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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

City Officials, Businesses Meet with Councils

City officials from the Planning, Building and Safety and other city departments addressed a collection of Valley Neighborhood Councils earlier this month along with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in an effort to improve communication and collaboration between citizens and the public sector. The meeting of the Valley Alliance of Neighborhood Councils was attended by representatives of 28 councils. Many councils have become concerned that they are unable to work with city officials when it comes to commercial developments or other activities that change the face of a neighborhood. Villaraigosa, who spoke at the beginning of the meeting, repeated a sentiment that was a key part of his campaign, saying he hoped to see more politicians and business interests running their ideas past neighborhood councils before putting new plans into motion. “I oftentimes say to my staff that power is a gift from the people,” Villaraigosa said. “Use it wisely, use it judiciously. . .by the same token I’ve said to them, ‘if you have a great idea, it may be a great idea, but if you haven’t percolated it through the people, maybe it’s an idea whose time’s not ready.” “We have to continue to make every effort to include you, to give you a voice, to give you that role that’s so critical to making our communities more livable,” he added. Neighborhood Councils have expressed their frustration at not having a voice in new commercial and residential developments, or in feeling like they have no effective way in reaching city employees. Sharon Mayer, Neighborhood Liaison for the City Planning Department said that councils need to be aware of what department to approach when they have concerns about projects in the neighborhood. “Probably 90 percent of what’s going on in your community in terms of building never comes to the Planning Department. It goes to my friend Andrew in the Building and Safety Department,” said Mayer. “Most of the building in your neighborhood is being built right, it’s complying with the zoning, it’s complying with the General Plan and individuals are able to go to the Department of Building and Safety and pull the building permit.” E-mail notification Mayer encouraged the councils to take advantage of a regular mailing from the Planning Department that is e-mailed every two weeks with every application filed with the department from the previous two weeks. The cases are divided according to neighborhood councils. Included with each e-mail is a brief description of every project and a contact person working for the developer. “You want to call the applicant and say ‘we just read that you are planning on building a 90-unit building in our neighborhood, and we’d really appreciate it if you could come to our neighborhood council. . .and perhaps talk to us about it, tell us early in your planning what you’re planning to do,'” said Mayer. Bruce Ackerman, president and CEO of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley said the group, in addition to focusing on marketing and job development throughout the region, has come to consider the neighborhood councils an ally in its livable and sustainable communities projects. “That’s a relatively new goal for the organization that came into being about three and a half years ago,” said Ackerman “We created that because we realized we can do that job of economic development, marketing the region and working to improve our schools with training programs for our young people (but) if we don’t focus on the rest of the community, things like health care, roads, trees, education, crime and safety, hospitals if we’re not addressing those issues, we’re really not solving the rest of the puzzle.” Closely aligned The Alliance, Ackerman said, worked closely with the fledgling neighborhood council system three years ago when developing its Vision 2020, a master plan for the 5-city region that outlines development goals. “(Neighborhood councils and the Alliance) are joined at the hip,” said Ackerman. “I admire and applaud what the councils have been able to do over the last three years, you are so far ahead of the rest of the City of Los Angeles it’s not even funny.” Marvin Selter, a past chairman of VICA, told the assembled crowd that neighborhood councils need to work harder at getting accurate information in order to best make decisions regarding businesses. “I think we need to examine the effect of decisions made by neighborhood councils without business participation,” said Selter. “I think we need to look at information or logic that flows within the council, and I’m not suggesting that it is but that it might be, without business participation. I think we need the possible contesting of some decisions of neighborhood councils, again without business participation.” Selter said it’s critical for small and large businesses to become active now in neighborhood councils, and that councils in turn need to be more accommodating, especially for small business owners. “One of the biggest problems we have is that a small business person cannot attend a meeting during the day, they can’t close their shop, come to a meeting and say what the problems are, they’re making a living,” said Selter. “We need the input that they could possibly give us, but more than the input we need the basis of why they are making the suggestions, what their input really means. We need to engage them in dialogue, not as combatants, but as a community trying to figure out what the problems are and what they think the solution is.”

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