09 Musso Neighborhood Council MidTerm Review

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Neighborhood Councils In Los Angeles:A Midterm Status ReportJuliet Musso, Christopher Weare, Terry L. Cooper

UNIVERSITYOF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIAURBAN INITIATIVE


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Urban Initiative Public Policy Briefing

2004 USC Urban Initiative & the USC Neighborhood Participation Project

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

USC URBAN INITIATIVE

3470 TROUSDALE PARKWAY, WPH 604

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES, CA 90089-4036

www.usc.edu/urban

U R B A N

P O L I C Y

B R I E F


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URBAN INITIATIVE POLICY BRIEFJUNE 2004

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I

n June 1999, Los Angeles voters enacted charter provi-

sions creating a citywide system of Neighborhood

Councils (NCs). The charter states that the broad goal

of the reform is to promote more citizen participation ingovernment and make government more responsive to local

needs. Three years have passed since the City Council

approved a plan for charter implementation, and the 2006

charter-mandated review of the Neighborhood Council

system is approaching.

Other cities required many years to implement fully a

Neighborhood Council system, suggesting that the Los

Angeles system is still in a formative stage. This briefing

considers whether midstream corrections are in order, and

suggests benchmarks against which to evaluate outcomes

over time.2 The criteria applied in this evaluation include

democratic legitimacy, the extent to which NCs provide

meaningful input on city decisions (relevance), and the

extent to which NCs appear to have the potential to influ-

ence City policies and develop relationships that bring

together diverse groups within and across communities.

We find that:

Democratic legitimacy requires policy reforms to ensure

that Council elections are fair and inclusive;

Policy relevance necessitates development of avenues for

systematic participation in City governance;

While it is too early to evaluate their long-terminput, we

suggest several benchmarks, including the quality of NC

activities and impacts, the development of social andpolitical relationships, and the impact of the system on

political efficacy and attitudes toward City government.

ISSUES OF LEGITIMACY AND RELEVANCY

Aclear measure of progress is the extent to which the

system is citywide, as intended in the charter. As ofMay 2004, 81 certified Neighborhood Councils repre-

sented areas containing 3,150,652 residents an average

of 38,411 per Neighborhood Council (Map 1). Sixty-six NCs

have had held one or more elections to select Board

members; turnout in first-round elections was on average

372 stakeholders (Map 2). Voting participation in first elec-

tions exceeded 20,000 residents, an average of 1.3% of the

residential population. This turnout needs to be contextu-

alized by recognizing that the citys recent history has been

one of relatively low electoral participation; for example,

the turnout in the last general election constituted just 4%

of city residents.

Implementation of the neighborhood council system has drawn

criticism on grounds that administrative practices are inconsistent

or excessively cumbersome and intrusive. We find that two issues

are particularly important to the legitimacy and relevance of neigh-

borhood councils: (1) controversy concerning NC elections; and (2)

the slow progress of participatory innovations to support

Neighborhood Council involvement in City policy-making.

NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCILS IN LOS ANGELES:

A MIDTERM STATUS REPORTJuliet Musso, Christopher Weare, Terry L. Cooper1

U R B A N I N I T I A T I V E P O L I C Y B R I E F

Reporting on a study supported by the James Irvine Foundation, the National Science Foundation,

the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development, and the USC Urban Initiative

1Expert analytic assistance was provided by Kyu-Nahm Jun, Nail Oztas, Amy Sheller,and Michael Sithole.2The first section primarily employs information from semi-structured interviews, focusgroups, field observations, and documentary research. The second section relies on

surveys of: (1) 51 elected Neighborhood Council Boards, conducted between July andSeptember of 2003 (response rate 66%); (2) 799 Los Angeles city residents conducted

in 2002 by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) and USC (Baldassare, M. PPICStatewide Survey: Special Survey of Los Angeles County, March 2003); (3) 49 purposively

sampled City Council staff from all 15 city council districts; and (4) 16 DONE projectcoordinators evaluating 62 of the 82 Neighborhood Councils certified to date.


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JUNE 2004 NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCILS IN LOS ANGELES: A MIDTERM STATUS REPORT

Electoral reforms required for legitimacy. Legitimacy ofthe NC system requires fair and inclusive governing Board

elections. Neighborhood Councils self-administer elections

with the advice of project coordinators (PCs) from the

Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE). While

most elections have been non-controversial, elections

administration is burdensome, and NCs have suffered from a

lack of clear guidance from the City. The PCs rate only 60%

of Neighborhood Councils as having conducted a first elec-

tion that was professional and fair.

Local conflict and sporadic elections controversies couldplace the long-term legitimacy of the system at risk. For

example:

Six certified Neighborhood Councils have not yet held elec-

tions, despite having been certified for more than seven

months. These delays are due at least in part to organi

zational difficulties;

Local factionalism sometimes leads to accusations of excessive

Board influence or inappropriate electoral procedures;

2

CERTIFICATION AND ELECTION STATUS AS OF 2004

MAP 1:


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Charges of electioneering, inappropriate absentee provi-

sions, inadequate outreach, or lack of qualification of

voters have characterized contested elections.

We recommend that the City Council adopt standards regarding

procedural matters such as absentee balloting, outreach, and

voting qualifications. To protect DONE from charges of

favoritism, the City could ensure neutrality by contracting with

an independent entity for elections administration, and desig-

nating a final arbiter of elections challenges.

Participatory innovations for relevance. To be relevant,Neighborhood Councils require avenues for meaningful

input into City policy. Table 1 summarizes the status of

charter provisions intended to empower Neighborhood

Councils. The City has made relatively good progress in a

couple of areas, most notably on-line information avail-

ability and NC involvement in budgeting. There is a need,

however, for earlier notification of pending City decisions

and an improved system for feedback regarding service

delivery. The DONE is now reorganizing its technical assis-

tance and training to occur through an Empowerment

3

TOTAL NUMBER OF VOTES CAST IN NC ELECTIONS

MAP 2:


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Academy. Consequently, the Congress of Neighborhoodsshould be reconstituted as a deliberative forum that will

engage Councils around citywide issues.

INTERMEDIATE OUTCOMES AND BENCHMARKS

There are three important measures of long-term

Neighborhood Council success: the quality and impact of

their activities, the social capital developed by the rela-

tionships they create, and the degree to which stakeholders

develop increased political efficacy and better attitudes regard-

ing City government and their community. We set forth severalbenchmark measures in these three areas, based on surveys of

DONE project coordinators, City Council staff, and NC Board

members. Future measuring efforts should also evaluate

perceptions of community stakeholders.

Neighborhood Council activities. A review of operating

expenditures by Neighborhood Councils should inform our

understanding of their current activities. Based on expen-

ditures as of February 2004, it would appear that almost half

of Neighborhood Council expenditures relate to outreach

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Early Warning System to notify

neighborhood of pending City

decisions with reasonable

opportunity to provide input.

(Charter Section 907)

Not fully implemented.

City provides automated distribution of agendas, a

significant innovation compared to notification

arrangements in other cities

Agendas are distributed only 72 hours prior to

meeting, which does not provide reasonable

opportunity to provide input

Need to make system more user-friendly, and

provide earlier notification of issues of import toNeighborhood Councils

Neighborhood Councils may make

budget requests to Mayor

(Charter Section 909)

Mayor implemented regional budgeting process

for 2004/5 budget, and has published a

neighborhoods budget report

City will provide support for a

citywide Congress of

Neighborhoods (Section 901)

Congress of Neighborhoods has functioned

primarily as a forum for technical assistance and

training

There is a need for a deliberative forum to address

systemic and citywide issues

Neighborhood Councils willmonitor service delivery and meet

periodically with responsible

officials. (Section 910)

City has not adopted consistent mechanisms forfeedback on service delivery

City Council may delegate hearing

authority to Neighborhood

Councils on matters of local

concern. (Charter Section 908)

No action

Charter Provision Status

TABLE 1:

STATUS OF EMPOWERMENT PROVISIONS


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PERCEPTION OF NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL ACTIVITIES

FIGURE 2:

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Keeps Informed About CityActions

Voices Views to Elected

OfficialsEngages City Depts. to

Improve Service DeliveryWorks with Other NCs

DONE Project Coordinators

ity Council Staffers

FIGURE 1:

NC EXPENDITURES AS OF MAY 2004

Outreach & Communications

48%

Administrative Operations

29%

Community Events & Projects

19%

Training and Professional Services

4%


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PERCEPTIONS OF NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL IMPACTS

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%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Had Po sitive Impact o n Qu ality of Life i n Its Communi ty Had Impact on City wi de Issues

DONE Project Coordinators

City Council Staffers

FIGURE 4:

FIGURE 3:

A BENCHMARK MEASURE OF SOCIAL CAPITAL: BOARD MEMBER COMMUNITY LINKAGES

.00

.00

.00

.00

.00

10.00

12.00

14.00

16.00

18.00

20.00

1 3 5 7 11 13 15 17 19 21 3 5 27 29 1 3 35 37 9 41

Elected Boards Summer 2003

Linkages to OtherBoards

ity Hall Ties

takeholderT ies

Linkages within Board


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and communications, including direct outreach expenditures,

printing, and telephone expenses (Figure 1). Another 29%

supports administrative activities, and 19% community events.3

Figure 2 suggests that the City employees who work

most closely with NCs, DONE project coordinators and City

Council staff, rate favorably the activities of most Councils

they encounter. Neighborhood Councils receive the lowest

ratings in the area of working with other NCs, a finding that

reinforces the need for a citywide Congress that engages

Councils in local networking around substantive systemic

and city policy issues.

While most Neighborhood Councils are rated as having a

favorable impact on their community (56% of project coor-

dinators, and 73% of City Council staff), most are not

perceived to have citywide impact. This is consistent with

other published research on Neighborhood Councils, whichfinds that they tend to be more influential at the local

rather than the citywide level. There are nonetheless

several citywide issues upon which Neighborhood Councils

exerted influence, the most recent being their widely

acknowledged influence in the decision by the Citys

Department of Water and Power to reduce a proposed 18%

rate hike to 11%.

Social capital: networks of relationships. A successful

Neighborhood Council system should contribute to the civic

culture of the city by creating sustained relationships that

build social capitalnorms of trust and reciprocity. The

average Board member surveyed reports 12.25 relationships

related to Neighborhood Council involvement, of which 6.71

are with other board members, 2.69 with stakeholders, 2.38

with City Hall, and .47 with other Neighborhood Council

Boards (Figure 4). Over time, a measure of success will be

the extent to which these ties thicken within the

Neighborhood Councils, and connect across the citys communities.

Political attitudes of participants. A last set of bench-

marks involve the extent to which Neighborhood Councils

influence stakeholder perceptions of their communities and

the City, as well as impacts on political efficacy, theextent to which people feel that they can make a difference.

Figure 5 suggests that Neighborhood Council participants

rank their communities less favorably than do residents in

general. They are more satisfied with City government;

around 60% of Board members report that their concerns

receive attention from the City government, and one-third

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BOARD MEMBER AND RESIDENTIAL ATTITUDES TOWARD THE COMMUNITY AND CITY GOVERNMENT

FIGURE 5:

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Somew hat to Very Satisfi ed withCommunity

Some to a Lot of Attention from City

Government

Good to Exc ellent City Performance

CITY OF LA 84% 57% 29%

NC BOARD 79% 63% 35%

Somewhat to Very Satisfied with

Commun ity

Some to a Lot of Attention from City

GovernmentGood to Exc ellent City Performance

3 It should be noted that this is a preliminary indicator given the small amount of expen-

ditures reported to date, and given the start-up nature of these voluntary councils.


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rank City performance as good or excellent. Over time, if the

system increases City responsiveness, we would expect to

see improvement in these measures.

Political efficacy, the extent to which individuals feel

that they can influence political events, is an important

constituent of civic culture, and is associated with political

activities such as voting and volunteerism. Research on

Neighborhood Councils in other cities has found that polit-

ical efficacy tends to be higher in cities with

well-functioning Neighborhood Councils. As Figure 6

shows, 45% of Neighborhood Council Board members

express beliefs that people, working together, can have a

lot of influence over political affairs. Only 9% thought that

people could have no or a little influence. We would expect

attitudes of political efficacy to improve further if the City

becomes more responsive to local concerns, as intended bythe charter.

NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL BOARD MEMBERS PERCEPTION OF POLITICAL EFFICACY

FIGURE 6:

1%

8%

46%

45%

None

Very Little

Some

A Lot

Question: How much influence do

you think people in your neighborhood,

working together, can have over local

government decisions?


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Cover Photo Credits:

Photos by Mark Elliot

Art Direction/Design: USC School of Architecture Office of Publications.


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09 Musso Neighborhood Council MidTerm Review

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