Arroyo Seco Journal Assistant Publisher Attacks the ER Neighborhood Council

Here is something making the email rounds that I wanted to post here. - CD 14 Watch (A new blogger)

Arroyo Seco Journal Assistant Publisher Attacks the ER Neighborhood Council

Here is an article I wrote for the Arroyo Seco Journal earlier this year. It gives a general rundown of the disregard the fledgling ERNC had for TERA:

I recently attended the only Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council (ERNC) meeting I ever will attend. I went because I wanted to see for myself if everything I'd heard since the ERNC was first established in 2002 was true. It was. I’d heard about endless bickering and people quitting out of frustration on the spot. I’d heard of egos so into control that they were out of control. The meeting was a circus. I was told this meeting was mild compared to past ones.

It is well known that the initiation of the neighborhood council (NC) system was a way to dissuade parts of Los Angeles from seceding. This was the city’s way of "throwing a bone" to neighborhoods to convince them that they would suddenly have a certain amount of power where they didn't before. Now that the system is in place, if you could call it that, it seems the NCs don't really have the power they were promised. It was also to diffuse the power and influence that time-honored resident/homeowner groups had already acquired. Wrong move.

I was always very doubtful the NC concept applied to Eagle Rock because I believed it would work only in neighborhoods that really needed a voice. During the ERNC's formative months and for the 16 years previous to that, Eagle Rock already had a strong voice in the local residents’ association.

I served as the association’s president from 1997 to 2003 and left the board in late 2005. The ERNC president-to-be sat on the association’s board with me and knew how hard we worked. She then left the board in 2001 to throw her full effort behind the ERNC, which was perfectly understandable. I supported her since I knew her and she was a friend, but I never appeared at any ERNC formation meetings because, besides being skeptical about the entire idea, I didn't have the time.

I voted in the very first ERNC election. Because I have since witnessed various things that told me the ERNC really got off on and remained on the wrong foot, I never voted again. As soon as the new ERNC officers were installed, it seemed their first order of business was to believe the 1,000-strong residents’ association no longer mattered.

Our association’s established beautification committee was immediately and very publicly co-opted by the ERNC at an event that was disguised as one of good will. No one can disagree with beautification, so I guess the ERNC thought it would be a good first feather in their cap even though our association created the committee, managed the committee's finances, paid for its insurance, and footed the bill for advertising its events.

Just as suddenly, there was an ERNC land-use committee. It was odd since our association was created in 1986 because of land-use issues and was already taking care of such matters. The tenor of the committee’s first meeting was our group had “failed” and the ERNC was now there to save the day.

The ERNC also began its own e.letter, and it looked remarkably like the e.letter that we had published since 2000 and was very popular with readers. One can’t argue with success, and the ERNC version had a tone so similar to ours that I received e.mails suggesting we combine them. In a show of support, we posted the ERNC’s events in our e.letter, but they wouldn’t post ours until we specifically asked them to. These and other observations told me the ERNC tag line -- service, collaboration, participation -- was disingenuous.

For an NC to ignore an already strong, long-standing residents’ organization is a huge mistake. In Eagle Rock, true collaboration and partnership between the two groups could have created one very powerful voice. After all, both have the same goal of improving the community, but they have different mission statements and purposes, different resources, and different avenues to getting things done. Together, they could have really kicked some serious ass around here.

The ERNC’s initial missteps were a recipe for failure because the mission of community improvement was not the priority. Power was. For an NC to be truly productive, the egos must be left at the door.

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Sent by Joanne Turner