STNC Elections - The Big Picture

Dear STNC Community,

I wrote the following to give the City Clerk the "Big Picture" about the Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council and our community so that they would have a good understanding about us, and our beliefs toward our elections.

For our stakeholders that are new to the neighborhood council system, I hope that this may give you some insight into our beginnnings and goals.

Mark Seigel -- STNC Treasurer

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To Whom it may Concern,

As the stepchild community of Los Angeles, Sunland-Tujunga has learned that it must be diligent in educating itself as to self representation.

In this document, I use the term "community member" as the City uses the term "stakeholder".

HISTORY
Our community had an active Townhall Community Council formed years before the Neighborhood Council system was in place. And that council would have upwards of 90 to 150 people in regular attendance. That council crafted bylaws to convert to be part of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council system. It took that group about 10 months, with vetting by over 150 people, to craft an effective and fair set of bylaws.

It was clear that the electorate wanted to be able to personally vet the candidates at Election Forums, and Candidate Mixers. The community wished to be able to question each candidate as to their motives and desires, to make sure their representatives would actually represent the community. To fulfill this requirement, write-in candidates and candidates that had not attended the community forums/mixers were barred from running for office. As you can see by our history and our community stakeholder involvement, this process has been the right choice and course of action. We have, possibly, the highest consistent turnouts of stakeholders of any NC and dedicated community participation/involvement in the City of Los Angeles.

The Board structure is designed to provide some redundancy and multiple levels for a community member to access representation to the Board.

As we looked at the structure of other Neighborhood Councils, we wrestled with the secularity of having named Group Reps in the Bylaws, such as "Business Rep", "Faith Rep", or "Homeless Rep". It was determined that Pigeon Holeing of representative positions was not flexible and would exclude representation of many groups of our community. If a new group wished to be represented on the Council, it would require a Bylaws change, and a possible restructuring of the Board. So, in order to provide the community with Representatives for each component of our community, possibly changing components, we set out to have a set of Board positions that were dynamic. To achieve this we designed our "Group Rep" board seats.

COMPOSITION AND DUTIES
We worked with DONE to comply with their rules and the laws set forth in "The Plan" to provide a structure of diverse representation. We came to a compromise of 22 Board members, comprised of 5 Executive Board members, 1 Parliamentarian, 8 Geographic Representatives, and 8 Group Representatives.

The Executive board would handle the administrative part of the council and also assist in representing community members, the parliamentarian would assist in matters of procedure and fairness, and the 16 representatives would work to represent the members of the community.

The Parliamentarian is appointed by the Board, and the rest are elected by the community.

There are 4 Regions in our Council with 2 Geographic Reps positions per region with each Rep providing representation to any community member based in that geographic area.


There are 8 Group Representatives providing representation for diverse groups in our community.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA (See Bylaws for exact wording)
Executive Board members must live, work, or own property in the STNC boundaries.

The Parliamentarian must understand Parliamentary Procedure and Robertís Rules of Order.

Geographic Reps must live, work, or own property in the area they represent.

GROUP REPRESENTATIVE ERRATA

The selection/candidacy of Group Reps is a little more involved.
The Community Groups that have a Rep on the Board changes each term. They are not predefined as in most NC's.
A prospective candidate would select a group to represent and provide documentation from that group to affirm that that group wished to be represented by that individual. For example, a candidate for "Faith Rep" would submit a letter provided by his/her church; a "Scouting Rep" would provide a letter from his/her Scout Pack or Troop, a "Food Rep" would submit a letter from their Restaurant or food related business, and so on.

Any Community Group in the STNC boundaries could put their candidate up for election to the Board.

Hopefully more than 8 Groups put forth a rep in the election and the community voters select the 8 they wish to see on the Board for the next term of office.

The Election Committee was charged with the responsibility to assist the prospective candidates with the information and assistance to 1) know what groups currently have candidates running to represent them and 2) attempt to suggest/provide a broad range of groups be represented, so that the electorate could have a diverse list of groups/candidates to choose from when voting. The electorate would be able to choose what areas they felt were the most important during the next Board term.
This being said, to achieve this goal, it is vital that the Election Committee be able to provide the current list of candidates and their group being represented to the community during the ìsign upî period, so that community members can be certain that their ìimportantî group has a chance to be represented on the Board, and at the same time that there is not a proliferation of candidates running for the same type of group.


Also, in relation to all the seats, it is important to have the candidate information available and transparent to the community during the sign up process. As you may have found out, there are a limited number of people that are able to commit enough time, energy, and resources to donate to the community for an extended time. As such, it helps the process immensely if the prospective candidates know which positions are currently available so that not everyone is running for the same seat and leaving holes in the Board.


Respectfully submitted,

Mark Seigel
Certifications Chair of the Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council
Current Bylaws Chair - 2009/2010
818-430-5244