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THIS IS THE OPINION PAGE
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Cliff Cheng writes
PALMS MISSED A CHANCE BY NOT SPONSORING A CANDIDATES' FORUM
Hopefuls woo voters in South Robertson
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Cliff Cheng, a frequent contributor to The Sun, attended a candidates' forum Oct. 27 for City Council District 10 (the seat left vacant by the resignation of Martin Ludlow). Go to this map for the district boundaries. The forum was sponsored by the South Robertson Neighborhood Council, or SoRo NC. Cheng's report has been shortened and edited. Go here for the original story.]
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The candidates were Barry E. Levine, Robert D. Serrano, Herb Wesson and Warren Williams.
Levine is a photographer. Serrano is an former U.S. Marine and owns a security company. Williams' background is unknown.
Levin e favors the Exposition light-rail line and high-density development along that line, more cops — especially foot beats — after-school programs, mentoring, fixing roads and sidewalks and historic preservation zones.
(High density along the Exposition line affects Palms since the line borders Palms. We already have too much density.)
Levine said that as a council member he would attend every neighborhood council meeting in CD-10. While this is commendable and we want more access to our council members, it is hard to see how this is practical. Many council meetings are at the same time on the same night. When the program is fully implemented, each City Council member will have about 10 neighborhood council in his or her districts.
Perhaps a more practical idea is that council members come to two or three meetings a year and also schedule nights and weekends when they will come to neighborhoods so that any "neighborhood person" could bring their problems to them.
Serrano called the LAPD ineffective and wants to break up LAPD so that each council district has it own separate police force and chief. He wants private security companies (he owns one) to patrol our streets instead of LAPD. He wants to do something similar to LAUSD.
I, on the other hand, believe that strengthening the basic-car system, with its Senior Lead Officer (SLO), is a better solution than breaking up LAPD. I would like to see neighborhood councils have a hand in selecting and evaluating SLOs.
Giving full law-enforcement powers to private contractors is dangerous and asking for abuse of authority. The police are vested with great power, and that power must have accountability.
Wesson wants to increase neighborhood council budgets and wants to give youth job training in the consruction trades by building housing for low-
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income people. He is running on his history of working in CD-10 as former Councilman Nate Holden's chief of staff and Supervisor Yvonne Burke's chief of staff, as well as CD-10's former Assemblyman — and speaker of the Assembly.
In answering a charge of opportunism, he has committed to serving the three years left on the seat and has announced his candidacy for reelection in 2007.
Williams did not say much about his background. His flyer says he has been a "human rights advocate for the past 30 years." This does not give us much information. His platfrom is: "government not politics, budget for needs not greed, fairness not racist status quo, family support not family destruction."
Serrano was the most concrete of all the candidates; followed by Levine. Williams was the most vague. Telling us "he is not a politican" each time he spoke does not tell us who he is. Time was wasted on things City Council members have no influence on but are what bothers voters at this time — for example, the high cost of prescription drugs and high gas prices.
Instead, the candidates should have told us their stand on the recent DWP rate increase, the renewal of BFI's trash contract, the upcoming cable TV franchisee renewal: We want to know what they are going to deliver!
Kudos to Colleen Collins for putting the forum on. Kudos to Carlos Collard, SoRo President and all the folks who worked hard to put this forum on.
The leadership of the Palms Neighborhood Council missed an important opportunity by not having our own forum. CD-10 is regarded as a mostly black district. African-Americans were the largest group to attend this forum. The western part of the district, South Robertson and Palms, are more racially diverse and have to work harder to get noticed and its share of city services.
While the SoRo neighborhood council is about as old as the Palms council, SoRo has one of the oldest neighborhood associations in L.A. and is a force to be reckoned with in CD-10. Palms is regarded as a neighborhood of 93% renters, who are highly transient and who do not vote, nor do they donate money.
This means Palms is easy to ignore. The leadership of the Palms Neighborhood Council has hurt Palms by missing an opportunity to politically empower our neighborhood. |
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What all of us together must seek from the city's
Human Relations Commission
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At long last an official body of the city government — the Human Relations Commission — has promised to mediate the dispute over the boundary between the Mar Vista and Palms neighborhood councils.
What should we ask for in an eventual settlement?
Here is the minimum:
1. We seek an outreach and information campaign, sponsored and paid for by the Human Relations Commission, which will reach into every house, office and apartment in Westside Village.
This, of course, would involve a direct-mail endeavor that would leap over those apartment gates which are seldom breached in any other way.
 2. We expect the HRC to identify the key people who could speak and craft the arguments for and against changing the status of Westside Village.
3. We expect the HRC, along with the people on each side, to cooperatively schedule and hold community information outreach at such places as:
- Charnock, Clover and Palms Middle PTSA meetings.
- A student assembly at Palms Middle School (nothing builds democracy better than instilling it in our young people).
- A debate in government classes at Hamilton High School.
- Our churches and synagogue on National Blvd.
- The annual meeting of the Westside Village Civic Assn.
- Board or annual meetings of the cooperative apartment assns. on Sepulveda Blvd.
- Representative assns. of UCLA family housing, also on Sepulveda Blvd.
4. We expect the HRC to work with the Palms Neighborhood Council to craft the necessary amendments to the Palms bylaws allowing the forming of a new Palms-Westside Village Neighborhood Council, including the number of Assembly representatives and where district boundary lines might be drawn.
5. The controversy should be resolved by a vote of the stakeholders of Westside Village. It might be held in conjunction with the election of the Mar Vista Community Council in March 2006, but it must be held in Westside Village and not in Mar Vista.
These are just a few ideas, and if you have more to advance the cause of a free and fair democratic decision-making process, please send them to the Human Relations Commission.
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