Coming Together To Fight Over Development

Here is an article that appeared on City Watch at: http://citywatchla.com/

LA’s Grassroots Voices: Ratcheting Up the Volume

CityWatch YearEnder-‘08
By Ken Draper

Grassroots empowerment in LA took another turn this year. The City’s myriad activists … neighborhood councils, homeowner groups, independents … are beginning to figure out how to ratchet up the noise level to get City Hall’s attention. City Council’s passage Wednesday of a three-month moratorium on off-site electronic billboards and supergraphics is an example. The package was less than the neighborhoods wanted but more than the Council wanted to give. And the result was the direct result of the empowerment work of Dennis Hathaway … President of one of those grassroots groups called Ban Billboard Blight … who organized and energized the angry voices from all over the city. The fury could be heard through the walls at the Council’s deceptive closed door meeting the day before the vote was taken.

This week the people of unincorporated East Los Angeles celebrated the completion of a petition drive for cityhood.

Just a few days earlier, the opposition coalition … Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council, No2HomeDepot group and independents … got the good news from City Planning that Home Depot will not be able to short-circuit the CEQA process putting a major kink in the HD planned invasion of Sunland. A considerable ‘David’ victory in the more than two year battle with the home building materials ‘giant’.

In June Lucile Saunders and her LaBrea Coalition sued the folks at City Hall. They want the City to obey the law and provide an updated Annual Report with contemporary infrastructure, transportation and population growth information so that the millions of building permits issued annually by LA can be done so with contemporary numbers and analysis. Wouldn’t it be helpful if NCs could provide development advice based on the latest stats?

Jim O’Sullivan and his coalition of HOA’s, NC folks, and Chambers of Commerce filed a similar suit last month.

This spring, O’Sullivan and a Westside citizen’s coalition took the Mayor to court over his Olympic West/Pico East Traffic Plan. The City, they said, hadn’t done any impact studies. They have no idea what kind of damage the Plan will have on Westside businesses and neighborhoods. The Court agreed. Ordered the Mayor to get himself an Environmental Impact Report before he starts redirecting traffic. Cost to the City: $500,000 or more.

Last June a neighborhood council DWP oversight group forced the City Council into extended deliberations on proposed rate increases and got the Council to agree to a citizen’s oversight committee. It has yet to be appointed, but you get the idea.

Soledad Garcia and her DWP oversight gang have now formed the DWP Committee. A watchdog group made up of representatives from NCs and activist groups citywide. They got snubbed by the DWP Board and now they’re mad. One of their chief goals for ’09: an independent Ratepayer Advocate. In the meantime, they will serve as the ratepayer’s voice.

Ron Kaye, former Daily News editor turned activist, kicked off his own revolution on Bastille Day at City Hall. Formed his own Saving LA Project. A kind of coalition of causes and activist groups who share their frustration with City Hall arrogance and aim to make a difference.

SLAP has a list of candidates for the March ballot they want in office. Neighborhood councils have yet to discover ways to influence elections. The kind of influence that has real clout. If SLAP scores one or to victories in March, they will instantly become a force to be reckoned with.

There’s more. I haven’t covered all of the stories and organizational efforts in this column. But I think that if you want to put a defining tag on 2008 it would note that the angry and frustrated grassroots voices across the city are beginning to learn the lessons of collaboration, organization, base expansion, having financial and legal expertise on their side. The art of petitioning and navigating the courts. And ratcheting up the noise level until City Hall gets it.

Former LA Councilman Joel Wachs introduced the neighborhood council concept in his 1992 campaign for mayor. He called it Family of Neighborhoods in 1992 and a lot changed about the first vision as it compromised political route through the system and the Charter Reform Commissions.

But the reason Wachs called for neighborhood councils was because he believed that the public had become cynical about and disengaged from its government because none of the City’s electeds ever listened to them. That part of the neighborhood council concept has not changed.

The folks you have put in office don’t trust you enough to be honest and transparent with you. Few will listen to you. And the few that do don’t understand the difference between listening and hearing.

Otherwise, they would stop violating the Charter by making important decisions without giving NCs time to weigh in and advise them as the Charter mandates.

And that arrogance is what has chased LA’s grassroots community to the courts. To petitions. To ratcheting up the volume on their neighborhood voices.2009 looks like more of the same. Only louder.

(Ken Draper is the editor of CityWatch. He can be reached at
editor@CityWatchLA.com
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Even though R Neighborhoods Are 1 was not mentioned in the article, I feel that organization fits in well with the issues posed by Mr. Draper.

R Neighborhoods Are 1, along with another local group is part of the La Brea Coalition lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles.

Ms. Soledad Garcia is a member of the Governing Board of our own Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council.

Besides the Home Depot fiascos, R Neighborhoods Are 1 has been very concerned with the Los Lomas project that recently found failure in the appeals area and not that massive project has been relegated to the history files.

R Neighborhoods Are 1 has followed the redevelopment project proposed for the downtown area of the city of Baldwin Park and the group communicated with C.A.R.A., the grass roots orgqanization built to fight against that redevelopment project in Baldwin Park.

A very familiar name was involved in the project before it was abandoned.

That same familiar name continues to surface in dealings with the city of Santa Ana and the City Place project and a plan to build a high rise condominium tower in that city.

Some time ago I opined that R Neighborhoods Are 1 was one of the founding groups within the city of L.A. to begin an overall overhaul of the way planning is done and how developements are dealt with throughout the city.

I feel reassured that the group, along with so many others that have been formed and keep everyone informed, has helped to create a climate where government officials and bureaucrats are required to take a better look at projects that will impact all of us and PERHAPS, L.A. City Hall is finally getting some message through the thick walls built by lobbyists.

2009 will bring more issues to light, more challenges for R Neighborhoods Are 1, more input from OUR community, and more requirements to be more informed now that the developer of Ponte Vista at San Pedro has changed, the Planning Department has established guidelines, and Councilwoman Hahn seems to be supportive of those guidelines.