flaw in how we manage our 99 neighborhood councils, because a little more knowledge (and skill) in parliamentary procedure would speed things up enormously.
My issue with the last few years of our annual congresses is that we don’t get a chance to give feedback to the city officials as to how they are screwing things up. There ought to be a chance to explain to the city that their constant meddling with our system serves no useful purpose, but instead serves to drive people away.
In other words, the congress ought to be a real congress in which hundreds of neighborhood council participants get to participate in meaningful back-and-forth communication not only with each other, but with the City Council. It was remarkable how little City Council participation there was. By contrast, the recent Budget Advocates meeting did have that participation.
For some participants, the biggest faux pas of the day was that the congress ran out of breakfast and ran out of coffee. This is no way to run a serious meeting.
Addendum
It recently became known that the Red Chinese government [has had access to parts of our F35](https://www.bostonherald.com/2026/09/24/pentagon-china-f-35-stealth-fighter-jet/) stealth fighter. This has been explained as a shipping error, and has prompted a lot of angry responses. If nothing else, we try to keep our top-line defense equipment out of the hands of the opposition.
So now, it is reliably reported that Donald Trump [asked the Chinese leader](https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/trump-asked-chinas-president-wants-001355631.html) (on the recent visit) whether he might be interested in buying weapons from us.
And one last point: The recent Charter Reform project initiated by the city government seems to have gone nowhere in terms of fixing obvious flaws in the neighborhood council system. There was real opportunity here, and our boards and alliances gave lots of advice. Creating a real system with brains and teeth is obviously not what the City Council would like to see.
*(**Bob Gelfand** writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [amrep535@sbcglobal.net)](mailto:amrep535@sbcglobal.net)*
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