Neighborhood Councils Have Become Tools of Obstructionists

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By HAROLD L. KATZ

No elected official dare say it. The business community will not speak out. But here it is: Neighborhood councils are a great idea in theory but bad in execution because they have become the tool of obstructionists who oppose almost any kind of development. And now, according to some recent published reports, they are pushing to get the City Council’s traditional power to make decisions in land use. If members of the business community sit by quietly, they are going to pay a terrible price.

When neighborhood councils were proposed as part of city charter reform nearly 10 years ago, I wrote and lobbied the two charter reform committees that neighborhood councils wouldn’t work, even though the concept sounded wonderful in theory. I quickly realized that there were powerful members of at least one committee who would derail the entire concept of charter reform if neighborhood councils were not included in the new charter. As charter reform was critical, I accepted the inevitable.

In theory, the membership of each neighborhood council was to be a balanced group representing all the stakeholders in the community homeowners, business people and others, such as religious organizations, community organizations and everyone else who lived or worked in the neighborhood council’s boundaries. However, they have very few representatives from business: Getting extremely busy business people to participate in civic affairs is next to impossible.


Abdication of power

So, in great part, many of the local problems the business community faces are of our own making. Too many have abdicated their power to a small group of neighborhood councils represented largely by homeowners who play the role of NIMBYs. These people do not represent the large number of constituents that they claim to represent. Most of their constituents belong to the silent majority. They are too busy making a living, running their businesses and raising their families to demand the things the NIMBYs are opposed to.

When I went to the city charter reform hearings, whom did I find? Certainly the gadflies, who speak but have little to say; a few paid representatives of chambers (thank goodness they were there); and of course large numbers of NIMBYs. I was one of the few independent business people who came down to speak on behalf of reforms needed to keep the greater metropolitan Los Angeles Area the primary reason California is the fifth largest economy in the world (China being eighth, if you didn’t know, but growing rapidly). The committee members should have heard from all the small business people in the area, but they didn’t. So when you see things you don’t like, just look in the mirror for who is at fault. I know that is a harsh statement, but it is true.

How many of you have ever attended an Architectural Design Review Board in your neighborhood? I had occasion to attend several such sessions. Of course, there were multiple matters on the agenda, so my wife and I got to sit there and watch developers get clobbered by inane comments and design change orders. Not only that, but we learned that there are professionals who come to these sessions for the sole purpose of objecting. Then they go out of the room with the developer during a recess, and when they come back they withdraw their opposition. The developer makes a few concessions, and his project is approved.

At one session, a noted NIMBY pulled up a chair and sat behind the chairwoman and whispered in her ear all night long. There were no city officials there to object to this, and certainly no one else had the ear of the chairwoman. Under what authority does a private citizen get to do this? This is a perfect example of why things look good in theory but fail in execution.

There are 89 locally elected councils. I wonder how many of them are doing what the charter reform committee members thought they would do? A city commission recently stated that City Hall must redefine the relationship between these neighborhood councils and the City Council.

Should developers be allowed to develop whatever they want wherever they want? The answer is obviously no. But delegating authority to a handful of very loud NIMBYs is not the solution.

Although history suggests the contrary, I believe that businesspeople will realize how much it is costing them not to participate. I remain the optimist and believe they will make their individual voices heard.


Harold L. Katz is a partner in a CPA firm in Los Angeles and a citizen activist. He lives on the Westside.

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