Equitable Funding Model Proposed for NCs

There are 99 neighborhood councils in the City of Los Angeles and they are each budgeted $32,000 per year. But the characteristics of the neighborhoods are often so different in so many ways that the size of their budgets may be the only thing they all have in common — and that may change soon, too.

Each neighborhood council’s budget allocation being determined based on each neighborhood’s population, poverty, life expectancy, health care access, employment and income is under consideration by the Board of Neighborhood Councils, or BONC.

BONC discussed this change at its Sept. 2 and Aug. 20 meetings, without acting on it.

“I was taught that neighborhood council funds were actually allocated to us to cover two items: one, administrative needs,” said Laurie Jacobs, vice president of the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council at the Sept. 2 meeting of BONC. “The other part of that was for outreach, whether it be events or whatever, to engage with our community.”

Jacobs said that it wasn’t until much later that the councils started using their funding for neighborhood purpose grants, or NPGs, which neighborhood councils use to make charitable donations. They were not the original intent of the city’s funding.

“Before you talk about equitable funding, I think that we need to get some direction and clarification on what the fundings that are allocated to the neighborhood councils should be for,” Jacobs said. “Because if truly they are just for the two items I just mentioned, you don’t really have a need for this equitable funding.”

BONC president Eli Lipmen said that because of the city’s current financial state, the city will likely cut the neighborhood councils’ budgets. On Sept. 3, the city declared a fiscal state of emergency, furloughing roughly 15,000 city employees.

“This is really an effort to save neighborhood councils from major cuts again, by finding a … better way to allocate neighborhood council funds,” Lipmen said.

Lipmen argued that more equitable funding could present a stronger argument to the Los Angeles City Council.

Ray Regalado, vice president of BONC and president of the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council, said the basis of a discussion on equitable funding requires a definition of what equity means regarding the funding of neighborhood councils. He said that certain communities being overpoliced should be considered as well.

“We are so much looking for fairness, and communities are looking for a way to be able to feel that they are being heard,” Regalado said. “This is a hard issue to address, because I believe,

depending on the neighborhood, we’re going to have different feelings as to what equitable actually means.”

Commissioner Len Shafer, who represents South Valley on BONC, said that the populations that some neighborhood councils represent fluctuate daily. For example, in Woodland Hills Warner Center and Downtown Los Angeles, a huge workforce comes in during the day and then leaves at night.

“The question is, do we count that workforce as opposed to something like [Korea]town, where most of their population is based on those who reside there?” Shafer said.

Shafer said that specific tax dollars from specific incomes are used for nonprofits or government programs to provide services to lower-income areas. He asked what the neighborhood councils are supposed to do, as the councils can’t buy food directly or pay stakeholders’ rent.

“We’re getting into an area that we’re not prepared to deal with,” Shafer said. “I don’t know how we would come up with an idea … of how that distribution would occur. The only thing I could think of is that the neighborhood councils would then be obligated to hand over that money to NGOs or nonprofits that themselves could work as they have been for the benefit of these particular communities.”

Commissioner Joy Atkinson, who represents South Los Angeles on BONC, said this is a difficult issue because neighborhood council areas are so diverse in terms of income levels, and it can be difficult to figure out where to start.

“But we’re almost at a point that if we don’t start, then the same problems occur and we still have inequities in our community because we can’t make up our mind how we want to do it,” Atkinson said.

Atkinson said that population needs to be considered.

“It’s not fair that a little neighborhood council that represents 10,000 people gets the same amount of money as a neighborhood council that represents 30,000 people in a poverty area,” Atkinson said.

Atkinson said that the neighborhood council system is a good place to experiment on how to solve problems of inequity, and that she was disappointed some neighborhood councils wanted to fight for their funding instead of the overall good.

Atkinson said that councils donating money to other organizations is a form of outreach.

“A neighborhood council should keep their money and it should be for what they do, and for how they promote themselves,” Atkinson said. “But a lot of neighborhood councils promote themselves through working and giving out NPGs.”

The idea for equitable funding was brought up before, Regalado said at the Sept. 2 meeting of the Harbor Alliance of Neighborhood Councils. Previously, BONC had a working group trying to decide on a formula for how the funding would be distributed. The working group came up with four different formulas, but it ultimately went nowhere, Regalado said.

“It really needs to be thought out a whole lot better,” Regalado said. “I’m not sure that the … desire to come up with a formula is going to be that easy, no easier than it was when it was first brought up.”

Bob Gelfand, board member of Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council, said the initial reason for equitable funding was because of the creation of Herman Neighborhood Council, which has about 4,000 stakeholders. It receives the same amount of funding as Wilshire Center Koreatown Neighborhood Council, which has about 100,000 stakeholders.

“The fact that BONC can’t figure out that there’s something inequitable about this is a little bothersome to me,” Gelfand said.

Gelfand attended several meetings of the working group and described it as a “total joke.”

“They went on for like eight or nine meetings,” Gelfand said. “[They] couldn’t develop the intestinal fortitude to just come up with a simple formula.”

Gelfand argued that the only thing that should be considered is how many people live in the area each council represents.

“BONC was never willing to make a decision,” Gelfand said. “I doubt that they will make a decision now.”