For the first time, leaders of the Palms community — everybody in Palms, as a matter of fact — have been invited to gather to talk about the problems of our diverse community.

It will be a special meeting of the Palms Neighborhood Council from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 4, in the Culver-Palms Church of Christ (corner of Delmas Court).

City Council Member Bill Rosendahl, who represents southwest Palms, will be a featured speaker.

Breakout sessions will be held on many diverse topics dealing with living, owning property and doing business in this area. It is expected that these discussions will help to establish future activities of the council.

The Palms Neighborhod Council is the official body certified by the city to make recommendations to the city government.

Neighborhood Council President Todd Robinson has asked that anybody interested in partaking of a planned luncheon during the meeting contact him to make reservations. He can be reached by e-mail at trobinson@gmail.com or by phone at (310) 430-8068.

The photo shows ideas presented during an October 2005 planning meeting for the forum.

Palms people have decided that economic development should be the highest priority for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa when he formulates his budget for 2006-2007.

Second choice: Improved traffic flow.

No. 3: Livable neighborhoods.

And last: Homeland security and public safety.

Of course, not everyone got to vote.

But the 10 Representative Assembly members and the dozen or so spectators who attended the monthly meeting of the Palms Neighborhood Council on Jan. 11 certainly did.

And they weren't shy about voicing their opinions, either.

Palms Vice-President Pauline Stout led the Stakeholders and Assembly members through the intricacies of a questionnaire which neighborhood councils throughout the city have been asked to complete. Opinions were solicited from the floor — and freely given.

A nonbinding "straw vote" was conducted by show of hands among the Stakeholders and Assembly members on each section of the questionnaire. If a decision was clearly in the majority, it was quickly ratified through general consent of the Assembly.

Where there was no majority in the straw vote, then the Assembly members alone made the choice, they being the final deciders under the rules of the city.

The No. 1 priority choice, economic development, was defined as including affordable housing, homeless services, city planning, code enforcement, job training and business assistance. That got 6 votes from the Assembly, with 4 for the second choice, improved traffic flow.

The latter was defined as parking enforcement, signal synchronization, public transit, and street resurfacng and widening.

A separate vote was held on the question Given the tough choices that may face our City, in which priority would you decrease funding?

The straw vote and the Assembly chose Homeland security and public safety (emergency preparedness and counter-terrorism, police services and fire services) as the area to be cut, if necessary.

For other results, see the draft minutes of the Representative Assembly meeting.

In a special meeting on Dec. 28, the Representative Assembly of the Palms Neighborhood Council. approved the priorities for street paving within Palms.

The Assembly OK'd a recommendation by the Palms Committee on Transportation and Roadworks in choosing "Midvale as first choice [top map] and Jasmine [bottom map] (starting from Venice going north for as much as the budget would allow) as second choice."

The city's Bureau of Street Services had recommended Watseka Ave. and Delmas Terrace as the preferred streets for repaving.

This year marks the first time that neighborhood councils throughout the city have been asked to weigh in on plans for fixing streets. The process was instigated by former Mayor James Hahn but was continued by new Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The council faced a Dec. 31 deadline to forward Palms's choice to the Bureau of Street Services. Each neighborhood council is allowed to recommend $100,000 worth of street repair to be done during 2006.

Palms will not join a proposed Los Angeles Neighborhood Councils Congress at this time, the Palms Representative Assembly decided on Jan. 11.

After a second presentation by Bob Gelfand of San Pedro, one of the Congress's organizers, the Assembly decided by a 8-2 vote to postpone a decision on the matter for four months. Gelfand had also addressed the Assembly on Dec. 7, 2005.

The discussion went like this:

Gelfand: The Congress was establish to discuss "interests that we may share . . . common interests."

Charnock Ranch Business Representative Lori Donahoo: "How did this originally come about, and why?"

Gelfand: " . . . implicit in the city charter of 1999 came the realization that neighborhood councils have to communicate with each other."

Overland Residential Representative Billie Silvey: "I feel like we're just beginning to get started in an important way in our community, and I'd hate to see us lessen our impact in this immediate area that all of us volunteered to be able to serve . . . . I think it's just too much to take on, and I think we're too new and too small to try to do this.

Secretary George Garrigues (quoting from a resolution approved by the Van Nuys Neighborhood Council):

"Neighborhood Councils are to give more say on what affects their immediate neighborhoods. This is not a move that is in the best interest of the stakeholders of Los Angeles and again is one more move to silence the voice of the people."

Garrigues added: "I wouldn't go that far, but . . . it is a not a unanimous feeling that councils should join this Congress. . . . At a future time after it gets going and we get going, sure, we could think about it."

He also said he believed it important that any representative sent to the Congress should "actually represent the district" and not merely his own views.

Garrigues noted that the organizational meeting of the Congress will be on same day of the Palms Leadership Forum, Saturday, Feb. 7.

Vice President Pauline Stout: "In many ways, I am very much in support . . . . I would like to be part of it. Right now, though, we just don't have enough people to do everything. . . . I think we [neighborhood councils} are a big necessity for our neighborhoods . . . I'm not sure that that is recognized right now by the people who are in office . . . By creating this Congress, we could be adding fuel to that fire, too. I'm torn, but if asked right now I would have to say no.

Gelfand: The questions raised in Van Nuys are "so far from reality that it is hard to get into. If you want to say you are so overworked, just so burdened that you can't possibly participate in this, even though you have a volunteer, I just don't buy into that . . . . Whether you join now, or later, the door is always open . . . "

"I guess I would like to know what the real reason is," he continued, "because I haven't heard any rational argument other than, 'I don't want to trust Cliff [Cheng, a stakeholder who volunteered to be Palms's delegate to the Congress] to represent me.' And even then, there is nothing to it, because all the Congress will do is report back to you . . ."

President Todd Robinson: "As you know, we are a very new council, and we are really working through in establishing . . . what we are doing here in the neighborhood to really assist and to help."

Pointing to the just-concluded debate on recommendations for the Mayor's budget, he said that "incoming requests for opinions . . . are all new things for us, so it's a little bit difficult for all of us, in general, to be able to provide the feedback and to make really educated decisions" about them.

"The goal that you have is a very positive thing," Robinson said, suggesting that the matter be tabled "for a period of three or four months and then revisit it."

"How about a year?" interjected Exposition Residential Representative Ingeborg Prochazka.

Stakeholder Terry Robinson suggested sending a representative who would report back to the Council and the Assembly as a way to "keep in touch."

"I'm open to that," Todd Robinson responded, before calling for the vote, which postponed the decision until May 2006.

Lori Donahoo and Neal Anderberg voted against the delay.