Neighborhood Council members from across Los Angeles gathered at City Hall on Saturday, Sept. 27, for a day of workshops, networking and policy discussions, but many left wondering: Where were the city’s elected officials?
While Mayor Karen Bass made a brief lunchtime appearance at Congress of Neighborhoods, and Councilmember Tim McOsker participated in one of its session on charter reform, many attendees said they were disappointed by the limited presence from other City Council offices at the Congress of Neighborhoods. Some said they felt overlooked, particularly after a year of contentious budget debates and concerns over the city’s responsiveness to neighborhood priorities.
“Where are they at?” asked Moy Valdez, a member of the Olivia Mitchell L.A. City Youth Council. “ This is our community, this is our council, these are the people that actually represent us, and are close to our community. Why can’t they dish out a little bit of their time to come help us today?”
In a statement after the event, the Mayor’s office said Bass “spoke at the Congress of Neighborhoods this weekend where she expressed her support for the work Neighborhood Councils engage in to advocate for their communities.”
The statement added that Bass also attended the 2024 Congress and, with major international events approaching, hopes to “further collaborate with Neighborhood Councils across the city to ensure communities can benefit economically from these events.”
Councilmember Tim McOsker — whose District 15 stretches from Watts to the Port of Los Angeles and includes San Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor City and Harbor Gateway — was the only City Council member to participate in a workshop at this year’s Congress of Neighborhoods. He joined an afternoon session on charter reform and said he felt it was important to hear directly from Neighborhood Council members.
“Personally, I think it’s very important for me to come to hear the issues, to hear from the practitioners as to what the issues are that they are facing and what they would like to see in charter reform,” McOsker said.
He added that his perspective would help inform future recommendations to the city’s Charter Reform Commission, and that it was useful for him to focus specifically on the Neighborhood Council system, which, based on what he heard at the event, “it’s not meeting its potential.”
City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who served as a keynote speaker along with Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman and senior officials from emergency response and public health agencies, praised the dedication of Neighborhood Councilmembers.
“It’s important to be here today at the Congress of Neighborhoods because these are the folks who are taking time out of their life to voluntarily get involved in local government,” he said.
Held each fall, the Congress is the largest citywide gathering of LA’s 99 Neighborhood Councils. Now in its 15th year, the event drew about 500 participants and featured sessions on the city budget, homelessness policy, community safety and proposed charter reforms.
But beneath the celebratory tone, several attendees said the event also highlighted a growing disconnect between Neighborhood Councils and city leadership — particularly as Los Angeles considers sweeping changes to its governing structure.
“It’s the day-to-day,” said Heath Kline, who serves on the Woodland Hills Warner Center Neighborhood Council. “Do they return phone calls? Does their staff return phone calls to Neighborhood Council board members that are bringing a community problem to them? Do they engage? Do they organize?”
That level of engagement, Kline said, often depends on where a councilmember is in their election cycle, and whether they’re focused on holding their seat or seeking higher office.
Council offices explain their absences
Some council offices, however, told SCNG they did not attend the Congress because they hadn’t received invitations — or had prior obligations.
Gabriel Avalos, a spokesperson for Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who represents parts of northeast San Fernando Valley, said the office “did not receive an invite.”
Others pointed to scheduling conflicts with city-led events that took place the same day.
Councilmember Adrin Nazarian, who represents parts of the East San Fernando Valley, spent Saturday participating in the city’s “Shine LA Day” cleanup alongside constituents and Neighborhood Council members, according to his spokesperson Hugh Esten.
“The Councilmember spent the day in his district, with constituents and Neighborhood Councilmembers, picking up trash and cleaning up parkways and sidewalks,” Esten said. “All Neighborhood Council members were invited to participate in the Mayor’s Shine LA Day.”
Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who represents much of the West San Fernando Valley, also cited district events that day and highlighted his office’s ongoing engagement with Neighborhood Councils.
“My staff regularly participates in practically every Neighborhood Council meeting in the district and we are regularly working with them on a wide range of community projects,” Blumenfield said in a statement. “Our door is always open to members of our Neighborhood Council’s.”
His office also said it did not receive a formal invite to this year’s event.
Councilmember John Lee, who represents the Northwest San Fernando Valley and also appeared at Shine LA Day events, echoed similar sentiments through a spokesperson.
“Councilmember Lee has long been a strong supporter of the Neighborhood Council system, and has a good working relationship with the nine Neighborhood Councils serving the communities of Council District 12,” said spokesperson Roger Quintanilla.
The councilmember “makes it a priority” to attend as many board meetings as possible himself and ensures a staff is present at every Neighborhood Council meeting across the district, he added.
While staff from Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez’s office led a workshop at the Congress titled “Know Your Rights: Protecting Immigrant Communities in Los Angeles”, a spokesperson said the council member himself, who represents portions of Central and Northeast LA, was unable to attend.
Organizers: only selected officials invited
The absence of most City Council offices raised eyebrows, but organizers said there was a reason.
Formal speaking invitations were only extended to Bass, Mejia and Hochman due to time and space constraints, said Daniel A. Perez, chair of the Los Angeles Congress of Neighborhoods Planning Committee.
“It depends on how we do the program. One year, we invited all the council members to lunch, to sit and network with everyone. Some year we’ll invite the Council President to represent the (City) Council,” Perez said. “But this year, we did not invite the council members to give keynotes.”
Each year’s speaker lineup, he added, is shaped by a new planning committee with its own priorities.
Still, Perez said elected officials are always welcome — even if not formally invited to speak.
“I’ll speak for myself, I don’t think we would ever turn a council member away from participating,” Perez said. “We just have such limited speaking slots that we might say, ‘Hey, you’re of course welcome to attend, we can’t offer you a keynote spot, but we’d love to have you maybe come meet and greet at breakfast, or come and sit and converse with people at lunch.’”
He also noted this year’s scheduling conflict with Shine LA community cleanup, a monthly beautification effort launched by the Mayor’s Office in April. Shine LA is held on the fourth Saturday of each month, while the Congress has long been scheduled for the fourth Saturday in September. This year, the two events coincided.
Still, Perez said organizers worked with the mayor’s team to coordinate her availability, and Bass was able to attend during the lunch break.
“We’re all very proud of how this year turned out,” Perez said, citing strong attendance, robust workshops and a packed agenda.
But some members of the planning committee said the lack of elected representation shouldn’t be brushed off.
“I wish that next year we are going to have a different communication approach — and actually (require) them to come to the Congress,” said Mihran Kalaydjian, a member of the Congress planning committee. “We need to see all our council members, 15 of them, attending the Congress, engaged and participate in the conversation.”
Kalaydjian said this year’s Congress was widely promoted on social media and across the Neighborhood Council system. While he was glad Mayor Bass made a surprise lunchtime appearance, he had hoped she would open the event. Instead, a pre-recorded video message from the mayor was played during the morning’s opening session.
“Personally, and I expect as an advocate in the community, my mayor should have shown up to the opening and made her opening remarks,” he said.
Long standing tensions and calls for reform
The absence of elected officials, or even staff representatives, didn’t just sting. For many attendees, it reinforced longstanding frustrations with the power imbalance they see between City Hall and the Neighborhood Council system.
Neighborhood Councils were created in 1999 as part of the city’s response to a growing secession movement in the San Fernando Valley. At the time, many Valley residents felt disconnected from Los Angeles’ central government and pushed to break away and create a new city in the Valley. The secession ultimately failed in 2002, when two-thirds of citywide voters rejected the proposal — but a narrow majority of Valley voters supported it.
In an effort to address those concerns, the city established Neighborhood Councils to give Angelenos a greater voice in local governance. Today, there are 99 Neighborhood Councils across Los Angeles, each tasked with advising the City Council on matters ranging from housing developments and infrastructure to public safety and city services.
But despite that mandate, many Neighborhood Council members said their influence is often symbolic.
“I’ll just speak for myself. It appears that we are advisory, but we’re having rules imposed on us as if we are consequential,” said Quintus Jett, president of the West Adams Neighborhood Council. “Like, ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do this, you can’t do this’… Tell that to the City Council.”
He said the imbalance reflects a broader issue of how power operates in L.A.’s government. “Structurally, the mayor does not have much power in the city of L.A. … The City Council runs everything.”
Neighborhood Council members have limited influence over final City Council votes. Even when their boards adopt official positions through Community Impact Statements, the input is advisory only. Funding has also declined sharply over time. When the system was first created, each council received $50,000 annually. That number dropped to $32,000 in recent years, and was cut again this year to just $25,000 per council, despite rising needs in many communities.
“It’s outrageous to me that even though we’re the lowest level of government, we’re elected — and that a political appointee can censure us, decertify us, or remove a board member,” said Tess Taylor, president of the Greater Toluca Lake Neighborhood Council, during the charter reform workshop, drawing applause from fellow attendees. “That is outrageous. It’s unheard of.”
Neighborhood Council board members can be formally censured or removed by a vote of their peers for misconduct, including disruptive behavior, bylaw violations, or acting in bad faith. Removal typically requires a prior censure and a two-thirds vote of the sitting board.
Board members facing removal can appeal to the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners — a seven-member panel appointed by Mayor Bass and confirmed by the City Council — which can reinstate them or send the case back for reconsideration. In extreme cases, the commission also has the authority to vacate board seats or decertify an entire Neighborhood Council if it finds a consistent failure to follow city rules and regulations.
Tabitha Butler, a new member of the Westchester/Playa Neighborhood Council attending the Congress for the first time, echoed similar concerns, though she acknowledged the limits of the system by design.
“I think a lot of Neighborhood Councils wish that their voice was more closely listened to,” she said. “At the end of the day, Neighborhood Councils were created to be advisory. So we are not calling the shots. We are advising the (City) Council based on what our neighborhood thinks. … It is important to listen to the Neighborhood Councils, but we also have to recognize that the elected officials that are in those positions — they ultimately get the final say.”
A push to strengthen Neighborhood Council rights
During a packed charter reform workshop in the afternoon, attendees overwhelmingly backed a proposal to enshrine a “Neighborhood Council Bill of Rights” into the City Charter — a document that advocates said would safeguard Neighborhood Council independence and formalize their powers.
The proposed provisions include language stating that Neighborhood Councils must “operate as independently as possible of the City’s officials and agencies” and that the “sole authority to censure, suspend, remove, or otherwise discipline a Board member is vested in the Neighborhood Council.”
“The powers of the Neighborhood Councils are very vaguely defined in the Charter,” said Greg Ellis, an attorney and a board member of the Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council, who spoke at the workshop. “That was intended as a good thing, but eventually it’s been used as a way to, I think, limit what we can and can’t do. … Maybe those powers need to be spelled out a little bit more.”
Bob Gelfand, the workshop facilitator who also sits on the Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council, added: “We need to have some ability to negotiate for ourselves in the same way that every city employee negotiates for themselves.”
McOsker, the only City Council member to attend a workshop at this year’s Congress, said he believes Neighborhood Councils deserve real authority — particularly over budgeting and the city’s Capital Improvement Plan.
“I think that the reasons why Neighborhood Councils were left vague … people were afraid of it back then, they were afraid of what it would become,” he said. “And now we know, as we go 25 years in, I think that Neighborhood Councils suffer from all of the things that you guys have just described. … You have all the responsibilities that you’ve described without real authority, and I think this is time for us to take a look at the Neighborhood Council structure, give it real authority.”
City Controller Mejia also voiced support for giving Neighborhood Councils a greater role in city governance, saying elected officials must take the lead in empowering them.
“One way in which Neighborhood Councils could have more say is to include them in the (City) Charter,” he said, suggesting they could be granted a voice in budget decisions or legislation. “But in order to do that … that’s going to take a lot of political will and effort.”
For some, it’s about civic duty
Still, many Neighborhood Council members said they remain committed to serving — regardless of the limitations.
Estrella Dela Rosa, who works in accounting and is the longtime treasurer for the Empowerment Congress Southeast Neighborhood Council which serves parts of Southern Los Angeles, said she got into the system due to the encouragement of her husband.
She was working full-time and wasn’t sure she could commit, but when she realized the Neighborhood Council only met once a month, she volunteered and was eventually appointed treasurer more than a decade ago.
“I like helping people, especially with finances,” she said. “When I came on board, there was a problem, and I helped fix it. I really want to help in that area.”
Howard M. Katchen, who chairs the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council and has attended every Congress since its inception, said he remains hopeful about the power of civic networks — especially through youth engagement and citywide collaboration.
“The Congress has evolved and matured since its beginning and manages to improve year after year in the number of workshops from which to choose to attend,” Katchen said.
He noted that he made valuable contacts this year — including students from Harvard-Westlake’s “Civicate Youth” — and hopes to collaborate with them through his council’s Student Committee.
For longtime participants like Heath Kline of the Woodland Hills Warner Center Neighborhood Council, the limitations of the Neighborhood Council system are clear — but so is the reason to stay involved.
Kline said he sees the role as a vital, if imperfect, link between residents and city government.
“That’s why I’ve served for 23-plus years to bring the voice of my community to City Hall and to bring City Hall’s message to the community,” he said. “We have to try. We have to have more people participating. And the more people that participate, that ever so slightly increases the odds that the City Council will listen.”
He added: “Unfortunately in this city, special interest groups carry the day. … The special interest groups have the conduits of communication to our electeds that the grassroots do not. And that was the purpose of Neighborhood Councils — to be that conduit for the community.”