Noncompliance posting council meeting agendas leads to probation
By Dolores Quintana
The North Westwood Neighborhood Council (NWWNC) has been placed on a three month probationary period, the first step in potentially decertifying a council.
This probationary period for the NWWNC–whose boundaries go from Hilgard Avenue to Veteran Avenue east to west and Sunset Boulevard to Wilshire Boulevard north to south–was invoked for noncompliance with the policy of posting council meeting agendas for the public as reported by the Daily Bruin. This period began on Oct. 7.
This ruling was issued by the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment or Empower LA, which is the regulatory agency that oversees the actions of the city councils in Los Angeles. During the Exhaustive Efforts three month period, Empower LA will supervise the actions of the city council and be responsible for training for the board members. The supervisory body has drawn up a work plan to put the city council back on track. This plan includes a board member retreat, development of a NWWNC strategic plan for the upcoming year of 2021-2022, developing a community outreach plan, developing standing rules for facilitating communication and a sense of community for the public, and increasing community participation and gender diversity and inclusion as reported by the Daily Bruin, who obtained the letter stating the terms of the probation. The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment can choose to alter the probationary period and further disciplinary action, including decertification, can result from a council’s failure to comply. All committee meetings for the council are canceled during this period.
In this letter states that the reason for the probationary period is “The continued disregard, by the NWWNC, of the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners Neighborhood Council Agenda Posting Policy 2014.01-1, which requires Neighborhood Councils to post agendas of all Board and Committee meetings on their website, all regular and special Board and Committee agendas to the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment to be posted through the Early Notification System.”
NWWNC President Furkan Yalcin claims, in a statement to the Daily Bruin, that the Oct. 6 meeting was the only council meeting that did not comply with the agenda posting policy. The council was warned not to go ahead with the meeting by Mario Hernandez, a representative of Empower LA, because the agenda had not been directly posted to the website in the approved manner. Instead of uploading the agenda, the NWWNC council linked a Facebook post with the information.
Yalcin added in his statement to the Daily Bruin that, “Although I believe this punishment is a highly disproportionate response to the council’s infractions, the NWWNC will be complying with all DONE requests in order to end the Exhaustive Effort situation”
Contrary to Yalcin’s statement, Lisa Chapman, Westwood Neighborhood Council President, accused the NWWNC of repeatedly violating agenda policy over the past few years. Chapman said that she had registered a number of complaints against the NWWNC council because of past infractions.
In a quote to the Daily Bruin, Chapman said, “This is just a matter of playing by the rules. Everybody has to play by the rules. When you have stakeholders that aren’t able to participate in their meetings, that’s not OK. That’s not allowing the public to participate.”
