by Michele Zack
The Town Council is the government we have. Many people are torn between working to improve it by showing up, asking questions, applying pressure when needed — and giving up on it. But not having a Town Council (or a dysfunctional one that does actual harm) would mean the loss of a great conduit to the “real” government, the Board of Supervisors, on key issues such as local land use. Attending an evening meeting on Altadena Drive about your house remodel is much more convenient than going to downtown LA on a workday.
Despite the good will of several individual council members, and non-council members like Eric Pierce who stepped up to lead the Election Committee, the Town Council continues to operate at far below its potential in the estimation of most Altadenans, who, it should be noted, fail to either vote in elections or attend meetings.
I will provide one example of how the council has operated in the many years I’ve observed or been involved, to illustrate the crux of the problem and to try to answer the question: why does it seem so hard for the Town Council to accomplish great things for Altadena?
Beautification committee
Former Town Council chair Sandra Thomas asked me to lead a new Altadena Beautification Committee in the fall of 2011 to present proposals for the council to consider and act on. With other time-consuming duties, the issue of overall community aesthetic development was something TC members never seemed to get around to. Chair Thomas asked me to form a committee “that considers everything and anything about the way Altadena looks.” What a great project!
We got off to an enthusiastic start, with reps from all around Altadena: the Historical Society, The Chamber, Altadena Heritage, TC member Greg Middleton, and a community member or two. We were first asked to consider "Welcome to Altadena" signs the county had budgeted for; we did research and with the help of AHS came up with a couple great designs to consider. I wrote about the process in this blog as part of the committee’s public outreach and received good feedback and comments.
We also met with the County Project Managers of the Woodbury Median project, then about to be built, and made specific tree recommendations. We applied through the Supervisor’s Office for a street tree grant to add street trees to the design. All our activities were well received, we felt heard and as if our efforts were appreciated.
When it came time to report back to the Town Council with suggested action items (we’d been reporting to the chair all along), a larger Altadena tree grant had just been announced as successful. However, it included only a few trees west of Lake Avenue (12 or 13 out of 120 or so). So we asked the council to write a letter to the Supervisor to nicely ask for more street trees on the west side, particularly Woodbury. But they dithered, because council members on the leafy east side who were getting the bulk of the trees were happy with the grant and didn't want to “rock the boat.” For example, one council member’s street and census tract were getting many trees, and she moved for the issue to be tabled, saying that in any case it shouldn’t be under the purview of the Beautification Committee. Enough members of the council agreed with her to put off any action.
Tree-mendous success
We had confidence that this uneven tree planting was an oversight based in the Department of Public Work’s bureaucracy, that Supervisor Antonovich would correct if he knew about it. So when the council voted to table, the Chair of Altadena Heritage (on our committee) shot a email to members asking them to politely request more west-side trees from the Supervisor’s office. By this time the tree grant was a matter of public record, and anyone could comment on it. About 30 Heritage members did, and the letter writing campaign was published in this website, which elicited a few more letters. Indeed our Supervisor came through with the roughly 75 beautiful new street trees you now see along Woodbury Road
The council also tabled signage ideas: "You are getting ahead of yourselves, the council should be in charge of this," several of them said. (They'd been asked to take up the task and had produced nothing more that a printed county publication that included some standard signs, nothing custom-made for Altadena.) However, they failed to act even on this non-action for more than a year, which is why our committee had been asked to try to move it along by recommending potential sign designs that were more interesting and that reflected our community’s personality.
The net-net of several months of good committee work all centered on making Altadena more beautiful was that we were sent off with our tails between our legs. This was the summer of 2012. The first thing the new chair (Ms. Broadous was elected to this position despite being a rookie member of the TC) was to get rid of our committee of devoted and talented people. She did this in a sly manner, proposing that from now on we would be "under" the Land Use Committee and report to them. After LUC got around to considering our ideas/proposals, they would vote on whether any were worthy of being passed on to TC. Well, you couldn't devise a better way to discourage people who want to make a difference than to relegate them to a subcommittee of a subcommittee, so of course they all quit. The Town Council (and community) lost a group of smart and dedicated volunteers.
Infighting and inaction
I wish the above story were uncharacteristic, but sadly there are many more. Indeed, the story of the Town Council has too often become one of inaction and lost opportunities. When I read of Eric Pierce’s woes with the Election Committee, I had an idea what he had gone through. For the record, I should say that I don’t know him or details of what transpired in his committee in its dealings with the TC. But most importantly, it all sounded so familiar and like “business as usual” that I felt grateful someone was speaking up honestly in a public forum to air the problem of non-action and obstructionism that bedevils our Town Council. The common tendency is to just give up and walk away, shaking one’s head and wondering where else to invest one’s efforts in the community? But he spoke up, and I think that was a good thing.
Many people of talent and good will have served on the Council over the years. Yet too often, infighting and inaction have trumped efforts to make this institution what it could be: vibrant, relevant, and making skillful use of its considerable influence (I didn’t say power, but influence is a kind of power), as an elected body to speak up for the greater benefit of Altadena.
I don’t know the reasons for its failures, and do not mean to say it hasn’t also had some great successes — because it has. These have just been too rare. I do feel that the community dialogue Mr. Pierce has started has the potential to begin a new and positive era for the Town Council as a service group whose members work together to do us some good. If it is true that we get the government we deserve, we have our work cut out and need to take more responsibility for the government we have.
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Michele Zack is a board member of Altadena Heritage, a former Town Council member, and the author of Altadena: Between Wilderness and City. She is also the current Altadena Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year.
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