THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE VANISHING COUNCIL: STUDIO CITY NC
On Wednesday, August 23rd, 10 of the 12 Board members, including the entire Executive Board, resigned from the Studio City Neighborhood Council, a body within the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council system -- just a day before a City Planning meeting vital to the neighborhood. The "what" is perplexing... but the "why" dives deep into a catastrophe of errors that could've easily been avoided
Where’s Hercule Poirot when you need him most.
On Wednesday, August 23rd, 10 of the 12 Board members, including the entire Executive Board, resigned from the Studio City Neighborhood Council (SCNC), a government body within the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council system.
Board affirmed to their positions in July after a ballot with no competitive races, the mass resignation came just shy of the long-awaited Los Angeles City Planning Commission hearing and subsequent vote on the Harvard Westlake School River Park development, a hot-button issue in the Southeast Valley region since the institution purchased Weddington Golf and Tennis from its previous owners in 2017. By resigning ahead of the hearing, Studio City was denied an opportunity to have its representative governing body present in an official manner at the hearing.
Which begs the question: why not wait until the end of the week, maintaining status as elected City Officials at the hearing, before conceding their tenure? Perhaps the answer lies in WHY the Board, save for two individuals, resigned in the first place.
Unlike the mass resignation of the Hollywood Studio District Neighborhood Council in February, this incident carried with it no advance notice, nor any social media posting addressing the public of the underlying reason for the decision.
The first sign of trouble could be found on the SCNC website, where the calendar page on August 23rd had every future meeting cancelled through the rest of 2023. Though a cursory check with the SCNC page at empowerLA found everything functioning nominally — with all Board members, training dates, and relevant information intact and as usual. The name empowerLA is bureauspeak for the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, the advisory arm of the City which oversees the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council system.
NO CALL NO SHOW
Then came the Harvard Westlake River Park Planning Commission meeting on August 24th.
At the beginning of the procession, the Commission afforded Neighborhood Councils who’ve submitted a CIS (Community Impact Statement) to speak for up to three minutes. Only one, Tess Taylor representing the Greater Toluca Lake NC (GTLNC), offered official input. The moment the Commission disposed of that section of comment, and moved to public comment, set off multiple alarms. Why did the SCNC not represent their stakeholders as did the GTLNC?
As the day prior, a cursory inspection of the SCNC empowerLA page was in order.
Unlike the day prior, everything wasn’t normal. Nearly every seat was listed as “vacant”.
Ann-Marie Holman of empowerLA confirmed to CW in an email dated August 25th that “there are no ethics or misuse of City funds allegations nor board member suspensions, potential or actual, tied to this Neighborhood Council.” This rules out the City Ethics Commission as well as the City Clerk, and also sweeps aside any investigation that may have triggered some form of administrative leave.
An email to Andrea Conant, Chief of Staff to Council member Nithya Raman yielded no answers. But something did raise an eyebrow: Lorenzo Briceno of empowerLA, who acts as the Neighborhood Empowerment Advocate (NEA) for the SCNC, in responding to the CW email, was puzzled about the cancellation of every SCNC meeting on its calendar, as if empowerLA had been unaware of that fact. This led to a belief that empowerLA had not been directly involved in this matter prior to the resignation.
So, what happened? According to the City, both an ethics violation and misuse of City funds are both non-starters. No suspensions current or pending, which may rule out any sexual harassment claims.
BEST GUESS: THE RALPH M. BROWN ACT
One possible culprit could have been a Brown Act violation, the State Government Code lording over public legislative meetings, that might have resulted in meetings being labeled as “cancelled” to satisfy the “address, cure and correct” stipulation when a Brown Act grievance is filed. The legislative body has 30 days to make right the violations committed by the body. This would include, if the problem were the meetings themselves, displaying an action in favor of the grievance such as temporarily cancelling the meetings until a solution can be realized.
The first issue with this scenario would be the lack of communication with the stakeholders (people who reside, conduct business within, have an interest in, or own property within the boundaries of the neighborhood the Council presides over). Not a word on the SCNC website, nor their social media, nor any preemptive email blast discussion the issue with the stakeholders of Studio City. The resignation, to put it bluntly, was swift and merciless… and silent, unlike the before-mentioned Hollywood Studio District resignation. If utilized as a protest, then prior communication would have been standard M.O.
The second issue are the resignations themselves. The Brown Act merely acts as a way to regulate transparency between government and the people. It’s not an adjudicator of internal discipline — that lies with the City Attorney. If the issue was how the in-person meetings were conducted, then SB 411 — appearing more likely than ever to make it to the desk of Governor Newsome — would solve the dilemma by moving Council meetings back to the Zoom platform. Resignations are a permanent choice to what appears to be a temporary problem.
Unless there was no choice.
A SHOCKING REVELATION
The mind wanders when attempting to figure out the ins and outs, did and did nots, policies and procedures followed and ignored, and general chaos of an evolving situation. In the end, it was a communication with somebody close to the circumstance that shed a kind of blinding light to the reality of it all, revealing the truth as to why nearly an entire Neighborhood Council Board would resign en masse.
The kind of light that makes one appreciate the dark all the more.
It’s an ongoing investigation, so very little can be said at this point in time. If early information is accurate and germane, it’s disturbing to say the least. LAWeekly penned a story about the “issue” in 2009. Subsequently, the topic of discussion disappeared from media attention soon afterward (for an obvious reason… again, if the information is accurate), only to resurface just prior to the Board meeting after some diligent work by an individual who shall be left unnamed.
Rather than this being the case of a vanishing Council, it’s instead a case of due diligence… or a lack thereof. A lesson of assuming nothing, and questioning everything. A simple search on Google revealed the truth with just a swipe of a finger. Knowing the subject, it took mere 30 seconds to find the matter. Once the subject and matter were combined, the Internet Sea was parted to expose its underbelly.
There have been more than a few questions asked at this point. Yet, the final question can only be answered after a City investigation, an investigation which was alluded to via the source of the above information:
Was the Board forced into this debacle? Considering their lack of pushback at the August 16th meeting, their subsequent resignation from the Board a day prior to one of the most important City Planning meetings facing Studio City in decades, and the choice of a permanent decision in lieu of allowing the City take command of the predicament, this is the most compelling of the questions posed.
Only time will tell.
Correction: After the publishing of this article, Monday August 21st was revealed to be the actual date most of the SCNC Board resigned.
