Charter Panel Urged to Double City Council Size

VAN NUYS — The Charter Reform Commission held its first public meeting in the San Fernando Valley on Wednesday, and residents were ready with their suggestions on how the 72-year-old charter should be revised.

Homeowners group representatives, business leaders and educators urged the panel to consider expanding the size of the City Council and creating neighborhood councils to give citizens a greater voice in local government decisions.

“We want to have a great city that has a small-town feel to it,” Warren Campbell, a Cal State Northridge professor, told the gathering.

The commission, a 21-member panel appointed by the council, the city controller and the city attorney, was formed in September to overhaul the charter that acts as the city’s constitution.

Headed by Executive Director Raphael Sonenshein, the panel has been meeting since November, but has mostly concentrated on organizational matters such as hiring staff and collecting historical information.

This first meeting to get public input was held at Valley College in Van Nuys and attracted about 50 people. Most who testified were area homeowners and activists who had specific ideas on how to improve local government.

Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn., suggested that the size of the 15-member City Council be doubled and proposed that neighborhood councils have the power to decide local matters.

“Right now, people in this room can go down to City Hall,” said Close, “and all they get is one minute to speak to the council while the members eat their lunch.”

Close said that giving neighborhoods more of a say in government was key to the city’s future. “We must decide, will the city of Los Angeles rebound or continue to decline,” he told the panel.

The proposal to create neighborhood councils has been discussed previously. It would involve electing local representatives who could decide local planning and neighborhood improvement projects. It remained unclear where the lines of authority would be drawn between the neighborhood councils and City Council.

The expansion of the City Council has also been proposed in the past. Each council member currently represents about 230,000 people, which is roughly the population of Burbank and Pasadena put together.

The history of charter reform is marked by many failed attempts to redesign the often confusing power structure that distributes authority among the council, mayor and about 40 commissions.

The current reform movement has been fueled by threats of a Valley secession and has been caught in a power struggle between the council, which voted to create the panel, and Mayor Richard Riordan, who has criticized the panel, saying it’s unlikely to create true reform because the City Council retained the power to reject or rewrite any reform ideas before they go on the ballot.

Riordan has led and financed a petition campaign to create a 15-member elected charter reform panel with the power to put its reform recommendations directly on the ballot.

In April, voters elected seven of the 15 members, with the other eight to be elected in runoff races Tuesday.

Both panels will work over the next two years to rewrite the governing charter. Voters must approve any changes to the charter.