Mid-City West Disbands Land Use Committee
By Josh Premako, 3/15/2012
Move is Prompted by Discord Among Board Members
The neighborhood council committee that reviews and makes recommendations on land use and development issues was disbanded last week, in the wake of “aggressive and reactionary problems” among board members, according to Sheryl Turner, chair of the Mid-City West Community Council.
The decision to temporarily disband the planning and land use committee was approved during the March 6 meeting of the executive council, Turner said.
The agenda for that meeting included an item referring to “updated additions/deletions and new appointments to all committees.”
“This was precipitated by allegations that members of the committee demonstrated unprofessional conduct during committee meetings,” Turner wrote in a statement Tuesday, “and there were accusations that members of the committee failed to serve the stakeholders in a professional manner.”
She declined to go into specifics of why the committee was disbanded, and said “those issues are pending with the city attorney.”
During Tuesday night’s meeting of the community council, Turner explained that while the 12-member committee has been disbanded, chairman Stan Brent has been retained and will oversee the drafting of a proposal for reforming the committee.
In the meantime, Turner said, the community council board will handle planning and land use issues. She said the process of drafting a reformation proposal will likely take several weeks.
The Mid-City West Community Council is one of 83 certified Los Angeles neighborhood councils. Its 45-member board weighs in on community concerns including renters’ issues, land use and development.
At the onset of Tuesday’s council meeting, Turner described community stakeholders and project applicants as “continually whipped around like badminton pucks among the strong personalities and personal agendas of certain members.”
Last week’s decision came as a surprise, said Jim O’Sullivan, president of the Miracle Mile Residential Association.
O’Sullivan said he’s seen tempers flare at past meetings, but nothing that he believed called for the decision to disband the land use committee.
“It’s being described as a dysfunctional committee,” he said. “For years, people compromised. And somehow, now that’s gone.”
Conversely, Jeff Jacobberger, first vice chair of the executive council, said the move to disband the committee was a good decision.
“There is kind of a core group of people who were on that land use committee who feel that residents are the only kind of legitimate voice for the neighborhood,” he said. “They sort of think that any personal attacks on people who disagree with them are basically acceptable.”
Tags | Mid-City West Community Council PLanning and Land Use Committee disbanded
I believe that any Mid-City West Board Member who wants to serve on the Land Use Committee (“PLUC”) should be able to do so.
At an Executive Committee meeting on February 7, PLUC chair Stan Brent took offense at the idea that he was holding a coveted empty seat on the PLUC committee for his wife, stating that she had no interest in being on PLUC.
We’ll see, since MCWCC Chair Sheryl Turner has disturbingly used the recent misconduct as an excuse/opportunity to reduce the size of the committee and allow it to be reformulated by Mr. Brent using one primary factor: whether the prospective member works or has worked in the field of planning and land use…the intent is clear: to stack the committee with pro-developer, pro-applicant, and pro-mansionization members even more so than it already is. The irony is that after Ms. Turner told us that the City gave her a choice between a Temporary Restraining Order (related to yet another workplace violence complaint, this time regarding the recent PLUC meeting) or Decertification of Mid-City West (oh, how far we have fallen since she became chair!), she chose a 3rd option, supposedly “suspending” the committee (although there is no mention of that in any agenda or on the MCW website) and leaving the same chair who has contributed to a disfunctional committee to solve the problem, and rewarding the perpetrator(s) of misconduct with remaining on the committee, while punishing the victim(s) of misconduct (with removal from the committee).
On August 2, 2010, I filed a grievance against a member of the Executive Committee, who has since resigned from the Board. This was while Mr. Jacobberger was Chair (he is now 1st Vice Chair). The committee only had 1 female member, and Mr. Jacobberger, through his “puppet” PLUC chair Michael Barba, was trying to micromanage the size and membership of the PLUC committee. 17 board members picked PLUC as their first choice right after an election of our community run by the City Clerk. New board members were initally not allowed onto the PLUC committee after they had just won a Democratic election; they included Elliot Zemel, Yudi Machado (who had served on PLUC when she was previously on the board long ago), Rosalie Wayne (who had served on PLUC when she was previously on the board long
ago), my mother Eva (who was an Architect for many years and thereafter has had decades of Real Estate experience), and Aaron Tomaszewski. In other words there was discrimination against new board members…why? Because Mr. Jacobberger wanted to ensure a certain predictable result coming out of the PLUC committee for each matter…if he could, he would have chosen the new board members that shared his views and removed the old ones who didn’t, but that would have been too obvious. He chose the chair Mr. Barba, just as he vetted Mr. Brent, and the Executive Committee approved those 2 men, who knew/know that they can be removed if they go against Mr. Jacobberger, formerly Chair of the Board, now Ms. Turner’s “consigliere”.
We protested (me and the 3 women)…we attended an Executive Cmttee meeting (2 of the 5 members supported allowing all 17 on; Ms. Turner, who was Treasurer at the time, could have made it a reality, but didn’t)…the men who had been excluded thusfar were not present. Barba was present, too. After making it abundantly clear that we would keep fighting, the Executive Committee allowed Machado, Wayne, Seamans, and Zemel onto the PLUC committee, but not Eva. I should mention that there was a “sham” application process, wherein all 17 board members had to answer a detailed questionairre to make the process more objective and “fair”…the questionairres were completely ignored (Stan Brent was the ONLY one that did not turn one in; ironically, he is now chair of the committee) and Barba insisted that all the then current members of PLUC be automatically allowed to continue on.
I filed a grievance for gender discrimination and unfairness against one of the members of the Executive Cmttee (you can’t file one for discrimination against New board members)…I filed against Jacobberger’s “enforcer” (my verbiage)…people asked me why I didn’t file my grievance against Jacobberger instead.
On November 1, 2011, I did file an airtight grievance against Mr. Jacobberger for providing just over 30 Hours Notice for two highly
controversial items of interest to the Public, to contribute the remaining taxpayer-underfunded
MCWCC yearly funds, the amount of which was NOT included in the Agenda Item Description,
to the Congress of Neighborhoods, and to weigh-in on the boundaries for New Assembly,
State Senate, and Congressional Districts, which would affect who will represent us in the State
Assembly, State Senate, and US House of Representatives. Ms. Turner has DESTROYED our grievance process. She immediately “bounced” my airtight grievance and didn’t allow it to be heard by the Board, while showing her deep misunderstanding of our former bylaws (we have new bylaws that allow for a mere 24 hrs notice to the public for so-called Special Meetings, something that Jacobberger wanted).
Getting back to my first grievance, the 3 women were first offered (by Barba at the meeting, which could have easily been Jacobberger’s idea since he didn’t oppose that concept) to be on the PLUC committee withOUT voting rights, and doing the boring chores that the men did not want to do…can you imagine such a thing in THIS DAY AND AGE !!! They, of course, angrily refused.
At this time it should be noted that nobody disagreed with the FACTS of EITHER of my grievances.
So, what happened with my 1st grievance? It was heard by the Bylaws/Grievance committee. Unfortunately the committee did not have the courage to find the process to be unfair…it’s politix; they didn’t want to rock the boat. The full board also got a shot (I used a dual-track process)…and nobody supported the victim (except me, of course). Eva subsequently left the Board.
Oh, and at the Board meeting, the “defendant” (my verbiage) and I tried to end the grievance in a civil manner (in fact, we had dealt with each other civally throughout and thereafter), but Mr. Brent had to make an outburst (paraphrasing): “Good, because this grievance was frivolous !”…of course, that caused me to respond…Mr. Brent also showed poor judgement on other occasions: when he bashed the community residents who opposed the Olympia Project (which was before the PLUC committee) in the Beverly Press; when he spoke at length (10 min?) in favor of mansionization from the board table, after he had been advised not to do so, and considering it will be taken-up by the committee he chairs and he will likely have to RECUSE himself; when he didn’t disclose to the board that Ms.
Rothschild was his wife when she was running to be appointed by the board to her seat.
Mr. Brent has said in the past that he will only accept one more member onto his committee, b/c otherwise it would be “unwieldy”. No, I think it’s because he’s following the desires of Mr. Jacobberger. I have TWO questions: (1) how can Ms. Turner and Mr. Jacobberger continue to only allow little or no public comment to the Full Board on Land Use items after Mr. Jacobberger has directly or indirectly micromanaged the membership and size of PLUC for a long time now (Ms. Turner seems to suffer from “Selective Short-Term Memory Loss”…the Board already VOTED to REPUDIATE her Anti-Stakeholder and Unfair
policy…It’s not right to exclude stakeholder participation on matters they are passionate about…this is a NEIGHBORHOOD Council, NOT the LA City Council) and (2) for how many consecutive years has Mr. Jacobberger served on PLUC and has he EVER RECUSED himself in all those years (I’ve asked him multiple times to recuse himself and he has not obliged)?
I FINALLY got the Public Records I requested after Ms. Turner kept the Secretary out of the loop and then told him not to give them to me…she wanted me to meet her and have a confrontation…I refused. There was no reason for her to push aside the Secretary, but she’s done it often before, so it’s not a surprise. The Secretary finally realized that he had to follow CA LAW and the City Attorney opinion, NOT Ms. Turner, our reckless and bullying “Queen of Mean” Chair, who spent an hour-long meeting plotting against fellow board members and a TWO HOUR long meeting plotting against stakeholders, and who chose unilaterally, outside of Executive Committee, a MAJOR CITY HALL LOBBYIST to be our new ELECTION CHAIR, while pushing aside our old one, who has done a fantastic job for years…gee, do you think the community thinks the Election is about to be RIGGED ???
You know, as an educator (math), I spend time teaching children how to recognize basic patterns. You would think that the leadership of Mid-City West would realize that they are only making things worse.
Yuval Kremer
Former HomeOwners Rep, MCWCC
Former Zone 3 Rep, MCWCC (Representing Zone 3 Renters, too)
Former Candidate for LA City Council District 5 (CD5)
Croft Ave Resident
The disbanding of MCWCC PLUC was just plain wrong!
As a participating stakeholder, I’ve observed that most PLUC members want to hear from the community, the project principals, as well as have the opportunity to digest the various required plans and reports, prior to coming to a conclusion. They attempt to provide the process of Participatory Democracy, which at the neighborhood level, seeks to discover and amplify the varied voices of the community.
The problem occurred when a 5-4 majority of the PLUC wanted to postpone voting on a project, requiring additional time to review pertinent documents. This act sparked an inappropriate response, initiated by the Vice Chair of MCW Executive Council, Jeff Jacobberger, towards the Vice Chair of PLUC. This is directly antithetical to the MCWCC Code of Civility, which all members agree to abide by. The action was reported and is under investigation.
Meanwhile, the “problem” within MCWCC is at the core of the council, as it still remains a toxic environment.
The failure of MCWCC leadership, and the city, to deal with the ”problem”, lead to the wrongful disbanding of MCW PLUC and possible discrimination against others.
Question: How can a council function when a vital problem within the council is pretty much controlled by the problem?
Answer: It can’t – anyone who attends a PLUC meeting or a Board meeting, for that matter, has one word to describe it = dysfunctional.
If PLUC is reconstituted with Mr. Jacobberger on the committee, the problems will be exacerbated, not solved.
LWC LA BREA-WILLOUGHBY COALITION Community Adovacy since 1986
15 March 2012
RE: LA BREA PRESS GRAVELY ERRONEOUS REPORT OF MCW PLUC
The La Brea Press’s (this date) one-sided–and gravely erroneous–article on the Mid City West (“MCW) Planning and Land Use Committee (“PLUC”): “Disbanded,” with subtitle: “Move Prompted by Discord Among Board Members” must be immediately corrected.
This President of the La Brea Willoughby Coalition Neighborhood Association (“LWC”) and that body’s liaison to MCW and other Neighborhood Councils attended the MCW PLUC on 28 February, the MCW Executive Committee (“EC”) on 5 March, and the MCW board meetings on 13 March.
We welcome points, [LWC] presented at the board meeting and in other venues, to be more compre- hensively investigated and reported by the La Brea Press for more substantive information.
The attached reports point to multiple abusive behaviors of JEFF JACOBBERGER, a PLUC, also EC and board, member as the core perpetrator and whose violent actions precipitated the EC “dis- banding” the PLUC [membership]. Voting for and supporting that action were Jacobberger, Sheryl- Turner, board president, and Stan Brent, PLUC chair. These are the vary parties in the attached re- ports and whose inactions enable these behaviors as in the LWC presentation to the board on 13 March
At the board meeting, this citizen identified and defined terms: •“Bully/abusive behaviors,” patterns, repeated, escalating violent incidents;
•“Conspiracy of Silence,” denial, minimization, and blame others accepts/justifies acts, and
•“Wag the Dog,” issues/blame are diverted rather than to get to/resolve real/core causes.
The board was directed by Saunders to the attached reports with examples of the above terms, espe- cially the rationalizations and actions of Turner throughout these incidents to protect and enable Ja- cobberger. At the 5 March EC meeting, diversion resulted in blaming, then “disbanding” the PLUC membership. This was in the bare face and facts of Jacobberger’s open attack on a PLUC member at the 28 February meeting. Though witnessed by the body and stakeholders in attendance, and it was subsequently reported to the City Attorney’s and DONE offices, Jacobberger’s actions are now characterized by “discord among board members” and his claim to blame “opposition stakeholders” is patently upheld in the La Brea Press article.
In the best interest of the community and La Brea Press’s credibility, please give further examination of all facts from all points of view
.
Sincerely,
Lucille Saunders,
President, La Brea Willoughby Coalition
843 North Detroit Street Los Angeles, California 90046
Phone: 323.939.2745 Email: labreacoalition@gmail.com