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Your Local Elected Officials
By adam || April 7, 2008Last night, while trying out a pretty delicious new Italian restaurant in Los Feliz, I got into a conversation with a friend about how his retired father recently joined, and then immediately resigned from, a position on his local traffic commission. He quit after attending a single meeting, which is all it took for him to realize that the commission board was populated by a bunch of fellow retires who seemed far more interested in the mechanics and formalities of governmental procedure than in actually doing anything to attend to traffic safety problems in their district.
This story recalled my own attempt to brave a regular monthly meeting of the Atwater Village Neighborhood Council shortly after I bought my house. In my mind, as the son of a man who has worked in government his whole life, and as a now-responsible, tax-paying member of the community, it was time to try contributing to my community by getting politically involved. Just shy of an hour after the meeting began, and about when they’d finally finished reading in the minutes from last week’s meeting, I drew a starkly similar conclusion as my friend’s dad: Local government sucks! It’s REALLY ineffectual, and worse than that, it’s boring!
The similarities my friend’s dad and I experienced are, to my mind, a bit startling: In both cases it’s a bunch of retirees, stay-at-home-whatever’s, and in my case, a girl who plays a dirty cop on The Shield (grab some irony to go, will ya?). These are pretty much exactly the sort of people you’d find in your average jury pool, and like in any good jury deliberation, they seem to have reduced local government to an endless succession of rules, procedures, and minutiae about which the group can spend hours bickering.
Based solely on the aforementioned first-hand experience, I can only conclude that the people getting involved in local branches of government are much more interested in being IN government, then in actually achieving anything WITH government. Instead of using government as a tool, they just are tools. And if this is truly the case, then clearly the jury pool is tainted, and if it’s tainted on a local level by aspiring bureaucrats, then it seems logical to assume that the higher you climb up the ladder, the more likely you’ll be to simply encounter bureaucrats of the professional variety.
Like many people, I think the last seven years with our soon-to-be-ex-president has greatly reduced my faith in the ability of government to efficiently and fairly govern. And yet, as my father’s son, I know of many public servants who have dutifully endeavored over their careers in politics to accomplish some truly important changes which have made all of our lives better.
That said, while I firmly believe that our system of democracy has the capacity to move mountains, I confess to my own frequent lack of faith in it’s ability to do so with any regularity. So as someone who believes that government CAN work, I can only conclude that it is not working because we have failed to staff the store properly. Clearly, as is anecdotally evidenced by our local legislative bodies, there are too few intelligent, motivated, and principled people seeking and winning public office.
I write this only to personalize a flaw in our system which has been exposed, far more eloquently I’m sure, by legions before me. But I also write this as an open invitation to anyone reading this, particularly if you live in Los Angeles, and are in the Silverlake/Atwater Village area: I NEED A POLITICS BUDDY! Can you? Will you be mine?
Maybe if some smart people actually get together and rush the stage at our local councils, we’ll wake up one day soon and find we’re running the joint. Then, if we’re lucky, we can just blame ourselves for fucking everything up.
Cheers.
[ Topic Politics | ]
Hi Adam,
I was elected to the Atwater Village Neighborhood Council in October, so needless to say, I am discouraged to read about your experience coming to our meetings.
First of all, let me say that we have a brand new council, and although like any group, whether it’s the US Senate or the local PTA, we have our fair share of bickering, we are making progress and (in my opinion) effecting positive change in Atwater Village, slowly but surely.
I have to respectfully take umbrage with your assertion that the council is made up of, as you say, “a bunch of retirees, stay-at-home-whatever’s, and… a girl who plays a dirty cop on The Shield.” Firstly, we are a council made up of (just to name a few) lawyers, mechanics, business owners, accountants, former members of the military, social workers, television editors, actors, moms, and dads.
We are your neighbors. Right here in beautiful Atwater Village.
And yes, we have had a few retirees and stay-at-home whatevers, but I don’t think that those people have any less a say in the progress and improvement of our neighborhood. Also, they have worked really, really hard. (And although Catherine Dent is no longer on the council, the fact that she is an actor, as I am, makes her no less qualified to serve her community as a volunteer, although I get the irony of her character on The Shield.)
We gain very little from our involvement with the AVNC and the city, other than the occasional sense that we are helping to make things better. For some of us, myself included, it is nearly a full time job, except we don’t get paid. I should only speak for myself, but there are many of us who are doing our best, and we are trying to change the long-held perceptions of our council.
It’s true that there is a mountain of red tape and bureaucracy working with any city. I come up against it all the time as the treasurer of the AVNC. I think part of the reason things are the way they are is because we are working with taxpayer money, and I believe it SHOULD be hard to spend, if that makes any sense.
Government rules are wonky and weird, as I’m sure you know from reading The Audacity of Hope - as Senator Obama says, learning the sometimes arcane and archaic Senate rules can take months. We obviously don’t have those sorts of rules around us, but we do have to follow the Brown Act (which makes us and all our conversations and debates completely transparent), Roberts Rules of Order, and our own Bylaws and Code of Civility. These rules may seem boring or bureaucratic, but they serve to make us accountable and to make our meetings run as smoothly as possible.
I decided to run for the council because I felt I needed to put my money where my mouth is. I also grew up with a father in politics, and have been surrounded by politicians my whole life. I felt it wasn’t enough for me to be an activist or raise money for the candidates I support. I had to get involved on a grassroots level, and the council gave me that opportunity.
To that end, I encourage you to come back to an AVNC meeting. We meet every second Thursday of the month. You can see our schedule on our website, which you linked above (by the way, we are working on getting a brand new website that will have much more info on it). If you really want to get involved, we always need help. All the time. Volunteer to be on one of our committees, or get involved with some of AV’s other local groups, like the Friends of Atwater Village or the Atwater Village Residents’ Association, both of whom do amazing work here in beautiful Atwater Village.
Sorry to write such a long comment, and I hope this doesn’t read as angry. I hope you will once again get involved and that we can change your mind about local government.
Thanks, Leonora Gershman
Comment by Leonora — April 8, 2008 #
Hello,
Can you please qualify when the AVNC meeting you attended was? From your reference to the woman on the Shield it is apparent it has been a while. FYI there was an election in November and there is a new board and we have been quite active in the neighborhood since then. Basically, some motivated & smart people have already rushed the stage so please come join us!
A majority of the current council range in age from their thirties to forties. I myself am a father whose only interest is to make the area I live in nicer and the schools the best they can be for my kids. I have a good career and have no desire to be “in” the government - I’m just a volunteer doing my part. I think many of the other members also felt a civic responsibility to get involved in light of the ongoing failures of our federal, state, and local governments. We have purchased books for schools, funded after school programs, purchased supplies for firefighters, sponsored neighborhood events and festivals, etc. The agenda for this months meeting (this Thursday) is up and you can see that we have a lot to discuss and vote on (including a couple traffic related issues actually).
Please make another attempt to come to an AVNC meeting. Yes we have some boring procedural stuff we have to get through, but we make every effort to get through it quickly so we can get to the business of helping our neighborhood. FYI the main AVNC meetings tend to be a little more structured because there is so much to get through. The committee meetings are where ideas get vetted out in a more informal way. Please give the council another chance so you can report back on your blog afterwards.
Thanks,
Tim Warner
AVNC Co-chair
Comment by Tim Warner — April 8, 2008 #
[...] I sat down to begin writing my first post on government this week, “Your Elected Officials”, my plan was for it to be the first of several forthcoming articles about government. As it [...]
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