University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Community, empowerment, and the city: sources of capacity in local governance

(USC Thesis Other)

Community, empowerment, and the city: sources of capacity in local governance

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content COMMUNITY, EMPOWERMENT, AND THE CITY: SOURCES
OF CAPACITY IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT
by
Alicia Kitsuse
____________________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(POLICY, PLANNING, AND DEVELOPMENT)
August 2010
Copyright 2010 Alicia Kitsuse

ii
DEDICATION
For Dad and, especially, Mom, and for Jay,
who made it all possible down the stretch.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The completion of this work offers evidence of the generosity of a great many
people. Foremost among them are the beloved members of my inner circle—Jim,
Christopher, Mom, and Lucrecia—whose patience, encouragement, and moral, financial,
and child care support over many years made the doctoral process possible. I am grateful
to them all.
Thanks are also due to the extended members of my superb doctoral committee:
David Sloane for guiding me forward from the very beginning, Chris Weare for his ready
advice on issues large and small, Janelle Wong, for so graciously and constructively
pinch-hitting as my outside member, Nina Eliasoph for urging me on and staying in
touch, and, especially Juliet Musso, my extraordinary dissertation advisor and friend,
whose wise counsel and clarity of thought and purpose kept me safely on track and under
whose guidance it has been both a privilege and a pleasure to work.
I am also indebted to the many interview respondents in the Boyle Heights, East
Hollywood, and Park Mesa Heights communities who contributed their time and insight
to the creation of the case studies that form the core of this study. Without the favor of
their assistance this dissertation would not have been possible. I sincerely thank them for
their help.

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication ii
Acknowledgments iii
List of Tables vii
List of Figures viii
Abstract ix
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Participatory Governance and the Los Angeles Experiment 5
Two Theories of Community Change 12
Community Building: Capacity at the Grassroots 13
The community capacity building model 21
Criticisms of capacity building 24
Summary 26
Accountable Autonomy in Participatory Governance: Creating
Community Capacity through the Institutional Environment 27
Accountable autonomy 32
Criticisms of participatory governance 36
Summary 40
Discussion and Research Questions 40
Organization of the Dissertation 44
Chapter 2: Governance Capacity and the Los Angeles Experiment 46
The Charter Reform Process 50
The Neighborhood Council Plan 55
The Implementation Process 60
Institutional Supports 61
Financial support 61
Training support 62
Elections 66
Capacity at the Grassroots 67
Cognitive capacity 67
Leadership capacity 69
Representational capacity 73
Integrative capacity 82
Political capacity 83
Production capacity 91
Development capacity 92
Communicative capacity 93

v
Discussion 96
Capacity and Equity 98
Next Step 100
Chapter 3: Research Design and Methodology 101
Case Study Design and Selection 103
Case Study Councils as Compared to the Neighborhood Council System 110
Sources of Evidence and Data Collection 112
Interviews 112
Direct Observations 115
Windshield Surveys 117
Documentation 118
Additional Sources of Evidence 119
Data Organization 121
Case Analysis 122
Quality Control 122
Chapter 4: Case Studies 124
The Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council 126
A “New Day” in Community Governance 126
Collaboration and Conflict in the Leadership Realm 136
A History of Neglect, a Vehicle for Voice 146
A Push-Pull Process of Development 152
Community building 152
Co-production 154
Planning 155
Discussion and Summary 157
East Hollywood Neighborhood Council 159
“Crazy Diversity” in an Emerging Community 159
Organizing and Representation: “Doing it Right” Over Time 163
Forging Connections, Developing Identity 172
Community building 172
Physical planning 179
Leadership “In Touch With the Moment of the Day” 182
Energy, youth, and commitment 182
Civility and deliberation 186
Discussion and Summary 189
Park Mesa Heights Community Council 191
The Comeback Kids 191
Leadership: A Strong Core and a Deep Bench 194
A Broad Development Agenda 197
Organizational networking 197
Co-production and stakeholder advocacy 200
Planning 206
Community organizing and outreach 210
Community building 211

vi
Representational Challenges: Engaging Diversity,
Gaining Involvement 214
Discussion and Summary 218
Chapter 5: Findings 221
Conditioning Influences 222
Political and Civic Culture 222
Safety 224
Residential Stability 225
Density of Acquaintance 226
Race and Class Dynamics 227
Distribution of Power and Resources 228
Density of Organizational Affiliation 229
Summary 229
Community-Based Capacity-Building Approaches 230
Leadership Development 231
Organizational Development 236
Organizing and Mobilization 239
Organizational Collaboration 244
Summary 246
Capacity Building and Accountable Autonomy 249
Autonomy 251
Accountability 254
Scope 255
Deliberation 258
Institutional Supports 261
Networking Across Neighborhoods 263
Redistribution of Resources 264
Summary 265
Implications for Theory: Joining Community Assets and Institutional
Design 265
Theory Building: Eliminations and Adaptations 268
The Principles of Supported Self-Determination 271
Empowered Leadership 271
Broadly Autonomous Governance Bodies 275
Representative Accountability 277
Enhancing the Communicative Sphere 280
Chapter Conclusion 283
References 285
Appendices
Appendix A: Case Selection Candidates 293
Appendix B: Case Selection: Other Considerations 299
Appendix C: Interview Protocol 303

vii
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Neighborhood Council Empowerment Innovations 10
Table 2: Case Study and Neighborhood Council System Comparison 111
Table 3: Interview Respondents by Council Affiliation and Stakeholder Status 113
Table 4: Case Study Observations 116
Table 5: Sources of Documentation 120
Table A1: Variables for Case Selection Candidates (Boyle Heights to
Empowerment Congress Central) 293
Table A2: Variables for Case Selection Candidates (Empowerment Congress
North to Park Mesa Heights) 295
Table A3: Variables for Case Selection Candidates (Pico Union to Wilshire
Center/Koreatown) 297

viii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Community capacity-building model 23
Figure 2: Boundaries of Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council area 127
Figure 3: Boundaries of East Hollywood Neighborhood Council area 161
Figure 4: Boundaries of Park Mesa Heights Community Council area 192

ix
ABSTRACT
This study investigates the factors that generate local-level capacity for
community governance in low-material-resource communities. Two current models of
capacity building suggest competing ways in which community governance capacity may
be built, whether through the “bottom-up” interaction of indigenous local resources with
interventions designed to enhance those resources or through a “top-down” approach in
which local capacity is instantiated through the design of state-centered citizen
participation programs. Drawing on the “hybrid” example of the City of Los Angeles
neighborhood council system, which combines an institutional framework of local
governance with reliance on indigenous resources, the study engages a micro-level
comparison of the means and mechanisms that produce governance capacity within three
neighborhood council organizations, using the competing frameworks to structure
analysis. The investigation concludes by offering a model of supported self-
determination, which suggests how top-down and bottom-up approaches to capacity
building may be reconciled.

1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Local communities today occupy a central but unenviable position at the cross-
roads of a significantly weakened system of urban production. On one hand, public
bureaucracies struggling to provide localities with even basic goods and services
increasingly look to communities as potential partners in devising and implementing
innovative and workable solutions to difficult local problems. On the other, communities
themselves face complex on-the-ground demands for social and physical development as
markets routinely subordinate community building to the maximizing demands of capital.
As a result, communities find themselves responsible for a dizzying and seemingly
expanding array of public and private functions.
The challenges of local governance are particularly complex in poor communities.
In addition to having needs that far outstrip governments’ ability or will for social
provision, poor localities may face near-total market failure, as well as attempts by
outside interests to impose development schemes inconsistent with the existing
community’s well-being. The result is often a patchwork landscape of programs and
services provided through a nominally coordinated array of nonprofit entities that are
themselves dependent on often tenuous streams of funding from government, philan-
thropies, and private donors.
The manner in which local capacity for community governance and development
is organized and expanded within poor communities is the topic of this study. Commun-
ity capacity is both the mechanism and the measure of a community’s ability to make
desired change happen. In affluent and better-educated neighborhoods, the process of

2
mobilizing capacity can seem to occur almost effortlessly, as individuals and groups
marshal their personal and collective resources and networks to address perceived threats
and needs. However, in poor neighborhoods, where elements of capacity may be widely
dispersed across the community (Chaskin, Brown, Venkatesh, & Vidal, 2001) or non-
existent, and where problems are many and deeply entrenched, capacity for local change
must often be built deliberately, over time.
Recent models from the literatures on community development and participatory
governance offer alternative theories on the nature and development of community
capacity in distressed neighborhoods. Theorizing from the current of the community-
building movement within the field of community development, Chaskin (2001; Chaskin
et al., 2001) views capacity as an indigenous property of communities, inherent in the
web of personal and organizational assets within the locality as they relate interactively
with conditioning forces and strategic interventions. By contrast, Fung’s (2004) theory of
“accountable autonomy” posits local capacity as a function of a carefully designed and
implemented institutional architecture of local participatory governance, in which local
groups are empowered to take action through state-centered forums for citizen participa-
tion in public problem solving. Taken together, these theories suggest that thoughtful
exploration of the phenomenon of local community capacity should consider both the
top-down effects of the institutional environment that supports and shapes local places
and the complex weave of factors that determine and sustain local communities from the
bottom up.
The City of Los Angeles (the City) provides a compelling context in which to
explore the marriage of these two frameworks. Since 1999, Los Angeles has been

3
charting a course of participatory governance reform based on a citywide system of
neighborhood councils. The charter amendment that created the system promised to
empower localities by giving them an official voice within city decision making and
making government more responsive to local needs. The resulting system occupies a
distinct middle ground between the arrangements of community building and accountable
autonomy. Neighborhood councils are formally incorporated into the City’s governance
apparatus, yet have no formal governance authority and are encouraged to operate as
independently as possible, with little support from the City. This institutional indetermi-
nacy invites a textured analysis of the capacity manifested within the system at the
grassroots.
The study posits capacity within the Los Angeles system as a paradox. Although
neighborhood councils have been undercut by lack of actual decision-making powers on
the part of neighborhood councils, tokenistic political and administrative support for the
participatory aspects of reform, and underfunding of the city department that oversees the
system (Musso & Kitsuse, 2002; Musso, Weare, Elliot, Kitsuse, & Shiau, 2007; Musso,
Weare, & Cooper, 2002), the system has nevertheless inspired and sustained broad
organizational capacity at the grassroots. Ten years into the reform, the system comprises
88 certified councils operating in virtually every part of the city, a notable achievement
within a city as large and diverse as Los Angeles.
Although the neighborhood council reform was structured to produce governance
capacity in the form of representative participatory bodies, many neighborhood councils
have developed capacity around community development functions. In addition to advisi-
ng government on matters of local importance, neighborhood councils initiate planning

4
and beautification projects, hold community-building events, sponsor the activities of
other community-based organizations, and mobilize to advocate on behalf of their
community in the face of threats or opportunities. These contradictions raise questions:
What factors explain the development of neighborhood-level capacity despite evident
obstacles? What factors support community development capacity in the absence of
structural determinants for its creation?
To answer these questions, the study looks to examples of neighborhood councils
operating successfully in communities with low levels of material resources. Taking a
pragmatic, mixed-methods approach, the study combines original case studies of three
neighborhood councils with qualitative and quantitative data on the Los Angeles
neighborhood council system available through the University of Southern California
(USC) Civic Engagement Initiative.
The study is exploratory in nature, with the purpose of informing theory develop-
ment. In addition, the investigation is intended to fulfill the practical purpose of identify-
ing the elements of community capacity that support successful neighborhood govern-
ance practices and the conditions under which these practices might be replicated. The
study also is designed to fill a gap in research on community-level governance, which has
tended to focus on administratively driven neighborhood change efforts rather than
voluntary groups that work in a relatively self-organizing and self-managing fashion.
This chapter proceeds in the following manner. In order to contextualize the study
of community governance within the framework of the Los Angeles neighborhood
council system, the following section offers a preliminary discussion of the origin and
nature of the system and reports findings on the state of community capacity across the

5
council system. This subject is treated at greater length in Chapter 2. The chapter then
contextualizes Chaskin’s and Fung’s contributions to the understanding of community
capacity by looking at the ways in which local capacity has been conceptualized within
the literatures of community development and participatory governance. Following that, a
comparative discussion of the two models attempts to tease out the methodological
implications of their underlying tensions for a field study of community capacity in the
Los Angeles context. The chapter concludes with a set of research questions that help to
operationalize the investigation of local governance capacity.
Participatory Governance and the Los Angeles Experiment
The current landscape of community governance in the United States is the result
of a faceted interplay of federal policy, social movements, broad societal and global
trends, and evolving experimentation with citizen involvement in direct democracy over
the past 40 years. The dawn of contemporary citizen participation practices convention-
ally dates to the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 and the creation of “community
action agencies” designed to put federal resources under the control of poor communities
to empower community change. This initial devolution of responsibility (if not always
power) to neighborhoods has been reinforced over time by multiple social movements
oriented to “community control” by citizens (Boyte, 1980; DeFillipis, 2008); the
continued decentralization and streamlining of federal government by Republican
administrations under a doctrine of “New Federalism” (Conlan, 1998; O’Connor, 1999)
and the increasing administrative complexities produced by globalization and the con-
comitant rise of “governance” as a form of development and service provision (Kettl,
2000; Savitch, 1998).

6
The 1970s were notable for the proliferation of municipally sponsored, com-
munity-based participatory governance programs, which arose in response to varying
political and ideological pressures for greater democratic participation by average
citizens. These systems stood in for Community Action and Model City programs that
were established and then undermined in poor neighborhoods during the War on Poverty,
while also attending to rising populist demands in middle-class neighborhoods for local
control over development (Berry, Portney, & Thomson, 1993; Boyte, 1980; DeFillipis,
2008). In both cases, community-based governance councils represented an affirmation
of beliefs that are deeply inscribed in the American value system: the value of the local
community as a meaningful place of social reproduction (DeFillipis, 2008) and the ability
of the people whose lives are embedded in that community to have a say in treating the
forces that shape it.
More recently, neighborhood governance systems have emerged as features of
broader agendas for governance reform, as in the case of Los Angeles. Los Angeles
instituted its neighborhood council system in the late 1990s as part of a charter reform
movement driven by threats of secession from the San Fernando Valley and other key
parts of the city and during a notably widespread wave of public and scholarly concern
with shoring up civic institutions as a safeguard against societal dissolution (what might
be termed Putnam’s “Bowling Alone” effect [Putnam, 1995, 2000]). Within a fragmented
and increasingly hostile political environment, neighborhood councils were envisioned as
a way to give neighborhoods an official voice at City Hall and make the City’s political
and administrative apparatus more responsive to local needs. In addition to establishing
neighborhood councils, the amended charter called for the establishment of a Department

7
of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), which would guide the development of a
neighborhood council Plan and provide support to the councils, and a Board of Neighbor-
hood Commissioners (BONC) responsible for policy setting and oversight. In an interest-
ing twist, the charter also called for inclusion of the “many diverse interests in communi-
ties”

(City of Los Angeles, 1999, Ordinance #172728, Chapter 28, Article 2, Section 900)
within the councils, which, in addition to precluding political capture of the new councils
by existing community groups, was widely interpreted by neighborhoods as a mandate to
include representation from marginalized groups.
While systems of community governance vary, Berry et al. (1993) suggested that
“strong” systems—those that provide meaningful opportunities for participation, as
assayed by feelings of citizen efficacy, among other measures—share common features.
The Los Angeles system was modeled on such “strong” principles, which included a
design that was citywide in scope, the provision that councils be built around relatively
small, indigenous neighborhoods, and the presence of participatory innovations from the
system’s inception.
The Los Angeles system incorporated from the start a set of political innovations
to improve communications between the City and neighborhoods, as well as bureaucratic
responsiveness, although these have been criticized by researchers as largely tokenistic
(Musso & Kitsuse, 2002; Musso, Weare, et al., 2002). In addition, by virtue of the charter
provisions that created it and the plan for implementing the neighborhood council system
later devised by DONE, the system is characterized by exceptional levels of openness and
autonomy. The inclusive definition of a neighborhood stakeholder as “any individual who
declares a stake in the neighborhood and affirms the factual basis for it” (amended

8
February 20, 2008, per Los Angeles City Council resolution) is designed to promote
diversity in participation and to prevent political capture of councils by organized groups.
Neighborhood councils are also granted broad latitude to define their own governance
structure, choose their own boundaries, and establish their own mission.
The system has built out within a largely self-organizing and self-sustaining
process and today comprises 88 certified councils averaging 39,000 residents. Virtually
every part of the city is represented, arguably a remarkable achievement in a city as large
and diverse as Los Angeles. The neighborhood council system has stimulated widespread
community organizing and the creation of a network of institutionalized organizational
bodies that in theory offer a platform for concerted action toward neighborhood
development.
Nine years into its existence, however, the system has so far fallen short of its
promise of a vibrant, inclusionary program of participatory governance. In their evalu-
ative report of the system based on research initiated at the inception of the system,
Musso et al. (2007) found that participation in neighborhood council activities was
largely limited to elected board members and that the demographic profile of board
members was significantly different from that of the Los Angeles populace at large. Only
42% of boards surveyed in 2006 included regular participation by non-elected stake-
holders in neighborhood council committee activities and, citywide, neighborhood
council meetings were attended by only 22 stakeholders on average. These figures were
slightly lower than findings from a similar survey conducted in 2003, indicating a
possible declining trend in participation as neighborhood councils become more
established.

9
At the same time, neighborhood council boards are overwhelmingly dominated by
affluent, White homeowners, a pattern that intensified slightly from 2003 to 2006. As the
report underscores, these disparities in participation pose challenges to the legitimacy of
the system, given neighborhood councils’ purported role as the official voice of their
communities. As a whole, the neighborhood council system is subject to criticism that it
constitutes yet another inequitable political arrangement, disproportionately distributing
power and development opportunities to well-organized councils with a more privileged
stakeholder base.
Perhaps more indicative of the system’s participatory shortcomings, the City has
yet to create strong channels for neighborhood access to administrative agencies despite
the inclusion of multiple “empowerment innovations” (Musso et al., 2007) in the system
design that target various points of interface between City and citizen (Table 1). Musso et
al. (2007) found that these innovations have been either ignored or implemented in either
a piecemeal or pallid fashion that fails to offer communities meaningful control over the
city’s budgetary or policy direction, or even a local agenda. Not surprisingly, this
research also shows that, while neighborhood councils have established horizontal net-
works of relationships with other councils across the city, vertical relations between
neighborhoods and City officials remain weak.
Musso et al. (2007) also found that neighborhood councils’ capacity to conduct
the business of governance successfully has been hampered by a host of challenges,
including a heavy preoccupation with internal operations at board meetings, internal
discord, difficulties with outreach, and low turnout at elections and meetings. Findings
reported by Berry et al. (1993) on successful participatory governance programs suggest

10
Table 1

Neighborhood Council Empowerment Innovations

Point of interface/participatory target Empowerment innovation

Planning and development Early warning system to provide councils advance
notice about municipal issues that might affect
their community
City services Neighborhood councils can monitor service
delivery and meet periodically with relevant city
officials
Mayor’s office Neighborhood councils can make budget requests
of the mayor in advance of budget planning
City council City council can delegate its hearing authority to
neighborhood councils prior to making decisions
on matters of local concern
Citywide organizing and networking Neighborhood councils can ask for support from
the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment
to arrange Congress of Neighborhood Meetings

that the Los Angeles neighborhood councils’ capacity might be improved with more
structured support from the City. Currently, each certified council receives $50,000 in
annual discretionary funding from the City but receives neither allocated staff support nor
assistance from the City for outreach or organizing. Moreover, leadership and organiza-
tional development training has thus far been limited to issues of narrow operational
importance to the council members (for example, abiding by the Brown Act). The
planned development of a new Neighborhood Leadership Institute, spearheaded by
DONE, may lead to broader and more substantive training of cadres of board members

11
and non-elected stakeholders. However, interviews with DONE Project Coordinators (the
field staff title within DONE) conducted in 2006 by the USC Neighborhood Participation
Project revealed that these coordinators overwhelmingly agreed that existing staffing
within the department was too low to support council activities effectively.
Despite these early and ongoing challenges, neighborhood councils continue to
operate, and in some cases display enough capacity to accomplish desired ends. Surveyed
in 2006, neighborhood council board members identified more than 800 accomplish-
ments by their councils in areas related to land use and transportation, community beauti-
fication, staging community events, safety, assistance to community programs and educa-
tion, environment, and the economy. Citywide, neighborhood councils have also had
limited influence on policy making and service delivery (Musso et al., 2007).
Of particular interest to this study are the records of accomplishment by neighbor-
hood councils in poor communities. In these communities, the barriers to participation
already present in the functioning of the system may be compounded by adverse social
conditions. In many cases, the civic infrastructure in poor communities has virtually
disappeared (Traynor, 2008), and with it the personal and organizational networks that
are theorized to facilitate community action (Putnam, 1993, 1995, 2000). Social trust and
the commitment to act on behalf of the community may be further eroded by fears for
personal safety stemming from violent crime and by high rates of in- and out-migration,
which impede the development of a sense of community. Whereas in affluent communi-
ties, capacity tends to be concentrated in easily identifiable sources, in poor localities
capacity tends to be distributed across the community (Chaskin et al., 2001), making it
harder to locate and engage without thoroughgoing outreach and organizing efforts.

12
The fact that some poor communities have overcome significant odds to achieve
successes leads to the central question of this investigation: What has made these com-
munities successful? Or, to frame the question in terms of community capacity: What
resources were mobilized, through what means, and under what conditions to produce
accomplishment? Embedded in these questions is the expectation that these communities
have important lessons to teach about what constitutes valuable sources of capacity in the
absence of concentrated resources and what works to facilitate the function of capacity
through the vehicle of the neighborhood council within a setting in which civic engage-
ment may be significantly compromised.
Two Theories of Community Change
The theoretic framework for this study employs two competing theories of
community capacity. This section describes how these theories have evolved, by and
large independently of one another, within the traditions of community development and
participatory governance.
This study is located theoretically and empirically at the interstices of two broad
and overlapping bodies of literature that offer contrasting perspectives on the founda-
tions, purposes, and mechanisms for engendering governance capacity and improved
outcomes at the community level. The first perspective on community capacity is rooted
in the history, theories, and practice of urban planning, particularly as they converge
within the subfield of community development. This tradition understands capacity as an
inherent feature of a community itself, intimately connected to the particular gifts and
resources that community members bring to collective action, the organizations and
networks that give life to the community, and the effort that community members and

13
others expend to enhance and harmonize these assets to achieve collective ends. In this
formulation, community capacity may be latent or active, but it exists independent of any
particular channel for its use.
The alternate conception of community capacity examined here grows out of a
tradition of participatory governance. Participatory governance casts the administrative
state as the source of many of the difficulties of local social provision in current times
and advances administrative reform as a response. In this view, the administrative state is
debilitated by the internal contradictions of outmoded bureaucratic structures, processes
and roles, lack of understanding about the context of local problems, and lack of innova-
tion. Programs that incorporate citizen involvement in government decision making and
provision are seen as a way of correcting for government’s creative and cognitive deficits
and providing an impetus to reform administrative structures, processes, and roles.
Community capacity is framed in this stream of literature as the instrumental and intrinsic
outputs and outcomes that accrue to the community through the interface between local
citizen groups and government officials within the context of carefully structured
programs designed and managed by administrators. These differing conceptions of
community capacity and their roots are explored below.
Community Building: Capacity at the Grassroots
Community capacity building is a central, if undertheorized (Chaskin, 2001), aim
of the modern community development project. As Chaskin noted, scholarship specific-
ally addressing the issue of community capacity is fractured among various fields (in
addition to community development, for example, public health, community psychology,
rural sociology) and tends to single out individual characteristics or agents of capacity (or

14
specific contexts in which capacity is engendered) without considering how these interact
within a broader array of community dynamics. For example, Mayer (1994) defined
capacity as the “commitment, resources, and skills” of a community and elaborated on
how these elements may be expressed through various organizational units in the
community without making connections to strategies for building on these. Nye and
Glickman (2000) and Glickman and Servon (2003) examined capacity building specific-
ally within the organizational context of community development corporations (CDCs).
Pavey, Muth, Ostermeier, and Steiner Davis (2007) described efforts to increase capacity
for rural community action as a function of building commitment for collective action.
Internationally, capacity building became an explicit subject of focus when it was
adopted in the early 1990s by the United Nations as a strategy for strengthening institu-
tions in developing countries and, later, as a framework for organizational development
and community participation at the community level (McGinty, 2002). In the United
States, capacity building has been associated with the largely philanthropically led
community-building movement of the 1990s, which emphasized reinforcement of local
civil society institutions and networks of civic engagement in poor communities as a way
of achieving development goals.
Within community development theory, a community’s capacity, along a variety
of social, political, environmental, and economic dimensions, is understood as the basis
for its survival within a structure of increasingly globalized capitalist power relations.
Communities themselves are understood as spatially defined units of commonly shared
experience that support and shape a host of critical human and societal functions, most
fundamentally social, cultural, and labor reproduction but also identity formation; civic

15
infrastructure and collective action; service provision by public, philanthropic, and
nonprofit agencies; and the formation of social networks that may significantly affect
community-level outcomes (Chaskin et al., 2001; DeFilippis, 2001; DeFilippis & Saegert,
2008; Sampson, 1997; Traynor, 2008).
Following emphasis on the relationship between communities and capitalism,
DeFilippis and Saegert (2008) described the activities of community development as
broadly oriented toward “[building a] community’s capacity to gain resources, achieve
goals, and participate effectively in the American political economy” (p. 1) and com-
munity development as an intervention that occurs “when the conditions of surviving and
thriving in a place are not being supplied by capital” (p. 5). Hence, community develop-
ment is theoretically aligned with a criticism of capitalist social relations and practically
focused on improving the plight of the poor.
1
Enlarged to consider the effects of the
political economy as a whole, community development can also be understood as a
product of government failure. Sampson (1997), for example, highlighted the litany of
adverse effects of the spatial policy of public decision makers on inner cities, and
DeFilippis and Saegert themselves pointed out that the (largely nongovernmental)
organizations and institutions of community development collectively operate to produce

1
Theories about the underlying causes of capital failure vary, of course. In com-
munity development debates, two theories stand out as particularly influential over the
past two decades. In The Truly Disadvantaged, William Julius William (1987) extens-
ively examined the effects of the spatial mismatch between employment opportunities
and the inner-city areas where low-income people live, arguing that this and other factors
in economic restructuring were more important than race in the creation of concentrated
poverty. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Robert Putnam’s theory of social capital drew
intense interest from community development specialists who saw potential for opera-
tionalizing social networks to rebuild the civic infrastructure of poor communities.
However, as discussed below, the relevance of Putnam’s formulation of social capital to
community development has been subject to attack for ignoring the connection between
social capital and economic capital (DeFilippis, 2001).

16
many of the goods and services commonly associated with the social provision of
government, among them, housing, education, child care, health care, and other social
services.
In the modern history of community development, the concept of community
capacity has evolved from a predominately political understanding of capacity grounded
in the ideals of community control and a practice of confrontation to redress unequal
power relations, toward a “softer” notion of capacity that emphasizes constructive
collaboration and self-help and comports with what DeFilippis (2008) has termed the
prevailing climate of “neo-liberal communitarianism” (p. 33), which advances market-
oriented approaches to development and nonconfrontational forms of civic engagement
predicated on the assumption that the various parties involved in development share
mutual interests. Community control was an idea rooted in the radical politics of the
1960s and encoded in the provisions of the seminal, if short-lived, Economic Opportunity
Act, which created the federally funded community action agency as a vehicle for
community organizing and activism under the well-known tenet of maximum feasible
participation. To the extent that community organizing in this period reflected the style of
the broad social movements under way at the time, community capacity during the 1960s
arguably consisted of both a disciplined, plannerly ability to identify “targets” and
organize disruptive actions and a bold political capacity to carry out confrontational
protest.
The ethos of community voice and control within a framework of participatory
democracy and local control established during this period has remained an enduring
touchstone of the community development field. In practice, however, participation and

17
organizing for political objectives have been largely symbolic or absent in community
development, undercut by changing federal policy and incompatible funding practices
(DeFilippis, 2008; O’Connor, 1999; Traynor, 2008) and the contradictions embedded
within the working theories and practical circumstances of community development
institutions (DeFilippis, 2008; Stoecker, 1997).
Funding streams increasingly favored the concentration of resources in depoliti-
cized, market-oriented CDCs, whose work grew increasingly focused on improvements
to the physical infrastructure of the community, particularly housing construction—
projects that were both easier to finance and to accomplish (DeFilippis, 2008; Traynor,
2008). Stoecker (1997) suggested that contemporary CDCs operate under a “myth of
community control,” with little direct contact with community residents, and in which the
operational interests of CDCs may actually conflict with those of the community. Never-
theless, within the CDC paradigm, notions of community capacity seem implicitly related
to the capacity of CDCs to effect their work. In some cities, community development
partnerships among philanthropic and corporate interests exist specifically to oversee the
development of CDCs’ organizational capacity: finding stable sources of core operating
funding, professional development for staff, strategic planning, and the like (Nye &
Glickman, 2000).
With the separation of politics and community organizing from the substantive
action of improving community conditions, the community development field moved
toward models of community involvement that emphasized collaboration and consensus
building among disparate parties. A variety of models and theories have informed the
programmatic frameworks that have operationalized community development activities

18
over the past three decades, each containing their own conception of the nature and role
of capacity within poor communities. For example, Kretzmann and McKnight’s (1993)
assets-based community development model, a response to the prevailing construction of
the poor as needs-ridden clients, formulated capacity as the individual and organizational
assets within a community that can be inventoried and mobilized for collective action.
Within consensus-based organizing, which rejected the polarizing, confrontational
model of traditional community organizing in favor “moderation, compromise, and
inclusion” (Eichler, 1998, para. 1), community capacity resides in the energy and
resources of community-based organizations seeking to develop consensus-based
partnerships with institutional players. Under the highly influential theory of social
capital (Putnam, 1993, 1995, 2000), community capacity within community development
work came to be seen, roughly, as the norms and networks of personal and organizational
interaction and trust that facilitate civic action (Wallis, Crocker, & Schechter, 1998).
The elevation of community capacity as a focal construct within the field of
community development grew out of the preoccupation in the 1990s with the idea of
“community building,” which through support and funding from the philanthropic
community became a leading paradigm in community development during that decade.
Community building was itself a product of the philanthropic shift in the late 1980s
toward comprehensive community initiatives that sought to restore a social agenda to
community development work by mobilizing resources in a concerted fashion to address
simultaneously social, economic, and infrastructure issues in poor neighborhoods (Wallis
et al., 1998). This approach brought together nonprofit organizations, community

19
residents, and outside resources to address community change in a comprehensive
manner.
A primary feature of community building is its assets-based approach to self-help,
designed to “obliterate feelings of dependency and to replace them with attitudes of self-
reliance, self-confidence, and responsibility” (Kingsley, McNeely, & Gibson, 1997, p. 3).
Another feature of community building is its emphasis on broad participation by com-
munity residents in democratic decision making about the future of their community and
co-production of tangible goods and services to improve the community (Briggs, 2008).
The community building movement was also heavily influenced by the emergence of
social capital as “public idea” (Wallis et al., 1998), and hence placed focus on strengthen-
ing poor communities by rebuilding nongovernmental civic networks, participation in
which is theorized to teach and reinforce the habits, skills, and attitudes of effective self-
governance (Putnam, 1993, 1995, 2000). Calling as it did upon residential engagement in
improving both personal and collective capacity (a process that is understood to occur in
an interactive fashion), community building fundamentally contrasted with efforts to “do
for” communities, either through interventions designed to improve some aspect of a
community’s well-being or through expert advocacy (Briggs, 2008; Kingsley et al.,
1997).
Briggs (2008) suggested that community building’s dual agenda of empowerment
and substantive community improvement reflects an attempt to reassert citizenship, an
outcome orientation, and a respect for local knowledge and places within the prevailing
apparatus of social provision dominated by top-down policy making and proceduralism.
As a conceptual framework, community-building focused heavily on the intermediary

20
goal of empowerment (Briggs, 2008), marrying an ethos of self-help and civic engage-
ment with calls to rebuild “socially valuable relationships” (Saegert, 2005, p. 3)
destroyed by the loss of social institutions, demographic churning, mistrust, and disen-
gagement that characterize poor communities today (National Community Building
Network, as cited in Traynor, 2008).
Within this framework, community capacity was soon identified as the
phenomenon of central interest and manipulation, the coherent core around which any
attempts at community empowerment depended. Capacity had an appealing holism that
fit well with community building’s emphasis on comprehensiveness and offered a target
that might be subject to experiments and measurement. In theory, capacity could be
increased through strategic interventions along particular dimensions and was assumed to
have lasting value “beyond the immediate program or project” in which a community
engaged (Briggs, 2008, p. 36), producing the companion idea of community capacity
building. In practice, community building became an organizing rubric for efforts
directed toward improving or leveraging multiple aspects of a community’s capacity:
engaging citizens in decision making on community improvements and in service
delivery itself, cultivation of indigenous leadership, developing collaborative relation-
ships among community-based organizations, and restoring the civic infrastructure of
poor communities (Traynor, 2008).
In the community-building model, capacity is understood to inhere within the
community as a function of the community’s intrinsic assets. Consistent with Kretzmann
and McKnight’s (1993) assets-based approach to community development, which
reorients the development process away from a needs-and-deficits mentality, even

21
communities poor in material resources are presumed to be possessed of an asset base
that can be organized, expanded, and channeled toward a variety of purposeful ends.
Hence, while capacity may be enhanced and shaped through intervention, akin to the
sculpture that awaits release from raw material through the work of the artist, the funda-
ments of community capacity are understood to exist within the everyday workings of
human enterprise within the community.
While community building continues to present a relevant agenda within
community development, its record of success has been mixed, undermined by the
complexity of community social systems and a lack of sufficient guides for action and
evaluation (Briggs, 2008; Chaskin, 2001; Chaskin et al., 2001). Many early community
building efforts moved forward without a clearly specified definition of community
capacity or a comprehensive understanding of the operants and dynamics by which it
might be built (Chaskin, 2001; Chaskin et al., 2001). The folding of the National Com-
munity Building Network after a 13-year lifespan suggests the difficulty of sustaining the
concept as an actionable (not to mention fundable) agenda.
The community capacity building model. Chaskin (2001) and Chaskin et al.
(2001) sought to address gaps in the conceptualization of community building by
devising a model of community capacity that related characteristics and agents of
community capacity, and conditions that influence it, to strategies that enhance it.
Consistent with the community building project, the model reflects a “bottom-up”
understanding of the nature of capacity, in the sense that capacity is seen as a function of
intrinsic characteristics and assets that a community “possesses” in interaction with
conditioning forces both internal and external to the community, and interventions that

22
make strategic use of key levers. Chaskin defined community capacity as “the interaction
of human capital, organizational resources, and social capital existing within a given
community that can be leveraged to solve collective problems and improve or maintain
the well-being of a given community” (p. 295).
Chaskin’s model (Figure 1) proposed six dimensions of community capacity that
operate in an interrelated fashion. A set of (a) core characteristics of community capacity
works through varying levels of (b) agency to engage (c) specific functions (planning,
decision making, etc.). When this process operates well, it leads to both the reinforcement
of the community’s capacity overall, and to (d) other development outcomes (e.g., more
or better employment in the community). The process is influenced by both (e) strategic
interventions working through one or more agents to shore up core capacities and (f)
broader forces at work in the environment (“conditioning influences”) that affect the
presence and levels of these capacities.
The core characteristics of community capacity are identified as (a) a sense of
community, (b) commitment, (c) ability to solve problems, and (d) access to resources.
Sense of community is understood here as “recognition of mutuality of circumstance” that
could be rooted in either affective or instrumental ties. Commitment refers to the extent to
which members of the community are willing to take action to improve the community,
which, as Chaskin (2001) asserted, relies on a sense of stakeholdership in the community.
Commitment may be manifest in the community’s organizations, as well in its residents.
Within this framework, the ability to solve problems refers to a wide variety of formal
and informal means of problem solving enacted through the agency of individuals,
organizations, or networks. Access to resources speaks to the community’s ability not

23

Figure 1. Community capacity-building model. Source: Building Community Capacity
(p. 12), by R. J. Chaskin, P. Brown, S. Venkatesh, & A. Vidal, 2001, Hawthorne, NY:
Aldine de Gruyter.

only to draw upon its internal resources but, more critically for development, to “bridge”
to various forms of capital outside of the community. The author noted that there are
likely threshold levels at which these four characteristics must exist before it is possible
for a community to take steps to advance its circumstances toward any particular ends
(p. 296).
As the model indicates, these four characteristics are subject to influence by a
variety of factors at both the micro and macro levels, which, in addition to bearing on the
community, may also interact among themselves. For example, safety may be related to
density of acquaintance, and both of these might affect sense of community and commit-
ment. At the same time, an improvement along the dimension of characteristics of

24
community capacity may relate to an improvement in conditioning influences. For
example, as ability to solve problems and access to resources are enhanced, negative
impacts from race and class tensions or inequitable distribution of resources might be
alleviated.
The interventions or strategies that can be introduced to increase community
capacity—leadership development, organizational development, organizing, and
organizational collaboration—are targeted at all three levels of agency—individuals,
organizations, and networks—and may sometimes overlap. For instance, leadership
development, which targets individuals, may occur in the context of a stand-alone leader-
ship program, or in the course of a traditional community organizing campaign that
emphasizes identification of indigenous leaders and development of leadership skills
(Chaskin et al., 2001). Leadership development may also take place as a part of organiza-
tional development, which targets capacity building efforts toward nonprofit and other
intermediary organizations within the community. Organizational collaboration works at
the network level to increase the interconnectedness of the community’s organizational
base.
Criticisms of capacity building. As intimated above, the community building
project is subject to criticism from a variety of perspectives. Recalling Arnstein’s (1969)
famous treatise on citizen participation, one line of criticism charges that the concept of
community building concept is subject to opportunistic use by social policy makers on a
variety of fronts. Commenting on state-run community capacity building programs in
Australia, for example, Mowbray (2005) argued that the term community is used cynic-
ally to conjure feelings of well-being and social harmony, while papering over legitimate

25
sources of social dissensus. Mowbray and others (Craig, 2007; Wallis et al., 1998) also
raised the concern that community building depoliticizes social problems while absolving
government and other sectors of society from responsibility for poor communities and
masking an aim to deliver social outcomes with relatively little investment.
Craig (2007) argued that the idea of capacity building is similarly problematic, in
that it implies deficits within a community and imposes a centrally defined notion of
capacity that may marginalize cultural difference. For example, a commentator on
capacity building efforts among Aboriginal people in Australia notes that “supporting,
helping, sharing, giving of time and resources, cultural affirmation and taking care of
country are responsibilities not viewed as special individualized effort but as cultural
competencies,” and warned that the idea of capacity building holds little meaning in that
context (Tedmanson, 2003, p. 15). Similarly, Williams (2004) contended that capacity
building attempts to impose a culture of participation that is characteristic of affluent
communities while ignoring habits of one-to-one engagement common among residents
of poorer communities.
Other critics have charged that a deficit-based approach reflects a broader mission
to prevent challenges to existing sources of power. Rather than empowering citizens with
an understanding of the ways in which central mechanisms of capital and distribution
systematically create and maintain poverty, community building channels energy and
attention toward commonplace improvement strategies (Mowbray, 2005) and actively
seeks to co-opt local activists, marginalize alternative views, and individualize rather than
collectivize local experience (Diamond, 2004). Hence, instead of encouraging poor com-
munities to “fight the power,” community building constitutes yet another initiative that

26
falsely attributes the source of their problems—and their solutions—to the community
itself.
Still other appraisals have questioned the viability of the premises upon which
community building practice is based. Traynor (2008) challenged the community build-
ing model’s understanding of the function of the civic sphere, leveling criticism against
what he perceived as an outdated associationalist model of collective action that demands
greater commitment than most community members are willing to invest. Traynor advo-
cated instead for a form of community organizing, informed by principles of network
theory, that creates opportunities for varied and more provisional forms of affiliation that
would engage a broader range of residents.
Perhaps the most trenchant critique of community building came from DeFilippis
(2001), who argued that the community building project is fundamentally flawed by an
uncritical application of Robert Putnam’s theory of social capital to poor communities.
DeFillipis contended that Putnam wrongly divorced social networks from power relations
and conflict, conceiving of them as a set of win-win relationships rather than competitive
entities that maintain benefits to their members through excluding others, and he argued
that poor communities are not lacking in social capital per se (as Putnam’s “bowling
alone” thesis holds), but that these networks are unable to generate economic capital. In
his view, community building should be based on an understanding of social capital as
presented by Loury (1977) and Bourdieu (1985): as networks with the power to attract
and keep capital and the benefits that accrue from it within the community.
Summary. This section traced the evolution of the idea of community capacity
within the field of community development, culminating in a specific model of

27
community capacity building. As shown, this particular construct is embedded rather than
revealed within the complex interaction of theory and practice that makes up the com-
munity development field.
While notions of capacity have varied across the field and have not always related
to one another across time, community capacity in community development shares
common features. Foremost is a focus on poor communities. Indeed, community develop-
ment as a field is predicated on the failure of capital to serve certain communities and
speaks to the need to produce within communities in which the market has bypassed the
various forms of capital that normally circulate within well-functioning communities.
Second is an understanding of communities as complex systems possessed of human,
organizational and network resources that can be coordinated and marshaled toward
desired ends. Third is the notion of indigenous participation and self-help. However much
these tenets have been violated in practice by well-intentioned actors who have sought to
“do for” the community, authentic participation of community members in discourse and
decision making remain central ideals for the field as a whole. Fourth, community
capacity in community development is linked to the idea of sustainability. The goal of
interventions is to rehabilitate the community so that it may compete on its own in the
prevailing political economy, either with support from institutionalized structures or in a
more unstructured fashion that relies on the improved function of the agents of capacity
within the community (Chaskin, 2001).
Accountable Autonomy in Participatory Governance: Creating Community
Capacity through the Institutional Environment
As highlighted by the comparison of Chaskin’s and Fung’s models of community
capacity, below, what is lacking from the community building framework as a whole, and

28
from Chaskin’s formulation of capacity building in particular, is an account of the ways
in which structural elements within the institutional environment affect the operation of
the community building project. This theme is taken up in this section, which explores
the notion of community capacity as it is engendered in the theoretical and practical tradi-
tions of participatory governance, from which the conception of accountable autonomy is
derived.
Participatory governance is a broad term encompassing a range of theoretical and
practical propositions about the place and conduct of citizen involvement in the pro-
duction of public goods. While the recent debates about social capital have significantly
expanded the scope of participatory governance to consider the impact of non-state
networks of civic society on public outcomes, the present discussion focuses more
narrowly on forms of participatory governance that involve the transformation of the state
as a vehicle for citizen participation. In this context, participatory governance refers to
the processes by which ordinary people come together to discuss and decide upon the
goals, strategies, and tactics by which public resources will be allocated, directed, or
otherwise managed in the process of creating and distributing public goods and services
(Chaskin & Garg, 1997; Fung, 2004).
This formulation of participatory governance has been particularly developed and
promoted within the fields of political science and public administration. These streams
share common normative commitments to citizen participation and common prescriptions
for the basic features of participatory governance arrangements. These include emphasis
on empowerment, in which citizens are given substantive authority over action, the
inclusion of people close to the problems at hand so that solutions benefit from “local

29
knowledge,” and the recasting of administrators as facilitators of participatory processes.
These streams differ primarily in focus. In keeping with its traditional disciplinary
concerns, the public administration literature is particularly engaged with the role of the
administrator within participatory settings, while political science literature focuses
strongly on the design elements of a reformed administrative state and the use of
deliberative processes to rejuvenate citizen engagement.
Participatory governance is presented by its proponents as an antidote to a host of
perceived failures within the institutions of democracy, including the professionalized
administrative state, with its emphasis on expertise, hierarchy, and control (Box, 1998;
Fung, 2004; Fung & Wright, 2003; Timney, 1998); ineffective and inequitable delivery
of public goods and services (Fung, 2004; Fung & Wright, 2003); “new” public manage-
ment strategies in which citizens “participate” in public decision making primarily in the
role of consumers responding to market-based approaches to improving service provision
(Box & Sagen, 1998; Fung, 2004); thin conceptions of citizenship under liberal demo-
cracy that justify rampant individualism (Barber, 2003); and broadly held citizen senti-
ment that government has become opaque, unresponsive, elite, and inefficient (King &
Stivers, 1998). Theorists variously assert that participatory processes can be a means to
improve policy outcomes (Fung, 2004; Fung & Wright, 2003), legitimize public deci-
sions (Gutmann & Thompson, 2004), culturally empower citizens (Fischer, 2006),
improve social equity and justice (Fung, 2004; Fung & Wright, 2003; Young, 2000), and
restore integrity to democracy and communities (Barber, 2003; Box, 1998).
While participatory governance neither privileges the local community as the
appropriate scale for citizen involvement nor encompasses any particular theory of

30
community,
2
both the intellectual heritage of participatory governance and its emphasis
on state-centered institutional reform hold important implications for the place of com-
munity and local capacity building within this tradition. As a capacity-building project,
participatory governance is dually oriented toward improving individuals’ capacity for
democratic action and instantiating capacity at the community level through the redesign
of state agencies to support effective decentered public action.
The emphasis on individual political capacity within participatory governance is
rooted in the classical theories of participatory democracy of Rousseau and John Stuart
Mill, which provide a normative justification for citizen participation and deliberative
processes. As Pateman (1970) discussed, for these theorists, group deliberation on issues
of public decision making within the context of public institutions produces transforma-
tional effects on individuals. This occurs both through participation itself and through the
reciprocal relationship between participatory institutions and citizen capacity. According
to the theory, participants in governance learn to see beyond their own private interests,
accept conditions of interdependence, compromise and cooperate in order to achieve
public goals, and reconcile themselves to decisions that they find unfavorable by virtue of
having had a say in the process and understanding how decisions were derived. Critically,
these effects are self-reinforcing. The more one participates, the more one grows in the

2
Although participatory governance does not privilege the local community, the
notion of governance is commonly understood to encompass devolution of decision-
making authority to the lowest appropriate level, and some theorists of participatory
governance advocate local control (Box 1998). The local community is also a common
level for practical experimentation with participatory governance programs, as evidenced
by the popularity of municipally based neighborhood council programs and the Chicago
reforms discussed below.

31
capacity for participation. The stronger citizens’ capacity to participate, the more the
institutions of participation are nourished and strengthened.
Classical theories of direct participation are fortified within contemporary partici-
patory formulations by the more recent body of theory on deliberative democracy. While
conceptions of deliberative democracy vary, there is considerable consensus on its main
features (e.g., Cohen, 1989; Fung & Wright, 2003; Gutmann & Thompson, 2004). In
general, theorists recognize deliberative democracy as an inclusive form of collective
decision making based on reason giving by free and equal participants. Deliberation is
open to all parties who stand to be affected by the decision, or their representatives.
Participants are committed to fairness and rationality and aim to reach consensus about
the issue at hand or, in its absence, a decision with which all can live. Hence, modern
participatory forums structured around deliberative processes are posited by advocates as
potential “schools of democracy,” in which individuals learn and grow in democratic
habits and attitudes.
The relationship between deliberative practice and individual capacity building is
particularly highlighted in Fung and Wright’s (2003) formulation of empowered partici-
patory governance, a theory based on empirical research on successful participatory
programs in various countries. In the deliberative settings that they describe, participants
are expected to “listen to each other’s positions and generate group choices after due
consideration” (p. 17). Participants’ ability to discharge this task inheres in their innate
local knowledge of the problems under discussion, coupled with heavy reliance on
participant training in deliberative processes. Fung and Wright’s theory suggests that,

32
by enhancing the democratic capacity of participants to deliberate, fairer and more
innovative and sustainable solutions to given public problems will emerge.
Accountable autonomy. A more comprehensive treatment of local governance
capacity is contained in Fung’s (2004) presentation of accountable autonomy, a variant of
empowered participatory governance based on participatory reforms within the city of
Chicago’s policing and public education agencies. These reforms were participatory in
that they entailed recasting conventional hierarchical roles and mechanisms supporting
the administrative cycle of priority setting, decision making, implementation, and
feedback around a new relationship between state and citizens. Chicago’s police force
and school system adopted programs in which ordinary citizens came together with
street-level administrators to address concrete problems in their geographic communities
using tools of deliberative problem solving. Citizens were empowered in these delibera-
tions by virtue of their authority over actual decision making and implementation of
collectively forged decisions. Hence, local capacity in the context of accountable auto-
nomy relates to local units’ ability to find and implement solutions to local problems in a
fair and deliberative fashion.
In contrast to community capacity as it is understood in community development,
Fung’s (2004) model of accountable autonomy suggests that local capacity under partici-
patory governance arrangements is less indigenous to the community itself than to the
design and structure of the institutional environment. Indeed, accountable autonomy is
definitively state centered in that it is the local state that both confers power to localities
and “hosts” the participatory program. Fung argued that the success of accountable
autonomy in creating local capacity lies in both the principles that inform the framework

33
of the participatory forum and the structured tension between local empowerment and
central authority.
In keeping with the features of empowered participatory governance outlined by
Fung and Wright (2003), accountable autonomy incorporates three main design princi-
ples, each of which is posited to add to the effectiveness of decentralized, community-
based decision making. As discussed above, the first of these principles, deliberative
problem solving, is generally theorized to have salutary effects on individual political
capacity by moderating or enlarging participants’ understanding of their self-interest,
promoting compromise and cooperation, and increasing acceptance of unfavorable
decisions. Fung and Wright (2003) argued that deliberative proceedings may also result
in fairer, more innovative, and more sustainable solutions to the extent that decision
making includes marginalized groups, draws on diverse sources of knowledge, and
participants deem the process to be fair and legitimate (and hence would be less likely to
contest decisions).
The second design principle is bottom-up participation, in which those closest to
and most affected by the problem at hand are involved in generating and implementing
solutions. In the context of accountable autonomy, Fung (2004) argued that the linkage of
citizens and state agents within small empowered local units collapses the sequence of
decision making, action, and results, thereby strengthening both accountability and the
feedback function. In units that are “compact in terms of time, geography, and levels of
administration” (p. 16), participants have the opportunity to see the consequences of past
actions and choose new strategies that may be more effective. Moreover, because

34
participants meet with one another regularly, they can monitor one another’s actions to
ensure that the group is achieving what it set out to do.
The third principle is a practical orientation by which local units address only
those problems that they can reasonably affect, given the scope of their authority. In
accountable autonomy, decision making is narrowly focused around practical problem
solving (in Fung’s examples, school improvement and community policing), as opposed
to broader-scale projects of advocacy or comprehensive community change. Fung (2004)
maintained that this feature empowers groups by guarding against the disappointment and
frustration that arise from the diffusion of energy, abstract discussion and venting, and
ineffectiveness in the face of hard-to-change societal conditions.
In the accountable autonomy model, local capacity is also the result of broad
institutional design properties that couple decision-making freedom at the local level with
centralized responsibility for support, supervision, and coordination of the participatory
program. One of the ways the central state engenders capacity among localities is by
providing supports that facilitate the actual work of governance. In Fung’s examples,
these included mobilizing participation in the school and policing programs, creating and
providing a training program for citizens and street-level administrators in the skills of
deliberative decision making, supplying specialized expertise to enhance implementation
of problem-solving strategies, and coordinating communication of best practices across
the system so that local units can learn from others’ successes.
The state also plays an important role in establishing and maintaining mechanisms
of accountability that help to ensure that local groups are effective in achieving results.
Fung (2004) referred to this as top-down, bottom-up accountability, which, he noted,

35
captures the element of the Rousseau-ian bargain in accountably autonomy. Central
authorities only monitor what local units say of their free will they are going to do; hence,
local units are “forced to be free.” In the Chicago cases this meant that administrative
agencies incorporated monitoring systems in which middle-ranking supervisors kept
track of locally generated strategies to ensure that local actors followed through on their
commitments to act. It also entailed the provision for external interventions by trained
facilitators in cases where the deliberative process had broken down and needed to get
back on track.
The state furthers local capacity by enhancing the background institutional
conditions against which accountable autonomy programs play out. As Abers (2003)
noted, “Participatory governance requires . . . the financial, operational and legal capacity
to implement its results” (p. 202); hence, accountable autonomy must include efforts to
“improve the disposition of institutions upon which these groups’ local efforts depend,
but which those within localities cannot affect” (Fung, 2004, p. 83). This includes central
lobbying to enhance funding for the system, and coordinating interagency cooperation to
ensure that strategies that cut across the operational lines of two or more state agencies
can be implemented.
Unlike community capacity building interventions in community development,
participatory governance processes are not specifically geared to disadvantaged com-
munities. However, Fung’s account of the Chicago reforms, which followed the partici-
patory process as it played out in two lower-income neighborhoods, as well as inter-
national examples of successful reforms in poor regions (Fung & Wright, 2003), raises
questions about the extent to which highly structured and supportive state-based

36
participatory reforms can advance social equity goals and benefit the capacity of poor
communities. Indeed, Fung and Wright (2003) and Fung (2004) advanced empowered
participatory governance as an institutional innovation that holds particular promise for
disadvantaged groups, while acknowledging participatory challenges associated with the
model.
Criticisms of participatory governance. Participatory governance arrangements
have drawn criticism from many quarters. Fung himself highlighted three strains of
criticism that speak to class, race, and gender bias in devolutionary, participatory settings:
(a) strong egalitarian, (b) social capital, and (c) cultural difference perspectives. From a
strong egalitarian standpoint, deliberative settings are too demanding of time, skill,
information, and other resources to engender sufficient participation by the poor; hence,
the affluent and better educated will be overrepresented, resulting in unfair outcomes.
Empirical research seems to support this contention. In a review of the literature on
neighborhood governance organizations, Cnaan (1991) found that leaders typically were
of a higher socioeconomic status than the neighborhood at large and much more likely to
be homeowners. The review also revealed disparities between leaders and residents in
their perceptions of neighborhood needs and noted that this disparity grew over time and
that leaders tended to align themselves over time with professional bureaucrats, in part
out of frustration with dealing with “uneducated” (p. 625) residents. Further, Cnaan
found that actions of neighborhood leaders tended to advance the interests of subgroups
to which they belonged, namely homeowners. These divisions have also extended to race,
as in the historical example of Saul Alinsky’s failure to create a coalition of Black and

37
White homeowners to prevent “White flight” from the inner-city Southwest neighbor-
hood of Chicago in the 1960s (Santow, 2007).
The social capital critique of deliberative participatory schemes cleaves closely to
concerns about social capital raised in the previous section. This perspective maintains
that effective and fair deliberations require a strong social and civic infrastructure in
which participants can previously learn the skills and habits necessary for effective
deliberative governance. To the extent that poor urban neighborhoods lack such
resources, they may be unable to take advantage of participatory opportunities, exposing
them to opportunistic bids for control over decision making by self-interested actors.
The cultural difference critique of direct and deliberative participation arrange-
ments holds that the communicative and public nature of this form of public action
systematically privileges the culturally advantaged and hence is unsuited to the plural,
heterogeneous political environment of contemporary urban areas. Young (2000) argued
that deliberative settings favor communicative habits that are more prevalent among
people with better education and men, such as logical arguments presented assertively,
with minimal gestural or emotional display. Hence, by virtue of their presentational
skills, advantaged parties are able to command undue authority over the group. Similarly,
Mansbridge (1980) maintained that the public, argumentative, and frequently conflictual
nature of deliberative politics discourages the timid from participating and results in their
silent assent to decisions that are against their interests. Her observation of these
dynamics at work in town hall meeting procedures in New England led her to conclude
that face-to-face political discussion “accentuates rather than redress[es] the disadvantage
of those with least power in a society” (p. 277). Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002) cited

38
additional empirical evidence that suggests that face-to-face decision making under con-
ditions of heterogeneity can undermine fair and productive decision making by leading to
groupthink, exacerbating power disparities, and increasing hostility between unlike
groups.
Fung (2004; Fung & Wright, 2003) countered these objections with a variety of
data on Chicago’s reform programs that at least partially contradicted these perspectives’
predicted outcomes. Participation in both policing and school reform programs was not
lower in disadvantaged areas of the city; poor communities lacking in significant social
capital infrastructure emerged as among the most effective in community policing. Both
reforms demonstrated a bias toward participation by women. While the data also point to
outcomes consistent with criticisms (homeowners and the better educated are overrepre-
sented among reform participants and Whites were overrepresented under conditions of
heterogeneity within communities), Fung nevertheless credited the institutional design of
accountable autonomy with mitigating participatory weaknesses and promoting equity.
In particular, Fung (2004; Fung & Wright, 2003) stressed the model’s decentered
design and restricted focus on practical problem solving as sources of equity. He argued
that the devolution of decision making to multiple local publics diminishes the brunt of
both egalitarian and cultural difference concerns. Because governance is pushed to the
local level, this brand of reform distributes control of the public forum to those who are
typically disenfranchised from public processes. Local control, in turn, frees public
discourse from domination by culturally advantaged groups, while proliferation of public
spaces allows alternative discourses to emerge. In addition, Fung noted that the pragmatic
focus of deliberation under accountable autonomy, which centers on prioritizing and

39
solving common rather than zero-sum problems, reduces incentives for people to “win”
in political argument. Fung suggested that accountable autonomy systems can strengthen
their egalitarian appeal by incorporating redistributive mechanisms, such as direction of
resources to needy communities and mentoring of weakest by strongest. Overall, he put
accountable autonomy forward as a weakly egalitarian system that creates the conditions
in which disadvantaged groups can participate effectively.
Accountable autonomy is also subject to a broader criticism of the state’s limita-
tions in fostering social change. Although Fung and Wright (2003) acknowledged that
one of the potential drawbacks of empowered participatory governance arrangements is
the tendency of state-sponsored action to quash dissent and militancy, they nevertheless
put these systems forward as a “progressive institutional reform strategy” (p. 5). How-
ever, Fischer (2006) questioned the extent to which institutional design innovations
within the state are themselves enough to produce a radical or progressive politics.
Fischer argued that the institutional design of discursive space itself holds varying social
meanings for groups, based on the extent to which they perceive the space as expressive
of their cultural identity and local knowledge. Highlighting the instrumental role of the
Science for the People movement in the success of government-centered participatory
planning efforts in Kerala, India, Fischer claimed that, for deliberative participatory
governance to be truly empowering for the poor, both identity and knowledge must be
carefully cultivated and strengthened among local participants by the nongovernmental
sector prior to deliberative engagement. Hence, strong political support from above is not
sufficient to create a truly radical deliberative culture that incorporates transformative or
emancipatory discourses. This line of argument raises further questions about the limits

40
on the role of the state in engendering political capacity, which are investigated in later
stages of this work.
Summary. Rooted in classical theories of direct citizen participation, contempor-
ary participatory governance efforts attempt to incorporate direct democracy in the
modern context of professional government within large urban polities with high levels of
racial, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and political heterogeneity. Across the tradition of
participatory governance, the institutional environment of the state is understood as the
central influence on capacity at the local level. This section has focused in particular on
the relationship between one form of participatory governance—Fung’s (2004) account-
able autonomy—and community capacity building in poor neighborhoods. Drawing on
empirical examples from Chicago, Fung advocated a “top-down” architecture of local
governance in which the state invites citizens to participate in local problem solving
within carefully designed deliberative forums and provides supports and monitoring to
ensure effectiveness. Fung presented accountable autonomy as an effective mode of
redressing social inequities in urban areas. However, his account raises questions about
the equity of such arrangements in heterogeneous areas and the role of the state in
producing social change.
Discussion and Research Questions
By their sheer preponderance, voluntary neighborhood governance organizations
are perhaps the most common institution of participatory governance in the United States
and elsewhere. In his 1991 review of the literature on self-managing “neighborhood
representing organizations,” Cnaan estimated the number of neighborhood governance
groups (including block associations, as well as larger community councils) to be in the

41
hundreds of thousands worldwide. Neighborhood governance organizations are theorized
to play an important role in the life of communities, serving as both a primary mediating
link between citizens’ private lives and the public institutions that affect them (Berger &
Neuhaus, 1977) and as loci for the production of social capital and instruction in pro-
democratic skills and knowledge (Putnam, 1995, 2000). However, little is known or
theorized about the nature of this class of organization’s ability to take action.
Each of the two models of capacity building presented here provides partial
guidance in this direction. Similar to voluntary neighborhood organizations, community
building efforts seek to build on capacity drawn from resources within the community to
accomplish a variety of ends. The basis of local capacity is understood to exist in the
community itself, as the community is structured by individuals, organizations, and the
networks that bind these elements together. Where these elements are weak, interventions
to strengthen them may have to occur in order to produce community improvement
results. However, the capacity building model provides nothing in the way of guidelines
for designing the institutional environment of neighborhood governance initiatives in
ways that might strengthen and support participatory processes in neighborhood
governance.
By contrast, Fung’s model of accountable autonomy highlights the power of a
strong institutional environment to build neighborhood governance capacity. Instead of a
map to community assets, Fung’s model provides a blueprint for creating the institutional
architecture of principles and practices that engages and enhances the capacity of indivi-
dual community members to participate in collective decision-making. However, these
guides apply to a significantly different governance context than that of neighborhood

42
representing organizations. Whereas neighborhood-representing organizations are
empowered to act by their own initiative and operate with relative self-sufficiency, local
governance units under accountable autonomy are effective only through sponsorship and
authorization by the state. Moreover, given that the activities of local units are limited to
problem solving around narrow functional issues, the scope of community capacity is
narrowed to collective capacity for effective deliberation and monitoring.
The models of neighborhood-representing organizations, accountable autonomy,
and community building share a common orientation to voluntary, local-level participa-
tion that seeks to improve the quality of community life for all community members,
regardless of their participation in governance activities. As a variant of neighborhood-
representing organizations, Los Angeles neighborhood councils are distinguished by the
combination of their official status as municipally incorporated entities and a de facto
status as neighborhood improvement organizations operating with relative autonomy
from the state. As such, neighborhood councils constitute an organizational hybrid that
falls somewhere between the arrangements of accountable autonomy and community
building.
As quasi-governmental agencies operating within an organized and at least
nominally coordinated system of local governance units, neighborhood councils align
structurally with the accountable autonomy model. However, unlike the local units under
accountable autonomy, neighborhood councils are not vested with authority to direct
public resources nor do they receive significant support or monitoring of their work by
the City. As broad-based community improvement organizations, neighborhood councils
share in common with community building efforts a broad-based orientation to

43
community change within an organically defined social and physical geography, yet
differ from them by virtue of operating within an institutional environment that
incorporates the features of “strong” municipal participatory governance programs
(i.e., political innovations and a citywide design).
This study suggests that bringing the dual analytic frames of accountable auto-
nomy and community building to bear upon the case of neighborhood councils can
illuminate the nature of community capacity within neighborhood representing organiza-
tions that operate in a self-organizing and self-managing fashion. The case studies pre-
sented in this dissertation investigate the working dynamics of neighborhood councils in
order to explore the propositions laid out in the rival theories. Based on these proposi-
tions, the study’s major research questions revolve around the capacity-building role of
six key factors:
1. Comprehensiveness: To what extent is community governance capacity
grounded in the cooperative action of various sectors of the community, each bringing
distinctive resources to bear in a coordinated fashion?
2. Institutional support: To what extent is capacity the result of interaction with
and support from particular institutional entities, such as government agencies, nonprofit
organizations, private firms, or other organizations operating in the voluntary civic arena?
3. Intervention: To what extent is capacity the result of specific capacity-building
strategies such as leadership, organizational, or network development or community
organizing?

44
4. Institutional design: How is capacity shaped by the design features of the
neighborhood council reform? How do the governance structures of individual neighbor-
hood councils affect capacity?
5. Microprocesses: How is capacity affected by the design and practice of partici-
patory processes at the local level?
6. Scope: How is local governance capacity related to the scope of activities
undertaken by the council?
The study is attentive to the extent to which neighborhood capacity is influenced
by untheorized factors, such as racial homogeneity, unique leadership, sense of place, or
community history. At the same time, the study is an attempt to identify common factors
that constrain or undermine capacity in neighborhood council settings.
Organization of the Dissertation
This dissertation is organized as follows. Chapter 2 elaborates on the origin and
nature of the Los Angeles neighborhood council reform and examines both the formal
capacity-building provisions of the reform and the nature of governance capacity as it has
in fact emerged at the system level as implementation of the reform has played out. A
capacity-building framework for local governance is then drawn inductively from the
example of the Los Angeles system and the elements of the framework are explained.
Chapter 3 discusses the research design of the study, covering case study design and
selection, sources of evidence and data collection procedures, and methods and pro-
cedures to ensure sound case analysis. Chapter 4 describes the activities and accomplish-
ments of each of the three case study councils chosen for this investigation, contextualiz-
ing accomplishments within the character of the community that the councils represent

45
and highlighting the means and mechanisms through which councils’ capacity was
manifested. Chapter 5 presents a comparative analysis of the cases with respect to the
capacity-building models described by Chaskin and Fung and with suggestions on how
these models might be integrated with the framework introduced in Chapter 2 to com-
prise a model of governance capacity-building that reconciles the influence of institu-
tional design with capacities indigenous to local communities and underscores the
centrality of representation within community governance arrangements.

46
CHAPTER 2
GOVERNANCE CAPACITY AND THE
LOS ANGELES EXPERIMENT
The previous chapter proposed grounds for understanding local capacity for
participatory governance as a product of the match between institutional opportunities on
the one hand and the resources available to a community on the other. This chapter
examines the institutional side of this equation as presented in the example of the Los
Angeles neighborhood council system. It explores the relationship between the capacity-
building institutional “inputs” to the Los Angeles system and observed capacity “outputs”
at the system level, as suggested by existing research on the system. Although system-
level findings cannot illuminate the mechanisms by which capacity works at the local
level, macro-analysis nevertheless suggests the contours of an alternate theory of com-
munity capacity that embraces elements of both Fung’s accountable autonomy frame-
work and Chaskin’s capacity building model and highlights the role of cognition,
representation, and communication in producing local governance capacity.
From its inception, the neighborhood council system—and hence the capacity that
it would generate—was compromised by weak foundations. The institutional framework
of the Los Angeles neighborhood council system is the complex creation of research-
driven underpinnings and the faceted politics of reform and implementation from which
the system originated.
As noted elsewhere, the City Charter amendment that created the system and the
Plan or a Citywide System of Neighborhood Councils by which the system was imple-
mented lacked clear and consistent goals, failed to specify duties of implementing

47
agencies and officials or mechanisms by which duties could be enforced, and did not
provide adequate resources to support implementation (Musso & Kitsuse, 2002; Musso,
Kitsuse, Lincove, Sithole, & Cooper, 2002). In combination with lukewarm support for
neighborhood councils by political leaders, the lack of integrity of the system’s founding
documents has resulted in chronic underfunding and lack of institutional support for
capacity-building activities.
However, tokenistic action by political leaders in implementing the neighborhood
council system has been met by dogged efforts at the grassroots to empower local voice
and improve local places. Indeed, although the formal infrastructure of the system is
heavily invested in the political and representative functions of governance, much of the
vibrancy of the system arguably stems from the grassroots action of community volun-
teers to develop local identity, build community, and take on projects that stand to
improve the community’s quality of life—ends that were not specified in either the
Charter or Plan but that have been empowered by local control over budgetary resources.
The net result of the engagement between actors and infrastructure is a system
that can be conceptualized on the basis of inductive analysis of the system’s structure and
observation of the system’s operation to generate an alternative framework of community
governance capacity to those drawn from the literature and presented in the previous
chapter. This framework comprehends seven dimensions of governance capacity, which
in some cases share features in common with the elements and mechanisms of capacity
described by Chaskin and Fung and in others are wholly distinct from existing models.
The first four dimensions—cognitive, leadership, representational, and integrative
capacity—comprise “input” conditions that potentiate the other forms of capacity. The

48
remaining dimensions—political, productive, and development capacity—relate to
councils’ outputs. While conceptually discrete, these dimensions often overlap as they are
expressed in on-the-ground action.
Cognitive capacity concerns the extent to which stakeholders living or operating
in geographic proximity recognize themselves as a community. Chaskin (2001) identified
a sense of community—defined as recognition by inhabitants of an area of common geo-
graphical attributes, as well as shared social attributes and interests—as a conditioning
influence in the community capacity-building process. In the Los Angeles governance
context, cognitive capacity can be understood as a function of neighborhood council
formation itself; it can be gauged by such measures as community members’ awareness
of their neighborhood council and correspondence across stakeholders’ “cognitive maps”
of the neighborhood council area (Lynch, 1960).
Leadership capacity refers to council leaders’ ability to manage the day-to-day
operation of their council efficiently and effectively. In Chaskin’s framework, the work
of leadership is described along a number of components that comprise leaders’ responsi-
bility for group action and their representation of the group to external actors. Here,
leadership capacity is conceptualized as an umbrella for two subordinate forms of
capacity: executive and administrative.
Representational capacity reflects councils’ power to represent the stakeholder-
members within their community effectively. This form of capacity is the foundation of
political legitimacy in democratically organized societies, but it is often overlooked in the
literature on community-based voluntary organizations. Like governance capacity,

49
representational capacity itself can be conceptualized along multiple dimensions (Guo &
Musso, 2007).
Integrative capacity reflects the extent to which civic participation through the
neighborhood council promotes individual growth and development. In democratic
theory, individual growth is not justified as an end in itself but rather as a means to
promoting the well-being of the community and the public (Pateman, 1970; Sager, 1994;
Young, 1999). Integrative capacity derives from the structure and quality of participatory
encounters created by councils, which are theorized to act as training grounds for the
development of the norms and skills necessary for participating in governance.
Political capacity speaks to councils’ individual and collective ability to engage
with City government agencies through the neighborhood council structure to influence
decision making. Political capacity is rooted in the practice of self-determination, defined
by Young (1999) as people’s ability to participate “in decisions and processes that deter-
mine their actions and the conditions of their actions” (p. 143) through participation by
all. Political capacity may include political mobilization of grassroots actors, as in
Chaskin’s model, as well as action through routine political channels.
Productive capacity corresponds to councils’ ability to produce goods and
services that benefit their locality, either alone or in partnership with government or other
entities. Productive capacity is related to such “good governance” functions as improving
public decision making, innovative problem solving, and government co-production. This
type of capacity has been theorized to stem from the presence of social capital (Putnam,
1993), as well as from a supportive institutional structure (Fung, 2004; Fung & Wright,
2003).

50
Development capacity refers to the complex set of activities that councils under-
take to build community ties, reinforce community identity, and complete community
improvement projects. In its most articulated form, development flows from strategic
planning processes.
The extent to which these capacity dimensions relate to previously described
models and may be combined with elements of other models to form the basis for a new
theory of community governance capacity is treated in Chapter 5.
Communicative capacity relates to councils’ ability to connect with their stake-
holdership, whether to collect or disseminate information, mobilize a constituency, or
otherwise engage stakeholder participation. Because it facilitates other forms of capacity,
communicative capacity is central to the neighborhood council project.
This chapter examines in turn each of these dimensions of capacity as they are
manifest across the neighborhood council system as a whole. The discussion provides a
lens through which to review the history and development of the neighborhood council
system, where appropriate, tying each form of capacity to the purposes and functions of
neighborhood councils stated in the Charter and Plan and, where possible, tracing the
conceptualization of these purposes and functions to their political roots in the charter
reform and neighborhood council planning processes. The review also addresses the
effects of the institutional environment on the development of capacity throughout the
system’s 8-year implementation history.
The Charter Reform Process
In a city widely known for political and administrative fragmentation and the
distant relationship between citizens and City Hall, Los Angeles’s neighborhood councils

51
emerged as the centerpiece of a series of proposed reforms to the City’s constitutional
charter. Charter reform itself was the product of extraordinary political circumstances that
pitted the City against the growing momentum of a secession movement centered in the
San Fernando Valley and newly empowered by state legislative changes facilitating
municipal detachment (Hogen-Esch, 2002). With the city’s integrity at stake, civic elites
and City Hall insiders latched on charter reform as a way to address underlying citizen
discontent with city government and keep the city intact.
Los Angeles pursued charter reform in a characteristically divided fashion, owing
to a particularly rancorous relationship between then-Mayor Richard Riordan and the
City Council, as well as disagreement over the Council’s power to review reform pro-
visions before putting them to vote by the general electorate. Ultimately, two competing
charter reform commissions were established, one appointed by the City Council and the
other comprised of at-large officials selected in a citywide election process underwritten
by Riordan. It was only through last-minute negotiations that a unified charter proposal
was forged and placed before voters.
During the reform commissions’ deliberations, there was considerable support
expressed by local community members, particularly with respect to a desire to augment
local voice on land use issues (Sonenshein, 2002). Secession proponents, who coalesced
around what Hogen-Esch (2002) described as a “suburban land use vision” (p. TK), par-
ticularly favored local councils with decision-making authority over land use. However,
neighborhood councils elicited little enthusiasm from political leaders in the charter
debate, echoing previous resistance to such a measure among City Council members and
underscoring the Mayoral indifference to the provision. Firsthand observers suggested

52
that the Mayor viewed neighborhood councils primarily as a bargaining chip to ensure
that the Charter also contained provisions for expanded mayoral powers, while City
Council members saw local councils as a threat to their existing power to convene
appointed citizen advisory groups within their districts (Musso & Kitsuse, 2002;
Sonenshein, 2004).
The charter amendment that was eventually adopted by voters included a variety
of provisions and mandates designed to build organizational, political, and representa-
tional capacity across the city but left the operational details of the system, including
guidelines for neighborhood council formation and organizational structure, to be decided
in a city-led public participation process. Responsibility for the process was assigned to
the newly created DONE, which was also charged with administering the implementation
and operation of the system. Authority for certifying and (if need be) decertifying
councils was given to a new BONC, which would also serve as the policymaking and
oversight body to DONE.
Structurally, the system was modeled after principles identified by research to
produce “strong” participatory governance, as assayed by feelings of citizen efficacy,
among other measures (Berry et al., 1993). The system was designed to be organized
around indigenous neighborhoods, to encompass all parts of the city, and to include from
its inception a set of participatory innovations intended to open administrative and
political leadership structures to citizen participation and oversight.
Substantively, the Charter focused on the political and representative functions of
neighborhood councils. To the disappointment of many neighborhood advocates, the
terms of political empowerment granted by the Charter and its enforcement were notably

53
weak. Despite political pressures created by the secession movement to enhance citizen
control over local development, the Charter established neighborhood councils as
advisory rather than policy-making bodies, with no formal authority over City decision
making. In lieu of formal powers, the Charter sought to enhance neighborhoods’ political
influence and oversight through a series of five “empowerment innovations” (Musso et
al., 2007, p. 3). Four of these were directed at vertical integration of local bodies into
political and administrative governance structures; the fifth previewed the potential for
neighborhoods to wield influence collectively within the city policymaking arena.
Even as it curtailed councils’ political agency, the Charter established high
standards for councils’ representative function. Two key provisions guided the system in
this regard. The first established a broadly inclusive definition of neighborhood council
membership as open to “everyone who lives, works, or owns property in the area”
3
(City
of Los Angeles Charter, Sec. 906.a.2). This provision, which appears to make Los
Angeles uniquely inclusive among cities with community governance programs,
4
was
widely interpreted to form a mandate for political enfranchisement of the city’s large
population of non-citizens, as well as other traditionally underrepresented groups, par-
ticularly renters. The second provision augmented the first by requiring neighborhood
councils to “include representatives of the many diverse interests in communities” (Sec.

3
This provision was later broadened by a City Council amendment to the neigh-
borhood council Plan to include “any individual who declares a stake in the neighbor-
hood and affirms a factual basis for it” (Plan for Citywide System of Neighborhood
Councils, Amended February 20, 2008, City of Los Angeles.)
4
Ken Thomson, comments at the “Civic Engagement through Neighborhood
Empowerment: The LA Experiment and Beyond” conference, January 2002, University
of Southern California.

54
900), a stipulation presumably intended to strike a pre-emptive blow against narrow
organization of councils around well-represented interests, such as homeowners and
businesses.
From an operational standpoint, the Charter focused mainly on the creation of
system’s organizational infrastructure, directing DONE to assist communities to organize
into councils, petition for certification, and select officers, as well as to provide training
for neighborhood council officers and staff. To the extent that the Charter spoke to
councils’ operational features, it did so primarily to ensure representative accountability
by neighborhood councils to their stakeholdership. The Charter required neighborhood
councils to adopt “fair and open procedures” (Sec. 904.g) in their conduct of business,
ensure that meetings would be open to the public, permit broad stakeholder participation
in “the conduct of business, deliberation, and decision making” (Sec. 906.a.6), and
develop a system by which boards would communicate with stakeholders on a regular
basis.
The Charter was notably silent in its provisions for both “bottom-up” and “top-
down” accountability between councils and the City in the operation of the system. The
Charter placed DONE in charge of developing the Early Notification System and arrang-
ing Congress of Neighborhood meetings upon the request of certified councils, but it
otherwise failed to specify the duties of city officials and agencies in implementing
participatory innovations or enforcement mechanisms for noncompliance. Instead, the
Charter outlined a process for a nonbinding review of the system after a period of 7 years,
to be conducted by an independent review commission appointed by the Mayor and City
Council. The Charter’s single provision for the “bottom-up” accountability of councils to

55
the City was the requirement that neighborhood council bylaws specify a system for
financial accountability of organizational funds.
Although the Charter contained no directives regarding the level of financial
appropriation for the neighborhood council system or how funds would be allocated, it
required the Mayor and City Council to appropriate resources for DONE and neighbor-
hood councils 1 year in advance of each fiscal year. The 2-year budget cycle was
presumably intended to protect neighborhood councils from the political vagaries of the
annual budget process and to enable DONE and neighborhood councils to plan their
activities more effectively. However, this provision has been ignored in practice
throughout the system’s existence, with fiscal appropriation proceeding on an annual
basis.
The Neighborhood Council Plan
The neighborhood council Plan both built on the architectural foundations of the
neighborhood council system sketched in the Charter and enlarged them to comprehend a
broader set of purposes for the system. Although the Charter’s construction of the neigh-
borhood council system around participatory innovations and representational criteria
implicitly constituted neighborhood councils around a political function, its broad goals
of increasing citizen participation and improving government responsiveness left the
nature of “empowerment” open to multiple interpretations during the planning process
(Musso & Kitsuse, 2002). Hence, reflecting sentiments and arguments expressed in the
public exchange leading to its creation, the Plan expanded the scope of the system to
include cognitive, productive, and integrative functions.

56
A central topic of public debate during the process of creating the Plan concerned
neighborhood councils’ role as agents of production, an issue with important program-
matic and political implications for the new reform. Some officials involved in the
planning process advocated a collectivist, self-help role for neighborhood councils,
suggesting that communities should take responsibility for themselves rather than simply
relying on the City to solve their problems. By contrast, neighborhood council organizers
articulated a desire for political influence and resisted the idea of a self-service approach
to governance. As one neighborhood organizer tartly opined, “Neighborhood councils
should not be the maid with the vacuum cleaner but the mother-in-law with the white
gloves” (Neighborhood Council Plan, as cited in Musso & Kitsuse, 2002, p. 5). Although
this issue was not fully resolved in the planning process, the Plan eventually enlarged on
the original goals of the Charter to include creating opportunities “to build partnerships
with government to address local needs and requests” (p. 5) as an objective of the system,
clearly opening the door for a co-productive relationships between the City and councils.
Another issue with implications for neighborhood council capacity concerned the
extent to which the Plan would support self-determination in boundary selection and
organizational structure. While the Charter’s spirit of empowerment implied flexibility to
allow councils to exercise voice and power in a manner consistent with the character of
their community, the letter of the Charter was vague on these points. The Charter con-
tained nominal provisions that pointed toward local autonomy in this regard, including a
directive that the method for determining boundaries maintain existing neighborhood
boundaries “to the maximum extent feasible” (Sec. 904.c) and a provision that councils

57
be allowed to choose their method of selecting officers (these provisions were subject to
broad interpretation in the Plan).
Citizen activists were particularly concerned with maintaining flexibility regard-
ing the definition of neighborhood boundaries, citing concerns about preserving neigh-
borhood integrity, as well as the desire to have the option to form large councils in order
to wield greater political clout (Neighborhood Participation Project, 2000). Hopes that
neighborhoods would be free to organize around meaningful jurisdictional groupings and
organically derived governance bylaws were set against the clear administrative logic of
normalizing council size and structure. Given the city’s large population, allowing a fully
organic process of self-selection into councils could result in an unwieldy number of
councils that would be difficult for the City to engage and serve. Moreover, self-selection
risked further fragmentation of the city along lines of class, race, or functional interests, a
possibility that ran counter to both the unifying impulse of charter reform and the express
intent of the Charter to create local polities around diverse interests. Similarly, local
variation across the constitutional and operational function of councils invited adminis-
trative confusion in providing operational support and oversight to councils. Ultimately,
the City sought to control for administrative complexity by requiring that neighborhood
council areas contain a minimum of 20,000 residents, although concerns over a pro-
liferation of councils appeared unfounded. In the mature system, average neighborhood
council size exceeded this minimum by double, presumably reflecting a natural com-
munity ecology around larger areas and council organizers’ desire to consolidate political
power by forming larger stakeholder constituencies.

58
The terms of the City’s involvement in providing operational support for councils
had also to be worked out in the planning process. Neighborhood activists articulated the
need for training and support early in the post-Charter period. At a conference at USC,
activists identified leadership development, outreach, organizing, and conflict manage-
ment as likely future challenges for neighborhood organizations (Neighborhood Partici-
pation Project, 2000). However, calls for support mixed uncertainly with a strong spirit of
independence at the grassroots, and fears that assistance from the City—particularly in
the form of financial support—could lead to increased regulatory demands, political co-
optation, or both.
Citizen fears about the outcome of the planning process were inflamed by wide-
spread discontent with the process itself. The DONE-led public planning workshops were
heavily criticized for lack of outreach to underrepresented populations and for reducing
citizen input about the design of the neighborhood council system to suggestions sub-
mitted via Post-It
®
notes (Musso, Weare, et al., 2002). Public cynicism about the City’s
commitment to empowering citizens grew throughout the planning process, leading to the
much-heard joke that the Plan was a “DONE deal” from the start.
Ultimately, these tensions were resolved in the Plan in favor of substantial auto-
nomy for neighborhood councils and the promise of operational support for the councils’
self-directed activities. Declaring the objective that neighborhood councils “be as inde-
pendent, self-governing, and self-directed as possible” (Article II.4), the Plan imposed
minimal qualifications in giving neighborhoods flexibility to choose their council
boundaries (in consultation with surrounding communities), determine their mission, and
establish their organizational structure and bylaws. The Plan also reaffirmed DONE’s

59
role as an organizational capacity-building agent, expanding on the Charter’s directives to
commit DONE to provide “adequate levels of staffing, with consideration to resource
availability, for each Certified Neighborhood Council” (Article VII.16). The Plan also
committed DONE to prioritize assistance for council formation and operational support
in areas of the city with “traditionally low rates of participation in government” (Article
VII.2).
In turn, however, the provisions of the Plan charged neighborhood councils with a
variety of duties that, in concert with those outlined in the Charter, placed significant
procedural and representational burdens upon council operations. In specifying the
Charter’s directive that neighborhood councils be open and inclusive in the conduct of
their business, the Plan required neighborhood councils to abide by California’s open
meetings act for local legislative bodies (the Brown Act), which compels councils to
publicly post meeting agendas at least 72 hours prior to convening and to comply with
state and city guidelines for the ethical conduct of elected officials. With regard to
councils’ representational function, the Plan elaborated on the Charter’s definition of
neighborhood council membership to detail a variety of possible categories of member-
ship, including, among other things, nonresident participation in local educational,
religious, and senior organizations, and local advisory boards; the Plan included an
additional provision that prohibited any single stakeholder group from comprising a
majority of a neighborhood council board.
5
The Plan also required neighborhood councils

5
This measure reportedly responded to pressure from the Valley Industry and
Commerce Association over concerns that neighborhood councils would fall under
control of homeowner interests (Musso et al., 2002).

60
to conduct a biennial survey of stakeholders to assess whether the council was meeting
the goals and objectives outlined in the Charter and Plan.
Finally, the Plan also introduced integrative functions into the stated purposes of
the neighborhood council system, identifying the objective that neighborhood councils
should “foster a sense of community for all people to express ideas and opinions about
their neighborhoods and their government” (Article I.6). This provision, which reinforced
the Charter’s directive that neighborhood council stakeholders be included in the conduct
of neighborhood council business, implied the constitution of neighborhood councils as
communicative forums attentive to self-expression and modes of interaction that support
individual voice and development.
The Implementation Process
As scholars of participatory governance have observed, the power of participatory
arrangements develops not only from the formal architecture of a program but also from
the strength of the surrounding environment in its implementation. Both Fung (2004) and
Berry et al. (1992) drew attention to the importance of strong political leadership and
adequate resources in creating successful participatory governance programs. In the insti-
tutional context of the Los Angeles neighborhood council system, these related factors
have had major implications for the development of local governance capacity across the
system as a whole. This section examines the evolution of community governance
capacity as it has played out in the neighborhood council implementation process. The
discussion first looks at the development of institutional supports for neighborhood
councils, drawing attention to the tensions and tradeoffs in the system between neigh-
borhood council autonomy and institutional provision. It then examines the extent to

61
which each of the modes of capacity outlined above has actualized across the system,
using existing research as the basis for these assessments.
Institutional Supports
Given neighborhood councils’ status as politically and operationally autonomous
bodies that are nevertheless bound by the regulations of public legislative and adminis-
trative bodies, a key question from a capacity-building perspective was the extent to
which and the manner in which the City would support neighborhood council operations.
The development of institutional supports examined in three key areas: financial, train-
ing, and elections.
Financial support. As noted elsewhere (Musso & Kitsuse, 2002; Musso, Weare,
et al., 2002), political leadership with regard to neighborhood councils was conspicuously
lacking in the early stages of the program’s history, as reflected in the limited funding
provided by the City Council to DONE for the public planning process. This led to
speculation that the City Council, fearing political challenge from neighborhood councils,
would seek to marginalize the system by limiting funding during implementation of the
program. Speculation also centered on whether the City would directly empower neigh-
borhood councils with control over their operational budgets, or whether operational
funding would be channeled through DONE.
Political leaders resolved this issue in favor of councils’ fiscal autonomy. Since
2002, the City Council has allocated $50,000 in unrestricted funding to each certified
neighborhood council annually, with the exception of 2009, when funding was reduced to
$45,000 as part of a citywide campaign to close an historic budget gap. Neighborhood
councils have come to view the magnitude of the $50,000 figure as a necessary if

62
insufficient condition of the council system’s function, as evidenced by their collective
outrage when the City Council’s Budget Committee proposed slashing neighborhood
council budgets to $11,000 to balance the budget
While the evolving emphasis within the neighborhood council system on political
and operational autonomy has vitalized the system by enabling councils to challenge City
policies and pursue local agendas, it also appears to have undermined the City’s financial
support for DONE and compromised the department’s capacity-building mission.
Throughout its history, DONE has been underfunded by standards of best practices in
municipal participatory reform, with average spending of only $1 per resident over the
past 7 years. By contrast, Portland, Oregon, has spent an average of $13 per resident over
the same time period to support its much-lauded Department of Neighborhood Improve-
ment. Average spending on citizen empowerment in Los Angeles rises to $2 per resident
if direct funding of neighborhood councils is taken into consideration.
6

Training support. The decision to endow councils with direct control over funds
has arguably weakened DONE’s ability to lobby for increased funding for the Depart-
ment, making it all but impossible for DONE to meet the system’s training and support
needs. In a public appearance following neighborhood councils’ successful bid to limit

6
Budget figures drawn from (a) Budget Documents, by City of Los Angeles,
Administrative Office, 2010, retrieved from http://cao.lacity.org/budgetsum/budgtsum
.htm; (b) Adopted Budget, by City of Los Angeles, City Controller, 2010, retrieved from
http://controller.lacity.org/AdoptedBudget/index.htm, and (c) FY 2009-10 Adopted
Budget and City Budget Archives, by City of Portland, Management and Finance,
retrieved from http://www.portlandonline.com/omf/index.cfm?c=26048. Population
figures based on (a) State and County Quickfacts: Los Angeles (City), California, 2010,
by U.S. Census Bureau, 2000a, retrieved from http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/
0644000.html, and (b) State and County Quickfacts: Portland (City), Oregon, 2010, by
U.S. Census Bureau, 2000b, retrieved from http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/41/
4159000.html

63
budget cuts to a 10% reduction over prior years, DONE’s General Manager, BongHwan
Kim, implored neighborhood councils to remember DONE when petitioning the City
Council to fund the neighborhood council system. DONE itself suffered a 13% reduction
in its budget in 2009. Perennially short staffed, DONE is also dealing with layoffs and
furloughs occasioned by the city’s budget crisis. Currently, DONE comprises a staff of
43 members, 14 of whom work directly with neighborhood councils in the field. This
averages one field staff member per 275,000 residents—a ratio higher than that between
City Council members and their constituencies. Musso et al. (2007) reported that, in
individual interviews DONE project coordinators consistently reported that departmental
staffing was inadequate to the task of supporting the neighborhood council system,
although respondents were divided on whether the department had adequate field staff.
It has not been easy for DONE to establish a relevant role within a system of
operationally independent neighborhood councils that are deeply skeptical of City
government in general and of DONE’s administrative competence in particular. The
relationship between DONE and neighborhood councils is complicated by the inherent
conflict in DONE’s role as both a servant of capacity building and an agent of oversight
with authority to initiate decertification proceedings against councils. Under these con-
ditions, an activist stance toward capacity building—for example, requiring mandatory
leadership and management training for all council board members—risks infringing on
councils’ autonomy and violating their trust, while a more relaxed approach is perceived
as a failure by DONE to fulfill its mission. Beyond training regarding conflict of interest
concerns, required of all board members, no systematic approach exists to ensure that

64
neighborhood council officers and active stakeholders have the necessary skills and
competencies to discharge their duties.
7

Hence, whereas the neighborhood council Plan previewed a robust role for DONE
in providing training and operational support to councils, DONE has instead cleaved to a
program of low-profile technical advisement and voluntary training. One DONE field
staff member identified the department’s primary job as helping councils to avoid pitfalls
in their operations—for example, helping them to follow rules and procedures so that
they avoid grievances, or suggesting that board members avail themselves of a particular
type of training—but noted that councils “have the choice to listen to me or not” and that
outcomes vary (interview with the author, July 8, 2009). With the exception of fiscal
oversight, DONE takes a hands-off approach to procedural enforcement, relying to a
great extent on councils’ stakeholdership to hold the board accountable for transparent
and democratic action.
Recent changes within DONE’s operations reflect the Department’s ongoing
effort to stake a claim to its designated capacity-building function and consolidate its
identity within the neighborhood council system. In July 2008 the Department announced
the creation of a Neighborhood Leadership Institute, and an ambitious intention to
develop the institute into the leading capacity-building program of its kind over the
following three years. Given the historic dearth of government support for the depart-
ment, DONE’s strategy for developing the institute relied on financial sponsorship and

7
Board presidents and treasurers are also required to attend a training workshop
on the Department’s funding system and financial reporting requirements.

65
operational partnerships with non-government entities.
8
The unfortunate timing of the
institute’s launch during a major economic recession appears to have undermined the
initiative’s 3-year timeline. So far, the Department has simply united its current training
offerings under the Institute’s name.
In July 2009 the Department announced that it would operate under the name
Empower LA, a move intended to raise awareness of the neighborhood council program
among both citizens and City departments. Among the department’s projected opera-
tional changes were greater visibility for neighborhood council accomplishments, recog-
nition of participatory practices within City departments, and a revamped website to
better facilitate training and workshops. During the previous year the Department also
changed field staff members’ title from the ambiguous “Project Coordinator” to
“Empowerment Analyst,” a move that a field staff member characterized as reflecting an
evolving relation of partnership between DONE and neighborhood councils (Personal
communication from Respondent 23, July 8, 2009). The new Empower LA program does
not appear to comprehend any substantive changes to the Department’s training policy or
program that might facilitate local organizational empowerment. Similarly, the Mayor’s
proposal to gain operating efficiencies by rolling DONE into the city’s Community
Development Department, which was subsequently put on hold by the City Council’s
Neighborhoods and Education Committee, would not appear to alter the Department’s
existing functions.

8
Statement by BongHwan Kim, General Manager of the Los Angeles Department
of Neighborhood Empowerment at announcement of Carol Baker Tharp Neighborhood
Leadership Institute, July 30, 2008.

66
Elections. Councils’ ability to renew and perpetuate themselves through periodic
recruitment and selection of governing officers is fundamental to the neighborhood
council system’s viability. For most councils, this function has been fulfilled through a
biannual election process carried out by the councils, with limited support from DONE
and volunteer election administrators and arbitrators. The decentralized nature of this
process was dictated by councils’ local autonomy in establishing their elections pro-
cedures, itself a further reflection of the City’s determinedly noninterventionist stance
with regard to local control over council operations.
However, in their 2007 review of the system, the Neighborhood Council Review
Commission (NCRC) raised doubts about the sustainability of the elections system, citing
a mismatch between the time and labor required to publicize, administer, and certify
elections and adjudicate subsequent election challenges and the institutional and volun-
teer resources available for these functions. This mismatch stemmed variously from the
demands placed on the system by the variation among neighborhood council bylaws
regarding election procedures, the difficulty of recruiting volunteer elections workers,
and reducing staffing at DONE, which lost its elections division to downsizing (NCRC,
2007).
In an attempt to reinforce the council system’s reproductive capacity, the City
Council voted to adopt recommendations by the NCRC to centralize and standardize the
neighborhood council elections process. The new guidelines call for the City Clerk’s
office to conduct and certify elections under common procedures and on a regular
schedule, and they require DONE to assist neighborhood councils by conducting a
portion of the outreach required to publicize council elections. The new regulations also

67
vest powers to resolve election challenges with the City Clerk’s office until a regional
grievance process can be established. As an added measure to improve the system’s
viability, City Council voted to abolish neighborhood council term limits, previously set
at 8 consecutive years, in order to facilitate councils’ ability to attract and retain
leadership.
Capacity at the Grassroots
This subsection considers the extent to which governance capacity has developed
across the neighborhood council system, addressing in turn each of the dimensions of
capacity conceptualized above with reference to research that assesses these various
dimensions. The discussion highlights the interaction between the institutional design of
the system and implementing actions by city officials and grassroots activists in produc-
ing each form of capacity.
Cognitive capacity. Cognitive capacity inheres in common recognition of some
form of “mutuality of circumstance” among inhabitants of a particular area, whether
founded in co-location within recognized spatial boundaries, shared social attributes, or
social ties (Chaskin, 2001, p. x). Commonly denoted as “sense of community,” this form
of capacity engenders the crucial “integrative links” of collectively held meanings and
values among group members that empower social action on behalf of the community
(McAdam, 1999, p. 50).
The Charter and Plan provided a basis for the development of cognitive capacity
through various provisions that supported neighborhood integrity and encouraged consti-
tutional self-determination. The Plan’s stated objective that councils develop “from the
grassroots of the community,” coupled with the broad latitude that it afforded community

68
members in determining council boundaries and organizational structure, reinforced
cognitive development of a sense of community by inviting community members to be
active participants in defining their community and the organization that would represent
that community.
For example, in the absence of previously established “official” neighborhood
designations, the Plan encouraged neighborhoods to consider a wide range of factors
when rationalizing their boundaries, including historical and contemporary boundaries,
census tracts, city service delivery boundaries, and natural boundaries and street lines
(Article III.2.a). The Plan stipulated only that councils contain a minimum of 20,000
stakeholders, that council areas be compact and contiguous, and that boundaries not
overlap. Following these guidelines, neighborhood council boundaries were determined
in an inductive manner, through locally led negotiations among neighborhood council
organizers.
Although cognitive capacity is inherently difficult to gauge and no systematic
attempt has been made to measure this form of capacity across the neighborhood council
system, focused research on the boundary-setting process among a cluster of four
neighborhoods in the northeastern part of Los Angeles suggests that neighborhood
council formation built or reinforced cognitive capacity (Kitsuse, Banerjee, Polyzoides,
& Cooper, 2002). The cited study, which made use of cognitive mapping methods
(Lynch, 1960), found that each neighborhood articulated a different set of principles for
selecting its boundaries and that, in each case, the process helped to reinforce stake-
holders’ shared sense of the “core” of their community, as well as to discover new
meanings and place identities for their area.

69
Neighborhood council organizers’ cognitive reckoning with the character of their
communities was also apparent in the organizational structures that councils adopted. An
analysis of neighborhood council bylaws found that, while many councils adopted a simi-
lar framework modeled after the structure and procedural rules of larger public govern-
ance bodies, structure nevertheless varied considerably with regard to board size and the
manner in which seats were allocated to various stakeholder groups. Neighborhood
council bylaws also indicated organizers’ intention that councils serve as a vehicle for
developing ties among community stakeholders. Analysis of councils’ mission statements
revealed that 92% of councils mentioned civic engagement, empowerment, or community
building goals as part of their organizational mission.
Leadership capacity. Leadership capacity concerns the skills, knowledge, and
competencies needed for neighborhood councils to operate efficiently and effectively.
These duties are generally concentrated within councils’ executive boards, but broad
leadership capacity shared across elected and nonelected stakeholders facilitates councils’
capacity in other areas, particularly with development activities. For the purposes of this
discussion, leadership capacity can be understood to comprise (a) an executive function,
relating to leaders’ ability to hold meetings, staff committees, and make decisions about
council actions; and (b) an administrative function, which concerns councils’ ability to
manage the regulatory and procedural demands associated with the institutional environ-
ment, as well as routine organizational functions.
The Charter and Plan included several broad supports aimed at bolstering
leadership capacity. In addition to DONE’s general mandate to arrange training to
council officers and staff, the Plan directed DONE to provide “adequate levels of

70
staffing” (Article VII.16) for each certified council, contingent on resource availability,
and to assist councils in sharing operational resources. However, these purposes have
been compromised by DONE’s ambiguous standing as a capacity-building agent and the
department’s anemic budget. Due to the department’s understaffing, the provision of
staffing to councils has consisted of directing councils to a list of temporary agencies
from which they may seek clerical support (to be paid for from councils’ individual
budget), and it has yet to develop a program for sharing of resources among councils.
More critically, support for leadership development has been limited to a patchwork of
information-driven rather than skill-building training options that are generally limited to
single-session modules of a few hours’ duration.
In addition to the training regarding conflict of interest that is required of all board
members, DONE routinely offers an initial orientation for newly elected boards, covering
expectations for transparency, inclusiveness, and ethical responsibility in council opera-
tions. DONE also requires council treasurers and presidents to participate in a training
module on the neighborhood council funding system. DONE offers a variety of training
programs on a regional or citywide basis, either in evening “workshops” held around the
city or at the annual Congress of Neighborhoods meeting. However, no systematic pro-
gram exists in which DONE enters into partnership with councils to assess their level of
leadership capacity and to create a leadership development plan. In some instances,
DONE may arrange training tailored to the needs of individual councils—for example,
board retreats that address issues of group dynamics and strategic planning training—but
such training activities are presented on a limited basis, subject to resource availability
and usually by specific request from the neighborhood council.

71
With few institutional supports available to them, councils have struggled to
consolidate leadership capacity around executive and administrative functions. Lack of
capacity in the area of meeting facilitation and conflict management has particularly
undermined councils’ executive function. Because neighborhood councils’ work centers
on public assembly, council leaders’ ability to conduct orderly meetings and manage con-
flict is crucial to council effectiveness. Group interaction and domination of democratic
discourse by polarized interests have been theorized as deterrents to civic engagement
(Fiorina, 1999), a premise that appears relevant in the neighborhood council context. In a
survey of city residents conducted by the NCRC, respondents cited “meeting participants
are polite and respectful of one another” as the second most important factor that might
influence their decision to attend a neighborhood council meeting, behind having a vote
on issues with which they were concerned (NCRC, 2007, p. 43). Interviews with DONE
project coordinators by the USC Neighborhood Participation Project confirmed lack of
civility to be a widespread problem among neighborhood councils. Project coordinators
identified group processes and internal conflict, including divisiveness, lack of commit-
ment, “rogue” board members, and procedural challenges, as the greatest obstacles to
neighborhood council success citywide (Musso et al., 2007).
The NCRC’s review of the neighborhood council system also suggests that
council leaders lack the substantive and procedural knowledge required to navigate City
government. Functional command of the workings of municipal government across a
wide spectrum of enterprise, as well as understanding of the often complex relationships
among various levels of government, nonprofit agencies, and private interests that make
up today’s governance landscape (Kettl, 2000; Rhodes, 1996) are crucial to capacity

72
outputs in the areas of policy action, production, and development; however, training
needs in this area have exceeded actual provision. The NCRC called on DONE to expand
its training offerings in accessing and navigating City Hall, influencing City decisions
and, particularly, substantive education regarding processes related to land use and
development. In turn, it also called on neighborhood council leaders to avail themselves
of training opportunities and to commit to informing themselves about policy issues
relevant to their community and the City as a whole.
Similarly, research on the neighborhood council system suggests that councils’
administrative leadership capacity has suffered from both institutional obstacles and
leadership weaknesses at the local level. Councils’ administrative function is centered
within the offices of secretary and treasurer, and concerns such tasks as creating and
posting agendas and minutes, financial record keeping and reporting, and managing day-
to-day organizational operations. The NCRC’s evaluation of the system highlighted
neighborhood councils’ frustrations in dealing with institutionally imposed and organiza-
tional impediments to conducting business effectively. When asked what they would fix
to improve their council’s operations, board members most frequently cited standardizing
and clarifying bylaws, guidelines, and procedures (NCRC, 2007). Analysis of neighbor-
hood council agendas confirms an inordinate preoccupation with administrative concerns,
revealing that more than half (52%) of agendized items related to internal operational
issues (Musso et al., 2003).
The NCRC report also called attention to deficiencies in the neighborhood council
program’s system of fiscal management, citing lack of consistent application of guide-
lines and oversight by DONE and administrative incompetence among council treasurers.

73
The NCRC recommended increased training for treasurers and standardization and
streamlining of fiscal procedures. Recently, the neighborhood council funding program
has come under scrutiny following widely publicized allegations of financial misconduct
against a small number of council officers (Reston, 2009), leading to calls by political
leaders for greater oversight by DONE. In turn, DONE has called for increased funding
to expand its audit staff, which currently consists of a single auditor working with two
assistants.
Representational capacity. The success of neighborhood councils as publicly
elected governance bodies relies on their capacity to represent the stakeholder/members
within their community effectively. Drawing on the literature in democratic theory, Guo
and Musso (2007) suggested that the representational function of community-based
organizations can be categorized along five dimensions. The authors characterized the
first three dimensions as input measures to the final two dimensions, which can be con-
sidered outputs of representational capacity in the form of legitimacy.
1. Formal representation relates to the existence of formal procedures for the
nomination and selection of the organization’s leaders (e.g., officers, executive board,
and committee heads).
2. Descriptive representation reflects the degree to which an organizational body
reflects politically relevant characteristics of its constituency.
3. Participatory representation refers to the extent to which organizations
incorporate participation from nonelected stakeholders into their decision making and
operations.

74
4. Substantive representation occurs when organizations act in a manner con-
sistent with the interests of their constituencies.
5. Symbolic representation refers to the degree to which organizations enjoy
constituents’ trust as a legitimate representative of the community, regardless of their
performance along other dimensions of representational capacity.
The institutional design and subsequent implementation of the neighborhood
council system includes provisions that speak to each of the three input dimensions of
representation, although institutional supports for building representational capacity have
been limited and representational capacity across various dimensions is uneven. Through-
out the evolution of the system, public discourse has focused on the desirability of
descriptive representation within neighborhood councils, but councils on the whole
remain descriptively weak. At the same time, other aspects of representation relevant to
the successful function of neighborhood councils, particularly participatory and sub-
stantive representation, have been effectively ignored. Neither the design of the system
nor its implementation have attended to symbolic representation; hence, the discussion
below does not treat this dimension.
Formal representation. By establishing clear and transparent guidelines for the
democratic and ethical accountability of neighborhood councils, including selection and
election of officers, grievance procedures, and rights of recall, removal, referendum, and
initiative, formal representative arrangements can build neighborhood council capacity by
enhancing neighborhood council legitimacy, thereby reinforcing councils’ symbolic
representation. The Charter speaks to formal representational arrangements only to
prohibit the Plan from imposing restrictions on the method by which neighborhood

75
council board members are chosen. While no particular formal arrangements at the
council level have been identified to either promote or detract from representation (Jun &
Musso, 2007), procedural variations across the system have led to administrative
inefficiencies that have threatened the integrity of the neighborhood council system.
Recent actions to standardize election and grievance processes point toward a desire to
strengthen neighborhood council legitimacy.
The initial provisions of the Plan granted broad autonomy to neighborhood
councils to determine formal aspects of representation and initiated an system in which
neighborhood council board elections were largely self-administered. Other features of
the selection process, such as procedures for nominating candidates, selecting executive
officers, and appointing board members, were left to individual councils to work out in
their bylaws. Analysis of neighborhood council bylaws showed that 96% of board seats
were elected positions and only 4% were appointed (NCRC, 2007), but nominating
procedures, as well as procedures for handling grievances, varied (Musso et al., 2003).
Relatively few council bylaws contained provisions for recall or referendum and
initiative processes (Musso et al., 2003).
After neighborhood council elections, grievance procedures have posed the
greatest challenges to formal representation. The NCRC recommended that neighborhood
councils adopt common grievance procedures to improve the City’s efficiency in handl-
ing such complaints. This recommendation is now a priority in the BONC initiative to
reduce variation in neighborhood council bylaws.
9
The current initiative by the BONC to

9
Statement by BONC Commissioner Albert Abrams at the Congress of Neighbor-
hoods, October 10, 2009.

76
standardize or narrow the range of formal procedures appears to be aimed toward
improving DONE’s ability to enforce formal representation, particularly in the area of
handling grievances.
Descriptive representation. The neighborhood council charter reform measure
contained two inclusionary provisions aimed at forming a descriptively representational
basis for councils. Whereas many community-based organizations are structured along
functionally associative lines—for example, into homeowners, renters, and business
associations—the definition of stakeholders as anyone who “lives, works or owns
property” within a neighborhood council’s boundaries is directed toward overcoming this
tendency, as well as implicitly opening neighborhood council membership to noncitizen
residents (Charter, Sec. 900). A provision that stipulated that neighborhood councils
“shall include representatives of the many diverse interests in the community” (Sec. 900)
reinforces the goal of functional diversity but also attends to inclusion of political
interests organized around race, ethnicity, national origin, faith, and social class.
Given the considerable racial and ethnic diversity of Los Angeles, much attention
has focused on incorporating these forms of diversity into neighborhood councils. The
primary mechanism for incorporation has been outreach: attempts by neighborhood
councils to make their activities known across a broad cross-section of their community.
Councils have pursued outreach in a variety of ways, including sponsorship of com-
munity events, tabling, distribution of souvenir items imprinted with their council logo,
newsletters, electronic communications, and knocking on doors. Despite the fact that
many councils devote a substantial portion of their annual budget to outreach activities,
research suggests that contacts between neighborhood council board members and other

77
neighborhood council members may be declining.
10
Moreover, neighborhood council
board remain overwhelmingly white and relatively affluent (Musso et al. 2007; NCRC,
2007).
The failure of neighborhood councils to incorporate racial and ethnic diversity
points to both the lack of institutional supports for this task (see communicative capacity,
below) and the inadequacy of outreach as a tool for attracting participation by tradition-
ally disenfranchised groups. Because it is intimately related to the system’s basic pur-
poses of participation and inclusiveness, neighborhood councils’ capacity to communi-
cate with their stakeholdership has been an ongoing and central concern among system
observers.
11

Councils’ effectiveness in using communications strategies, practices, and techno-
logies has implications for their ability to perform a wide range of critical functions,
including informing the community about important issues, recruiting officers, engaging
nonelected stakeholders in the work of the council, and mobilizing stakeholder turnout
for political actions and community events. Yet, counter to the importance of communi-
cation, the Charter and Plan place relatively little emphasis on this function. The Charter
requires that councils include in their bylaws a system for communicating with stake-
holders, and the Plan directs DONE to assist neighborhood councils with public outreach,

10
The USC Neighborhood Participation Project’s surveys showed interactions
between board members and other neighborhood council members declining from 7.5
contacts to under 7 between 2003 and 2006.
11
Councils’ ability to communicate with City Hall and one another is conceptu-
alized as a function of political capacity, discussed above, and hence is not treated here.

78
including, under the revamped elections guidelines, outreach to mobilize voter turnout for
neighborhood council elections.
As the neighborhood council system has matured, the burden of this communicat-
ive function has fallen almost entirely to the councils. Although DONE initially provided
support in mobilizing difficult-to-reach populations to participate in the neighborhood
council formation process, it has subsequently limited its support to councils to providing
basic advice and training on strategies for outreach. Neighborhood councils have
responded to this challenge by increasing their outreach efforts (Musso et al., 2007), and
they commonly dedicate a significant portion of their annual budget to outreach activi-
ties. System wide, neighborhood councils have engaged in a wide variety of outreach
activities, including face-to-face contact (knocking on doors and tabling at events), print
strategies (fliers and community newsletters), electronic communications (websites and
e-mail messaging) and, more recently, social networking applications. However,
councils’ effectiveness in deploying these strategies depends variously upon members’
communicative and technological skills, their commitment to the demands of ongoing
communications tasks, their ability to effectively target underrepresented stakeholder
populations, and the “fit” of both their message and the means of delivering it to the
populations that they are trying to reach.
As observers have noted, given that neighborhood councils are often faced with
connecting with diverse stakeholder constituencies across multiple linguistic, cultural,
and class barriers, more or even better outreach is unlikely to engage disconnected groups
in local governance in the absence of concerted community organizing (Lincove, Cooper,
Musso, & Sharfenberg, 2002; NCRC, 2007).

79
Whereas outreach is oriented primarily toward publicizing neighborhood council
activities to those “outside” the existing structure and inviting them to come in, organiz-
ing implies a concerted effort to incorporate targeted groups into the neighborhood
council structure by mobilizing group action around some shared interest (Chambers,
2003; Cox, Erlich, Rothman, & Tropman, 1979; Delgado, 1994). In light of the knowl-
edge and skills required to bridge language, cultural, and class divides, and the well-
known bias toward civic participation among better educated and more affluent people,
councils’ lack of racial and ethnic diversity is not surprising.
Significant attention also focused on the functionally descriptive dimension of
representation, particularly during the council formation period. The Plan’s elaboration of
the Charter’s definition of neighborhood council membership to specify a variety of
possible categories of membership (including, among other things, non-resident partici-
pation in local educational, religious, and senior organizations, and local advisory boards)
sparked considerable public discussion over the reasonable extent of stakeholder status
and the implications of such a broad definition on neighborhood council structure.
12
An
additional provision in the Plan that prohibited any single stakeholder group from com-
prising a majority of a neighborhood council board reportedly responded to pressure from
the Valley Industry and Commerce Association (VICA) over concerns that neighborhood
councils would fall under control of homeowner interests (Musso, Weare, et al., 2002).
Ultimately, many neighborhood councils addressed the mandate for functionally

12
The Plan was subsequently amended to designate stakeholders as “any indivi-
dual who lives works or owns property in the neighborhood and any individual who
declares a stake in the neighborhood and affirms the factual basis for it.” (Plan, Amended
2.20.2008).

80
descriptive representation by designating seats on the board to functionally specific
interests (e.g., a faith organization representative, an education representative; Musso et
al., 2003) and through formation of committees that respond to specific interests within
the community.
Participatory representation. Given the neighborhood council reform’s stated
purpose of involving more people in government, participatory representation is arguably
the most important dimension of representational capacity. Participatory representation
relates to the frequency and intensity with which board members interact with nonelected
stakeholders in the conduct of neighborhood council business and activities. The Charter
treats participatory representation primarily as a function of openness, mandating neigh-
borhood councils to include assurances in their bylaws that meetings are open to public
and that there will be broad participation “in the conduct of business, deliberation, and
decision making” (Sec. 906.a.6). However, participatory representation is more easily
measured as a function of the porousness of councils’ governing structure with regard to
direct involvement by nonelected stakeholders. In this regard, neighborhood councils
present a mixed record.
Analysis of neighborhood councils’ organizational structure found that councils
appeared to replicate a City Council structure, in which decision-making power is heavily
vested in elected board members, with little room for nonelected stakeholders to influ-
ence deliberations (Musso et al., 2003). Nevertheless, one third of the bylaws analyzed by
the USC Neighborhood Participation Project permitted some form of general assembly
voting beyond elections. This is extant despite the fact that direct participation by a
general stakeholdership has been challenged by the City Attorney, who recommended

81
that Town Hall-style governance be limited to advisory votes. The recommendation cited
(a) the need for decision makers to comply with conflict of interest rules when voting on
the expenditure of public funds or entering into contracts, and (b) concerns over the
vulnerability of a Town Hall format to domination by a single stakeholder interest. The
NCRC has promoted Town Hall governance as consistent with the nature and purpose of
the neighborhood council system and has called on the City to investigate the legality of a
Town Hall structure.
Analysis of board structure also suggests that many boards are not designed to
allow nonelected stakeholders to initiate or participate readily in committee activities.
The USC group found that almost half of the bylaws that they examined assigned com-
mittee creation to the board and almost 18% vested this power in the president. In two
thirds of the cases the president or board were in charge of selecting committee chairs,
and in one third of the cases the Board or President had approval authority over com-
mittee members. Only 42% of the boards surveyed in 2006 included regular participation
by nonelected stakeholders in neighborhood council committee activities. Eighty percent
of the bylaws in the USC analysis called for the use of parliamentary procedure—pre-
dominately Robert’s Rules of Order—in the conduct of neighborhood council meetings.
Although these rules are a widely employed procedural model in the United States, their
formal nature may have the effect of hampering direct involvement by stakeholders.
Substantive representation. Given the difficulty of achieving descriptive repre-
sentation, observers of the system have advocated for greater attention and supports for
developing substantive representation (Musso et al., 2007). No systematic focus has been
placed on increasing neighborhood councils’ substantive representational capacity—the

82
extent to which elected board members’ concerns mirror those of community stake-
holders. Comparative research suggests that neighborhood council board members and
city residents share a substantive interest in public safety but that council members are
more likely to be concerned with quality-of-life issues, whereas residents at large care
more about education (Musso et al., 2007).
13
Some councils have sought information
about stakeholder interests on an individual basis through community surveys, but such
surveys are time consuming to conduct and analyze.
Integrative capacity. Integrative capacity relates to the extent to which neighbor-
hood councils function as a forum that affords participants opportunities for personal
expression and growth. As discussed in Chapter 1, integration is an ideal of classical
democratic theory as well as deliberative democracy, valued not for its effects upon the
individual per se but for its role in developing competencies and attitudes necessary to
successful democratic governance. While integration can result from many types of
action, the literature cited in Chapter 1 suggests that “strong” participatory forums
involve some combination of engagement in reasoned justification of opinions and
preferences, sharing of personal experiences that shape participants’ perspectives on
issues at hand, and contribution of “local knowledge” that has bearing on group
deliberations.
While the Charter alluded to a deliberative function for councils in mandating
inclusiveness “in the conduct of business, deliberation, and decision making,” the idea of
an integrative function was suggested in the Plan’s objective that neighborhoods councils

13
The USC report compared results of neighborhood council board member
surveys in 2003 and 2006 with results from surveys of likely voters in Los Angeles
conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California between 2003 and 2005.

83
promote a “sense of community” for the expression of ideas and opinions. It is interesting
that more than half of the mission statements analyzed by the USC group identified
neighborhood councils as a forum for public discussion of community issues and 20%
characterized these forums as either “deliberative” or “collaborative” (Musso et al.,
2003). These findings suggest that many council organizers envisioned local councils as a
vehicle for building civic and community capacity, as well as a structure for representa-
tive governance. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that neighborhood councils are
well removed from a participatory ideal. Although no systematic investigation of council
meetings practices has been undertaken, observation of neighborhood council meetings
reveals that many councils have modeled their deliberations after those of larger govern-
ance bodies, requiring nonelected stakeholders to submit speaker cards in order to com-
ment on agendized items, imposing time limits on speaker comments, and limiting direct
stakeholder influence on decision making (Musso, Weare, et al., 2002; NCRC, 2007).
Indeed, the opportunity to experiment with alternative models of governance has
been trumped by seeming caution on the part of councils to adopt organizational struc-
tures and practices that depart from traditional models. The NCRC’s report encouraged
the further development of neighborhood councils as deliberative bodies rather than
merely decision-making bodies, urging the City and councils to adopt a stakeholder-
centered council model that engages a wide range of participatory practices, including
newly emerging forms of participation facilitated by technology.
Political capacity. As distinct from mediating forms of capacity, neighborhood
councils’ political capacity speaks to councils’ ability to influence the decisions and
actions of City government both individually and in collaboration with one another.

84
Political capacity inheres in the number and quality of the channels available to neighbor-
hood councils to connect “vertically” with the City, and “horizontally” with each other,
as well as in neighborhood councils’ ability to mobilize their resources to take advantage
of political opportunities. In the latter respect, political capacity—the ability to act
effectively in a political manner—can be theorized as a function of the capacity “inputs”
described above.
Although the Charter explicitly constituted neighborhood councils as advisory
governance bodies, more than 40% of the mission statements analyzed by Musso et al.
(2003) referenced advocacy to influence the City on policy, planning, or service delivery
as a part of the councils’ work. An analysis of neighborhood council agendas revealed
that councils were involved in advocacy at both the local and regional level, in issues
such as the Los Angeles airport expansion and mitigation of the environmental effects of
waste facilities (Musso et al., 2007). While no data exist to assess the extent and nature of
political action at the local level, neighborhood councils clearly identify political action
as a primary field of accomplishment. In an NCRC survey, board members most fre-
quently cited “influence on a land use decision or process” as a board success.
The political empowerment of neighborhood councils along advocacy lines may
be supported in part by the series of “empowerment innovations” (Musso et al., 2007)
contained in the Charter. These innovations laid a foundation for both vertical and
horizontal integration of neighborhood councils into governance processes with a series
of “empowerment innovations” (Musso et al., 2007) designed to introduce reform into the
City’s administrative and political leadership structures. The Neighborhood Council Plan
sought to support these innovations by committing DONE to “promote and facilitate open

85
communication among City agencies and Certified Neighborhood Councils, and provide
education, guidance, and assistance in developing strategies for providing comments and
feedback to the City Council and its committees and City boards and commissions”
(Article VII.6). However, these innovations have proven largely tokenistic, implemented
in the absence of performance goals and sanctions for nonperformance, and without
appropriation of educational support or financial resources to assist city agencies in
developing an appropriate citizen engagement function. Meanwhile, a variety of partici-
patory innovations have emerged in an ad hoc fashion, as neighborhood councils have
sought greater collective influence on City decision making by organizing on regional
and citywide scales, and as the growing organizational strength of neighborhood councils
has forced City agencies to develop means of incorporating neighborhood council input
into their decision-making processes.
Community-level empowerment. The neighborhood council charter provision
included four innovations directed at vertical integration of local bodies into city govern-
ance procedures. The participatory innovation with the greatest potential value for direct
local empowerment was a new communications system intended to give neighborhoods
advance notice of city decisions affecting their area. Created by the Charter as the Early
Warning System and renamed the Early Notification System in the Plan, this innovation
was particularly welcome, given the vast scope of city governance in Los Angeles, which
poses challenges to communities seeking to stay abreast of relevant issues, and the City’s
reputation for backdoor dealings between property developers and elected officials,
which has historically cut local communities out of the land use and planning process
until after crucial decisions had been made.

86
The Early Notification System was debuted by DONE in 2001 and has since been
adopted by the City as a feature of electronic government available to all citizens by sub-
scription. Despite a number of refinements, the system’s usefulness has been hampered
by technological limitations that require users to sort through postings to find information
relevant to their council, and by lack of sufficiently timely delivery of information. The
system’s notification standard corresponds to that of the state’s open meetings law, which
requires only 72 hours advance posting. Because neighborhood councils typically meet
on a monthly schedule, the notification timeline is at odds with councils’ ability to hold
meaningful deliberations before their stakeholder community and provide input before
decisions are taken by the City (Musso et al., 2007).
Whether empowered by the Early Notification System or other means, neighbor-
hood councils have incorporated urban planning as a central part of their activities. An
analysis of neighborhood council agenda items showed that almost half of all issue-
oriented agenda items concerned land use, with half of this share devoted to handling
zoning and variance requests for specific projects (Musso et al., 2007). Thirteen percent
of all land use items concerned proactive planning, suggesting that councils are also
playing a development role within their communities. Together, land use and transporta-
tion made up 40% of all accomplishments listed by board members in a citywide survey
(Musso et al., 2007), and 12% of council bylaws identified economic development as a
part of their organizational purpose (Musso et al., 2003).
The Charter also included a provision that vested neighborhood councils with
responsibility for monitoring City service delivery in their area and holding periodic
meetings with departmental officials. This provision was clearly intended to open

87
channels of communication between City service agencies and neighborhoods and to
enable neighborhoods to hold City agencies accountable for their performance by
locality. While the City has not taken action to develop a uniform program for local
monitoring of service delivery, a variety of initiatives to increase citizen participation in
administrative decision making has emerged in an ad hoc manner.
The most visible participatory reforms within city administrative agencies have
involved the collaborative development of memoranda of understanding between neigh-
borhood councils and City departments. An early initiative led by the USC Collaborative
Learning Project produced memoranda of understanding (MOUs) between regional
clusters of neighborhood councils and three City agencies regarding delivery of services
to those areas. The Department of Water and Power (DWP) later produced the first
citywide MOU to establish terms of collaborative policy making, stimulated by a fallout
between the department and neighborhood councils over a proposed rate hike. Among
other things, the DWP’s MOU, which is overseen by a committee composed of neighbor-
hood council stakeholders, establishes regional liaisons with neighborhood councils,
guarantees 90-day notice on specified DWP board actions, provides for budget work-
shops and educational training, and calls for regional annual meetings with DWP
representatives to discuss service provision. The DWP has also established a dedicated
website for neighborhood councils. Similar citywide MOU processes have subsequently
been undertaken by the Department of Transportation and the Department of Planning.
The third participatory innovation provided a channel of engagement between
neighborhoods and the Mayor’s Office in formulating the City’s annual budget. The
high-profile successes of participatory budgeting programs in places such as Porto

88
Alegre, Brazil, and Kerala, India, previewed the possibility for the development in Los
Angeles of a broadly inclusive, deliberative process with potential to redistribute
resources to poorer areas of the city. However, the resulting reform—built on a regional
deliberative process—has failed to elicit broad participation by neighborhood councils
and has been criticized on the grounds that deliberations result in broad service priorities
rather than actionable recommendations on areas of the budget that are open to influence,
and that the expressed service priorities do not represent the preferences of a sufficiently
broad cross-section of the population (Musso et al., 2007).
The final reform to improve relations between citizens and the City targeted
neighborhoods’ relationship with City Council. The Charter gave neighborhood councils
the power to hold hearings on matters of local concern when delegated to do so by the
City Council. The intent of this provision was to elevate local voice in City Council
decision making and bridge the historic divide between City Council and local places. To
date, no action has been taken on this front. However, City Council has facilitated
neighborhood council input into its deliberations through the creation of a program that
allows neighborhood councils to file community impact statements that are printed
directly on meeting agendas of the Council, its committees, and city commissions. The
City Council also established a 2-year pilot program in 2009 that allows neighborhood
councils to create files for the City Council’s consideration.
Despite these innovations, research indicates that neighborhood councils have
yet to establish a solid footing within the City’s decision-making apparatus. The USC
Neighborhood Participation Project’s surveys of neighborhood council board members
revealed that interaction between board members and city officials was unchanged

89
between 2003 and 2006, and identified better communication with and responsiveness by
the City as a primary challenge (Musso et al., 2007). The City’s sluggish reception of
neighborhood councils may reflect perceptions that neighborhood councils lack legiti-
macy as representatives of a community constituency, as suggested in a comment by
Bernard Parks, who represents Los Angeles’ 8
th
City Council district:
“We view neighborhood councils as unique, but we also make it clear that they’re
not more important than the BIDs, the CACs, all the other entities that exist in the
city. . . . We don’t ignore Mrs. Smith who lives on 62
nd
Street, who doesn’t
belong to anything.”
14

This lack of regard for neighborhood councils’ standing appears to be shared by City
service departments. In a survey, City department staff ranked neighborhood councils last
among all categories of constituents in terms of providing important information to the
department and influencing departmental goals and policies (Musso et al., 2007).
Collective empowerment. Neighborhood councils have also made efforts to flex
their political muscle collectively through various networks of intercouncil associations
developed from the grassroots. The Charter provided for an annual Congress of Neigh-
borhoods, to be arranged by DONE at the request of neighborhood councils, designed to
facilitate an associative function among councils. This provision was changed in the Plan
to delegate a more activist role for DONE in taking the lead in organizing the Congress,
which is done in conjunction with a committee of neighborhood council leaders. The Plan
also added more general support for horizontal networking among councils, directing
DONE to facilitate meetings and communication among neighborhood councils on
request.

14
Remarks at the “Open Forum with Electeds” session, Congress of Neighbor-
hoods meeting, Los Angeles City Hall, October 10, 2009.

90
Although the Charter’s Congress provision appeared to preview the creation of a
deliberative forum in which neighborhood councils could take positions on policy issues
of citywide importance, under DONE’s direction the Congress of Neighborhoods has
evolved into a biannual networking, information sharing, and training convention. In
recent years the main Congress has been held at City Hall during fall and has been
anchored by the Mayor’s “Budget Day” presentation, in which the Mayor lays out his
budget priorities for the upcoming fiscal year and initiates the participatory budget cycle
described above. The second Congress, held in the spring, rotates locations around the
city. Together, these events represent the only formal effort on the part of DONE to
facilitate citywide networking among councils. An additional networking and informa-
tion-sharing forum, the Alliance of Neighborhoods, developed from the grassroots and
holds monthly meetings focused on invited guest speakers from City agencies.
In the absence of a deliberative Congress, grassroots leaders mounted an inde-
pendent effort to create a deliberative body of neighborhood council representatives from
across the city in 2005. The Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Coalition (LANCC) has
attracted delegates from 40 certified neighborhood councils and has formed resolutions
on topics such as a proposed requirement that neighborhood council members who
participate in creating City Council files complete financial disclosure forms, and the
City’s noncompliance with required updates to its Annual Growth and Infrastructure
Review Report. However, the Coalition has struggled to attract greater numbers of
delegates, citing neighborhood councils’ concerns over maintaining their autonomy and a

91
tendency for neighborhood councils to work through regional policy networks.
15
A
variety of such networks has organized at the regional level under varying levels of
formalization, including groups in the San Fernando Valley, Harbor area, Northeast
Central Los Angeles, and Hollywood.
These various networks of intercouncil association have developed in tandem
with a significant aggregate increase in horizontal engagement between neighborhood
councils. The Neighborhood Participation Project’s board member survey showed that
interaction between board members of neighborhood councils more than quadrupled
between 2003 and 2006, jumping from 0.04 contacts to more than 2 contacts. To date,
however, citywide alliances of neighborhood councils have achieved only modest
influence over City policy making in limited arenas (Musso et al., 2007). This suggests
that the proliferation of participatory networks within the neighborhood council system,
while potentially strengthening the civic fabric of the city, does not yet represent a signi-
ficant opportunity for councils to collectively pursue agendas that promise meaningful
local change.
Production capacity. Production capacity refers to the underlying structures and
competencies that support neighborhood councils in performing tasks related to pro-
duction of goods and services. Although production was not envisioned by the Charter as
a function of neighborhood councils, the neighborhood council Plan intimated a role for
neighborhood councils as co-productive agents in citing “build[ing] partnerships with
government” (Plan, Article 1.1) as an objective for the neighborhood councils system but

15
Proceedings of the meeting of the working group of the LANC Congress,
December 17, 2005, and minutes from the LANCC Senate Meeting, July 7, 2007,
www.lanccoalition.org.

92
did not specify means or resources through which such partnerships should be achieved.
DONE currently sponsors a program that engages neighborhood councils in promoting
public safety planning in conjunction with the Department of Emergency Preparedness,
but otherwise has not established formal co-productive links between councils and
service providers. No data exist measuring the extent to which neighborhood councils
have entered into co-productive relationships at the local level or undertaken production
of goods and services on their own.
Development capacity. Community development, defined as councils’ ability to
undertake and complete projects related to community improvement and community
building, was not explicitly previewed by the Charter or Plan as a neighborhood council
function. However, analyses of council bylaws, meeting agendas, and board member
survey data show that neighborhood councils commonly engage in development-oriented
activities. More than half of neighborhood council bylaws analyzed by Musso et al.
(2003) identified community improvement and beautification as a part of their mission
orientation, and beautification and assistance made up 23% and 10%, respectively, of all
accomplishments reported by members in USC’s survey of neighborhood council board
members (Musso et al., 2007).
16
Moreover, 11% of all issue-oriented agenda items
analyzed concerned community beautification and 13% involved providing financial or
other assistance to other organizations operating in the community (here categorized as a
community-building activity). Of the non-issue-oriented agenda items analyzed, 7%
concerned support for community events (Musso et al., 2007).

16
Beautification and neighborhood improvements made up only 15.5% of
accomplishments reported by board members in NCRC’s survey.

93
The impetus toward productive activities from the origins or neighborhood
councils traces back to councils’ origins; councils have clearly been empowered in this
arena by the availability of direct annual funding through the City. This basic funding
provides the means by which neighborhood councils support other organizations in the
community and sponsor community events. Annual funds can also be leveraged to win
matching grants for community improvement projects available through the City’s Office
of Community Beautification and publicized through DONE. Theoretically, annual
funding could also be used to leverage resources from outside the City, although such
funding would have to flow through an ancillary nonprofit organization attached to or
created by the neighborhood council.
Councils’ use of strategic planning has not been documented; however,
impressionistic evidence based on observation of the system over time suggests that
councils have not engaged extensively in higher-order organizational planning. This may
be due in part to the inhibiting effects of the Plan’s initial imposition of 2-year terms of
office on council leaders’ temporal perspective and commitment.
17

Communicative capacity. Because it is intimately related to the system’s basic
purposes of participation and inclusiveness, neighborhood councils’ capacity to com-
municate with their stakeholdership has been an ongoing and central concern among
system observers.
18

17
Beginning in 2010, neighborhood councils will have the option to set either 2- or
4-year terms of office under the system’s revised election rules.
18
Councils’ ability to communicate with City Hall and one another is conceptu-
alized as a function of political capacity, discussed above, and hence is not treated here.

94
Councils’ effectiveness in using communications strategies, practices, and techno-
logies has implications for their ability to perform a wide range of critical functions,
including informing the community about important issues, recruiting officers, engaging
nonelected stakeholders in the work of the council, and mobilizing stakeholder turnout
for political actions and community events. Yet, counter to the importance of communi-
cative capacity, the Charter and Plan place relatively little emphasis on this function. The
Charter requires that councils include in their bylaws a system for communicating with
stakeholders, and the Plan directs DONE to assist neighborhood councils with public
outreach, including, under the revamped elections guidelines, outreach to mobilize voter
turnout for neighborhood council elections.
As the neighborhood council system has matured, the burden of this communica-
tive function has fallen almost entirely to the councils. Although DONE initially provided
support in mobilizing difficult-to-reach populations to participate in the neighborhood
council formation process, it has subsequently limited its support to councils to providing
basic advice and training on strategies for outreach. Neighborhood councils have
responded to this challenge by increasing their outreach efforts (Musso et al., 2007), and
they commonly dedicate a significant portion of their annual budget to outreach activi-
ties. System wide, neighborhood councils have engaged in a wide variety of outreach
activities, including face-to-face contact (knocking on doors and tabling at events), print
strategies (fliers and community newsletters), electronic communications (websites and
e-mail messaging) and, more recently, social networking applications. However,
councils’ effectiveness in deploying these strategies depends variously upon members’
communicative and technological skills, their commitment to the demands of ongoing

95
communications tasks, and the “fit” of both their message and the means of delivering it
to the populations that they are trying to reach.
Indeed, despite the apparent success of outreach in raising constituents’ awareness
of their existence,
19
various measures of local-level participation in neighborhood council
activity point to councils’ difficulty in drawing stakeholder engagement. In their analysis
of the 2006 neighborhood council election cycle, the NCRC found that 90% of neighbor-
hood council elections drew less than 2% of the total population for their council area and
that average participation had declined since the first elections in 2002. The USC
evaluation revealed that average participation at meetings also appeared to be declining,
falling from an average 26 to 22 participants between 2003 and 2006, as estimated by
DONE Project Coordinators, the field representatives who worked directly with neigh-
borhood councils (Musso et al., 2007).
Neighborhood council board members appear to recognize this shortcoming.
Although one third of board members surveyed in 2006 identified outreach as an
accomplishment of their council, roughly the same percentage indicated that outreach
was a challenge to their council, and 63 respondents cited outreach as both an accom-
plishment and a challenge (Musso et al., 2007). Board members identified low turnout at
both elections and meetings as a problem in both the 2003 and 2006 surveys. DONE
project coordinators also reported declining stakeholder involvement in neighborhood
council committee work during this period (Musso et al., 2007). Both USC and the

19
A survey of by the Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles reported that
nearly 60% of Los Angeles city residents surveyed were aware of their neighborhood
council, up from 27% in a 2003 survey by the Public Policy Institute of California
(Musso et al., 2007).

96
NCRC have called for DONE to support neighborhood councils’ engagement function
through direct involvement in organizing and outreach activities, but it is not clear
whether the department will receive the necessary financial backing from the City to
expand its role in this fashion. To date, the only dedicated effort by the City Council to
improve councils’ engagement capacity has been the removal of officer term limits,
making it easier for neighborhood councils to fill board seats.
Discussion
From a capacity building standpoint, the narrative of the neighborhood council
system to date is one of gains and enduring struggles amid adversity. Arguably the most
successful aspect of the neighborhood council reform was its institutionalization of broad
organizational infrastructure at the local level through the creation of neighborhood
councils. The system unfolded swiftly
20
and in a remarkably self-organizing process,
consistent with the Plan’s directive that neighborhood councils be as independent as
possible and its provisions for broad local autonomy in organizational constitution.
Neighborhood councils continue to operate and have a mixed record of accomplishing
desired ends. Surveyed in 2006, neighborhood council board members identified more
than 800 accomplishments by their councils in areas related to land use and transporta-
tion, community beautification, staging community events, safety, assistance to com-
munity programs, education, environment, and the economy (Musso et al., 2007).
However, it is difficult to generalize about neighborhood council successes, given the
number and diversity of councils and because neighborhood council accomplishments

20
Of the 88 councils currently established, 81 were created within the first 2 years
of the certification process.

97
vary across the city. Citywide, neighborhood councils have had limited influence on
policymaking and service delivery.
Yet the governance potential created by the neighborhood council infrastructure
has yet to be matched by governance capacity. The integrity of the system’s capacity-
building framework has been undermined by a lack of both clearly defined policy goals
and meaningful accountability measures to ensure City support for the system (Musso &
Kitsuse, 2002), a burdensome regulatory apparatus, and bureaucratic impediments to the
conduct of council business. Moreover, the City’s laissez-faire approach to ensuring
institutional supports for councils is at odds with both reasonable expectations of the
skills, knowledge, and commitment that volunteer stakeholders bring to community
governance and the burden of responsibility that falls to neighborhood council leaders.
Neighborhood council leaders’ duties require them to perform many of the policy
analytic and production functions of officials elected to higher office without the benefit
of a salary, paid staff or, in many cases, a central office, while meeting statutory and
regulatory mandates for openness, transparency, and inclusiveness. To the extent that
community volunteers must also contend with cumbersome administrative procedures
within the City’s bureaucracy and may lack experience in organizational management,
the lack of robust capacity across the neighborhood council system is not surprising.
Both USC’s Neighborhood Participation Project, which evaluated the neighbor-
hood council system in both a formative and summative fashion over a period of 7 years,
and the NCRC, the body that produced the 7-year review of the neighborhood council
system required by Charter, have called for DONE to alleviate neighborhood councils’
operational burdens by assisting them with outreach and organizing, tasks crucial to the

98
system’s participatory mission and councils’ representational capacity. However, given
the City’s current fiscal woes and its lackluster record in supporting DONE, the future of
DONE’s capacity-building role will likely rest on the department’s ability to attract
additional resources from outside government.
Capacity and Equity
Social equity in the governance capacity-building process was an evident concern
of the neighborhood council reform. Both the Charter and Plan contained provisions
intended to pre-empt uneven development of the system and disproportionate distribution
of political power to well-organized councils with a more privileged stakeholder base.
The Charter insisted that the Plan ensure that all areas of the City fall within the bounda-
ries of a neighborhood council and have an equal opportunity to form a council, thereby
safeguarding against “land grabs” by more affluent or organized communities, as well as
power disparities resulting from uneven development of neighborhood councils across
the City. The Plan in turn required DONE to prioritize assistance with neighborhood
council formation and training to neighborhoods in politically marginalized areas.
Although fears that neighborhood council formation would lag in poorer com-
munities proved largely unfounded, the extent to which disadvantaged communities have
converted participatory opportunity into governance capacity remains a pressing ques-
tion. In poor communities, threats to governance capacity posed by deficiencies in the
participatory system itself are compounded by adverse social conditions at the local level.
In many cases, the civic infrastructure in poor communities has virtually disappeared
(Traynor, 2008), and with it the personal and organizational networks that are theorized
to facilitate community action (Putnam, 1993, 1995, 2000). Social trust and the

99
commitment to act on behalf of the community may be further eroded by fears for
personal safety stemming from violent crime and by high rates of in- and out-migration,
which impede the development of a sense of community (Chaskin, 2001). Whereas in
affluent communities capacity is generally concentrated in easily identifiable sources, in
poor localities capacity tends to be distributed across the community (Chaskin, 2001),
making it more difficult to locate and engage without thoroughgoing outreach and
organizing efforts.
Although existing research on the neighborhood council system does not report
on the development of governance capacity in poor areas, inferential evidence exists to
suggest that neighborhoods have not benefited equally under the design and implementa-
tion of the system. Empowerment divides particularly appear to surface around issues of
autonomy and self-determination. For example, the study of the neighborhood council
boundary-setting process found that the politics of boundary negotiation at the fringes of
proposed council areas left poorer communities feeling less empowered overall by the
boundary setting process than their more affluent neighbors. Within the cluster of neigh-
borhoods under investigation, residents of affluent areas that were contested by compet-
ing neighborhood councils fought to be grouped with other affluent areas, and the BONC
upheld these residents’ right to self-determination in the council certification process
(Kitsuse et al., 2002).
Divisions also appeared over the proposal by the BONC to devise standard
organizational bylaws for neighborhood councils based on best practices. Discussion
during a session at the fall 2009 Congress of Neighborhoods Meeting produced strong
sentiment both for and against this proposal, with representatives of well-functioning

100
councils resisting standardization and those from dysfunctional councils embracing
greater guidance and support.
Next Step
Having considered the manifestation of governance capacity across the neighbor-
hood council system in aggregate, the comparative case studies in Chapter 4 explore the
mechanisms and conditions that produce capacity at the local level. The study was par-
ticularly focused on illuminating how governance capacity is built through the neighbor-
hood council system in low-material-resource communities. Embedded in this proposi-
tion is the assumption that these communities have important lessons to teach about what
constitutes valuable sources of capacity in the absence of abundant and/or concentrated
resources. The study takes a micro-level approach to this investigation, relying on case
studies to achieve a nuanced understanding of the factors that contribute to successful
neighborhood council operations. The following chapter outlines the method and sources
of data that were used to inform the three case studies that comprise the original research
reported in this dissertation.

101
CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
This inquiry used a sequential, mixed-methods approach to investigate the sources
of capacity that enable voluntary neighborhood governance organizations in poor com-
munities to take collective action. The investigation relied primarily on qualitative, multi-
site case studies of neighborhood councils that represent disadvantaged areas in the city
of Los Angeles. The case studies were supplemented by multiple other forms of quali-
tative and quantitative data on the Los Angeles neighborhood council system, mostly
produced by researchers at USC over a period of 8 years.
As Yin (2003) suggested, the use of the case study method is well suited to
inquiries involving “many more variables of interest than data points” (p. 13) and in
which the researcher is unable to control or manipulate the dynamics of the focal
phenomenon. In this study the intent was not to interfere with events as they were
researched, but rather to understand the phenomena as they were, with the hope of
identifying manipulations that would be of most benefit to capacity-building efforts going
forward.
The theorized effect of multiple social and economic “conditioning influences” on
community capacity (Chaskin, 2001) also points to the appropriateness of a case study
design. Yin underscored the superior strength of the case study method in investigations
in which context plays an important role, particularly where the boundaries between the
study phenomena and the context in which they are embedded are unclear. By virtue of
allowing triangulation among various types of evidence, case studies are better able to
parse context from phenomenon than are other, singular approaches, for example survey

102
questionnaires. The detailed observations involved in ethnography are perhaps still better
suited than case studies to handle context, but the multiple-case design of the current
research, as well as the researcher’s previous experience with case study research, lack of
training in the ethnographic method, and time limitations, argued against such an
approach.
The case studies were exploratory in nature and designed to build on existing
theories of community capacity. The inquiry was structured around models of community
capacity derived from (a) theories of community building, as represented by Chaskin’s
(2001) framework of community capacity building, and (b) participatory governance, as
embodied in Fung’s (2004) model of accountable autonomy. The particular “hybrid”
nature of Los Angeles neighborhood councils, which are at once quasi-governmental
organizations endowed with limited local authority and de facto community development
organizations with an implicit mandate to undertake community improvement, presented
a unique opportunity to bring contrasting theoretical frameworks to bear on a single
empirical phenomenon. Through the case study strategy, the research was an attempt to
reconcile the largely top-down, state-driven approach to capacity building advocated by
Fung with the more organic and comprehensive bottom-up strategy presented by
Chaskin.
The study took advantage of abundant existing analyses available through the
USC Neighborhood Participation Project (NPP). The NPP was an 8-year, multi-
methodological inquiry into local civic engagement as mediated through the Los Angeles
neighborhood council system. A primary focus of the project was a formative and,
ultimately, summative evaluation of the implementation of the system from its inception

103
in 1999 through 2007, the year in which the city charter mandated a review of the system.
Methodologically, the project’s research utilized interviews and surveys of neighborhood
council leaders and city officials, observation of city-run and community-based meetings,
case studies of political incorporation in immigrant communities, content analysis of
neighborhood council bylaws and agenda items, and geo-coding of demographic and
other data by council area.
Case Study Design and Selection
Although the theoretical models applied in this research refer broadly to com-
munity governance capacity, the focal phenomenon of the study is community capacity
for governance as it is expressed through the activities of Los Angeles neighborhood
councils. Given the deliberately inclusive nature of neighborhood council membership
under the Los Angeles system, which extends to all individuals and organizations with a
residential, property-owning, employment, or other substantive stake in the community,
neighborhood councils are in theory a representative microcosm of the community.
However, many sources of productive governance capacity exist within Los Angeles’
communities that are not coordinated by the neighborhood council. Hence, this study
used the frameworks of community capacity building to illuminate potential strategies
that might inform the capacity-building efforts of neighborhood councils without
equating neighborhood council and community capacity.
Because the researcher was interested in identifying the foundations of capacity in
disadvantaged communities, case selection was primarily controlled for socioeconomic
status. To construct a preliminary sample, I identified the 22 neighborhood councils that
formed the bottom quartile of certified councils (N = 88) as measured by median

104
household income. The decision to divide councils by quartile was reinforced by a natural
break of $4,500 between the median household income within the council at the top of
the quartile and the next lowest-earning council area. In all cases, annual median house-
hold income within this sample fell below that of the City of Los Angeles as a whole
($36,687, per U.S. Census Bureau, 2000), ranging between $14,000 and $30,000.
With initial candidates in hand, I constructed preliminary thumbnail sketches of
each council that included information on secondary selection criteria (see Appendix
A).
21
Among these criteria were four dimensions of particular interest: (a) racial/ethnic
diversity, (b) cultural geography and history, (c) political representation, and (d) institu-
tional factors.
1. Racial/ethnic diversity. Race and class dynamics are among the conditions that
Chaskin et al. ( 2001) hypothesized to influence community capacity. Consistent with
Santow (2007) above, racial diversity—as well as cultural and linguistic diversity—may
undermine a sense of community and may impede efforts to solve problems collectively
in the absence of institutional supports, such as translation services (Fung, 2004). Further,
in their study of network development within the Los Angeles neighborhood council
system, Musso, Weare, and Jun (2008) found that “vertical ties—those from board
member to community stakeholder, or from board member to city council member—are
impeded by heterogeneity, and positively influenced by political and administrative
support” (p. 16), suggesting that diversity factors may also affect access to resources.

21
I am indebted to Kyu-Nahm Jun for generously sharing her compilation of 2000
U.S. Census data on neighborhood councils, which was meticulously geo-coded to match
neighborhood council boundaries. All of the demographic data on neighborhood councils
in this study, including the data on which appendix A is based, refers to Jun’s geographic
analysis.

105
Appendix A contains a demographic breakdown of each candidate community’s racial-
ethnic makeup, as well as a Lieberson (1969) index of racial/ethnic heterogeneity within
each area. The index is constructed on a scale of 0 to 1, where an index value of 0 indi-
cates complete racial/ethnic homogeneity within the population and an index value of 1
indicates complete parity among racial/ethnic groups.
2. Cultural geography and history. This dimension posits a connection between
neighborhood councils’ capacity and the political history and culture of the region of Los
Angeles in which the council is located. Given the city’s large size, political identity and
culture have historically developed on a regional basis around distinct physical-environ-
mental, sociocultural, economic, and institutional factors. The roots of these political
identities have been spelled out in works on Los Angeles racial politics (Sonenshein,
1993), secession movements (Hogan-Esch, 2002; Sonenshein, 2004), and immigrant
neighborhoods (Sánchez, 1993). This dimension is roughly measured in Appendix A as
the regional geography within which each neighborhood council falls, as designated by
Los Angeles area planning commission boundaries. Out of seven regional areas, the
neighborhood councils in the proposed sample fall within only four—South, Central,
East, and Harbor—with the majority located in the South and Central areas. For case
study selection, I intentionally chose cases that fell in different regions in order to capture
geography as a variable within the study.
3. Political representation. At the level of local governance immediately superior
to neighborhood councils, citizens of Los Angeles are represented politically by 15 City
Council members elected by district, each of which is equivalent in population to a
medium-size city (260,000 residents). City Council members enjoy significant power

106
within their districts and have traditionally played a mediating role between citizens and
the City’s highly bureaucratic administrative agencies (Cooper & Musso, 1999). In prac-
tice, many local entities, neighborhood councils included, work with their city council
offices to conduct joint projects, discuss policy issues, and secure resources for their
organization. Hence, political representation was hypothesized as a potentially strong
determinant of neighborhood council capacity. In order to explore this hypothesis, I
sought to choose cases that varied according to City Council representation. Appendix A
identifies the City Council district(s) associated with each neighborhood council. In some
cases, neighborhood council boundaries span as many as three City Council jurisdictions.
4. Institutional factors. In the neighborhood council context, institutional effects
on community capacity may stem from a variety of sources. Fung (2004) underscored the
importance of institutional supports for community-level capacity building. Although
centrally administered support for neighborhood councils has been weak in Los Angeles,
the primary link between individual councils and such supports is the DONE Project
Coordinator. Project Coordinators provide direct organizational assistance to neighbor-
hood councils, supply information regarding system procedures and operations, and link
councils to resources within City government and elsewhere. As in the case of political
representation, the strength of neighborhood council capacity could reasonably be
expected to vary by project coordinator; hence, case study selection took into account
variance across Project Coordinators. The column headed DONE PC in Appendix A
identifies the Project Coordinator associated with each council candidate.
Because the investigation aimed to uncover factors that contribute to neighbor-
hood councils’ success, cases also had to represent neighborhood councils that were

107
beyond the initial start-up phase of development (i.e., writing bylaws and electing a
board) to undertake projects or programs in the community with which they had had at
least some qualified successes. Appendix B presents initial qualitative commentary on the
activities of the case study candidates. These remarks were based on a combination of
sources: (a) consultation with a senior staff member at DONE who had broad knowledge
of the characteristics and operations of neighborhood councils system wide, (b) reference
to qualitative comments in a 2006 survey of neighborhood council board members con-
ducted by the USC NPP that questioned respondents on their perceptions of their board’s
accomplishments and challenges, (c) intelligence from fellow doctoral students who were
conducting research in candidate council communities, and (d) personal knowledge of
individual neighborhood council operations based on my association with the NPP.
Were this study a controlled experiment, incorporating sufficient degrees of
freedom into the study design would, assuming the four categories of dependent variables
above, dictate exploration of 160 cases—many more than existed in the initial case
sample and, for that matter, the entire neighborhood council system. Given limitations
on available cases and—more crucially—my time and resources, the study ultimately
incorporated three case studies.
The field of case study candidates was narrowed through both deductive and
inductive means as follows.
1. Discussion with committee members during my dissertation proposal defense
eliminated several outliers in the sample (for example, the Downtown Los Angeles
Neighborhood Council, where many board members are highly connected members of
the downtown professional elite) and directed attention toward choosing cases from the

108
areas of Central, East, and South Los Angeles, which are respectively associated with
high concentrations of recent immigrants, Latinos, and African Americans. During this
round of consideration, Boyle Heights emerged as a favored candidate for a case study in
East Los Angeles based on its reputation for civic activism, its endorsement by my
DONE contact as a productive council, and the potential for research synergies with a
doctoral colleague involved in a similar inquiry within the area. East Hollywood emerged
as a likely candidate in the Central area based on its reputation within the neighborhood
council system for a highly energetic, youthful board representing a heavily immigrant
community. No obvious selection emerged for a case study in South Los Angeles.
2. Given that the Boyle Heights and East Hollywood neighborhood councils were
desirable cases in terms of variation across the secondary selection criteria laid out
above—in addition to being located in different areas of the city and varying in terms of
history and racial and ethnic profile, the councils fell within different city council districts
and were represented by different city council members—I screened these options to test
their appropriateness for the study. Screening consisted of attending one or more meet-
ings of the council’s general membership, executive board, or committees, and conduct-
ing two or more interviews with key council leaders. In observations of meetings, I was
particularly attentive to signs that meetings drew participation from nonelected stake-
holders, as my familiarity with council operations suggested that stakeholders do not
attend meetings if councils are dysfunctional. In interviews, I was particularly concerned
to ensure that respondents deemed the council to have been successful in past activities,
could identify at least two tangible accomplishments beyond basic operational success
(e.g., conducting meetings in compliance with their bylaws and procedural regulations

109
that pertain to elected bodies in the state of California), and were generally affirmative
about the potential of their council to achieve desired ends. As both the East Hollywood
and Boyle Heights councils met these screening conditions, I committed to each of the
areas as a case study “finalist” and continued apace with the research.
3. The lead for the third case study choice, the community council in Park Mesa
Heights Community Council (PMHCC), arose through contact with a neighborhood
council leader in East Hollywood who had worked with the council in the course of his
employment as a public park developer and admired the competence and good nature of
the council’s leadership. Although PMHCC members’ responses to the NPP board survey
indicated that the council had been in distress at the time of the survey, I was intrigued by
the possibility of conducting a case study in the area due to my previous research
involvement in the area during the neighborhood council formation period.
22
Given that
the PMHCC was located in South Los Angeles and had both a different city council
representative and DONE Project Coordinator than either Boyle Heights or Park Mesa
Heights, it appeared to be a good candidate for a case study, provided its board also had a
record of accomplishments. As with the previous case study candidates, I applied screen-
ing criteria to the council, attending both an Executive Board meeting and a meeting of
the general membership and conducting interviews with council leaders. In the course of
the screening, an informal conversation with a DONE staff member confirmed my

22
The research focused specifically on the efforts of the Hyde Park Community,
which falls at the southern end of the PMHCC council area, to form its own neighbor-
hood council. The area was eventually incorporated along with the communities of Park
Mesa and View Heights into the PMHCC.

110
impression of the high-performing nature of the PMHCC’s board and non-elected leader-
ship. Park Mesa Heights was hence screened into the study.
4. My final case selections were vetted and approved by my dissertation
committee chair.
Case Study Councils as Compared to
the Neighborhood Council System
As depicted in Table 2, a comparison of the selected case study areas against the
Los Angeles neighborhood council system as a whole places these councils toward the
poorer and less politically enfranchised end of the neighborhood council spectrum, with
Park Mesa Heights somewhat better off on several measures than Boyle Heights or East
Hollywood. Median household income in the case study areas falls below the median for
all neighborhood councils, while the percentage of households receiving public assistance
in the three areas is more than twice the median for neighborhood councils as a group.
However, the three case study areas fall in the middle of the range of public assistance
receipt across all councils, suggesting a working class rather than structurally poor
character to the areas. Levels of educational attainment and homeownership, both of
which are positively correlated with civic participation (Verba, Schlozman, & Brady,
1995), were at or higher than the neighborhood council median in Park Mesa Heights but
significantly lower than the median in both Boyle Heights and East Hollywood. East
Hollywood had a notably low rate of homeownership (8%) compared to other councils,
and Boyle Heights had markedly low educational attainment (16%), as measured by the
percentage of population over the age of 25 that has completed high school or above.
The councils also differed from neighborhood councils as a whole in terms of
race, ethnicity, citizenship and English language ability, although these comparisons are

111
Table 2

Case Study and Neighborhood Council System Comparison

Boyle East Park Mesa
Characteristic Heights Hollywood Heights System
a

Total population 86,006 54,932 36,635 35,046
Median household income ($) 24,938 24,400 29,889 39,685
Households with public assistance
income (%) 15 12 13 6
Over age 25 with high school diploma
or above (%) 16 33 41 43
Not U.S. citizens (%) 40 44 13 25
Cannot speak English (%) 37 32 9 16
White (%) 2 21 2
Black (%) 1 3 66
Asian (%) 2 15 1
Hispanic (%) 95 57 27
Racial/ethnic heterogeneity 10 60 49 54
Mean age 33
Homeowner (%) 25 8 47 38
Home tenure, 1995-2000 (%) 54 48 58 51
Geography East Central South
City Council district 14 13 8
Year certified 2002 2007 2002

Note. Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) Project Coordinators:
Boyle Heights = Molina-Trujillo, East Hollywood = Meshack, Park Mesa Heights =
Covarrubia.

a
Median values for the neighborhood system.

112
more nuanced. Boyle Heights, with the highest proportion of Hispanic residents of all
neighborhood councils (94%), falls well below the council median in terms of hetero-
geneity, while Park Mesa Heights (66% African American and 27% Hispanic) falls
slightly below. By contrast, East Hollywood, home to a significant ethnic White
(Armenian) and Asian populations, in addition to a large Hispanic population, falls above
the median measure of heterogeneity system wide.
Forty percent or more of all residents in Boyle Heights and East Hollywood lack
U.S. citizenship—higher than the system median of 25%—and at least 30% of residents
in those communities are unable to speak English, as compared to the 16% median. Park
Mesa Heights fell below the median on both these measures. On other measures, the
selected case study councils resembled the system median, for example in terms of
residential tenure and mean age. All of the selected case study councils were slightly
larger in population than the neighborhood council median, with the population in Boyle
Heights more than twice the median.
Sources of Evidence and Data Collection
The case studies were based on original data collection from multiple sources and
types of evidence, including interviews, direct observations, and documentary sources.
Each of the sources of evidence and data used in the study is described below.
Interviews
The primary source of evidence for the case studies were interviews with 37
people conducted across the case studies (see Table 3). Interviews typically lasted for 1.5
to 2 hours and were usually conducted one-on-one, although several interviews were
conducted with two or more people and on one occasion I interviewed a group of five

113
Table 3

Interview Respondents by Council Affiliation and Stakeholder Status

Neighborhood
Respondent council Stakeholder status

1 East Hollywood City official
2 East Hollywood Board member
3 East Hollywood Board member
4 East Hollywood Board member
5 East Hollywood Board member
6 East Hollywood Non-elected stakeholder and committee member
7 East Hollywood Board member
8 East Hollywood Board member
9 Boyle Heights Board member
10 Boyle Heights Board member
11 East Hollywood Board member
12 Boyle Heights Non-elected stakeholder/Former board member
13 Boyle Heights Non-elected stakeholder
14 Park Mesa Heights Non-elected stakeholder and committee member
15 Park Mesa Heights Non-elected stakeholder and committee member
16 Boyle Heights Board member
17 Boyle Heights Board member
18 Boyle Heights Board member
19 Boyle Heights Board member
20 Boyle Heights Non-elected stakeholder
21 Park Mesa Heights Board member
22 Park Mesa Heights Board member
23 Park Mesa Heights City official
24 East Hollywood Non-elected stakeholder
25 Park Mesa Heights City official
26 East Hollywood Friend of the council
27 East Hollywood Non-elected stakeholder
28 East Hollywood Non-elected stakeholder
29 East Hollywood City official
30 Boyle Heights City official
31 East Hollywood Board member
32 East Hollywood Board member
33 East Hollywood Board member
34 Park Mesa Heights Board member
35 Park Mesa Heights Non-elected stakeholder and committee member
36 Park Mesa Heights Board member
37 Park Mesa Heights Former board member

114
respondents. In several instances I spoke with respondents on multiple occasions to
clarify previous statements or to discuss new questions that arose from the previous
interview or unfolding events within the council. With the exception of a single interview
held by telephone, all interviews were conducted in person, at cafes, restaurants and,
occasionally, in respondents’ homes. I also spoke with several key respondents by
telephone to get feedback on the first draft of the case studies. These conversations were
useful not only in vetting the case studies but in gathering additional information.
Following Hammer and Wildavsky (1983) and Yin (2003), the overall interview
strategy was to engage respondents in friendly and robust conversation and storytelling
about their neighborhood council. Interviews followed an open-ended, semistructured
format generally guided by an interview protocol but fluidly shaped around key topics
and subtopics. Interviews were conducted to elicit richly descriptive detail about key
events using “how” questions, asking for examples and illustrations and carefully probing
and clarifying ambiguous statements.
Interview questions flowed from the theoretical propositions about community
capacity put forth by Chaskin (2001) and Fung (2004) and identified above. As outlined
in Chapter 1, these were categorized as questions pertaining to neighborhood council
organization and activities in the areas of comprehensiveness, institutional support,
intervention, institutional design, microprocesses, and scope of work. The interview
protocol is included as Appendix C.
Interview subjects included (a) key neighborhood council board members, past
and present; (b) lead committee members; (c) non-elected stakeholders active in the

115
neighborhood council; (d) current and past DONE Project Coordinators assigned to the
case study areas; and (e) City council office representatives serving the case study area.
Direct Observations
In addition to interviews, I conducted 29 direct observations of neighborhood
council board meetings, committee meetings, and community- and City-sponsored events
(summarized in Table 4). Meetings and events were typically held in the evenings and on
weekends, and lasted for one to several hours. At these meetings I sat in an unobtrusive
part of the room and took longhand notes, which I later transcribed to computer. In my
notes I sought to capture the quality of stakeholder exchange, often in the form of
quotations, as well as substantive information about community issues and council
activities.
I was never a “participant” at meetings to the extent of publicly asking questions
or voicing opinions, although on a few occasions I contributed refreshments at meetings
and mingled with council members during breaks. At one executive board meeting, board
members invited me to ask questions about the council at the conclusion of the meeting,
which I did. The research followed the NPP standard field observation protocol, which
covers guidelines for what to include in note taking, collection of materials, networking,
and notes write-up.
On one occasion I volunteered to assist in a council’s activities, working with
members of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council (EHNC) to set up their inaugural
ArtCycle event. My assistance consisted mostly of policing the street closure and helping
to set up vending tents. Afterwards, I conversed with neighborhood council members in

116
Table 4

Case Study Observations

Council Date Observation Venue

EHNC 10/20/08 General Meeting Hollywood Youth and Family Center
EHNC 11/10/08 Outreach Committee Meeting Red Corner Asia Restaurant
EHNC 11/17/08 General Meeting Ronald McDonald House
BHNC 11/19/08 General Meeting Boyle Heights Senior Citizens Center
BHNC 11/23/08 4th Annual Multicultural Parade Fourth Street
PMHCC 1/13/09 Executive Board Meeting PMHCC Office
BHNC 1/28/09 General Meeting Boyle Heights Senior Citizens Center
BHNC 2/9/09 Boyle Heights Community Plan Workshop Hazard Park Recreation Center
PMHCC 2/14/09 General Meeting Angeles Mesa Elementary School
EHNC 2/23/09 General Meeting Dayton Heights Elementary School
EHNC 2/26/09 Arts and Culture Committee Meeting Synchronicity Space
EHNC 2/28/09 1st Annual EH ArtCycle Heliotrope & Melrose Ave.
PMHCC 3/14/09 General Meeting Angeles Mesa Elementary School
EHNC 3/16/09 General Board Meeting Dvin Restaurant
BHNC 3/25/09 General Meeting Costello Recreation Center
PMHCC 5/9/09 General Meeting Angeles Mesa Elementary School
PMHCC 6/13/09 General Meeting Angeles Mesa Elementary School
BHNC 6/24/09 General Meeting Aliso Pico Recreation Center
BHNC 6/29/09 Grievance Committee Meeting Aliso Pico Multipurpose Center
PMHCC 7/11/09 General Meeting Angeles Mesa Elementary School
EHNC 7/20/09 General Meeting Los Angeles City College
EHNC 7/23/09 Central East Regional Training Aliso Pico Recreation Center

117
Table 4 (continued)

Council Date Observation Venue

PMHCC 8/8/09 General Meeting Angeles Mesa Elementary School
PMHCC 8/11/09 Executive Board Meeting PMHCC Office
EHNC 3/13/10 2nd Annual EH ArtCycle Santa Monica Blvd. & Melrose Ave.
EHNC 3/17/10 Imagine East Hollywood Exhibit Barnsdall Art Museum
EHNC 6/2/10 Arts and Culture Committee Meeting Mi Alma Collective
PMHCC 6/12/10 General Meeting Angeles Mesa Elementary School

Note. EHNC = East Hollywood Neighborhood Council, BHNC = Boyle Heights
Neighborhood Council, PMHCC = Park Mesa Heights Community Council.

the area of the neighborhood council information table and participated in the event as a
festival goer, including riding my bicycle on a tour of East Hollywood artists’ studios.
Windshield Surveys
Visual assessments of each case study area were conducted through “windshield
surveys” of the physical environment. Although such assessments are arguably best
performed on foot, the large size of the case study areas made it necessary to survey the
areas by car.
The windshield survey method is rooted in mapping techniques introduced and
elaborated by Kevin Lynch (1960, 1995) and in Jacobs’s (1985) work on visual “clues”
contained within the built environment. The windshield survey method is premised on the
notion that parties unfamiliar with an area may discern important information about the

118
physical, social/cultural, and economic characteristics of a community through a careful
visual assessment.
Lynch (1960, 1995) proposed that urban communities are physically organized
around five main elements: paths, edges (boundaries), districts, nodes (intersections
characterized by a high intensity of activity), and landmarks. To these may be added a
sixth important element: natural (geographic or topographic) features. The character of
these elements can suggest a great deal about the life of the community and the potential
challenges it faces. For example, an area that lacks discernible and/or differentiated
districts may suffer from lack of community identity and vitality. Conversely, an area
with multiple, clearly defined landmarks may enjoy a rich sense of place that informs a
sense of community identity.
Jacobs (1985) approached the urban landscape as an investigator looking for
visual clues. He assessed the environment at a finer-grained level of observation that
included both physical elements, such as landscaping, signage, special-purpose buildings,
and overall maintenance of the area, and non-physical elements, such as economic
diversity, street vitality, and the race and class of residents. The windshield survey joins
the visual elements described by Lynch and Jacobs into a single evaluative instrument.
Documentation
The study supplemented interviews and observations with various forms of
documentary evidence, which were helpful in corroborating evidence from other sources,
analyzing neighborhood council processes and phenomena, understanding the condition-
ing influences that affect community capacity, and tracking down and verifying specific

119
pieces of information. A list and descriptions of the primary sources of documentation
used appear in Table 5.
Additional Sources of Evidence
Background research for this study relied heavily on review of reports and docu-
ments produced by the USC NPP and the Los Angeles NCRC, which provided a con-
textual basis for understanding the aggregate nature of council governance capacity at the
system level. The sources of data on which these reports are based are listed below.
1. Neighborhood Council Board Members Survey (NPP). Two-wave survey of
all existing neighborhood council boards (2003, N = 41; 2006, N = 86), which asked
respondents to identify council successes and challenges. In addition to describing
neighborhood council capacity, the survey data were useful in establishing the demo-
graphic characteristics of board members system wide.
2. Neighborhood Council Evaluation Survey (NPP). Survey of DONE Project
Coordinators and representatives within Los Angeles City Councilmember offices to
evaluate each of the neighborhood councils in their district on a broad range of items.
This survey was also administered in two rounds (2003 and 2006). The survey mirrored
the board members survey in specifically asking respondents to identify their council’s
major accomplishments and challenges.
3. Content coding of neighborhood council bylaws (NPP). Analysis of the
mission, structure, and procedures of the first 56 neighborhood councils to be certified by
the City of Los Angeles based on council bylaws.
4. Content coding of agenda items from neighborhood council meetings (NPP).
Analysis of agendas from 43 councils over a 3-year period.

120
Table 5

Sources of Documentation

Documentation type Description/comments

Neighborhood council bylaws Useful in understanding the formal design of councils,
allocation of neighborhood council board seats among diverse
community interests, the formal processes by which elected and
non-elected citizens engage in participation, and the structure
of opportunities available to non-members to participate
Neighborhood council meeting
agendas and minutes
Available at council meetings and in council website archives;
archived materials helpful in providing context for substantive
issues confronting councils
Neighborhood council budget and
funding reports
Helpful in understanding the strategic direction of councils, as
expressed through budget allocations; available at council
meetings and through DONE website
Neighborhood council newsletters East Hollywood Neighborhood News, available on EHNC
website
Neighborhood council surveys Stakeholder surveys conducted by councils
Neighborhood council maps General reference/guide for windshield surveys; created by
DONE
News articles Useful in providing context on conditioning influences and
substantive issues facing council and for information on actions
taken by councils
Video recordings Documentation of events and presentations by EHNC
Web content Background information on councils and community-based
organizations
Facebook pages Information and commentary about council-sponsored events
Fliers, posters, and
announcements
Outreach, event, and other handouts distributed at neighbor-
hood council meetings and communicated by e-mail
Documentation submitted by
councils to the City
For example, BHNC grievance report

121
Table 5 (continued)

Documentation type Description/comments

Plans, reports, and literature from
city, county, and nonprofit
agencies
For example, Los Angeles City Planning Department, Los
Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority, Los Angeles
Community Redevelopment Agency, City Council
representatives offices, Thai Community Development Council
Unpublished research on case
study areas
Contextual references
Research notes from Regenerating
Urban Neighborhoods project
Contextual information on Boyle Heights community,
particularly pertaining to redevelopment efforts in that area,
courtesy of Ellen Shiau

Note. DONE = Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, EHNC = East Hollywood
Neighborhood Council, BHNC = Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council.

5. Report on the status of the neighborhood council system (NCRC). An official
evaluation of the neighborhood council system, with recommendations, based on surveys
of past and current neighborhood council board members, a citywide survey of the
general public, and 14 public hearings.
Data Organization
The data collected in the course of this study were organized within a case study
database that included both electronic and hard-copy documents. Typed interview notes
were coded by respondent, entered into an interview log, and filed separate from the
respondent code key in order to ensure anonymity of respondents who were quoted in the
study. Observations were logged and coded by respondent. Hard-copy notes were
retained in a separate file. The dates, nature, and venue of observations were entered into
a log, with typed and hard-copy notes filed separately. Other sources of documentary

122
evidence, such as fliers, handouts, and publicity materials, were clearly marked with the
time and place that evidence was collected in order to maintain the evidence chain; they
were similarly included in the database.
Case Analysis
The general strategy for analyzing the case studies relied on the theoretical
propositions that generated the study and that are reflected in the research questions and
literature described in Chapter 1. The theoretical framework for the study involved rival
propositions; these were examined using a cross-case synthesis approach. Tables were
constructed that compared processes and outcomes of interest across the cases and were
analyzed for patterns and possible typologies. These results necessarily relied on inter-
pretive argument.
Quality Control
Given that the main analyses in this study relied on the interpretive strength of the
researcher, measures were taken in the design and conduct of the research to reinforce the
quality and rigor of the investigation. The reliability of the study was strengthened by the
construction of the case study database described above, a case study protocol that identi-
fied specific topics and possible types of evidence to be collected in connection with each
topic, and interview and field observation protocols. The construct validity of the study
was strengthened by use of multiple sources of evidence and by the establishment of a
chain of evidence. Drafts of the completed case studies were distributed to all respond-
ents, with an invitation to provide feedback. I followed up with key informants within
each case area to ensure factual and interpretive accuracy of the case study reports.

123
Research designs that rely on a small number of cases as evidence are particularly
subject to criticism regarding external validity—the extent to which findings may be
generalized—since cases cannot be said to be representative of the complex phenomena
that they explore. Indeed, the case study method engages a tradeoff between relevance
and ability to understand complex phenomena on the one hand (which argues in favor of
a smaller comparative case approach) and generalizability on the other hand. However,
according to Yin (2003), the criticism of case study validity arises from the equation of
case studies samples with representative survey samples and the expectation that case
study findings are generalizable to a population. Yin argued that case studies are analo-
gous to experiments, in which findings may be generalized to theory within the domain in
which in the research is founded. Hence, this study draws on three examples of communi-
ties that have experienced success in community governance in order to identify factors
that support their success. The findings were reconciled against competing theories of
community governance capacity to propose an alternative theory that reconciles and
expands on existing theory.

124
CHAPTER 4
CASE STUDIES
Chapter 2 described the phenomenon of local governance capacity in Los Angeles
as engendered by the Los Angeles neighborhood council system on a system-wide basis.
This chapter takes a micro-level view of the means and mechanisms of local governance
capacity as manifested through the neighborhood councils in three communities. These
communities—Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, and Park Mesa Heights—are similar to
the extent that each is, in aggregate, poor. Average household income in all three com-
munities falls below that of the City as a whole, and all fall within the poorest quartile of
communities represented by neighborhood councils. As the case studies show, the
neighborhood councils within these communities have also encountered many of the
same challenges in establishing themselves as productive local governance bodies. For
the most part, however, the communities are markedly different from one another, vary-
ing by location within the city, racial/ethnic makeup, and community character, among
other things.
Situated at the easternmost edge of the Los Angeles City, Boyle Heights is the
longest-settled and most racially and ethnically homogenous of the three communities.
Highly identified as a center of Latino culture and politics, the area’s residents are also
keenly aware of the community’s multicultural history as a pre-World War II refuge for
Jews, Japanese, and other racial and ethnic groups seeking permanent settlement in Los
Angeles. At 86,000 residents, Boyle Heights is the largest of the case study areas, with a
bustling urban environment and a host of critical urban problems, including violent crime
and low educational attainment. Nevertheless, Boyle Heights is known among

125
community stakeholders for its family orientation, small-town atmosphere, and vibrant
arts scene, a potent combination that keeps families firmly in place over generations and
draws residents who have left to return. Certified since 2002, the Boyle Heights Neigh-
borhood Council has struggled with internal conflict even as its most recent board
developed active programs of community sponsorship and co-production with City
entities.
By contrast, East Hollywood, a former no-mans-land within the sprawling
metropolitan area that makes up greater Hollywood, owes its definition as a community
to the advent of the neighborhood council system. Fabled within the neighborhood
council system for its long and ultimately triumphant formation and certification process,
the EHNC has become known within its short, 3-year tenure for its celebration of the
bracing cultural diversity within its boundaries and its energetic and often whimsical use
of the arts to connect with its diffuse stakeholders. East Hollywood has a large immigrant
population and a low rate of homeownership—characteristics that typically defy local
civic engagement.
Park Mesa Heights is located in south Los Angeles, an area with a high concen-
tration of African Americans and where African Americans dominate political leadership
despite a growing population of Hispanic residents. Active since 2002, the PMHCC at
one point faced decertification after conflict among board members halted normal
operations but bounced back in a remarkable display of resilience to advance a broad
community development agenda. One of the council’s foci has been the revitalization of
Crenshaw Boulevard, the area’s listless commercial backbone, which is primed for
development as the Metropolitan Transit District prepares to construct a light rail corridor

126
that will connect the area to points north and south. Of the three case study communities,
Park Mesa Heights is both the most affluent and the smallest in terms of population. As
in Boyle Heights, Park Mesa Heights stakeholders’ emphasis on the area’s neighborly
character contrasts with its reputation for street crime and lagging school performance.
This chapter looks at the operation of the neighborhood council within each of
these case communities before turning to a comparative discussion of governance
capacity across the cases in Chapter 5.
The Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council
A “New Day” in Community Governance
Few communities in Los Angeles bear the imprint of human activity as vividly as
Boyle Heights, the storied, now predominantly Latino district perched on the east bank of
the Los Angeles River. Originally incorporated in the 1800s as a rural residential retreat
for well-to-do Angelenos seeking views of the city’s burgeoning downtown district
directly to the west, the area’s physical development and social coherence have arguably
been shaped from the beginning by the series of divisions—both natural and imposed—
that have isolated it from the city at large.
Boyle Heights is one of only several communities that make up the incorporated
area of Los Angeles east of the river. Bounded to the east and to the east and south,
respectively, by the unincorporated area of East Los Angeles and the City of Vernon, and
to the west by the river and the city’s central rail yard, Boyle Heights is densely
populated by 86,000 residents within an area of 7 square miles (see Figure 2). One of the
oldest communities in the city, virtually every square inch of the area has been
developed, resulting in a bustling, tightly woven landscape in which people, structures,

127

Figure 2. Boundaries of Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council area. Source: Roster of
Neighborhood Councils, by City of Los Angeles, Department of Neighborhood
Empowerment, 2008, Los Angeles, CA: Author. Retrieved from http://done.lacity.org/
ncdatabase/nc_database_public

128
and open space often appear locked in a contest for room. Even the historic Evergreen
Cemetery, which a map at a community planning workshop conducted by the Los
Angeles Department of City Planning rather disingenuously denoted as one of the larger
open spaces in the community, appears cluttered with tributes to the community’s
forebears.
Although much of Boyle Heights, including its fine-grained mom-and-pop
commercial districts and modest neighborhoods of iron-gated bungalow homes, looks
worn with age and intensive use, the community also shows signs of the recent influx of
public investment in the area. In the early 2000s, two of the community’s largest public
housing complexes—Pico Aliso and Aliso Village—were fully redeveloped as new
urbanist-style apartments and townhome villages, replete with front porches, mixed uses,
and integrated green spaces. More recently, the community has celebrated the openings
of a number of newly built or refurbished community facilities, including new schools
and childcare centers, a state-of-the-art technology center, a hospital expansion, and a
new police station built in a high-profile, modernist design. The project with the greatest
potential impact on the community was the opening of three Metro light rail stations,
which not only restored a vital transit link to the city that was severed with the removal of
the Pacific Electric railway line in the 1940s but portends new retail and housing
development around and between metro stops.
Cumulatively, these and other projects, combined with the community’s massive
civic infrastructure of nonprofit agencies, religious institutions, and voluntary organiza-
tions, represent the growing momentum of efforts to address Boyle Heights’ demanding
array of social and economic woes. Lack of economic opportunity, low educational

129
attainment, and gang activity are among the area’s more intractable problems. Although
Boyle Heights has long been considered a working-class community, median household
income in the area is less than two thirds that of the city as a whole, a problem that is
perpetuated by high school dropout rates. At Roosevelt Senior High School, the com-
munity’s main secondary school, less than half of the student body reportedly achieves
graduation (Blume, 2009), and fewer than 20% of the area’s residents have earned a high
school diploma or above (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000).
Meanwhile, residents remain attuned to the ever-present possibility of gang
violence, which developed acutely in the 1980s and 1990s and abated somewhat in the
past decade. Although some Boyle Heights stakeholders interviewed in the course of this
study expressed skepticism about the efficacy of the area’s nonprofit service organiza-
tions in redressing community problems, there seemed to be general consensus that
efforts on the part of multiple agencies to alleviate gang activity have been working.
Among them were the Los Angeles Housing Authority’s intervention in Aliso Village
and Pico Aliso housing projects, which was widely understood as an attempt to break up
gang strongholds in those areas, and various outreach and training programs on the part
of nonprofit and faith-based organizations, including the famed Homeboy Industries
employment program initiated in Boyle Heights by Father Gregory Boyle under the
slogan “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.” Nevertheless, gang activity continues to shape
patterns of mobility and activity, particularly among young residents who fear crossing

130
territorial lines to attend community events or straying from designated “safe passage”
zones on their way to and from school (interview with the author, July 7, 2009).
23

Despite its mounting list of urban ills, Boyle Heights frequently elicits deep
feelings of pride and loyalty among its residents. Many of the comments posted by
former and current residents to the Los Angeles Times (2010) online mapping project
website, for example, cast Boyle Heights as a tightly knit community with strong identity
around schools, churches, well-known eateries, and other institutions. In interviews with
residents, respondents invoked Boyle Heights’ small-town intimacy, alluding to family-
like social networks developed over generations of tenure in the community and the sense
of belonging engendered by familiarity among neighbors and local business owners.
Respondents also highlighted Boyle Heights’ identity as a locus of arts and
culture. Known as a leader in the Chicano arts movement, the community abounds with
both traditional and contemporary musicians, visual artists, poets, actors, and lay intellec-
tuals, as well as a variety of educational, media, and arts institutions that support artistic
and political expression. Local artists have also formed a group called ARTES (Artists
for Revitalizing the Eastside) to build on the momentum created by the fragile clustering
of cultural hot spots along First Street. The installation on First Street of the well-known
Casa 0101 theater in 2000 was followed by the opening of the Eastside Luv wine bar,
Brooklyn and Boyle, a literary and artistic salon that publishes an online magazine by the
same name, and the Primera Tazza Café, a coffee house co-owned by Boyle Heights

23
As an example, the respondent criticized the planning behind the Mayor’s
“Summer Night Lights” program, designed to provide evening activities for youth and
their families, on the grounds that youth on the district’s north side would not travel to
the south side park where the program is held.

131
Neighborhood Council (BHNC) President Juan Romero. ARTES envisions the develop-
ment of a full-fledged arts district that would run the length of First Street between the
newly operational light rail stops at the iconic Mariachi Plaza, currently under renovation,
and Soto Street.
The area’s cultural history of harmonious race relations and civic integrity is also
a source of pride and attachment in Boyle Heights, which was extolled in the national
media in the 1950s as a model of democratic progress for its plentiful and collaborative
civic institutions. Historian George Sánchez traced the distinctive cultural mix in the
years between the turn of the 20th century and World War II to distinctive cultural mix to
a combination of a 1908 zoning ordinance that prohibited industrial development on the
city’s Westside and restrictive real estate covenants that simultaneously barred non-
Protestant ethnics from owning or renting homes on the Westside, making Boyle Heights
a destination for working-class Mexicans, Japanese, Italians, Russians, Armenians,
African Americans, and Jews seeking residential proximity to employment in Eastside
industrial areas. In time, the area became associated with a radical working-class political
consciousness heavily influenced by Jewish migrants schooled in the trade unionism and
leftist politics of the Eastern and Midwestern cities from which they came, and for a
multicultural civic and political alliance, which Sánchez further attributed to Jewish civic
leaders’ strong ideological commitment to interethnic, working-class solidarity (Sánchez,
2004).
Community members’ desire to safeguard the history of Boyle Heights is evident
in campaigns to preserve historic structures and in symbolic tributes, such as the neigh-
borhood council’s participation in the rededication of the recently refurbished Breed

132
Street Shul and its sponsorship of an annual multicultural parade, for which a recent
theme was “Celebrating Past, Present and Future Heroes and Leaders of Boyle Heights.”
However, nostalgic and symbolic efforts to preserve the past also have the effect of
pointing up fundamental changes in the community’s character, not simply in terms of
demographic transformation but in the nature of its political and civic culture.
Politically, Boyle Heights maintains a reputation as a highly activist community,
with a particular ability to mobilize through the organizational structures of its Catholic
Churches and the residents groups in its public housing projects.
24
Civically, too, echoes
of the community’s ethos of cooperative action can be discerned within its sprawling
system of nonprofit organizations, which observers affirm generally operates in an open
and collaborative manner. However, as the community has matured, practices of civic
engagement based on organizing and a sense of empowerment have been challenged by
the institutionalization of the community’s nonprofit apparatus, as well as by widespread
distrust of the political process among community residents.
As in the 1950s, Boyle Heights’ powerful nonprofit infrastructure continues to be
a defining feature of the community. Yet the current size and centrality of the nonprofit
sector in Boyle Heights has caused some to question the effectiveness of the sector’s
interventions in the community, if not the sector’s integrity. One interview respondent
recalled feeling motivated to participate in the neighborhood council by his observation

24
For example, Dolores Mission, a Jesuit church influenced by liberation theology,
sponsors Christian Base Communities, small groups of parishioners organized to address
community problems, and is the institutional home of Proyecto Pastoral, a nonprofit
organization that combats poverty through grassroots projects in education, leadership,
and service. Resurrection Church, home to the Mothers of East Los Angeles, a group that
originally formed to contest the siting of a prison in Boyle Heights, continues to mobilize
parishioners and community members around issues of environmental justice.

133
of the nonprofit infrastructure’s limitations. “There was a lot of stuff NOT going on at the
same time that there were a lot of nonprofits. They were and still are disconnected from
each other, and because of that [they’re disconnected] from the community,” the
respondent said (interview with the author, July 8, 2009). Other observers attributed the
current lack of integration across the community’s structure of nonprofits not to a lack of
goodwill or dedication to the community but as an inherent outcome of a funding
structure that requires nonprofits to compete for survival. Still others objected to what
they saw as nonprofits’ disproportionate influence in the community’s governance
compared to the influence wielded by residents.
Whatever the shortcomings of the area’s third-sector institutions, Boyle Heights
residents reserve far greater animus for the political institutions that serve the community.
Distrust of political institutions runs deep in Boyle Heights, nourished by longstanding
neglect and exacerbated by repeated attempts by government agencies to locate undesir-
able land uses in or around the community, most infamously the massive Eastside free-
way interchange that cut across the western portion of the community in the 1950s and
1960s. Interview respondents speculated that community members’ antipathy toward
government also stems from a history of self-interested elected leaders, who they say
used the area as a short-stay political training ground before moving on to higher office,
leaving unfinished business behind.
Political rifts are also apparent in the community’s voluntary sector, where
divisions have emerged based on age and political style. Intergenerational conflict has
been particularly pronounced in the evolution of the BHNC, where political control has
recently shifted from a mostly older group of residents with roots in homeowner

134
organizations to a younger generation of leaders with less accumulated experience in
voluntary organizations. Some of this conflict reflects differences in approach between
stakeholders influenced by the confrontational politics of the Chicano Civil Rights
Movement and younger stakeholders who operate in a more collaborative mode.
Background to all of these developments is the evolving diversity within the
community with regard to socioeconomic status. Although the community is generally
regarded as working class, the area is also home to a core of third- and fourth-generation
middle-class residents who remain in the community by choice, a significant portion of
residents who receive public assistance income (15%), and poor immigrants newly
arrived in Boyle Heights. As public investment dollars flow into the community, portend-
ing an influx of private investment to follow, these juxtapositions raise pointed questions
about the nature of the community’s future and whom development should be made to
serve.
Amid the weighty history and complex institutional, political, social, and eco-
nomic dynamics that constitute the community, the BHNC has charted a valiant if
troubled path toward a relevant role within the community. Certified in 2002, the council
developed a reputation as a broadly participatory body with a propensity for intra-board
conflict. Within the system of neighborhood councils, Boyle Heights stands out for both
the size and distinctive structure of its board. Originally composed of 51 members, the
board was later scaled back to 35 posts due to the council’s difficulty to attain meeting
quorum. The current board is organized around seven executive board members elected
at large and four geographically bound quadrants, each represented by seven members. A
community member who was involved in the early development of the council said that

135
the quadrant structure evolved as a compromise when, at DONE’s behest, groups seeking
to establish councils covering discrete areas of community joined to created a unified
Boyle Heights council (interview with the author, June 4, 2009).
Among the council’s early accomplishments were the creation of the Boyle
Heights Multicultural Parade and leadership of a community-wide effort to prevent
installation of a $200,000 tile mural that many community members found culturally
offensive. Commissioned by the City’s Cultural Affairs Department, the mural was slated
to decorate the new Hollenbeck Police Station. In interviews, neighborhood council
members described the mural as depicting predominately negative or inaccurate images
of the community, such as women drying clothes on bushes, illegal street vendors, youth
wearing baggy pants, and a man being apprehended by the police. The mural “wasn’t
anything that showed pride in the community” and “wasn’t anything we wanted plastered
on the beautiful Hollenbeck station building,” neighborhood council members said in
interviews (February 19, 2009). In a campaign that one community characterized as one
of the neighborhood council’s “shining moments,” (interview with the author, February
10, 2009), the BHNC rallied groups from across the community to attend a town hall
meeting that included representatives from the Cultural Affairs Department, members of
the Los Angeles Police Department, and Jose Huizar, a Boyle Heights native son and the
Los Angeles City Council Representative for District 14 (which includes Boyle Heights),
who also opposed the mural. Ultimately, the community prevailed, and the mural was
never installed.
The BHNC election in 2008 marked a turning point for the council, whose leader-
ship had until then remained fairly static under a single president, Robert Jimenez, with

136
many of the same executive officers and quadrant representatives. The new election
inaugurated a fresh cohort of leaders, some of whom said they were motivated to run for
office to end the reflexive infighting that had impeded previous boards and restore public
trust and legitimacy to the council. The new board concentrated on building working
relationships with city entities and expanding the council’s sponsorship of community-
building events. The Executive Board also broadened the council’s function to include a
role in connecting constituents with city services. Although board members lamented
time constraints and other impediments that have limited the scope of the council’s reach,
particularly with regard to planning and land use issues, they generally expressed satis-
faction with the council’s new tone, direction, and accomplishments during their tenure.
The board also won praise from city officials for their collaborative style and energetic
involvement in the community. One city official familiar with the BHNC’s history
proclaimed it a “new day” for the council (interview with the author, July 8, 2009).
Collaboration and Conflict in the Leadership Realm
By virtue of the BHNC’s structure and elective arrangements, much of the
council’s leadership authority is vested in the members of the Executive Board, who are
elected directly by stakeholders on at at-large basis. One of the Executive Board’s notable
features was its members’ surprising youth. In contrast to previous boards, which were
generally made up of senior community members (the BHNC’s former president, who
was in his 30s, was an exception), officers’ median age was in the mid-30s. The council
president, Juan Romero, was 35 when he was elected, as was the vice president, Azael
(Sal) Martinez. In addition to youth, executive board members also had personal histories
in common. Two of its officers, Diana del Pozo-Mora, the Outreach and Educational

137
Officer, and Amanda del Pozo, the council Treasurer, were sisters. Their mother and
sister, Elvira (Vera) del Pozo and Brettany Ponce de Leon, held positions as resident
representatives from Quadrant 2. Juan Romero and Sal Martinez were friends who had
previously served together on the council as representatives from Quadrant 3 and as
members of the Boyle Heights Community Police Advisory Board, and who ran for
BHNC office as a slate.
Interview respondents identified the harmonious rapport that existed among the
council’s seven executive board members as one of the organization’s chief assets.
Respondents portrayed executive officers’ working relationship as mutually supportive,
communicative, and congenial. One board member observed that a kind of synchronicity
had developed among the Executive Board, such that “somebody will throw a [com-
munity] event, and everyone wants to be there” (interview with the author, February 19,
2009). The respondent joked that the executive board inadvertently convened in the same
place so frequently that she had begun to worry about Brown Act infractions. (Convening
at social events is not a violation of the Brown Act, so long as officers do not discuss
official council business.)
This harmony extended to members’ similarly collaborative style of governance
and a collective determination to steer the council away from overtly political involve-
ments and toward functions that unify the community, promote a positive sense of com-
munity identity, and help community members to help themselves. One Executive Board
member identified “providing quality events” and collaborating with other community-
based organizations to engage community members in improving their lives as primary
purposes of the council, a vision that other board members seemed to share and which the

138
council has largely pursued (interview with the author, December 17, 2008). Board
members repeatedly alluded to a sense of the community as a family and spoke of the
need to build community pride. One board member described being moved to tears at the
sense of pride and unity engendered by a recent Fourth of July celebration sponsored by
Council District 14 and speculated that the neighborhood council might play a part in
sponsoring this celebration and the District’s annual Easter event, both of which were due
to be cancelled because of budget cutbacks at the district level. The respondent recalled
seeing “all the negative stuff” attending community meetings with her grandmother as a
child and stated that these experiences of communal togetherness were important in
helping the community define a positive image of itself (interview with the author,
February 19, 2009).
Board members identified City Councilmember Huizar’s office as a primary
source of support and partnership in conducting community events, both in helping the
council with logistical issues for their own events and inviting the neighborhood council
to conduct outreach activities at council office events. A staff member in Councilmember
Huizar’s office praised BHNC’s Executive Board’s ability to work productively with city
agencies and noted that the board “knows how to use” the council district office and
“knows how to get us involved.” For example, in planning a neighborhood cleanup, the
neighborhood council asked for the councilmember office’s collaboration in securing
participation from the organizations Clean and Green and City Year, as well as from
other volunteers.
Neighborhood council members pointed to a similarly collaborative relationship
with the Mayor’s Office. One respondent said that the neighborhood council was “always

139
involved and always invited” to participate in mayoral initiatives relating to Boyle
Heights. For example, the council co-sponsored a Town Hall meeting at which the Mayor
discussed proposed cuts to the city budget and partnered with the Mayor’s office on the
kickoff event for the Mayor’s Million Tree Initiative, which took place in Boyle Heights.
Board members also emphasized a role for the council in partnerships and direct-
ing resources toward service-oriented organizations, particularly those involving youth
and children. To the extent that preserving funding for direct assistance to community-
based organizations has been at odds with an events-driven agenda, the Executive Board
has favored service over community building. These priorities played out in the 2009-
2010 budget cycle with the Executive Board’s decision to redirect funding from the
multicultural parade to the council’s grant program following a 10% reduction in the
council’s annual budget and in face of increased need due to the city and state’s fiscal
crisis and the foundering economy. “With the economy the way it is, it’s not right to be
spending our money in that way. There’s a greater need now,” a board member said,
noting that funding that would normally go toward the parade was now required to fulfill
basic needs in the community, such as purchasing books for school programs (interview
with the author, July 7, 2009).
Given the low regard in which elected officials are held in Boyle Heights and the
often volatile nature of public perception, neighborhood council legitimacy and effective-
ness depend in no small part on the board’s ability to convey credible knowledge of com-
munity issues. Interview respondents cited the breadth and depth of the board’s collective
reach into Boyle Heights’ community-based organizations as an asset in this regard. Four
of seven seats in each council quadrant are reserved for nonresident stakeholders, most of

140
whose representatives come from the nonprofit sector. Many resident representatives, as
well as Executive Board members, have active ties to area nonprofits or maintain posi-
tions on community advisory boards to government agencies. Respondents saw board
members’ ability to offer firsthand insight into governance issues and processes that came
before the council as valuable both in developing public trust in the council and in
improving public understanding of hot-button issues.
As an example, a board member cited the opening of a new high school in the
Aliso-Pico area, which was greeted by the public with both anticipation and apprehen-
sion. “Most of what we get are rumors,” the respondent said, but because one of the
board members, Lester Garcia, was involved in his capacity as Executive Director of the
Boyle Heights Learning Collaborative in the planning of the school, “he was able to say,
‘No, these are the facts.’ We always want to refer [stakeholders] to something tangible.
That type of experience helps a lot because people are comfortable that the council is not
just getting second-hand information” (interview with the author, July 7, 2009).
Respondents also noted a strong level of commitment among board members, as
well as significant individual leadership capacity in certain key functional areas. The
council’s president, Juan Romero, has worked in the nonprofit sector in Boyle Heights
since his youth and, over the years, has developed an extensive set of contacts and
collaborative relationships within the community. Romero’s collaborative ethos became a
touchstone for the council as the board forged its organizational agenda. Similarly,
Margarita (Mago) Amador, the council’s secretary, grew up in the Pico Aliso housing
project and worked for the Los Angeles Housing Authority for more than 15 years.
Amador brought extensive contacts and knowledge of the resources available to the

141
community to the council, as well a no-nonsense efficiency in managing the council’s
administrative affairs. In addition to drafting meeting agendas and minutes, Amador acts
as the council’s main point of contact with the City with regard to procedural matters,
manages collection and dissemination of documents to board members prior to meetings,
and initiates systems and processes that “in the long run makes everyone’s job easier,”
respondents said (interview with the author, February 19, 2009).
Board members also had praise for Fanny Oliveira, the Special Events coordin-
ator, who members said worked tirelessly to produce the 2008 multicultural parade while
drastically reducing costs. Whereas $30,000 to $40,000 had been allocated for the parade
in previous years, Oliveira and the Executive Board limited 2008 costs to $9,000, largely
through soliciting in-kind donations from businesses and performing most of the logisti-
cal planning and coordinating in house.
To the extent that BHNC leaders took satisfaction in laying a firm groundwork of
leadership for the council, they were also clearly aware of challenges that threatened to
undermine fragile gains. Some of these related to the board’s structure and internal work-
ing arrangements, while others reflected complexities rooted in the character of the
community environment.
For a variety of reasons, difficulties in recruitment and retention of board mem-
bers proved to be a fundamental and chronic issue within the BHNC. Aside from the
sheer number of candidates required to fill the board, this function foundered on the
demands imposed by the board’s quadrant structure and the often turbulent nature of
public life in Boyle Heights. The time commitment involved in attending both the general
board meeting and monthly quadrant meetings deterred potential candidates from running

142
for geographic representative, according to respondents, making those seats particularly
difficult to fill. What’s more, respondents said, people are hesitant to run for office in
Boyle Heights out of fear of attracting unwelcome public attention. “A lot of people don’t
want to expose themselves to controversy,” a board member observed. “Being a board
member you inherit a lot of extra problems” (interview with the author, July 7, 2009).
Council members also reported difficulty in retaining quadrant representatives, a
problem which one respondent attributed to the disproportionate number of seats
assigned to nonresident stakeholders (four of seven seats in each quadrant are reserved
for nonresident representatives). “People who leave the board are usually non-resident
stakeholders. If people don’t have a job, they’re not going to have an interest anymore”
(interview with the author, July 7, 2009).
Problems with recruitment, retention, and board member attendance at meetings
were especially freighted, given the council’s persistent difficulty meeting quorum, a
quandary that appeared to be alleviated by the election of a new, smaller board but
subsequently resurfaced. Inability to meet quorum means that the council either fails to
vote on business before the board, which in practice often means failing to take a stand
on land use issues, or must call a special meeting, frequently in response to a developer’s
deadline.
Although the council had a tendency to be lenient on absenteeism due to the
shortage of people to occupy board seats, the new board adopted a tougher stance,
moving to enforce the bylaws provision that allowed the council to remove board
members who miss consecutive meetings. Respondents noted that the bylaws committee
was considering various amendments that might remediate the quorum problem,

143
including reducing the overall number of seats on the board still further and reducing the
proportion of nonresident quadrant representative seats. (Neither of these changes was
made in amendments to the BHNC bylaws dated August 26, 2009.)
However, a quadrant representative speculated that board member absenteeism
may point to a systemic problem rooted in lack of clarity regarding the role of quadrants
and their representatives. Within his quadrant, office holders were unsure of their
authority within the board, the respondent said, for example whether they were allowed
to make motions or whether their role was simply to bring issues from their quadrant to
the board for consideration. The respondent speculated that, given that most BHNC board
members worked and had limited time to allocate to their community role, they were less
likely to attend to attend meetings if they felt that there was no strong value to spending
their time in that way (interview with the author, July 9, 2009).
The close-knit quality of the Boyle Heights community means that potential
conflicts of interest are a chronic issue for the board. Board members’ multiple ties to
professional and voluntary organizations within the community not only require that they
be vigilant about recusing themselves from decisions that may involve a conflict of
interest but also oblige them to constantly search their own motives to ensure that they
are not voting on issues based on their fellow board members’ interests, respondents said.
Respondents also noted that conflicts of interest meant a reduced pool of board members
available to attend meetings at which the community should be represented. For example,
the BHNC’s president, Juan Romero, was an employee of the City of Los Angeles, which
prevented him from representing the council at various City meetings.

144
Respondents characterized the most serious tests of the board’s leadership as
involving challenges to the board’s authority and practice of governance by a group of
Boyle Heights stakeholders, some of whom had previously held office on the BHNC.
Members of the group would typically attend BHNC general meetings and raise objec-
tions to the board’s procedural handling of issues. Board members said that they had also
received e-mails that they had taken as personal criticism of the way in which they pre-
sented themselves at council meetings.
During the period of my research, tensions surrounding this conflict produced a
terse exchange of e-mails between the BHNC’s vice president, Sal Martinez, who initi-
ated the exchange, and Teresa Marquez, a former BHNC member and co-chair of the
Boyle Heights Stakeholders Association. Marquez, who was among the stakeholders who
challenged the board on procedural issues, filed a formal grievance against Martinez with
the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, on the grounds that Martinez’s
messages, which contained disparaging comments about Marquez’s leadership within the
community, violated the council’s bylaws and the Ralph M. Brown Act. Marquez had
also filed a previous grievance against Martinez for an incident of the same nature. In
consultation with the City Attorney’s office, the grievance committee determined that
neither the council’s bylaws nor the Brown Act had been violated and recommended that
Martinez receive a warning rather than be removed him from the board, as Marquez had
requested in her grievance. The committee also made preliminary plans with DONE to
hold a board retreat that would, among other things, address appropriate rules of conduct
by board members, but this retreat never took place.

145
At the grievance committee meeting to adjudicate the issue, Marquez explained
her interaction with the council as instructive in its intent and voiced frustration over
what she perceived as board members’ lack of understanding of their roles and the
procedures of governance, as well as the board’s inaction on local planning issues.
Marquez also characterized challenge as a source of strength within the democratic
process, saying at the Grievance Committee meeting, Boyle Heights Neighborhood
Council, on July 29, 2009, “I speak my mind. That’s part of being a community activist.”
Although some board members ascribed the board-stakeholder conflict to sour
grapes on the part of former board members who were not re-elected, others expressed
more faceted interpretations about the nature of the clash. One board member judged the
contributions of the stakeholder group as valuable because they serve to educate the
board but characterized their criticisms as wrong in tone and approach. “They don’t seem
to consider the value of what we’re doing versus calling us out on a technicality,” the
respondent said. “What I get is they do want to benefit the community. I don’t know that
they understand the effect of what they’re doing... I understand that the intent is not a
malicious one, but it’s perceived differently” (interview with the author, July 8, 2009).
Another saw the issue as an expression of intergenerational conflict between older
community members with long experience in civic action and a relatively young and
novice board. “We have a lot of old-timers in the community,” the respondent offered.
“They think their way is the right way. . . . Just because you’re younger, they think they
don’t have to be respectful” (interview with the author, December 17, 2008). Still another
saw a divergence in the political style and principles of an earlier generation, who saw
activism as a means of holding elected officials accountable, and that of the current

146
board, which works extensively with elected leaders. “I can see where [the group] sees
that we’re too close to the City agencies—that we do what they want,” the respondent
said. “Maybe they’re right” (interview with the author, July 7, 2010).
A History of Neglect, a Vehicle for Voice
Across the neighborhood council system, racial and ethnic inclusion have tacitly
emerged as the primary yardstick for assessing the representativeness of neighborhood
councils. In the course of research on the other two cases that make up this study, for
example, respondents frequently evaluated their council’s representativeness based on the
extent to which the race and ethnicity of participants in council activities reflected the
racial and ethnic makeup of their community. In Boyle Heights, however, where the
population is overwhelmingly homogeneous with regard to race and ethnicity, and where
numerous organizations provide channels of political access to the community’s highly
vocal populace, discussion of representation within the neighborhood council setting
opened to broader meanings and considerations.
Questioning council members and observers about the representativeness of the
BHNC elicited a range of views. Some stated that the council was strongly representative
of the community, pointing to the council’s size, quadrant structure, and outreach
apparatus as evidence. Others commented that the council failed to capture the voices of
groups marginalized by immigration status and linguistic barriers. Others commented on
the imbalance between resident and nonresident stakeholders, as discussed above, and the
absence of representatives from the business community within the council.
Joining size with geography, the BHNC’s unique organizational design gives
structural prominence to the participatory and spatially descriptive dimensions of repre-

147
sentation. In a populous community in which “everyone is a leader,” as one respondent
put it (interview with the author, June 4, 2009), the council’s large number of seats
symbolically and literally makes room inside the governance process for a broad range of
voices and interests. At the same time, the quadrant structure is designed to ensure equity
in participation from across the community.
Nevertheless, some council members expressed skepticism that the council’s
structure is enough in and of itself to ensure representation of the community, particularly
with regard to substantive representation and participation of traditionally marginalized
groups. One respondent questioned the feasibility of arriving at a genuine understanding
of the community’s substantive interests, given the community’s large size and com-
plexity. “What the board wants to do is find out what the community wants,” the
respondent said. “You think it would be easy to get at that with a survey, but we need to
do three or four different things to get to that” (interview with the author, July 8, 2009).
Another respondent indicated interest in commissioning a study of the area but was
hesitant to initiate a project that could not be completed within the board’s 2-year tenure.
Some respondents expressed particular concern about lack of participation in the
council by immigrants and by residents of the community’s public housing projects,
which are distributed relatively equally across the council quadrants. The council does
not have elected representation from Ramona Gardens (Quadrant 2), Estrada Courts
(Quadrant 3), or the privately owned Wyvernwood Apartments (Quadrant 4), where
tenants face displacement by a proposed redevelopment project. Although the Aliso-Pico
housing project does not have an elected quadrant representative, Mago Amador, the

148
council’s secretary, maintained ties to the area and was elected to office after campaign-
ing exclusively in Aliso-Pico.
While underrepresentation of particular interests or segments of the population
within the council may indeed have reflected inadequate knowledge of the community or
lack of outreach on the part of the council, it may also have been an indication of stake-
holders’ access to multiple outlets for political voice and expression. For example, each
of the community’s public housing projects has its own tenants association, organized
under the auspices of the city’s Housing Authority, while residents of the Wyvernwood
Apartments also organized a tenants group to oppose the proposed redevelopment of that
housing complex. Similarly, the absence of local business representation within the
council may be attributed to the presence of a relatively active Boyle Heights Chamber of
Commerce.
Differences of opinion emerged over the effectiveness of the council’s communi-
cation with stakeholders in ensuring representation. Much of the council’s effort to pub-
licize its existence and connect with stakeholders concentrated on “tabling” at community
events in various quadrants, where council members would gather stakeholder contact
information through an informal registration sheet. As an inducement to registering,
the council offered small giveaway items printed with the council’s logo and contact
information, a tactic that proved particularly successful in attracting parents with young
children (light-up balls were a popular item at the Fourth of July celebration, for
example). The council also established the practice of rotating meetings around the
various quadrants, which respondents noted had the effect of attracting new local partici-
pants in each venue. Working in this manner, the council amassed an impressive database

149
of 15,000 contacts from across the community, an accomplishment that several respond-
ents indicated to be one of the council’s main successes. One council member suggested
that the council’s outreach had been so successful in raising awareness of the council
across the community that it obviated the need for the quadrant structure in insuring
geographic representation on the council (interview with the author, December 17, 2008).
While some respondents lauded the council’s ability to disseminate information to
a large base of stakeholders, the council’s heavy reliance on electronic forms of com-
munication drew concern from some quarters about digital communication divides within
the community. Although the council made limited use of postcard reminders for
upcoming meetings and events and occasionally performed door-to-door outreach—for
example, to stakeholders along the parade route—its primary mode of communication
consisted in e-mail “blasts” to registered stakeholders. While acknowledging heavy use
of publicly accessible computers located at 99 Cent stores and the library, one respondent
viewed the council’s communication practices as a further wedge between the council
and those already “less present” in community governance, reporting that he had heard
that as much as 90% of the community lacked computers at home. “In terms of the dis-
connect, one of the biggest problems is technology,” the respondent said. “Because of
e-blasts and use of e-mail, the council is not getting to residents; people don’t get
information” (interview with the author, July 8, 2009).
To the extent that “less present” elements of the community included monolingual
Spanish speakers, the council had achieved at least modest success in securing both
participatory and descriptive representation in this connection during the period of my
observation. Spanish-speaking stakeholders addressed the board on non-agendized items

150
at general meetings on at least four occasions, twice regarding support for public educa-
tion, once to request the council’s support for native American cultural programming, and
once to enlist the council’s support for the Wyvernwood tenants group. The council
facilitated participation by Spanish-speaking stakeholders by hiring a professional trans-
lator to attend general meetings.
25
The board also incorporated two monolingual Spanish
speakers elected as quadrant representatives.
Arguably, the most significant aspects of the BHNC’s representational capacity
lay in the council’s participatory and symbolic function as an officially sanctioned,
locally imprinted vehicle for voice. In spite of the council’s formal procedural conven-
tions, BHNC meetings undeniably reflected the expansive, often fervent nature of the
community’s character. Particularly in the early days of the board’s tenure, when the
council’s budget afforded dinner service, council meetings resembled a sprawling family
affair, with children eating with their parents at long banquet tables set up by quadrant or
milling about the room playing. Council business often proceeded untidily, as executive
officers paused to confer on procedural issues and struggled to contain public comment to
2 minutes per speaker. Impassioned speeches and claims—well researched or not—and
political gadflies were not out of the ordinary. At one meeting a particularly energized
stakeholder insisted on commenting on every item on the agenda (BHNC General
Meeting, November 19, 2008).
Indeed, although in interviews board members themselves tended to discount the
power held by the council, underscoring the council’s advisory status, community stake-

25
In response to stakeholder demand, the previous BHNC board briefly experi-
mented with holding general meetings in Spanish but reverted back to English, again
under pressure from stakeholders.

151
holders nevertheless engaged the council as an outlet for expressing hopes, desires,
needs, and experiences. Given the community’s long history of neglect and separation
from greater Los Angeles, the council fulfilled a fundamental purpose as a forum for
expression, witness, and enlistment. “Because people have been disconnected, when
there’s a channel people feel like they’re being heard,” said one respondent. Another
noted the council’s importance in bringing the city’s business to the community’s back
yard. “How many people go downtown to speak at City Council? In the neighborhood
council you can go and present your issue and have the community back it up” (interview
with the author, March 12, 2009).
The council was less focused on engaging nonelected stakeholders in governance
processes beyond public commentary at general meetings. The council’s bylaws con-
tained no provisions for direct voting by the stakeholdership and centralized authority
over committees within the Executive Board. Executive Board members must move to
establish committees and appoint committee heads and members, who are then subject to
the majority vote of the board. Committees receive support from the Executive Board
through the Committee and Early Notification Oversight Officer, who forwards City
Council agenda items to committees as relevant and assists committees in preparing
Community Impact Statements for submission to the City Council.
Finally, some respondents saw a strong value in the transparency with which the
neighborhood council operates in conferring legitimacy to the council. A former board
member noted that, while the board may at times have bogged down in discussion, one of
its virtues was that “you couldn’t railroad anything through it” (interview with the author,
June 4, 2009). In contrast to stakeholders’ perceptions of the patronage and back-door

152
deals by which most business is conducted in Boyle Heights, the openly deliberative
process built into the neighborhood council system may offer a step toward restoring
community trust in public governance.
A Push-Pull Process of Development
The nature and scope of the BHNC’s development interventions within the
community evolved both organically around the Executive Board’s skills and interests
and in a push-pull manner based on the demands of the neighborhood council function
and the community’s needs. In keeping with the Executive Board’s vision of the council
as an agent of unification, community building—particularly as it concerned partnerships
with other community-based entities to maximize resources and building community
pride—was a central component of the council’s agenda. Capitalizing on a confluence of
aptitude, need, and opportunity, Executive Board members also fashioned a role for the
council in working co-productively with city agencies to improve local delivery of city
services. By contrast, board members embraced the council’s planning role with caution,
citing the overwhelming level of development taking place in Boyle Heights and diffi-
culty in developing productive working relationships with planning entities.
Community building. The BHNC’s Executive Board both enacts and supports its
community-building agenda by leveraging its annual budget allocation against other
available resources in the community. Roughly half of the BHNC’s budget is reserved for
special projects within the community, which in the 2009-2010 fiscal year worked out to
$23,000 in funds available for grants to community organizations. Managing these funds
to support the many organizations that request funds is a source of pride within the
Executive Board, which has elevated “resource maximization” through community

153
networking to an iron-clad principle and oft-repeated mantra. “We kind of are the little
extra dollar that an agency needs to make the events [happen],” an executive board
member said. “If they ask for $5,000 we only give $1,000,” but the board will then assist
organizations to find in-kind donations to supplement their budget (interview with the
author, July 7, 2009). Most expenditures are in the range of $500 to $1,000, with the
largest single expenditure in the 2008-2009 fiscal year a $4,000 contribution toward a
mural restoration project on Cesar Chavez Boulevard. Some donations were made
directly by quadrants, which each controlled an equal portion of funds, totaling one third
of the council’s special projects budget.
Although the board funds a broad range of activities, interview respondents
expressed a partiality toward projects that convey positive images of the community,
build community pride, and represent the community’s accomplishments to the outside
world. The multicultural parade was a case in point. A former board member who sup-
ported the council’s production of the parade described the parade as something that the
council needed to “do first” to lay a groundwork of pride and cooperation that would
enable other actions, such as the unified response to the Hollenbeck mural (interview
with the author, February 10, 2009). Another respondent extolled the council’s support
for programs such as Roosevelt High School’s Mesa Club, in which students build and
sail solar panel boats for a regional competition. The respondent asserted that the
activities of the club, which has been awarded medals in the competition even as they
have functioned without school funding, “is so important because it shows that Boyle
Heights is more than gangs” (interview with the author, July 8, 2009).

154
Co-production. Board members’ orientation toward service to the community,
coupled with stakeholder complaints about the unresponsiveness of city agencies, also led
the council to assume a role at the front lines of constituent services. Calls from indivi-
duals seeking assistance in resolving problems increased in keeping with the council’s
efforts to put out the message that “we are your voice with the city,” as one respondent
put it (interview with the author, July 7, 2009).
Council members affirmed this function of the council on the basis of both obliga-
tion as elected representatives and efficiency. Some respondents identified service
coordination as a fundamental responsibility of the council. One respondent, who saw the
neighborhood council’s function as “alleviating the city council office,” said, “That’s
really what our job is. It’s what we’re elected to do. We want to be resourceful in that that
way” (interview with the author, July 7, 2009). Another respondent remarked, “We have
a duty and an opportunity to help people find what’s available to them” (interview with
the author, July 8, 2009).
Moreover, respondents said, board members’ connections with city agencies
helped to expedite the handling of complaints. “For example, if we have a resident who
comes to us and says ‘I need speed bumps on my street,’ it’s so easy for one of us to pick
up the phone” and contact the appropriate city office, a respondent said (interview with
the author, July 7, 2009). The respondent also noted that in some cases it was safer for the
board to handle complaints than individual stakeholders, who may be subject to retalia-
tion from neighbors.
The strong relationship between the Hollenbeck police department and the Boyle
Heights community at large, built on Hollenbeck’s record of continuity in policing, com-

155
munity responsiveness, and proactive stance toward crime prevention, has enabled a co-
productive relationship between the neighborhood council and law enforcement. For
example, a neighborhood council leader who lived in an area threatened by gang violence
maintained an open line of communication with the police department. If there were a
shooting in the area, the police would call the council member, who would alert various
agencies in the area. Likewise, the council member would notify the police when new
graffiti appeared in the area (a sign that gang tensions were mounting) and ask them to
increase their patrol for a while. Council leaders were also instrumental in recruiting
police to resource fairs in various parks and neighborhoods within the community and in
introducing the police to area business owners.
Planning. In contrast to the council’s decisive leadership in the areas of com-
munity building and collaborative service provision, board members showed reluctance
to assert a full-blown role for the council within the various crosscurrents of planning and
development in Boyle Heights and were slow to develop an organizational infrastructure
for handling issues of planning and development. Respondents attributed this reticence in
part to the sheer volume and complexity of development both underway in the com-
munity and in the proposal stage and council members’ lack of discretionary time to
invest in researching the various impacts of these projects, alone and collectively.
Respondents noted that, while the council has not made itself influential in the major
development processes in motion in the community, it has developed functional working
relationships with key agencies, such as the Community Redevelopment Agency, which
includes council representatives in its committee meetings and regularly calls on the
council for input and support.

156
The council was more proactive about inserting itself into local school planning,
despite the Los Angeles Unified School District’s lack of outreach to the neighborhood
council. By pushing for council involvement in planning for the new high school in the
Aliso-Pico area, for example, the council won two seats on the school’s steering
committee, called administrators’ attention to the school’s placement within rival gang
areas, and offered help through the area’s safe passage program.
Approximately 6 months into its tenure the board established a planning and land
use committee that regularly monitored information sent by the City’s Planning and Land
Use Management unit and contacted applicants to request plans and development appli-
cations. For the most part, the board’s regular planning activities remained closely
focused around local quality-of-life issues. Yet, despite the executive board’s aspiration
for the council to serve a unifying function within the community, everyday planning
issues within Boyle Heights often challenged the board to wrestle with pointed questions
regarding social equity, control of the community environment, and the meaning of
acting in the best interest of the community as a whole.
One such issue concerned petitions for liquor licenses. Although the BHNC board
categorically opposes new permits to sell liquor within the community, a proposed
remodel of the landmark El Mercado building, a complex of restaurants, shops, and
entertainment venues that serves a mostly immigrant clientele, presented grounds for a
policy exception. El Mercado’s owners sought to trade five licenses to sell beer and wine
for a single license that would allow the sale of hard liquor. The plans for the remodel
included creation of a sports bar with space for dancing, as well as improvements that
would bring the complex into compliance with current building codes. Proponents of the

157
remodel presented an 800-signature petition in support of the amendment; however, a
vocal group of residents actively opposed the license amendment, citing the large number
of existing liquor licenses in Boyle Heights and El Mercado’s previous lack of respons-
iveness to community concerns about negative externalities from the complex’s
operation. The issue enmeshed the council’s decision on the issue within what some saw
as an uncomfortably politicized atmosphere that pitted U.S.-born residents against new
immigrants.
Controversy over congregations of illegal street vendors around the community
posed another delicate issue for the board. Illegal vending is a longstanding issue in
Boyle Heights that reached a flash point as the economy soured and shop owners and
residents complained that evening congregations of sidewalk food vendors around the
intersection of Breed Street and Cesar Chavez Boulevard were detracting from sales at
nearby legal businesses and blighting the environment with litter. Given that many of the
vendors were immigrants who supported themselves on the sidewalk-style cooking
common in their home countries, opposition to evening vending took on anti-immigrant
overtones. County health inspectors encountered protests by vendors and their advocates,
who asked the city to designate a regulated space within the community where vendors
could sell food legally. Councilmember Huizar has laid preliminary groundwork to enact
such a plan, which was presented to the BHNC at a general meeting. Board members
ultimately voted to support the creation of a night vendor market in the community.
Discussion and Summary
Within the short tenure of the BHNC’s remade elected board, governance
capacity within the council coalesced around a blend of skilled, proactive, and harmoni-

158
ous leadership, participatory representation, institutional partnerships, and a flexible
approach to the deliberative process. Both the procedural and substantive aspects of
governance were facilitated by leaders’ administrative and project management skills,
while leaders’ extensive personal and professional networks within the community
empowered resourceful programmatic work and information sharing. Leadership capacity
was further empowered by a strong commitment by executive board members to uplifting
the community and mutual regard among members, which facilitated communication and
made the considerable labor involved in running the council more enjoyable and
rewarding.
Initiative and collaboration were two additional qualities of leadership that
enabled the council to serve and represent its stakeholder constituency. Board members’
proactive engagement with individual stakeholders in handling community-related prob-
lems and their ability to work productively with city agencies to find resolutions played a
growing role in increasing the council’s relevance within the community, where stake-
holders have perceived government responsiveness in some quarters to be lacking. The
board’s desire for collaboration has also led to mutual relationships with key city
agencies, particularly their city council member’s office and the local police division,
which variously facilitated the council’s programmatic efforts, stakeholder outreach,
formal inclusion in community development events led by other government entities, and
the actual production of services—namely, public safely—on behalf of the community.
The council also appeared to be empowered by the representative aspects of its
function. While unwieldy, the council’s quadrant structure and large number of elected
representatives offered stakeholders broad access to local governance across the com-

159
munity’s geographic districts, strengthening its capacity along the dimension of participa-
tory representation and, arguably, laying a foundation for symbolic legitimacy. The
council’s ability to adapt the procedural formalities of representative governance to suit
the political and civic style of the community also formed an element of capacity. This
generally involved making meetings welcoming and accessible to families with young
children through the provision of food at meetings and balancing the need to control
meeting proceedings to maintain order and efficiency with recognition of petitioners’
need for adequate time to address the board and make their voices heard.
While the BHNC board has charted a course within its tenure that has reinforced
the council’s relevance to the community and enabled it to advance an improvement
agenda, a question remains as to whether the council’s gains under the moderating
influence of this particular board are sustainable, given the community’s distrust of
government institutions and the often combative climate of its political and civic life.
This issue is especially significant given the lack of support available to the council in the
form of training in conflict management and resolution, in spite of documented
challenges in the area of board-stakeholder relations. The results of the recent
neighborhood council election, which returned several Executive Board members and
roughly half of the board’s quadrant representatives to office, suggest a base of leadership
continuity that will likely be central to maintaining the council’s forward momentum.
East Hollywood Neighborhood Council
“Crazy Diversity” in an Emerging Community
By virtually any indicator, East Hollywood is an unlikely candidate for model
community governance. Fundamentally, there is a problem of identity. Despite its

160
physical division from Central Hollywood by the construction of the Hollywood Freeway
in the 1940s, East Hollywood has been slow to develop a distinct presence within the
constellation of established communities that surround it. Indeed, more than many com-
munities in Los Angeles, East Hollywood owes its existence as a separable entity to the
neighborhood council organizing and certification processes, which literally placed the
area on the map through the assignment of an official set of boundaries. Tellingly, a long-
time resident who grew up in the area recalled discovering his status as a denizen of East
Hollywood only after encountering the EHNC website. He said that, before that, he
thought he lived in Hollywood.
East Hollywood’s persistent obscurity as the intermediary landscape connecting
more compelling destinations suggests the extent of the area’s physical and social
fragmentation. From an environmental perspective, the area lacks the coherent spatial
patterns and easy legibility that the urbanist Kevin Lynch (1960) claimed contribute to a
sense of well-being and appreciation of places. To the uninitiated in particular, East
Hollywood can appear less a recognizably integrated settlement than a pastiche of
regional institutions, ethnic enclaves, and scruffy 1930s-era apartment housing
interspersed among gritty urban thoroughfares. The area is illustrated in Figure 3.
The area similarly lacks a social or cultural coherence that might provide a
normative foundation for community action. Even by the culturally porous standards of
Los Angeles, East Hollywood comprises an astonishing concentration of ethnic diversity,
the cumulative product of successive waves of immigration that intensified in the 1960s
and continues to the present. Today, East Hollywood is home to sizable populations of
Armenians, Thais, and Central Americans and, according to EHNC organizers, also

161

Figure 3. Boundaries of East Hollywood Neighborhood Council area. Source: Roster
of Neighborhood Councils, by City of Los Angeles, Department of Neighborhood
Empowerment, 2008, Los Angeles, CA: Author. Retrieved from http://done.lacity
.org/ncdatabase/nc_database_public

162
incorporates populations of Mexicans, Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Russians,
Eastern Europeans, and people of Middle Eastern heritage. Almost half of the area’s
residents lack U.S. citizenship and nearly one third are non-English speakers. Roughly
half had changed residences within the 5 years preceding the most recent census, portray-
ing a pattern of residential churning common to immigrant gateway communities.
Evidence of the area’s immigrant history is visible in the designated districts of
Little Armenia and Thai Town, which overlap at the northwestern edge of the council
boundaries in a loose assemblage of ethnic eateries, markets, import stores, and pro-
fessional and cultural institutions, and in the clamor of ethnic-language commercial
signage denoting businesses that serve the area’s Salvadoran and Guatemalan popula-
tions, as well as other less established cultural groups. Several neighborhood council
leaders with whom I spoke highlighted the kinetic energy created by what one respondent
termed the area’s “crazy diversity” (interview with the author, November 3, 2008) as one
of East Hollywood’s greatest assets. Yet research on civic engagement suggests that
cultural dynamism comes at a social cost. The findings of the well-known Saguaro
Seminar Study concluded that, at least in the short term, immigration and diversity
significantly undermine the stability and social trust necessary for community cohesion
and good governance (Putnam, 2007). “We have rich ethnic diversity,” a board member
of the EHNC observed, “but that doesn’t help these groups connect that meaningfully. A
lot of different people can find a niche here where they feel comfortable. What could be
strengthened is how these niches interrelate” (interview with the author, February 3,
2009).

163
East Hollywood’s prospects for community governance are also unencouraging in
light of known predictors of civic voluntarism. Whereas civic activism is positively
correlated with affluence, educational attainment, age maturity, and property ownership
(Verba et al., 1995), the population in East Hollywood is largely working poor, under-
educated, young, and renters. At $24,400, the area’s annual median household income is
two thirds that of the City of Los Angeles, with 12% of the population receiving public
assistance. More than 64% of residents are under the age of 40, and only one third of the
population has achieved more than a high school education. Ninety-two percent of
residents are renters, yielding one of the lowest homeownership rates in the City.
Yet, against these odds, East Hollywood has emerged as one of the most vibrant
and committed neighborhood councils within the Los Angeles system, lauded by the City
for its big-hearted celebration of the diverse elements that fall within its borders and
known locally for its arts-centric approach to community building. Within a system
dominated by older, White homeowners, the EHNC stands out for the racial and cultural
diversity embodied in its notably youthful board members and close adherents and for
their patient cultivation of the personal, organizational, and institutional ties that form the
basis for representative community governance.
Organizing and Representation: “Doing it Right” Over Time
From its earliest stages, the EHNC embraced inclusiveness as a core organiza-
tional principle, an approach that reflected early organizers’ appreciation for both the
culturally kaleidoscopic character of the district and the realities of the neighborhood
council certification process. Among organizers with whom I spoke, East Hollywood’s
multicultural mix exerts not only the sensory attractions of motion, change, and choice

164
but a powerful symbolic appeal. Reflecting on the nature of his attachment to East
Hollywood, one organizer offered, “Maybe it’s because of its concept. This place is a
gateway for all sorts of communities” (interview with the author, November 15, 2008).
Another organizer projected the area as a kind of postcultural crossroads in which groups
can maintain their distinctive cultural heritage in peaceful co-existence and occasional
shared celebration of the heritage of others. “I like to see this neighborhood as a
microcosm of the city or even the world. I think the rest of the city could learn from our
example” (interview with the author, November 10, 2008).
To organizers, cultural diversity was axiomatic to the future identity of the neigh-
borhood council. However, translating this assumption into practical action that would
satisfy the City’s open-ended requirement that outreach “reflect the broadest array of
community stakeholders who will be active participants” (City of Los Angeles, 2001,
Article III(2)b) in the council proved daunting. For the purposes of certification, council
organizers were compelled not only to identify the multitude of stakeholder groups within
the community but to find ways to connect and communicate with them. This task was
complicated by the absence of evident associational ties within local groups, particularly
the large Latino population, that would facilitate outreach.
26
In addition, organizers felt
increasing pressure to properly execute the outreach process as early petitioners for
certification came under challenge by the BONC on the basis of insufficient outreach.

26
An analysis performed and generously shared by Kyu-Nahm Jun revealed East
Hollywood to have one of the lowest ratios of community-based organizations per 1,000
residents in the City: 13, compared to 3.4 in the Historic Cultural Neighborhood Council
area, which, like East Hollywood, falls within the poorest quintile of council communi-
ties in Los Angeles.

165
“The whole point was to get it done right,” said an early organizer. “My whole goal was,
I don’t want that to be us” (interview with the author, November 10, 2008).
As it turned out, “doing it right” took 5 years of persistent effort, earning East
Hollywood the distinction of conducting one the most protracted organizing processes
in the neighborhood council system. Initially, progress was hampered by the lack of an
organizational base to champion the council. An obvious candidate was the East
Hollywood Community Association (EHCA), a loosely affiliated group made up mostly
of over-50 property owners organized around a mission of community beautification and
information sharing. However, while some members viewed incorporation as a neighbor-
hood council as a logical next step, others objected to the possibility of undermining the
association’s independence by affiliating with the City.
As the neighborhood council organizing process got underway citywide, a core
organizing group eventually coalesced in East Hollywood around a trio of youthful and
civically involved stakeholders with strong ties to the area. The spiritual and organiza-
tional heart of the operation centered in Elson Trinidad, a lifelong Hollywood resident in
his 30s whose family had been active in the area’s Filipino community and who had co-
founded the EHCA. Trinidad’s deeply felt commitment to improving East Hollywood
and his dogged determination to shepherd the community through council certification
became a touchstone that carried the organizing process forward as the effort ground on.
The core organizers also included Alfredo Hernandez, also a Hollywood native who in
his 20s had already logged a decade of experience as a volunteer in a variety of
Hollywood-based organizations, and Israel Stepanian, a graduate student at Los Angeles
City College with connections within the area’s Armenian community.

166
The organizers set an ambitious goal of establishing a relationship with every
nonprofit organization in the area and at least half of the stakeholders-at-large. In addition
to mailing fliers and setting up tabling booths in front of grocery stores and at community
events, organizing entailed a significant investment of time in formal meetings with
social service and business organizations, as well as door-to-door outreach in residential
neighborhoods. Spanish- and Armenian-speaking organizers were particularly instru-
mental in the latter regard. Organizers sought both to raise awareness of the council and
to engage stakeholders’ interest in the community. To assist them, the group developed a
survey tool that asked respondents to identify urgent community issues.
To enlarge their ranks, core organizers aggressively availed themselves of
electronic forms of media to publicize their efforts, incorporating text messaging and
Facebook and MySpace pages into the usual repertoire of e-mail notices. The group’s
modus operandi was to call a meeting around a social event, then break into smaller
groups and disperse to gather signatures for their neighborhood council petition. “Our
meetings were always fun,” recalls an early organizer. “I think that’s how we attracted
people. Our technique was to bring people in with some kind of fun activity. We always
met in different places. We went bowling, met in restaurants, coffee shops, someone’s
house” (interview with the author, November 15, 2008).
However, the problem was not attracting participation but sustaining it. Not
surprisingly, the group’s buoyant, technology-rich approach particularly appealed to
young stakeholders who, while civic-minded, also tended to be footloose. “For every
meeting, one person would come forward,” an early organizer recalled, but these addi-
tions were offset by losses as people churned through the area as they found housing in

167
other neighborhoods. “That kind of reality kind of hindered progress” (interview with the
author, November 10, 2008).
The group finally stabilized around a core of a dozen or so people, some of whom
would be more active than others at any given time, but organizers continued to vacillate
between a desire to move forward with a creating a council and doubts about the ade-
quacy of their organizing base. With barely enough leadership to make the election of a
first neighborhood council board viable, organizers were reluctant to draw up bylaws and
make other preparations for certification. Moreover, organizers were having difficulty in
determining a standard for inclusiveness against which to measure their outreach efforts.
“We kept asking ourselves whether we had done enough outreach, whether enough
people knew about the council,” an organizer recalled (interview with the author,
November 15, 2008).
Similar concerns surfaced on the part of the BONC when the group finally
presented itself for certification in April 2007. In an opening statement BONC com-
missioner Diane Middleton spoke for the Board in pointedly questioned the viability of a
fully operational East Hollywood neighborhood council, given the formation committee’s
modest size. However, by the end of the hearing, the board had completely reversed its
position, with Middleton declaring, “You just demonstrated you’re going to have one of
the best neighborhood councils around” (City of Los Angeles, BONC, 2007).
Indeed, formation committee members had come to the hearing prepared. In a
memorably heartfelt series of presentations, Hernandez, Stepanian, and Trinidad demon-
strated the committee’s command of the nuances of the community and spoke evoca-
tively of their personal experience of East Hollywood and their commitment to represent-

168
ing its diversity. Leaders from community service organizations and neighboring certified
councils were on hand to attest to the group’s energy and dedication to the neighborhood
council process. The coup de grace was an original video titled, “This is East Holly-
wood,” written and produced by Trinidad in the week before the hearing (Trinidad,
2007). Set to an original score, “In My Part of Town,” also written and performed by
Trinidad, the video interspersed images of the neighborhood’s businesses, cultural
organizations, and places of worship with footage of community groups and individuals
who delivered messages about the community in various languages. The council’s
certification petition was unanimously approved among commendations on the
organizers’ evident enthusiasm and willingness to embrace diversity in its many forms.
In closing, BONC commissioner Linda Lucks asserted, “You represent what we’re
hoping the system will become all over the city (City of Los Angeles, BONC, 2007).
Since its certification and subsequent election, the EHNC has continued to enjoy a
reputation for authenticity in its connections with the community, even as it has struggled
to make meaning of the relationship between the council and representation in the context
of East Hollywood’s prolific diversity. Board members and active stakeholders with
whom I spoke generally agreed that the council was representative of the community.
Some respondents explained this in descriptive terms, pointing to the racial and cultural
diversity of the council’s board, which includes members with direct ethnic, cultural,
and/or linguistic ties to the area’s Armenian community and Latino population, as well as
African Americans and Whites not of Armenian heritage. Some also noted descriptively
relevant features such as the board’s age profile, which reflects the youth of the area’s
population, and the high proportion of non-homeownership among board members.

169
Other respondents connected the intimacy of individual council members’
knowledge of their immediate neighborhoods with their ability to advocate for their needs
and interests, suggesting a formal and substantive basis for representation. One board
member praised fellow members for “the passion, the details, the concern for the neigh-
bors” that they displayed in their work on the council. Such fine-grained knowledge is
facilitated by the council’s division of the community into 11 discrete neighborhood
districts, each with its own board representative which, in a community of 55,000 people
and 2 square miles, provides an intensely local basis for representation. “Everyone has a
keen sense of their area. They kind of, ‘Here’s what this neighborhood is like.’ They’re
really fighting on behalf of the neighborhood,” said the respondent (interview with the
author, February 3, 2009).
Another board member voiced similar views, emphasizing the link between
street-level interaction with neighbors (such as going door to door and conducting
informal conversations) and the legitimacy of the council’s substantive agenda. “Repre-
sentation depends on how you reach out to people in your neighborhood. I know my
neighbors. I know my neighbors kids . . . and they say, ‘We don’t have anywhere to
play.’ I pretty much know my community” (interview with the author, December 16,
2008). However, the same respondent noted that all board members were not equally in
touch with their electorate. To build on the strength of the council’s electoral structure,
the board recently voted to make geographically representative board members
responsible for outreach in their respective areas. A board member noted that the results
of this policy—which was instituted toward the end of the board’s tenure—were mixed,

170
both in terms of getting representatives to perform outreach and bringing new participants
into the council (interview with the author, August 6, 2010).
Other council members, among them board members who represent functional
interests as opposed to geographic areas, expressed less confidence in their understanding
of the main issues in the community and questioned whether the council’s activities
adequately reflected community concerns. Some members raised the possibility of
conducting various types of inventories and assessments to better understand the
community’s assets, needs, and preferences, but no plans to this effect materialized.
Rather, the board opted for a more interpretive means of collecting information through
the launch of “Imagine East Hollywood,” an interactive multimedia installation that
combined a collection of video and audio interviews, essays, poems, stories, illustrations,
and Facebook, Twitter™, and YouTube submissions with live encounters with actors
who engaged exhibit visitors in the various languages spoken in East Hollywood.
Contributors to the project were asked to share their vision for and feelings about the area
and to offer solutions for community problems. Council board members, who partici-
pated in soliciting submissions from a broad cross-section of stakeholders, suggested that
the project tapped into a store of local knowledge and preferences that is often difficult
for the board to access (“Community Members Invited,” 2009). The project is ongoing
and the council has yet to decide how it will use its results. A board member expressed
hope that an immediate outcome of the project would be to energize new board members
elected in April 2010, but noted, “Like almost everything we do on the EHNC, the impact
[may be felt] subtly, over time” (personal communication, June 6, 2010.)

171
Although “Imagine East Hollywood” included contributions from Spanish-speak-
ing stakeholders, some East Hollywood council members acknowledged the council’s
lack of success in engaging the area’s working-class, Spanish-speaking population. First-
generation Latinos are notably absent within the council’s leadership structure and at
council meetings and council-sponsored events. An exception was a normally scheduled
board meeting that convened directly following the murder of a woman whose body had
been discovered in an East Hollywood alley, an event that drew an unusual number of
Latino participants, some of whom came as families with young children in tow. Council
members attributed their attendance to door-to-door outreach and distribution of flyers in
the area immediately surrounding the alley, alerting neighboring stakeholders to the
incident and urging them to attend the meeting to hear a first-hand report on the case
from the police. Otherwise, the council’s main form of outreach to Latinos consisted of
forming partnerships with local schools to send students home with English- Spanish-
language fliers announcing the council’s activities, a practice that was discontinued due
to difficulties with timing fliers to go out in manner that would be effective in engaging
stakeholders and the sheer cost and labor involved in printing, collating, and coordinating
distribution of 3,000 fliers to four schools.
In a study of Latino participation in the EHNC conducted by Cassandra Pruett, a
co-chair of the council’s outreach committee, organizational leaders who are engaged
with the area’s Latino population cited lack of knowledge about the neighborhood
council, fear of authority, perceptions that the council is bureaucratic, and a perceived
lack of relevance to their concerns and cultural interests as reasons for low Latino partici-
pation in the council. Respondents also identified youth and education, safety, and jobs/

172
employment as the top three issue priorities in the Latino community, a finding that
suggests a substantive mismatch between Latinos’ concerns and the EHNC’s policy and
programming actions, which have largely focused on beautification, support for arts and
culture, transportation, and increasing parks and open space.
Pruett’s study recommends a three-pronged strategy to increase participation that
involves raising awareness of the council through resuming targeted outreach; making
council meetings more supportive of participation by holding meetings in culturally rele-
vant locations (for example, churches) and providing translation, childcare, an informa-
tion booth manned by a Spanish-speaking board representative; and collaborating with
community-based organizations that serve the Latino population to work on action-based
projects relevant to Latino stakeholders’ concerns. However, as of January 2010, Pruett
had yet to present the study to the board, citing the council’s difficulty in meeting routine
outreach demands.
Forging Connections, Developing Identity
Community building. As an elected body, much of the EHNC’s attention has
been devoted to building connections within the community, a function that, perhaps
more than any other, challenged the council to consider the nature of its role. Like other
neighborhood councils, the EHNC has relied on the city’s annual disbursement of funds
to sponsor programming conducted by community organizations, and in some cases to
enter into partnerships with organizations on community-oriented projects. A significant
share of the EHNC’s resources was channeled to arts and cultural festivals, including
sponsorship of the Thai New Year celebration, the Armenian Independence Day Festival,
and the annual Shakespeare-in-the-Park Festival, held each summer at the Barnsdall Arts

173
Park. The council also concentrated resources on sponsoring youth-oriented programs to
create art that served the community, such as a project in which young artists painted
utility boxes, and a public arts project that involved youth ages 15 to 25 in story gather-
ing, mapping, design, and artmaking about the neighborhood.
The board also made a conscious effort to steer resources toward projects or
partnerships initiated by council committees or individual members, in response to
concerns that the council was developing as an intermediary organization, rather than an
agent of direct action.
My problem with the council is it seems like we’re a money-giving agency.
They’re not even sustainable, some of the things we’re giving money to. I think
the money should be used to do something sustainable for the whole community.
[For example], we should make a small green space with a statue. Someone said it
would cost too much money, but I think we could use it as a way to build
connections. (Board member’s interview with the author, November 15, 2008)
The council’s efforts to forge direct relationships with area stakeholders have
ranged from the intimate to the expansive. A series of small-scale beautification events
mobilized residents and businesses to plant or care for trees or clean up an alley in their
immediate locale. A project to co-produce an event celebrating the 100th birthday of
William Saroyan, a prominent writer of Armenian descent who lived in East Hollywood,
with the local branch of the public library attracted 40 people and led to other collabora-
tive efforts. In the vein of garnering public involvement in the creation of green space,
the council expressed support for the idea of installing a permaculture project within the
community.
27

27
At an EHNC board meeting on March 16, 2009, board member Jennifer Moran
argued that permaculture, a philosophy and practice of design intended to involve inhabi-
tants in the creation of sustainable settlements, has a strong practical and symbolic rele-
vance to community development. Moran described permaculture as about “how people

174
The council’s biggest community-building project to date has been the East
Hollywood ArtCycle (pronounced like motorcycle), which attempted to spotlight neigh-
borhoods around the council area and raise East Hollywood’s profile within the Los
Angeles Eastside region. The event, which was conceived, planned, organized, and
produced by Jennifer Moran and Enci Box, co-chairs of the EHNC’s Arts and Culture
Committee, self-consciously coupled two distinctive elements of East Hollywood’s
emergent alternative hipster scene: a growing but diffuse collection of visual artists and
gallery owners living and working at the fringes of the East Hollywood boundaries, and a
vibrant affinity group organized around bicycle activism, anchored in East Hollywood’s
“Hel-Mel” district, so named for its location at the T-shaped intersection of Heliotrope
Drive and Melrose Avenue.
East Hollywood became the de facto hub for the Hollywood biking scene when
the Bicycle Kitchen, an all-volunteer organization that helps people to build and repair
bicycles, decamped from its founder’s downtown apartment to a small storefront space
on Heliotrope Drive, near what is now the EHNC’s southern boundary. Bicycle Kitchen
workers have since branched out along the street to found a bicycle shop, a vegan
restaurant, and an ancillary studio space used for storage and occasional bike-related
events. Although the bicycling community is deliberately decentralized, the better to
avoid legal consequences from transgressive actions during mass rides, the Hel-Mel
district provides a physical center of gravity for the area’s cycling activists and
enthusiasts. Currently, the district also includes a head shop, a tattoo parlor, several

live in connection with everything else, both organically and socially” and contended that
an ongoing permaculture project held the reciprocal benefit of being both an outreach
tool for the council, and “an opportunity for people to do a project using us.”

175
performance art theaters, a high-end art gallery, and the popular Scoops gelato shop,
famous for its exotic and sometimes insouciant flavor combinations.
28

By contrast, artists living and working in East Hollywood, while networked to
various extents with one another, as a group lack a discernible link to the neighborhood.
An interview respondent who works within the Los Angeles arts community in various
capacities characterized East Hollywood as having talented artists who have been work-
ing for a while without being discovered but who still experiment and take risks, placing
them somewhere between the “super snooty and kind of elite” crowd that make up one
end of the Los Angeles arts spectrum and the “underground, homemade, DIY” scene at
the other end (interview with the author, June 9, 2009).
Rather than a local community, he sees them as part of the greater Eastside arts
community, which encompasses Silver Lake, Echo Park, Los Feliz, and downtown Los
Angeles. By and large, East Hollywood artists and gallery owners proved receptive to the
ArtCycle concept, but to the extent that they were often unaware of the EHNC or even
their own location within East Hollywood, organizers had to cultivate participation in
ArtCycle through individual outreach and recruitment.
In addition to a series of guided bicycle tours of the area’s galleries and live-work
art spaces, ArtCycle was conceived as a street festival featuring art installations, an array
of pop-up vending and information booths, food purveyors, and street performances. The
planning and organization of the inaugural event, which took place in 2009 in the Hel-
Mel district, attracted a small core of artists and a crossover group of cycling activists

28
Goat cheese rosemary, for instance, or their signature Brown Bread, which
blends caramel-flavored gelato with crumbled croutons.

176
who also identify as artists. EHNC engaged members of the cycling community in the
logistical planning for the event and accompanying bike tours, and they advertised the
event through cycling social media networks. Capturing the overlap between the cycling
and artists communities, ArtCycle also hosted cyclists as vendors in the street festival and
included a bicycle art exhibit in the Bicycle Kitchen’s studio space.
As word of the event spread, local artists stepped forward to make various contri-
butions to the planning and execution of the event, including designing and hand painting
posters for the event and coordinating and overseeing children’s art activities at the
festival. Organizers also tapped the resources of area gallery owners, one of which
(Synchronicity Space) was instrumental in recruiting artists and musical acts for the street
festival, publicizing the event through their listserv and MySpace page, and providing the
venue for a series of parties to produce hand-stamped woodblock postcards that adver-
tised the event.
ArtCycle itself unfolded to a feel-good vibe and robust turnout over a gloriously
balmy Saturday in February 2009. One organizer later described the event in terms of the
artist Allan Kaprow’s notion of a “happening,” in which divisions between the presenters
and participants in an event or artwork are blurred or broken down. In the course of the
afternoon and evening, a notably multi-ethnic and age-diverse crowd circulated amiably
on foot and bike among vendors and performers or viewed the passing scene from tables
at sidewalk cafes. Lines formed around a “live” screen-printing business producing
custom T-shirts and at the booth of the Photography Collective, which assembled por-
traits of participants into a real-time digital collage of the event. Elsewhere, festival goers
lounged on armchairs arranged around an oriental carpet to form an improvised outdoor

177
living room space, while parents with young children danced alongside a salsa troupe and
Capoeira artists performed to the rhythm of a handheld drum and native Brazilian
clarinets while neighbors looked on from lawn chairs in their front yards. Toward the top
of each hour, helmeted bicyclers congregated in the center of the street for the next
departure of the ArtCycle tour, while a Bicycle Kitchen worker on a beach cruiser trailed
a fat stripe of yellow paint through a funnel attached above his front tire. (The point of
this, I later learned, was to suggest that all it would take was a little paint to reshape the
city along more bike- and human-friendly proportions.)
To the extent that ArtCycle was intended both as an expression of the EHNC’s
core value of unity amid diversity and a means of drawing attention to East Hollywood as
an entity, the event, which attracted an estimated 2,000 participants, was roundly deemed
a success by organizers and the EHNC board. An organizer reflected that ArtCycle’s
broad appeal owed in part to the culturally inclusive nature of the East Hollywood arts
and cycling communities themselves. “One of the reasons for organizing the event
around the arts was that art is so broad almost anyone can interpret it the way they want
to,” the organizer said. This made for a good fit with the cycling community, whose ethos
is similarly non-agist, non-gendered, and multiracial (interview with the author, March 6,
2009). Perhaps more significant from the standpoint of building a sense of community
identity, the event projected the spontaneity and sense of fun that has characterized the
EHNC since its inception.
Board members also commended ArtCycle’s success as an outreach event.
Although the event was sponsored by the EHNC, virtually all of the work for the event
was performed by non-EHNC board members. Nevertheless, organizers acknowledged

178
that ArtCycle had not been as successful as hoped in drawing participation from local
residents and businesses, an outcome they attributed to their publicity strategy, which
recruited participants mostly through organizers’ existing networks of affiliation.
Relatively little effort was put toward door-to-door promotion of the event, although
organizers spoke to neighbors in the area immediately surrounding the Hel Mel district to
advise them of the Heliotrope street closure and to invite their attendance at ArtCycle.
Moreover, with the exception of Synchronicity Space, businesses in the Hel-Mel district
showed faint enthusiasm for the event and kept more or less to business-as-usual during
the festival.
If nothing else, the aftermath of the council’s success with ArtCycle inspired what
one member described as “an explosion of creativity” about ways to incorporate other
elements of the community into the neighborhood council’s activities (interview with the
author, March 6, 2009). Among the ideas that surfaced were an event to showcase the
skateboarding and bike-trick skills of the area’s youth, and inviting church congregations
to a picnic to talk about what they would like done in the neighborhood. Following the
success of a second annual ArtCycle event in 2010,
29
in which the council, restricted by
City policies, encountered difficulty in accepting donations from groups outside of the
council, Arts and Culture Committee leaders were in the process of recreating ArtCycle
as a separate nonprofit entity dedicated to fundraising, advocacy, and programming
around the arts, transportation, and open space development in East Hollywood.

29
The second annual ArtCycle was held along a stretch of Santa Monica Boule-
vard chosen to highlight a City-owned lighting maintenance yard that the council hoped
to convert into a park, and the Cahuenga Branch Library, which co-produced events with
the council.

179
Physical planning. East Hollywood’s burgeoning identity as the center of the Los
Angeles cycling culture was also shaped by the neighborhood council’s activism around
regional transportation policy and planning. The EHNC was the first neighborhood
council to endorse the Cyclist’s Bill of Rights, created by the Los Angeles-based Bike
Writers Collective, which calls for planning and development that promotes cycling and
cycling safety, and unanimously supported the Los Angeles Regional Bicycle Master
Plan. As one of six neighborhood council members that make up the Hollywood
Coalition, the EHNC participated in a parking, planning, and transportation town hall
meeting jointly sponsored by the Coalition, presenting “East Hollywood on the Move,”
an original video that advocated for bicycle friendly streets, increased bicycle parking
and amenities, and greater awareness of cyclists’ right to share the road (EHNC, n.d.).
Although there were no concrete outcomes from the meeting, an EHNC board member
reported that it had resulted in closer working relationships on specific issues between
individual councils and the area’s City Council office and the Los Angeles Department of
Transportation (personal communication, June 14, 2010).
The EHNC’s leadership faced greater challenges in gaining traction in com-
munity-level planning, particularly in terms of developing consensus around the future of
the community’s development. This was due in part to dissention within the ranks of the
council’s planning and beautification committee, which had difficulty in reconciling pro-
and anti-development sensibilities and presenting unified recommendations to the board
for approval. In one instance the board voted in favor of a recommendation put forward
by a minority of the committee, which deepened tensions around the planning function
and temporarily brought the planning committee meetings to a halt. Although the

180
committee subsequently resumed its work, one board member observed that the council
is “nowhere near making our neighborhood what we envision, but I don’t think we
[collectively] envision it” (interview with the author, December 16, 2008).
Meanwhile, board members expressed a sense of urgency about strengthening the
council’s planning function. Although most of the development projects that came before
the board were small in scale, board members foresaw East Hollywood’s location next to
Silverlake, Los Feliz, and Echo Park, its proximity to downtown Los Angeles, and its
public transit accessibility as magnets for larger-scale development. As one board mem-
ber put it, East Hollywood had the potential “to become a dumping ground for people to
make money” if the community failed to take a proactive stance on development guide-
lines” (interview with the author, November 5, 2008). One council member suggested
that the most valuable training that the City could offer would be a skill-building course
in “how to put neighborhood councils in the middle of development” (interview with the
author, November 3, 2008). In this vein, the council allocated funds for two neighbor-
hood council members to attend a planning and development seminar at the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which participants reported was helpful in generating
supportive contacts and ideas for engaging planning and development processes.
One of the areas in which the council is making inroads is park planning, an issue
that had broad support across the EHNC board. With the exception of Barnsdall Art Park,
which sits at a remove from the community on a hill between Hollywood and Sunset
Boulevards, East Hollywood incorporates no public park space within its boundaries, a
condition that has inspired both activism and formal action among EHNC members. For
3 consecutive years the board allocated funding for members to participate in “Parking

181
Day,” a national event that draws attention to the need for additional parks and open
space. For the occasion, council members erected temporary “parks” on the street in
various areas around the community. The largest of these was the “East Hollywood
Recreation Center,” which spanned four parking spaces and featured art, entertainment,
barbecuing, and a wading pool.
In 2009 the council established a park in front of the Bureau of Street Lighting’s
maintenance yard on Santa Monica Boulevard to draw attention to the council’s endorse-
ment of action to convert all or part of the 4.2-acre yard into community space. Council
members lay down sod, built a fountain from an old tire, and invited people to paint
banners that the council could use for outreach purposes. Approximately 100 people
visited the park, and many more drove by along the busy boulevard. Within days of the
action, City Councilmember Eric Garcetti’s office had arranged a tour of the facility and
initiated a feasibility study. Although Garcetti and the Bureau of Street Lighting are sup-
portive of the conversion, a board member who has been involved with the negotiations
expressed pessimism that the project would go forward without the EHNC raising the
$29 million needed for construction, citing the City’s preoccupation with other priorities
and, in his estimation, a norm of political inaction within the city. “You get all excited
about stuff, and you realize that nothing much happens here,” the respondent said, giving
as an example the extended projected timeline for a freeway-spanning park in the plan-
ning stages in Hollywood, compared with the relatively rapid installation of Millennium
Park in Chicago. “There is a political culture in this town that is used to not getting things
done” (interview with the author, June 6, 2010).

182
Leadership “In Touch With the Moment of the Day”
Collectively, EHNC’s board members and active stakeholders embody a rich
endowment of personal and social resources that foster and shape the council’s capacity
for effective governance. Many of these resources have been cultivated through mem-
bers’ prior experiences in professional and civic contexts that operate according to the
practice and norms of communication, negotiation, planning, and other skills relevant to
community action. During the period of this investigation the EHNC board counted
among its members three attorneys practicing in the public or independent sectors, a land
use planner, an educator, several members who worked professionally in various capaci-
ties within nonprofit agencies, a pastor, and a journalist. Board members also arrived at
the neighborhood council as seasoned veterans of voluntary action, including experiences
as leaders or participants in other community-representing organizations, political cam-
paigns, student government, advocacy groups, and community-based service and arts
organizations.
While board members’ background experiences clearly formed a base of compe-
tence and ability that supported the neighborhood council’s accomplishments in the areas
of deliberation and decision making, event production, and, to a lesser extent, policy and
planning advocacy, an active stakeholder’s observation that the EHNC board was
“definitely able to get things done” (interview with the author, December 5, 2008) also
reflected personal qualities that board members brought to their work for the council, as
well as productive assets generated through council members’ interactions with one
another.
Energy, youth, and commitment. Intangible resources such as energy, enthusi-
asm, and commitment were among the assets most frequently mentioned by interview

183
respondents as constituting the council’s capacity. Virtually everyone with whom I spoke
in connection with the EHNC cited energy and dynamism as the council’s defining
characteristics and main sources of effectiveness. Respondents often suggested that
energy was primarily a function of board members’ youth, frequently drawing con-
nections between council members’ place in the life cycle and their enthusiasm and
openness to change. A member who had a working relationship with another neighbor-
hood council board in the Hollywood area whose members were significantly older
commented, “We’re youthful as a board. All but three or four of the members are under
40. That means we’re more contemporary, more in touch with the moment of the day. We
have more energy” (interview with the author, December 16, 2008).
Council leaders pointed to a positive relationship between the board’s youthful
age profile and its progressive attitude toward community change and development. For
example, several leaders conjured a similar land use vision that embraced density and
home rentership as principles of sound ecological and social planning. This vision
centered around development of high-density, affordable apartment units and mixed
commercial uses around the area’s public transportation infrastructure—a marked
contrast to the anti-density stance found elsewhere in the city. To the extent that the
board’s progressive spirit reflects age cohort-related political sensibilities, these politics
may themselves be shaped by the majority of board members’ shared status as non-
property owners.
Another member framed the council’s youth as a valuable temporal asset that
would allow leaders the time to initiate projects and see them through to completion. The
respondent suggested that this potential for ownership of the change process was part of

184
the council’s attraction for young stakeholders. “[East Hollywood is] still our neighbor-
hood. When you get the older folks, it’s their neighborhood. I don’t want the old guys
planning my neighborhood for my kids” (interview with the author, December 16, 2008).
Interview respondents also highlighted council members’ commitment to the
community and the governing process as among the council’s central strengths. “The
whole board is pretty dedicated,” a board member observed. “They come to meetings,
they go to events, they participate in DONE things” (interview with the author,
November 5, 2008). An exceptionally committed core of board members sits on multiple
committees in addition to holding executive offices. The group’s collective investment in
council activities is particularly remarkable, given that board members’ engagement
traced neither to property ownership nor an imminent threat to the community.
Board members themselves tended to attribute members’ energy and dedication to
the neighborhood council to a deeply felt sense of place. Some saw the board’s energy as
rooted in the dynamism of the community’s juxtaposition of cultures, intensity of use,
and centrality within the city’s budding mass transit system (three subway stations are
located within the EHNC’s boundaries). Another suggested that the board was dedicated
because “people believe in and love the neighborhood” (interview with the author,
November 10, 2008), an attitude that seemed especially prevalent among board members
who were long-time residents of the area or who were affiliated with the area’s ethnic
institutions and culture.
Many respondents also spoke of council members’ friendliness and conviviality
as a council asset, an emphasis that implied that participation and dedication were equally
if not more a manifestation of the social benefits that board members and active

185
stakeholders derived from their involvement in the council. In keeping with the playful
spirit of the organizing effort from which it was formed, council leaders continued to join
civic purpose with sociability (for example, by holding council-sponsored dinner breaks
during monthly meetings and sponsoring work parties around committee-related activi-
ties), effectively incentivizing participation with the promise of fun. This friendly founda-
tion arguably set in motion a virtuous cycle of engagement as like-minded members
developed social networks and a sense of camaraderie, further reinforcing members’
interest in council activities, and the board’s evident enthusiasm attracted and engaged
non-elected core adherents to positions on council committees.
For some members, involvement in the council was akin to a lifestyle choice, a
propensity that reflected both the demands and rewards of council engagement, and that
underscored the relationship between members’ dedication to council work and their
access to discretionary time—itself a function of board members’ predominant youth and
largely single and/or childless marital and family status. One board member pointedly
emphasized this association in a candidate’s statement during the EHNC’s mid-term
election of new executive officers, underscoring how flexibility in his professional
circumstances and lack of personal attachments would enable him to devote the necessary
time to effectively fulfill the role of council president (EHNC Board Meeting, November
17, 2008). Other board members who were interviewed considered time availability to be
a limitation, lamenting professional obligations that limited their ability to take on more
work in the council. During the period of the study, two board members resigned as
committee heads, citing work conflicts.

186
Even as they praised board members for their commitment to the council, inter-
view respondents acknowledged that, professional commitments aside, some members
did not participate in the council to their full potential, particularly where committee
work was concerned. One respondent reported an increasingly pessimistic view as the
board’s tenure wore on:
It seems like many of the EHNC board members aren’t passionate and dedicated.
They just show up at meetings once a month and minimally participate in other
activities. But there are those few that are really doing something . . . and that is
where we are getting things done. (Personal communication to author, February 1,
2110).
Others offered approaches for correcting the problem. One board member reported quiet
efforts to reach out to other members to gauge their interests and encourage greater
involvement. Another suggested following the example of councils that require board
members to participate in committee leadership. Another identified accountability as an
issue, suggesting that the council would benefit from a tracking system that kept com-
mittee heads on task and answerable to the board.
Civility and deliberation. A distinctive feature of the EHNC’s deliberative
function was the facility with which its leaders managed the formal aspects of the
council’s meeting procedures while promoting a supportive and friendly governance
environment. Counter to its normative emphasis on sociability, the EHNC followed a
traditional decision-making approach that, in contrast to the greater discursive flow of
consensus-oriented approaches, structured deliberative interaction around parliamentary
procedure and time limits on public comments. Within a procedural setting, maintaining a
human proportion to group interaction is largely dependent on the facilitative skill of the
meeting chair, which, during the course of my observation, was primarily held by David

187
Bell, who succeeded Elson Trinidad in the EHNC’s presidency. A lawyer by training and
profession, Bell earned praise from council members and observers for his articulate
manner and artful modulation of council meetings. Possessed of both a comfortable com-
mand of Roberts Rules of Order and a natural geniality, Bell had a talent for smoothing
over procedural interstices and engaging the board, agendized speakers, and members of
the public through a blend of deference to other board members’ areas of expertise,
respectful questioning, and a generous application of humor. A visiting researcher from
Belgium, intrigued by the upbeat civic behaviors employed by Bell and other
neighborhood council presidents whom he observed, characterized this style as “Let’s
have fun while we follow the rules!”
30

More generally, council members identified the strength of board members’
ability to handle conflict with civility and respect as a significant council asset. One
council stakeholder attributed the board’s functionality to members’ uncommon open-
mindedness and diplomacy, noting, “Even [names board member], who’s notorious for
being against development, he’s pretty tactful and graceful when people don’t agree with
him” (interview with the author, December 5, 2008). Another hailed board members’
willingness to disagree as a fundamental indicator of the council’s health, observing,
“Dialogue is a sign that the democratic process is working” (interview with the author,
December 16, 2008).
Board members’ diplomacy and communicative integrity were particularly on
display during the EHNC’s mid-term election of new executive officers, which marked

30
Informal research colloquium, Eliasoph/Lichterman home, Los Angeles, January
2009.

188
the council’s first change in leadership since the inaugural election of the EHNC board.
The election painfully pitted a number of prominent board colleagues against one another
for the seats of president and vice-president, which until then had been occupied by core
members of the council’s original organizing group. Throughout a palpably tense
assembly, in which the board openly held nominations, heard statements from and
questioned candidates, and cast their ballots, board members seemed implicitly to follow
conventions of good discursive communication: They spoke honestly and openly, stuck
to comprehensible reason giving, and mostly avoided remarks that might be deemed
critical of others. In the process, Elson Trinidad, the EHNC’s hardworking founder and
spiritual touchstone, agreed to a nomination for the council’s vice-presidency after losing
his bid for reelection as council president to David Bell. For his part, Bell took office
pronouncing himself shaken by the election and good-naturedly suggesting that perhaps
he was simply intimidated by his new role because “Elson is the George Washington of
East Hollywood” (EHNC Board Meeting, November 17, 2008). At the conclusion of the
election, both Bell and board member Gary Slossberg commended fellow members for
their civil and respectful conduct.
Nevertheless, board members acknowledge ongoing interpersonal tensions and
factional divisions within the board, a situation some stated had grown more pronounced
with the board’s tenure in office. Tensions tended to surface as ripples of discontent
rather than outright conflict, although one board member likened the board’s occasionally
quarrelsomeness atmosphere to that of a school lunchroom. Several board members
raised the need for further training in group dynamics. Board members’ previous collect-
ive training in group dynamics was limited to a daylong board retreat that focused on

189
leadership styles, conducted under the auspices of the Department of Neighborhood
Empowerment soon after the board’s election. While board members described the
training as informative, they deemed it too short and not sufficiently oriented to skill
building to be truly useful.
Discussion and Summary
From its earliest origins, East Hollywood’s improbable rise to prominence as a
poster child for the neighborhood council system was fueled by area leaders’ commit-
ment to the formal process of community governance, a group style based on sociability,
and a broad appreciation for the diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural elements contained
within the community. Its subsequent success in operating as a certified neighborhood
council drew on these resources, as well as the professionalism of elected council
members in managing the deliberative, administrative, and programmatic aspects of
community governance, and an infusion of creative energy that has informed the
council’s development agenda.
The council’s inclusive group style and energetic and friendly manner were
particularly potent resources with regard to organizational development, affecting the
council’s ability to attract and maintain participation around a core of dedicated elected
and non-elected stakeholders. Similarly, its imaginative programming that drew distinct-
ive elements of the community together in the production of ArtCycle established a
secondary circle of council supporters, initiated relationships between the council and
other community-based entities, and promoted awareness of the council both inside and
outside of East Hollywood. The council’s relatively narrow scope of activities—most of
which were directed toward publicizing the council and community building—also

190
appeared to help the council to gain traction as an entity and prevent diffusion of the
group’s energy in multiple directions. In this respect, the council benefited from lack of
divisive issues within the community during its first years of operation, which allowed
leaders time to develop functional organizational arrangements and cultivate relationships
with other organizational stakeholders.
The council’s communal norms of engagement extended to a generally shared
practice of civility that facilitated deliberation and decision making and maintained board
stability despite interpersonal tensions among board members or individual members’
dissatisfaction over the direction of the council’s activities.
As the council matures, sustaining the level of energy and creativity that has
carried the council forward thus far would seem to be central to the project of leveraging
existing governance capacity. The council’s immediate prospects in this regard look
hopeful. Elections held in the spring of 2010 returned 7 of 17 board members to office,
including EHNC president David Bell and Jennifer Moran, the highly active chair of the
council’s arts and culture committee, providing a strong base of leadership continuity
over the next 2 years. Bell expressed optimism that new board members, whom he
described as similar to old board members in terms of youth and enthusiasm, would bring
fresh energy to the council (personal communication, June 1, 2010). In order to smooth
the transition between boards and keep outgoing board members and committee members
engaged in council work, the previous board allocated funds to hold a council retreat
facilitated by Stephen Box, an East Hollywood stakeholder and political activist who
worked previously with DONE as an elections mediator.

191
A greater challenge to the council lies in making their activities relevant to the
large proportion of the community that is not directly involved in the council. To the
extent that nonparticipants include a substantial number of stakeholders who differ from
board members in terms of income level, educational attainment, and immigration status,
the council’s will and ability to clarify stakeholders’ priorities may provide foundations
for representational legitimacy going forward.
Park Mesa Heights Community Council
The Comeback Kids
Every second Saturday morning, stakeholders in the Park Mesa Heights com-
munity in South Los Angeles gathered at Angeles Mesa Elementary School for a ritual of
civic communion of surprising simplicity and power. Dotted among the wooden fold-
down chairs in the school’s auditorium, an assembly of 20 to 30 meeting goers face an
11-member board clad in matching green polo shirts, who anchored the assembly from
behind adjoining banquet tables. Collectively, meeting participants skewed decisively
toward senior status. Virtually everyone in the room is African American.
Although South Los Angeles became synonymous with urban unrest following
the Rodney King riots in 1992 and the area, including Park Mesa Heights (see map of the
area in Figure 4) continues to suffer its share of urban ills, these meetings felt more
Mayberry than metropolitan. Donuts in a pink pastry box at the door tempted attendees,
meeting goers traded good-natured barbs and banter and, in an echo of a rapidly receding
era in which gentility in social relations was customary, participants regularly addressed
one another as “Mr.” and “Miss.”

192

Figure 4. Boundaries of Park Mesa Heights Community Council area. Source: Roster
of Neighborhood Councils, by City of Los Angeles, Department of Neighborhood
Empowerment, 2008, Los Angeles, CA: Author. Retrieved from http://done.lacity.org/
ncdatabase/nc_database_public

193
These occasions marked the monthly meetings of the PMHCC general member-
ship, a forum designed to engage elected board members, non-elected stakeholders, and
invited guests in direct exchange about local issues. As distinct from the board meetings
at which the council’s official business is conducted, general meetings constitute a privi-
leged space in which board members can seek feedback from stakeholders away from the
pressure of decision making and stakeholders can safely ask questions, share information,
hold one another accountable for statements and actions, and exercise political voice.
Meetings unfolded within a distinctive structure of practices that reinforced
civility while encouraging self expression. Observance of ceremonial and procedural
conventions—the recitation of the pledge of allegiance, the full reading of the previous
meeting’s minutes into the record, a routinized agenda—delineated the official auspices
of the assembly and telegraphed standards of orderly public conduct. However, pro-
cedural formalities were largely set aside to facilitate free-flowing group dialogue about
substantive issues. Speakers were not subject to time limits, although the council
president would occasionally interject to keep discussion on track or reign in verbal
sparring. Forceful expressions of anger, tears, and mistrust, mostly directed toward
political institutions, were commonplace and indeed constituted a valued aspect of the
group encounter. In interviews, stakeholders commonly identified establishing a forum in
which people could speak freely as one of the PMHCC’s primary achievements.
In stakeholders’ and observers’ estimation, under the board elected in 2007,
PMHCC has distinguished itself as a highly functional council with a series of notable
accomplishments. Within a year of the board’s election, the council had developed
networks with local organizations, formed working relationships with key city agencies,

194
and initiated plans and projects to improve the area’s quality of life. These achievements
are all the more noteworthy, given the council’s near-death experience as a governing
entity. Prior to the board’s election, the council faced decertification by the City’s BONC
following infighting, racial tensions between Black and White board members, allega-
tions of fiduciary misconduct, and violations of procedural regulations. Rather than dis-
banding, the council was allowed to hold fresh elections and reconstitute itself around a
new executive board. According to a supporter within the City’s DONE, the board’s
aggressive efforts to develop stature for the council and make itself accountable to the
community had earned it a reputation with DONE as the “comeback kids of South LA.”
Leadership: A Strong Core and a Deep Bench
Many credited the PMHCC’s triumphant turnaround to the leadership of Ted
Thomas, a local resident and the council’s president. Tall, barrel-chested, and
bespectacled, with salt-and-pepper hair that points toward his 70s, Thomas projects a
low-key, unhurried style that masks a flinty resolve and considerable capacity for action.
A 25-year veteran of the United Auto Workers Union, where he worked as a contract
negotiator and arbitrator, Thomas’s professional schooling in the organized politics of
labor has deeply informed both his leadership style and the scope of the council’s
activities.
Prior to his election as council president, Thomas was chiefly involved in
community affairs through his local block club, which he helped to organize and chair.
His interactions with the council in this capacity both dismayed and angered him. In his
view, the board’s leadership was ineffective in handling relatively simple requests and,
worse, quashed comment and dissent from stakeholders. Moreover, in violation of

195
California’s Ralph M. Brown Open Meetings Act, council meetings were held outside of
the council’s designated boundaries. As relations within the council deteriorated—
including an episode in which a board member placed a restraining order on Thomas’s
wife, Claudette, a founding PMHCC board member who remained an active stakeholder
after serving an initial term—Thomas circulated a petition calling for the resignation of
board members on the grounds that they had no legitimate claim to stakeholdership
within the Park Mesa Heights area. When new elections were announced, Thomas put
together a slate of candidates who he felt possessed skills and experience that would be
valuable in rebuilding the council. The slate included his wife, Claudette, a former
accountant, in the position of secretary and a neighbor, John Dean, a professional
fundraiser, as treasurer. After his election, Thomas continued to recruit experienced
stakeholders to key positions in the council, appointing a local businessman and an
education activist to fill vacant board seats as Business and Educational Representatives,
and installing a community organizer and former council board member as chair of the
council’s stakeholder action committee.
While Thomas acknowledged his role in orchestrating the council’s rebirth, he
underscored the group nature of the council’s accomplishments. Members not only
transferred valuable professional skills to their work with the council, but between them
offered a impressive storehouse of civic knowledge and connections gained through past
and current activism in local and other arenas. Board members and active stakeholders sat
on local planning boards, volunteered with cultural organizations, and spearheaded
efforts to improve local educational provision and public safety. The council’s access to
this trove of collective civic experience empowered it to embrace a wide-ranging

196
community development agenda and helped the PMHCC to secure a central place within
the community’s existing organizational landscape.
Crucially, the council’s success was built on the time and commitment of the
organization’s senior members, in particular a core group of three executive officers—
Thomas, Claudette Thomas, and Franklin Tilley—all of whom were retired. In the early
days of the new board’s tenure, the group treated their positions on the council as a full-
time job. The absence of other demands on their schedule not only enabled the trio to log
as many as 10 hours a day each on council work, but gave them flexibility to conduct
business with government and professional nonprofit agencies by day and attend meet-
ings of voluntary groups during evening hours.
Beyond technical assistance with translations and the occasional procedural
question, PMHCC neither asked for nor received leadership support from DONE, and
indeed became locked in a bitter dispute that pitted council leaders’ administrative com-
petence against that of the Department. The dispute involved $14,000 in rollover funding
that DONE “swept” from the council’s account, claiming that the council had not spent
the funds by a designated cutoff date. The council produced receipts and documentation
to counter the claim, instigating a protracted audit during which DONE first agreed that
the council was owed the funds, then reversed its position. The audit, which involved
multiple meetings with city officials and repeated requests to the council by DONE to
resubmit misplaced documentation, infuriated council leaders, whose pursuit of the issue
became among other things a principled defense of their accounting practices in the face
of what they perceived as the Department’s gross ineptitude and organizational

197
mismanagement.
31
Council members reported that. at one meeting, the contrast between
PMHCC’s orderly efficiency and DONE’s evident lack of proper record keeping
prompted a representative from the PMHCC’s City Councilmember’s office to suggest
that DONE adopt the PMHCC’s bookkeeping procedures.
A Broad Development Agenda
Organizational networking. Under Thomas’s leadership, the PMHCC board
launched a vigorous campaign to establish itself as an organizational player within the
community. Armed with a weekly master list of meetings and events taking place in the
PMHCC district, Thomas, Claudette, and Tilley, with support from other board members,
deployed across the community to acquaint themselves with the area’s organizational
leadership and identify opportunities for the council to support community-based
programming and change efforts. The success of this strategy depended not only on
repairing the council’s tattered reputation within the local area but, more fundamentally,
advancing a cognitive appreciation of Park Mesa Heights district as a coherent entity of
community governance.
The PMHCC’s official boundaries are less the expression of an organic spatial
logic than the composite product of circumstance and political pressures during the
council organizing and certification processes. This process began in the Hyde Park area,
located at the southern end of the PMHCC district, and gradually enlarged as the Hyde
Park organizers came into contact with civic actors from surrounding areas through
participation in a neighborhood leadership training program run by Coro Southern

31
PMHCC members had nothing but praise for Lisette Covarrubius, the DONE
Project Coordinator assigned to the council. Their grievance was with DONE’s account-
ing personnel and upper management.

198
California.
32
Seeking a logic by which to resolve a boundary dispute with a neighborhood
council organizing group in an adjacent area, the PMHCC organizers finalized their
boundaries around the 90043 zip code on the gamble that an existing territorial grouping
in conjunction with a petition that they circulated to stakeholders in the disputed area
would carry the day at their certification hearing before the BONC. It did, the group was
certified, and the PMHCC was born, incorporating the three previously distinct com-
munities of Park Mesa, Hyde Park, and View Heights.
PMHCC board members and active stakeholders commonly identify the council’s
network of relationships with other community-based organizations as the foundation of
the council’s work in the community. Today, the PMHCC has links to virtually all of the
active nonprofit organizations in the area, which comprise a civic infrastructure that
includes the headquarters of the Los Angeles chapter of the Urban League, dozens of
block clubs, voluntary organizations that support the area’s two libraries, and several
organizational collaboratives: the Hyde Park Organizational Partnership for Empower-
ment, which spearheads community development in the Hyde Park area; the Crenshaw
Pre-K-12 Collaborative, which works to improve school performance across the greater
Crenshaw area; and the Cougar Coalition, an alliance of parents, local nonprofit groups,
and foundations that supports site-based reform at Crenshaw High School. Thomas had a

32
My actions as a Research Associate employed by the University of Southern
California’s Neighborhood Participation Project, which held a contract with Coro to
evaluate the effectiveness of its neighborhood leadership training, had a bearing on this
outcome, however tangentially and inadvertently. In the course of conducting research on
the role of faith organizations in neighborhood councils, I became familiar with the
HOPE-led organizing effort and recommended the Hyde Park community as a candidate
for training. The decision to conduct training in the area was Coro’s, which ultimately
recruited training participants beyond the borders of Hyde Park to ensure a full comple-
ment of trainees.

199
particular interest in the area’s educational future and personally focused on reaching out
to the area’s schools. As a result, said a council member, “Ted can go into any school in
this community council district and will know the principal” (interview with the author,
July 23, 2009). Thomas is also the PMHCC’s representative to the Cougar Coalition,
from which he recruited the Coalition’s then-president, Eunice Grigsby, to the PMHCC’s
board as educational representative.
In addition to the time, commitment, and connections of its board members and
active stakeholders, the council’s ability to root itself within the neighborhood’s
organizational ecology relied heavily on the financial resources available from the City
under the neighborhood council funding program. In the 2009-2010 funding year 44% of
the PMHCC’s expenditures went toward supporting the activities of other community-
based organizations, most in amounts of $1,500 or less. The council’s strategy of dis-
tributing funds widely around the community not only fostered broad-based goodwill
toward the council but required organizational representatives to attend board meetings to
petition for funds, increasing the community’s familiarity with the council and its
processes. Among other things, the council purchased computers for the Friends of the
Library organizations, paid for after-school karate instruction performed by the police
department at Hyde Park Elementary School, and sponsored a principal’s tea for gradu-
ating seniors at Crenshaw High School. One respondent underscored the council’s stand-
ing as a benefactor within the community’s organizational infrastructure, noting that a
key difference between the council and nonprofit agencies was that “we don’t ask for
money” (interview with the author, March 18, 2009).

200
The PMHCC’s efforts to engage the local business community were more faceted.
Following a highly successful beautification program in which the council installed
banners in the community’s main commercial areas, the council secured sponsorship
from businesses for a second round of banner hangings, as well as installation of trash
receptacles customized with decorative designs. The council secured agreements from
businesses and other organizations to regularly empty the cans as part of the city’s terms
for installing additional receptacles, resulting in a three-way program of co-production by
the City, the local council, and local businesses. The council also sought to galvanize
local business development by initiating a business improvement district (BID), but these
efforts foundered on lack of funds and technical know-how. The council procured a list
of local businesses from their council district representative’s office but lacked members
with expertise to convert data from a spreadsheet file into a mailing. The council’s busi-
ness representative, Wesley Smith, asked the council district office for a $1,000 deposit
to sponsor a breakfast meeting for potential BID participants, but he was encouraged to
seek a donation from a restaurant—a difficult deed in a poor economy.
The PMHCC is also seeking to bolster its organizational strength by developing a
501(c) organization that will have greater fiduciary and advocacy flexibility than the
neighborhood council, which is bound by restrictions pertaining to government
organizations. The “Friends of PMHCC” organization will focus on fundraising and
economic development.
Co-production and stakeholder advocacy. Several council members highlighted
the establishment of formal work premises—centrally located on Crenshaw Boulevard—
as another of the council’s accomplishments. Creation of the office was one of the current

201
board’s first actions, and maintaining it has been a budget priority despite the City’s
recent cutback in the neighborhood council funding program. On a practical level, the
office created a visible presence for the council within the community and provided work
and meeting space in which members could conduct the administrative business of the
council, convene board and committee meetings, and hold community events. The
council also made the office available to community groups in need of a workplace or
meeting venue, although few groups took advantage of this resource.
From a symbolic standpoint, the brick-and-mortar trappings of an office com-
municated the council’s stature as an official entity of city government and lent a sense of
consequence and authority to the council’s dealings. The office’s comfortable appoint-
ments, desks, computers and printers, a photocopier, a wall-mounted flat-screen tele-
vision, a conference table and chairs, and a kitchenette made it a welcoming drop-in
center for community members seeking help accessing government services. Many of
these inquiries involved quality-of-life issues such as nuisance abatement, repairing
cracked sidewalks, health code violations, and the like. Assistance of this type is gener-
ally handled by either Thomas or the council’s stakeholder action committee, whose
members help stakeholders by calling the appropriate city agency, filing paperwork, and
writing letters on community members’ behalf.
While some councils have resisted a service-oriented role, the PMHCC has
embraced it as part of their duty as an advocate for the community. One council member
expressed a vision of the council as “one-stop shop” for information and assistance.
“There shouldn’t be a question that comes in this door that doesn’t get answered” (inter-
view with the author, February 17, 2009). Indeed, the board has proven so effective in

202
this capacity that it has emerged as the de facto constituent services arm of their local
City Council representative’s office, which regularly refers inquiries of this nature to the
community council for handling.
The council’s highest-profile advocacy project to date was a successful bid to
pressure the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to revise recently
redrawn flood plain maps, which erroneously designated parts of the South Los Angeles
area as a high flood risk. More than 900 parcels were affected by the change, which
required individual homeowners with a federally insured mortgage to pay thousands of
dollars in increased insurance premiums. The PMHCC promulgated the issue after an
affected homeowner (and trained surveyor) brought it to the board’s attention at a general
meeting. With support from the office of Bernard Parks, who represents the City’s Eighth
Council District (CD8), of which Park Mesa is a part, the PMHCC brought FEMA
officials to a town hall-style community forum attended by 200 community members,
three news outlets, and U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who was alerted to the
issue by Councilmember Parks. Waters, who is Chairwoman of the House Financial
Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, which has jurisdiction
over the National Flood Insurance Program administered by FEMA, had previously asked
FEMA to reconsider its decision. The PMHCC’s presentation, which included a graphic
comparison of maps of the area originally drawn by FEMA in the 1980s with the redrawn
maps, proved convincing. Several months later, FEMA notified the City that the parcels
would be removed from the flood plain maps. The Los Angeles Board of Public Works
subsequently directed requests for information from other neighborhood councils with

203
areas that are affected by changes in FEMA’s maps to the PMHCC, to the point at which
the issue became a distraction from other council work.
The council’s ability to advocate successfully for the community was facilitated
by solid working relationships with key city agencies, particularly the CD8 office and the
Los Angeles Police Department. Although Councilmember Bernard Parks’ support for
the neighborhood council system as a whole has been ambivalent at best—as chair of the
City Council’s finance committee, he was a leading advocate of reducing neighborhood
councils’ annual funding allotment to $11,800—Parks’ office has nevertheless
consistently backed the PMHCC’s positions on planning issues and supported them
through the protracted funding dispute with DONE.
The PMHCC maintained a close relationship with Ta-Lecia Arbor, the CD8
senior field deputy who, until budgetary cutbacks forced changes within the CD8, was
assigned specifically to the PMHCC territory. Arbor and Ted Thomas conducted ride-
alongs together to identify problems in the community—torn-up sidewalks, areas that
attract crime, de facto dumping grounds for trash—and worked together to remediate
them. In the early period of the board’s tenure the pair maintained daily contact and
sometimes spoke on the telephone as many as two or three times a day.
Arbor also maintained a lively rapport with the council’s general assembly. Trim
and fortyish, Arbor coupled no-nonsense efficiency with a wry sense of humor well
suited to the community council’s bantering style. She sent frequent e-blasts to stake-
holders highlighting emerging issues (“When I know it, you know it.”) and regularly
attended the council’s monthly general meetings to disseminate information on projects
and programs affecting the area, answer questions, and triangulate next steps on issues

204
that community members bring to her attention. Arbor’s evident dedication to the area
and her responsiveness to individual stakeholders have earned her broad respect and
appreciation among council members, who often evince distrust if not outright hostility
toward public agencies. At one general meeting, a stakeholder who had previously raged
over DONE’s fiscal management vis-à-vis the community council was moved by Arbor’s
appearance to declare, “She is from Councilman Parks’ office and she is very, very good.
Honestly, I’ve never seen anyone that good. Thank you” (PMHCC General Meeting, July
14, 2009).
The council cultivated ties with the police officers assigned to cover the PMHCC
area, a relationship that evolved into a informal community policing program. Following
a general trend of crime reduction in Los Angeles, violent crime has gone down in Park
Mesa Heights for 6 consecutive years, but car and home invasions remain a concern, as
does gang activity. Senior Lead Officer Gary Verge and his colleagues stress community
members’ role as the eyes and ears in the community and put an accessible face to the
police department.
Beat officers’ regular attendance at PMHCC general meetings has created an
opportunity for community members to hear the resolution of previously discussed
issues, stay up to date on current public safety concerns and priorities for the area, bring
new matters to police attention, and triangulate action by stakeholders, board members,
and the police. A typical exchange took place at a general stakeholders meeting attended
by Officer Verge and a colleague, Officer Dix, who were greeted with applause by the
stakeholders in attendance. Officer Verge began by informing stakeholders that the area

205
had been having a problem with home invasions and that the police had recently caught
people in the midst of a burglary.
Stakeholder 1: Who were they? Were they gang members? Were they young?
Officer Verge: They were in their 20s. They were staking out the neighborhood.
Stakeholder 2: There’s a blue van that’s been sitting by KFC in the parking lot,
and lots of trash around the building.
Officer Verge: We’ll check it out. It’s on private property, but if I can find out
something, I’ll let the [community council] office know.
[The officer noted that there have also been problems with students from View
Park Preparatory High School loitering around Burger King, which has led to
confrontations between View Park Prep students and Crenshaw High students.]
Stakeholder 3: I saw people smoking weed in front of Burger King and the
security guard didn’t do anything!
Officer Verge: They’re supposed to call us.
Stakeholder 4: There was a kid hanging around my apartment building on West
Boulevard.
Officer Dix: At least twice a month there’s a truancy task force. As long as they
don’t live there, I can cite them.
[Officer Verge urges stakeholders who see kids walking around their
neighborhood during the school day wearing backpacks to call the police.]
Stakeholder: Don’t leave stuff in your car visible. Secure your valuables.
Officer Verge [agreeing]: Because of the economic situation, people are getting
desperate. Make sure you put stuff away in your car. Light up the area around
your house. Help us out. We have an airship that can see a lot, but the reason we
catch people is because of you. You know your neighbors. (PMHCC General
Meeting, February 14, 2009)
Following such exchanges, Verge typically followed up on incidents with the neighbor-
hood council president, often dropping by the neighborhood council office to conduct
business in person. Thomas then passed information along to relevant stakeholders.

206
Planning. More than any other sphere of the council’s activities, the planning
arena showcased the depth of the community council’s capacity for leadership in com-
munity governance and the organizational deficits that limited their scope and power.
As a group, the PMHCC board and active stakeholders were uncommonly prepared to
engage planning challenges. Between them, members had logged decades of experience
on citizen planning boards, including current involvement in the Community Redevelop-
ment Agency’s community advisory committee and the Metropolitan Transit Authority
(MTA) Crenshaw transit corridor project. Through these networks and their ties to their
City Council office, board members remained well informed about the area’s planning
issues and assumed a complex role as defenders of community assets, agents of renewal,
and local intermediary to public planning projects. Although their efforts met with
varying degrees of success, council members’ nuanced understanding of the planning
process and ability to work through routine channels of power while courting direct
action suggested the possibility for achieving meaningful influence over the area’s
planning future.
During the period of this study the most critical planning issue by far in the Park
Mesa Heights area was the planned construction of a light rail line to carry commuters
from Los Angeles International Airport to Wilshire Boulevard via a right-of-way running
the length of Crenshaw Boulevard. Initiated by the county MTA after the 1992 riots,
which sapped much of South Los Angeles’ already waning commercial vitality, the
corridor simultaneously promises opportunities for economic development along the
transit path and threatens the social and physical fabric of Park Mesa Heights’ prime
commercial district. Under the MTA’s preferred design option, the rail system would run

207
at or below grade in the sections directly to the south and north of Park Mesa Heights but
above grade through the Park Mesa Heights area itself, eliminating the iconic landscaped
median that confers a stately elegance to the boulevard. Construction of the corridor is
scheduled to begin in 2012.
As the MTA’s planning process wore on, the community council struggled to
devise an authoritative response to the approaching development juggernaut. At a general
meeting at which Ta-Lecia Arbor called attention to the grade issue, council stakeholders
expressed anger, confusion, and frustration amid calls for unity and mobilization against
the MTA plan.
Board member: They’re not going to destroy the splendor of our community. You
talk about green—they put in all that concrete, where’s our green? Do you want to
look out your window every day and see a train going by?
Stakeholder: I’ve been going to these meetings for the last 4 years. I need support.
I need you to come out and voice your opinion.
[Ted Thomas reinforces this appeal and urges people who attend the Crenshaw
Corridor meetings to keep a focus on job creation.]
Board member: These people who are putting this stuff in don’t live here. This is
so people can commute past Crenshaw real quick. They’re not going to get off
and go to Taco Bell and get back on the train, spend money in our community.
Stakeholder 2: Mr. Thomas, are we there to say we want the train to go
underground?
Various stakeholders [clarifying]: You’re there to say what you want.
Thomas: We need to unify what we want. (PMHCC General Meeting, March 14,
2009)
Against the backdrop of the impending transit corridor construction, the PMHCC, led by
the Land Use and Planning Committee, doggedly pursued a vision of revitalization that

208
would improve amenities in the area, increase local employment opportunities, attract
people into the area from outside the community, and raise the area’s tax base.
One of the group’s chief concerns was the community’s languishing retail district
along Crenshaw Boulevard, which, in contrast to the area’s well-tended residential areas,
bore testament to decades of disinvestment. In place of the surplus of vacant or underuti-
lized storefronts along Crenshaw, stakeholders imagined development that would bring
both basic amenities such as a grocery store (in a boon to the neighborhood, the Fresh
and Easy
®
grocery chain confirmed plans to install a market on the site of a former Ford
automobile dealership) and a mix of retail, entertainment, and hospitality outlets that
would serve the immediate community’s needs and draw patrons from the broader area.
One interview respondent saw potential for the area to be developed in the manner of
Marina del Rey or Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade (two popular Westside shop-
ping and entertainment destinations), citing the area’s central location relative to the
airport, downtown Los Angeles, and Westside beaches.
In a step toward operationalizing this vision, the PMHCC’s Land Use Committee
engaged the Los Angeles City Planning Department to create a community design over-
lay for the specific plan that guides the area’s commercial development. The overlay will
establish refined standards and guidelines for development along Crenshaw and in the
retail and light industrial sections along Slauson Avenue and West Boulevard, and,
crucially, suggest how such development might interact with the transit corridor and the
plans for a pedestrian district in the Hyde Park area. Once it is vetted by the board, the
overlay will be adapted to incorporate community input from a public workshop before

209
continuing through a hearing phase, in which it must ultimately be adopted by City
Council before going into effect.
Beyond its symbolic value as a rallying point for the community, an overlay plan
would have the practical effect of stemming private development around undesirable land
uses. One of the major threats to the area’s commercial revitalization came from
developers of charter schools who, board members complained, had used the PMHCC
area as a “dumping ground” for their projects (interview with the author, March 18,
2009). A relative abundance of underutilized land, low real estate costs, and demand for
higher-performing schools have combined to concentrate the highest proportion of
charter school students in the city within the PMHCC zip code. Board members insist
that their opposition to charter schools reflects a pro-education and pro-community
stance. Some board members denounce charter schools for a lack commitment to the
community’s educational achievement, charging that charter schools compete with local
public schools for the best students in the neighborhood while heavily recruiting students
from outside the community.
During the period of this investigation the board was considering a proposal to
expand an existing charter school would introduce 1,000 new middle and high school
students to two separate campuses along Crenshaw Boulevard, occupying prime real
estate that the council hoped to preserve for commercial development and, the council
feared, creating traffic congestion, parking problems, and other negative externalities for
surrounding businesses and residents. The PMHCC’s Land Use Committee met with the
developer to discuss concerns about the school’s site design and operation, many of
which were subsequently addressed, but also called for the City Planning Department to

210
conduct full traffic and environmental impact studies in connection with the developer’s
application for a conditional use permit. The board voted unanimously against the
expansion of another charter school, which board members felt had performed an end run
around the neighborhood council to secure premises within the community and had
subsequently failed to keep promises in connection with aesthetic and operational con-
cerns voiced by the community. City Councilmember Parks has backed the community
council in its opposition to these proposed expansions.
Community organizing and outreach. Mobilization and the power of numbers
were frequently invoked by council members as a strategy to combat community prob-
lems, and the council was generally successful in recruiting 10 to 15 stakeholders to
attend critical meetings on transit and other issues. However, the time- and labor-
intensive nature of community organizing undermined the council’s efforts to assemble a
broader stakeholder base that might be mobilized for political action. The council’s
Stakeholder Action Committee took the lead in this regard with a strategic plan that
called for coordinating across the area’s numerous block clubs to organize the area’s
sizeable homeowner constituency. However, the informal nature of block clubs—where
organizational coherence tends to ebb and flow in proportion to immediate threats or
projects—and their large number in proportion to the time available to committee mem-
bers made activity beyond basic outreach impractical. Outside of limited personal appear-
ances by board members at some of the area’s active clubs, the council’s main organizing
tool was a community survey, sent to every known neighborhood group, which asked for
organizational contact information and questioned respondents on their priorities for the

211
neighborhood. However, few surveys were returned and committee members lacked time
to track down lagging responses.
The breadth of the council’s reach within the community was also limited by
active members’ preference for higher-context, more cost-intensive interaction with
stakeholders over electronic forms of communication. The council made attempts to
reach out to unaffiliated stakeholders through small-item giveaways such as pens and
pencils, trick-or-treat bags, and T-shirts, but was slow to develop a robust e-mail listserv
or regularly maintain their website. Until the final year of the board’s tenure, the council
relied on mailed reminders or personal telephone calls (made by a part-time office
assistant) to inform stakeholders about upcoming meetings and events. To the extent that
these practices reflected board members’ lack of comfort and facility with electronic
media, they were also motivated by the practical recognition that many community
members on their contact list lacked access to or easy familiarity with digital technology.
However, in response to financial pressures and stakeholder demands, the council
adapted its communication practices to regularly disseminate information electronically,
including notices encouraging turnout for meetings on high-impact local issues.
Community building. Of all the PMHCC’s community development efforts, its
neighborhood beautification activities were widely regarded as having the greatest impact
on the community. Led by the beautification committee chair, Suzanne Simmons, the
council won consecutive $10,000 matching grants from the City’s Office of Beautifica-
tion to post custom-designed, double-hung banners along the council’s main thorough-
fares and to install trash receptacles in the community. The banners, which prominently
displayed the community council’s name and logo, featured inspirational slogans such as

212
“Express kindness,” “Realize abundance,” and “The beauty in transformation,” which
were paired with images drawn by a student at nearby Manual Arts High School. The
bold visibility of the installation drew an overwhelmingly positive response from com-
munity members, as well as inquiries from other neighborhood councils interested in
pursuing similar projects. The banners’ success in building community pride and identity
and creating a presence for the community council ultimately overcame objections from
inside the council over the project’s high price tag. As one board member commented,
I wasn’t that enthusiastic about it, but once we did it even I was proud because it
made the community look a little better. The business community loved it. And
people outside and inside the community took note. To the point when the
banners started to fray, we heard about it. That’s good. That’s taking pride in your
community. (interview with the author, July 23, 2009)
As the inspirational slogans suggested, the beautification campaign was also an
expression of a shared vision for the social renewal of the community around “thick”
norms of interconnection, sociability, and sense of place. One councilmember imagined
the council functioning as a figurative welcome wagon, suggesting that one goal of the
council was that “people should know that those who leave the council will be missed,
and we want those who come to feel welcome” (interview with the author, February 17,
2009). Another spoke of the value of social networks in bridging generational divides
between adults and young people, as well as enforcing social control among youth. “Back
in the day when you thought someone knew your mom, you’d do differently than you’d
do if you didn’t think they knew her” (interview with the author, March 18, 2009). This
theme was also sounded by Ta-Lecia Arbor of CD8, who entreated participants at a
general meeting to take responsibility for monitoring nonviolent youth offenders who are
reintegrating into the community under a program run by the Urban League.

213
I want you people to know that so-and-so is coming back to the community. And
you know his grandparents aren’t around [so you can monitor the situation]. It
takes a village to raise a child. That’s what we’re trying to get back to. Even if
you don’t know the child, even if you don’t love the child. This is still a child of
our community. (PMHCC General Meeting, March 14, 2009)
If council members’ impulse toward village-like social arrangements suggests a
collective nostalgia for a reliable social order, it also reflects a shared recognition of the
role that trust and familiarity have played in the neighborhood council’s operational
success. For example, council president Ted Thomas, drawing on his experience as a
contract negotiator, identified the building of trust as the animating principle in his
philosophy and practice of leadership, particularly where democratic dialogue is con-
cerned. “People tell me, ‘You know, you let people talk a lot at the [general] meeting,’”
Thomas said in an interview. “Well, when you do contracts, you can’t cut people off.
You have to hear everybody out. You need their trust.” The characteristic intimacy that
supports wide-ranging forms of expression at general meetings is a palpable manifesta-
tion of the trust Thomas seeks to promote.
Board members identified faith in fellow members’ intentions vis-à-vis the
community as a principal component in the generally harmonious relations among board
members, which facilitates the council’s work. Interview respondents repeatedly referred
to board members’ genuine concern for the community and determination to act on
behalf of a common good as among of the council’s chief assets. As one respondent
observed, “Sometimes you get people who have their own agenda, and it’s not about the
community. They’re trying to get something over on the community. We don’t have
anyone like that; or, if we do, they’ve been very discreet” (interview with the author, July
21, 2009).

214
Representational Challenges: Engaging Diversity, Gaining Involvement
In terms of representational capacity, the experience of the PMHCC spoke to the
inherent difficulty in achieving the neighborhood council reform’s broader ideals of
inclusion and representation in community governance in the absence of institutional
supports. It also reflected a faceted view of representativeness that illuminates the com-
plexity of local-level representation in the context of the high ideals and low institutional
provision of the neighborhood council reform.
From a descriptive standpoint, the council had yet to achieve anything beyond
tokenistic representation of the area’s significant Hispanic population. Although
Hispanics make up 27% of the PMHCC’s residential stakeholders, all of the council’s
board members during the research period, both elected and appointed, were African
American, a circumstance that represented only a slight deterioration from previous
arrangements. As one board member wryly remarked, “We used to have Latino repre-
sentation on the board, but he moved” (interview with the author, July 16, 2009). Like-
wise, all of the council’s appointed committee chairs were held by African Americans,
and, in my observation, the composition of council meeting assemblies was exclusively
African American or White.
Outwardly, the lacunae in Latino participation in the neighborhood council could
reasonably be ascribed to lack of organizational commitment to enfranchise other groups
due to racial and cultural divides. As a region, South Los Angeles has arguably been
more deeply etched by the recent history of American race relations than any other part
of the city, both as the epicenter of the Rodney King and Reginald Denney beatings and
their aftermath and as a gateway destination for immigration from Latin America, which
has rapidly changed the area’s demographic profile and political equilibrium.

215
Evidence of racial sensitivities frequently surfaced in discussion at the community
council’s general meetings. At one meeting a stakeholder pointedly questioned a repre-
sentative of a land development agency about its hiring practices on a construction site
near her home, stating. “I live in a mixed community and I see my Hispanic brothers
working, I see my Caucasian brothers working, but I do not see my African American
brothers working” (PMHCC General Meeting, May 9, 2009). Another stakeholder who
accompanied a group of high school students to the Obama inauguration on a trip parti-
ally underwritten by the community council, recounted for the assembly the feeling of
unity that prevailed among those in attendance. “I didn’t even know this woman and we
hugged and she said, ‘We’re together,’” she recounted, then added for emphasis, “and she
was Caucasian” (PMHCC General Meeting, February 14, 2009).
Interview respondents noted the presence of undercurrents of tension in council
members’ occasional use of cultural stereotypes and around the council’s employment of
a Spanish-language translator to attend board and general stakeholdership meetings, a
policy to which some council members objected on the grounds that meetings of official
governance bodies should be held in English.
Whether these tensions are superficial or in fact express deeply felt divides that
are not readily brooked, interview respondents generally characterized the community
council as welcoming and conscious of the democratic function the council is intended to
discharge. A city official familiar with the council commented,
They take themselves quite seriously as a bridge between government and the
community. They have a pride like, “We want to be representative of the com-
munity” and they’ve made themselves accountable to the community because of
how much they put themselves out there. (interview with the author, June 3, 2009)

216
Both the official and board members tended to see the lack of Hispanic participa-
tion in the council as a combination of a failure of outreach and lack of interest on the
part of Latinos rather than an intent to exclude other groups. The council’s efforts to
reach the Latino population included distribution of flyers in English and Spanish, efforts
to recruit youth to bring their parents to council meetings, personal appeals to Latino
neighbors by board members, a plan for an area-wide Unity Festival, and language
translation at meetings—a service that went largely unused. However, as one board
member observed, “It’s one thing to do all that, and it’s another to walk the streets and
say ‘Come join us’” (interview with the author, July 23, 2009). Board members and
observers familiar with the council also noted a seeming resistance on the part of Latinos
to join an intercultural governance group, speculating that non-English speakers may be
embarrassed to participate or that Latinos were uninterested in the council’s focus.
The council’s difficulties in attracting Latino participation may also be seen as a
more intractable variant on the problem of attracting unaffiliated stakeholders to the
council. As the city official quoted above noted, many Latinos in the area are recent
immigrants whose lack of familiarity with American civic traditions and preoccupation
with making ends meet make them poor candidates for participation. Moreover, to the
extent that Latinos lack and obvious social, cultural and economic infrastructure within
the community, connecting with them through organizational channels—the PMHCC’s
main form of outreach—can be difficult. Going door to door—assuming council mem-
bers had the time—would be more difficult still, given language and culture barriers.
Hence, in the absence of substantive support from the city in performing outreach and
organizing, the PMHCC’s lack of Latino participation has hardly been surprising.

217
Stakeholders were apt to see representation in nuanced ways when directly asked
whether they felt the council was representative of the community. Some respondents
emphasized the descriptive aspects of representation, pointing to the designation of board
seats for specific community interests; others noted the board’s gender balance. Several
respondents noted that certain segments of the community—particularly seniors and
youth—were very well represented by the community council’s activities, seniors
through various forms of targeted programming and grant making and youth through the
council’s connection with the area’s schools.
Members pointed out that the council has not shied from embracing the economic
diversity within the area. Of the three communities that make up the council area, Hyde
Park is significantly poorer than Park Mesa and View Heights, and View Heights is
significantly more affluent, a circumstance that one observer contended has “humanized”
the board (interview with the author, June 3, 2009). This union has been facilitated by
formal arrangements that reserve a seat on the board for a representative from each area.
Several respondents that felt the council’s substantive focus on beautification,
improving public education, and public safety provide substantive benefit to stakeholders
across descriptive lines. Although there is no local evidence to support this assertion—the
council has never completed a biannual community survey of stakeholders required by
the Plan that might help the council assess its stakeholders’ interests—general data
collected by the Public Policy Institute in collaboration with USC showed education and
public safety to be among the top concerns of the Los Angeles County residents
(Baldassare, 2003).

218
Achieving robust participatory representation from its stakeholder base also
proved challenging for the board, which suffered from work overload. Despite strong
committee leadership by both elected board members and non-elected stakeholders and
consistently strong turnout at general meetings, council leaders experienced difficulty in
converting council adherents to active committee members. At a general meeting, Ted
Thomas underscored this point, urging greater involvement from assembled stakeholders
in order to fulfill the council’s aspirations.
Our committees are stretched to the limit. Our volunteers are stretched to the
limit. I’d say we have 10 people to do all the work. We’ve really made a job out
of it. We’ve put ourselves in a good position, but we need more people to do all
the things we want to do. (PMHCC General Meeting, June 16, 2009)
Discussion and Summary
After its near-death experience at the hands of the City, PMHCC dramatically
recovered its standing within the community on the basis of experienced, committed, and
strongly unified leadership, support from key city agencies, and discursive deliberative
processes that engaged the participation and voice of non-elected stakeholders. Central to
the council’s accomplishments was the depth of civic and professional experience among
elected board members, which enabled administrative efficiency and pursuit of a broad
development agenda that encompassed community building, constituent service assist-
ance, co-production of services, organizational development, advocacy, and physical
planning. Capable and committed leadership across a broad array of functions enabled
committees to function well independently and allowed the council’s president, Ted
Thomas, to take the lead in representing the council to outside entities and to build
relationships with key players in the community, which facilitated the work of the

219
council. Plentiful time resources to devote to council work, thanks to the retired status of
many of the council’s leaders, were also a critical component of the council’s success.
A coordinated working relationship with their City Councilmember’s staff and
consistent political support from their City Councilmember himself was another factor in
the council’s achievements and in raising the overall governance capacity available to the
community. In accepting routine service requests that are redirected from the City
Councilmember’s office and engaging in partnerships with office staff on problems that it
could resolve on its own, the PMHCC efficiently leveraged existing assistance, a signifi-
cant contribution given the cutbacks in the council members’ office due to the City’s
fiscal troubles.
Elected council members’ discursive relationship with nonelected stakeholders
through the institution of the council’s Saturday morning general membership meetings
played a role in the council’s effectiveness, establishing legitimacy for the council as a
place for political voice and witness. However, the council’s legitimacy may have its
limits with regard to gaining broad support for community change efforts, given its con-
tinuing difficulty in engaging the Latino community in its activities.
Toward the end of the board’s term of office in June, the council was well
positioned to continue its work. With 8 of 13 current board members, including council
president Ted Thomas, running for re-election in an election in which none of the seats is
opposed, leadership continuity was assured. Among the remaining five open seats,
Kahllid Al-Alim, the chair of the council’s Stakeholder Action Committee and a previous
PMHCC board member, was slated to return to office as resident representative from
Hyde Park. All of the candidates ran as a slate, suggesting a unity of purpose that was

220
articulated by candidates during their election statements at the June 2010 general
membership meeting. Many of the candidates expressed satisfaction with the council’s
direction and a desire to contribute to the council’s continued success and development.

221
CHAPTER 5
FINDINGS
The aim of this study was to understand the mechanisms that empower success
among citizen-based community governance organizations in poor urban areas. As
outlined in Chapter 1, two current models suggest competing ways in which community
governance capacity may be built. Writing from a community development perspective,
Robert Chaskin (2001) proposed a “bottom-up” model in which capacity is understood as
a product of indigenous resources within the community, combined with interventions
from outside agencies, to develop those resources to be more productive. From the vein
of literature on participatory governance, Fung (2004) suggested that local governance
capacity is rather an outcome of state-centered interventions in which citizens exercise
delegated authority in specific arenas within a carefully structured program of partnership
with government agencies.
Chapter 2 describes the institutional framing and substantive context of the Los
Angeles neighborhood council system, the empirical example of governance reform that
prompted this study. In light of the two models of governance capacity presented in
Chapter 1, the Los Angeles system raises an interesting paradox. Virtually none of the
strategies laid out in either Chaskin’s community-centric approach to capacity building or
Fung’s institutional scheme were enacted within the neighborhood council reform.
Nevertheless, some communities have managed to establish productive councils that
perform as both deliberative bodies and agents of community development. How, then,
has capacity developed?

222
Chapter 4 presented an attempt to answer that question through an intensive
examination of the workings of three neighborhood councils operating in distressed areas
of the city. Chapter 5 synthesizes findings across the three council area studies in terms of
the frameworks provided by Chaskin and Fung. The chapter looks first at the differences
among the communities in terms of the conditioning influences laid out by Chaskin and
then turns to a comparative analysis of the ways in which capacity development was
shaped by the varying conditions laid out by Chaskin and Fung.
Conditioning Influences
Chaskin’s community capacity building model identifies a set of seven conditions
pertaining to the background environment in which community-based organizations
operate that may influence organizational operations. These “conditioning influences” are
safety, residential stability, structure of opportunity, patterns of migration, race and class
dynamics, and distribution of power and resources. This section considers the effects of
these conditioning influences to the extent that they are pertinent to the case study areas.
First, however, the section suggests how local political and civic culture—an influence
not well developed by Chaskin—has affected the function of community-based govern-
ance in each of the council areas.
Political and Civic Culture
The historic experience of each of the case study areas vis-à-vis its political
incorporation within the city points up similarities as well as sharp contrasts. In Park
Mesa Heights, neighborhood governance operated in the context of active distrust of
outside entities, grounded in what stakeholders perceived as a history of mistreatment—
and in some stakeholders’ view, deliberate deception—by political institutions and

223
private interests seeking to profit at the community’s expense. Perversely, the neighbor-
hood council’s dealings with DONE—the agency established to facilitate improved
relationships between localities and the City—only fueled stakeholders’ animus toward
the City, owing to the fiduciary dispute between the entities. Distrust and anger were
often openly expressed at neighborhood council meetings, sometimes in the form of
pointed challenges directed to representatives in attendance from City or private agencies.
Council members’ oppositional stance was also evident in members’ calls for mobiliza-
tion and protest against perceived threats to the community. Ironically, of the three cases
examined for the study, Park Mesa Heights also had the most extensive co-productive
relationships with City agencies. This was facilitated by members’ tendency to dis-
tinguish individuals with whom the council had a direct relationship from the institutions
they served. Hence, for example, the council maintained an excellent working relation-
ship with Lisette Covarrubias, the DONE project coordinator assigned to their council,
while evincing antipathy toward DONE itself.
Political distrust was also a factor in the operations of the BHNC, where ethnic
and physical marginalization within the City have shaped the community’s political
history. Well known as an activist community, Boyle Heights has frequently used
mobilization and protest as a means of challenging entrenched power. Echoes of this tack
were evident in the BHNC’s leadership in organizing a Town Hall meeting to challenge
the City on the installation of a mural that many in the community found culturally
offensive. However, much of the challenge within the neighborhood council was the
result of antagonism not between the council and City or other agents but between
neighborhood council members themselves. Under the board elected in 2008 (subsequent

224
to the mural issue), these tensions manifested as stakeholder challenges of the procedural
actions of the board and, board members said, as private commentary by stakeholders on
board members’ conduct. At one point, conflict escalated into a formal grievance filed by
a stakeholder against a board member following an exchange of e-mail. Although the
origin of these tensions was unclear, some stakeholders suggested that they were rooted
in part in a contrast between consensual and confrontational political styles. The
Executive Board that served during the period of my observation took a deliberately
collaborative approach to governance, in particular partnering with their city council
representative’s office on events and in handling constituent inquiries.
By contrast, local political and civic history had little influence on the activities of
the EHNC, given the largely anomic status of the area as a community prior to the advent
of the neighborhood council system. In the absence of dominant political and civic
norms, the neighborhood council was itself the lead player in shaping a nascent political
identity that strongly reflected countercultural influences, particularly the progressive
politics of the cycling community, which are themselves founded in environmental values
and an inclusive ethos. Although routine political networks have played a role in the
council’s activities, particularly in terms of its collaboration with the city council office
on the development of a park, the area’s emerging identity, based in part on the council’s
efforts to highlight distinctive elements within the community, reflects an alternative
world view that champions multiculturalism and progressive forms of social provision.
Safety
While all of the case study councils were substantively concerned with issues of
public safety—ranging from home invasions and car thefts, to homicide and gang

225
activity—the BHNC appeared to be the only council whose activities were negatively
affected by concerns over safety. Interview respondents in Boyle Heights speculated that
fear of retaliation inhibited stakeholders from coming forward to voice complaints about
issues in their neighborhood and that reluctance to become a target of public attention
impeded the council’s ability to attract office holders. All of the councils found a way to
utilize safety as grounds for public action. Both the Boyle Heights and the Park Mesa
Heights councils converted safety issues into an opportunity for co-production with local
police precincts. In East Hollywood, council leaders used a breach of public safety as
motivation to reach out to engage surrounding residents in the neighborhood council
process.
Residential Stability
Patterns of residential stability, which are influenced across Los Angeles by high
rates of mobility, also varied across the case study areas. Boyle Heights, where multi-
generational families were not uncommon, was the most stable of the communities,
followed by Park Mesa Heights, which had a significant population of seniors who had
lived in the community for some time. In both instances, residents’ history within the
community—as well as their projected future there—contributed to their commitment to
the area and appeared to fuel an appetite for community improvement. In Boyle Heights,
as in Park Mesa Heights, longtime residents were hopeful that the neighborhood council
could play a role in bringing needed amenities that would restore their community’s
commercial integrity, as well as facilitate community members’ everyday lives. Residents
in both communities also appeared to entertain visions of intergenerational renewal. For
example, part of the creative energy behind the development of a Boyle Heights arts

226
district derived from former residents who felt drawn back to Boyle Heights out of a
desire to make a contribution to the community (Lopez, 2010). In Park Mesa Heights,
such a vision was carried by a board member who repeatedly expressed the desire that the
community develop as a place in which young people would choose to stay and make
their own contribution to improving local life (respondent 22 in interview with the author,
March 28, 2009).
The outlier among the cases in terms of residential stability was, once again, East
Hollywood, where residential churning was pronounced. Lack of stability appeared to
affect the council most during the council formation period, when continual attrition
frustrated organizers’ attempts to work up a sufficiently critical mass of participants to
move the council toward certification. Subsequent to their certification, the council lost
several key members due to out-migration from the community but appeared able to fill
empty council and committee seats relatively quickly. However, lack of residential
stability and commitment to the area is likely to contribute to the council’s difficulty in
attracting a broader base of participation from community members.
Density of Acquaintance
Given the comparatively short tenure of residents in East Hollywood, that com-
munity also lagged the other two case study areas in terms of density of acquaintance.
Indeed, one of the peculiarities of the EHNC was that it managed to attract a full comple-
ment of generally committed board members in the absence of existing networks of
recruitment. By contrast, top leadership spots within the Park Mesa Heights area were
filled by a slate of candidates made up of stakeholders with a previous history of working
with one another in a civic context. Neighborhood council leaders were also able to

227
capitalize on the network formed among members of previous neighborhood council
boards, some of whom were recruited to fill positions on non-elected committee posi-
tions. Existing networks of relationships were also apparent in the BHNC board, which
included members with familial and pre-existing friendship ties.
Race and Class Dynamics
Although the council areas diverged in terms of the specifics of the race and class
dynamics at play within their respective communities, similarities emerged in the practi-
cal effects of these dynamics upon the community governance function. Divisions based
on race and class were most evident within the Park Mesa Heights community, where
immigration from Latin America is changing the community’s racial and ethnic profile.
Although the area is increasingly racially mixed—Latinos now make up one quarter of
the population—the council’s leadership was heavily dominated by African Americans.
Moreover, council leaders tended to be middle- or upper middle-class, in contrast to the
working class status of recent immigrants. Whether this gap in representation was rooted
in racial tensions, the difficulty of reaching out across cultural divides, or both, the evi-
dent lack of Latino participation in the council’s operations raised uncertainties about the
extent of the council’s legitimacy as a community representing organization and its
ability to advance the more ambitious aspects of its development agenda.
Race and, to a greater extent, class dynamics were also a subtext in the operation
of the EHNC. Although the council was celebrated within the neighborhood council
system for its inclusive spirit and notably racially and ethnically diverse board, board
members were largely educated and upwardly mobile professionals. The council did not
have participation from the large Spanish-speaking, immigrant population within the

228
community, again raising questions about the extent to which the council was perceived
as a legitimate representative of the community as a whole.
In Boyle Heights, which is largely homogeneous with regard to race and class,
nativity and cultural assimilation presented the greatest challenges to the council.
Tensions around divides between the cultural preferences and standards of public orderli-
ness of recent immigrants and those of established residents manifested in controversy
around substantive planning issues, raising questions about how space would be shared
within the community.
Distribution of Power and Resources
Although the scope of the study did not permit a thorough examination of the
dynamics of power within the three case study areas, the areas clearly shared similarities
in terms of active sources of power within the community during the period of study.
In each neighborhood council area, the City Council representative’s office was an
important source of information and resources for neighborhood governance, whether in
providing financial or in-kind resources to support local councils’ activities, backing
neighborhood councils’ positions on issues of community concern or alerting the council
to potential threats in their neighborhood. Council offices also acted as agents of change,
advancing planning, and programming agendas within their districts. However, in all of
the areas, large regional planning entities—specifically the MTA and the Community
Redevelopment Agency—were focal actors in promoting large-scale planned change.
While council members in these areas reported interactions with these agencies, they also
said that their councils had found it difficult to influence the agencies’ agendas. In Boyle
Heights, power and resources were also significantly concentrated within the nonprofit

229
sector, with which the neighborhood council maintained a highly porous relationship.
Nonprofit agencies supplied leadership within the council’s board, entered a partnership
with the council in leveraging resources for community programming, and allowed the
council to access to their memberships for the purposes of council outreach.
Density of Organizational Affiliation
A full understanding of the dynamics of organizational affiliation within the focal
communities was also beyond the scope of this inquiry. However, interviews revealed
that key actors within each of the neighborhood councils indeed maintained active ties to
other local organizations and frequently drew on these affiliations to support the activities
of the council. In Boyle Heights, council leaders were particularly active in using affilia-
tions with other organizations to maximize resources available for programmatic activi-
ties, and to promote information sharing. In Park Mesa Heights, leaders’ connections
with other local entities served as a guide for the council’s grant-making activities and as
a conduit for information sharing, particularly around issues of planning and develop-
ment. Given the lack of a developed local organizational infrastructure within East
Hollywood, council members on the whole maintained fewer ties to local organizations.
However, members’ affiliations with non-local affinity groups, such as the Los Angeles
cycling and arts communities, proved valuable as outlets for publicizing neighborhood
council activities and drawing participants to neighborhood council events.
Summary
The above discussion suggests no clear pattern of conditioning factors mediating
the practice of local governance across all three council areas. Of all of the dimensions,
the distribution of power and resources appeared to be the only factor along which the

230
three communities shared a similar experience. Although many similar dynamics existed
between Boyle Heights and Park Mesa Heights, particularly in terms of residential
stability and density of organizational affiliation, the areas diverged with regard to race
and class dynamics and political and civic culture, at least as they were expressed within
the context of neighborhood council activities. East Hollywood, which was both less
established as a coherent entity and more dynamic in terms of residential turnover than
the other two communities, was a consistent outlier among the three case areas. These
contrasts in background conditions suggest that the terms of the institutional reform that
created and implemented the system of which the councils are all a part may hold greater
power to explain similarities in the councils’ capacity for governance action.
Community-Based Capacity-Building Approaches
Chaskin’s community-based capacity building model presents development of
capacity for action within a community as a function of the interaction of indigenous
leadership and organizational assets with strategic interventions to strengthen those
assets. Within the Los Angeles neighborhood council reform, the creation of DONE
was intended to be the primary vehicle for development of local governance capacity.
Between the City Charter and neighborhood councils, multiple provisions establish a role
for DONE in assisting neighborhood councils with leadership training, organizational
development, and organizational collaboration. As outlined in Chapter 2, DONE has in
practice provided little in the way of these forms of support, due to both a philosophy of
nonintervention and a lack of resources. Nevertheless, community governance capacity
has developed throughout the system, albeit unevenly. This section explores the means
and mechanisms by which the neighborhood councils at the center of this study

231
strengthened leadership and organizational resources in the absence of concerted
inventions directed toward these purposes.
Leadership Development
In each of the cases considered here, neighborhood councils benefited from a
deep bench of talented leaders who collectively brought myriad skills, knowledge, and
resources into the service of their neighborhood council. Council leadership benefited
from board members’ professional experiences in a wide array of fields and from their
connections both within and without the community. Each council demonstrated particu-
lar strengths in different areas of leadership. In East Hollywood, board members’ fluency
in the procedural aspects of community governance was especially prominent, seemingly
reflecting skills learned in professional and other voluntary contexts. Board members
were also highly adept in the use of electronic forms of communication to promote their
council and stay in touch with one another. In Boyle Heights, members were able to call
on established ties to local resources across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors in
discharging their duties. In Park Mesa Heights, leaders were especially knowledgeable
about the processes of planning and community development.
Strong capacity in key positions within the board also contributed to councils’
success. Predictably, council presidents were particularly prominent within their councils,
both acting as meeting facilitators and establishing the scope of the council’s work. Less
immediately apparent was the importance of the role played by the council secretary—an
often unsung position within governance organizations. The centrality of this role was
particularly apparent in Boyle Heights and Park Mesa Heights, where respondents called
out the administrative skill and initiative displayed by their council secretaries as special

232
assets to the council. In both cases, the secretaries worked not only behind the scenes as
the council’s administrative liaison to the City, attending to the bureaucratic and pro-
cedural business of the council but on the front lines of the council’s activities within the
community. Claudette Thomas, the PMHCC’s Secretary, was one of the core trio of
leaders whose aggressive efforts to reach out to organizational entities within Park Mesa
Heights helped to put the PMHCC on the community’s organizational map. Margarita
Amador was instrumental in engaging her personal networks within the council area to
connect the council and other organizations with resources and served as a key inter-
mediary connecting individual stakeholders with public services. Interview respondents
also praised Thomas and Amador for establishing systems and procedures that facilitated
fellow board members’ work and kept the council on a smooth administrative track.
Two of the neighborhood councils—Boyle Heights and East Hollywood—
received modest levels of capacity building support from DONE in the form of
board retreats and technical assistance. However, apparently more helpful was skill- or
knowledge-building instruction gleaned from other sources. For example, leaders from
the EHNC participated in a seminar at UCLA designed to teach community members
how to involve themselves effectively in planning and development processes. The
PMHCC regularly sought speakers from the City and community-based agencies so they
could learn about resources available to the community. Leaders also participated in
seminars conducted by the City to learn the processes for installing street lamp banners
and trash receptacles and preparing the community for emergencies.
Much of the success enjoyed by neighborhood council leaders appeared to be a
function of personal attributes, among them energy, initiative, patience, civility,

233
resourcefulness, humor, and a genuine desire to help others. Far and away the most
important personal quality of leadership that emerged from the case studies was that of
leaders’ commitment, both to the community and to the faceted and demanding work
entailed by leadership in community representation and development. In my observation,
more than any other quality, commitment—in the form of leaders’ willingness to devote
substantial discretionary time to council activities, endure the frustrations and limitations
inherent to the bureaucratic processes that accompany neighborhood councils’ status as
governmental entities, and persist in pressing forward with a development agenda despite
limited institutional supports for the neighborhood council role—was the foundation of
neighborhood councils’ successful function.
In all three of the study cases, interview respondents identified board members’
commitment to the council and community as a primary asset. Often, commitment was
especially concentrated among a relatively small core of board members who drove the
council’s actions forward and saw projects through to their completion. In East Holly-
wood, commitment appeared to build in waves, beginning with the dedicated efforts of a
trio of organizers who painstakingly reached out to stakeholders over a period of years
simply to form and certify their council. These organizers then became elected members
of the EHNC’s board, arguably establishing standards and norms of commitment that
have been emulated by fellow board members. Commitment was especially evident
among core members of the Arts and Culture committee, who devoted plentiful time and
effort in organizing and producing ArtCycle and who persistently pursued projects that
used the arts as a means of bringing the council closer to stakeholders and uniting the
community around a common identity.

234
In Park Mesa Heights, a small core of leaders concentrated within the council’s
executive board brought the council to life from the deathbed of the decertification pro-
cess and quickly consolidated a place for the council as a player within the community’s
development. Treating council leadership as a full-time job, core leaders developed net-
works of interaction with other community-based organizations, engaged in partnerships
with City agencies in the production of services, and took steps toward realization of an
ambitious urban planning agenda. In Boyle Heights, core leadership was similarly
clustered within the council’s Executive Board, which spearheaded event planning,
worked across local networks to leverage the council’s development influence within the
community, represented the council at local events, and engaged city agencies in
partnerships to produce services.
The commitment that council leaders displayed across the case study examples
was all the more extraordinary, given that neighborhood council work is entirely unpaid.
Leaders took on the work of the neighborhood council despite adding labor to their lives,
exposing themselves to the inevitable conflict that accompanies the task of reconciling
the public interest, and, in the case of Boyle Heights, risking becoming a target of public
hostilities. One partial explanation for stakeholders’ continued commitment to this path
lies in what social movement scientists refer to as solidary incentives, which might more
commonly be understood as camaraderie. In all three of the case study areas, relations
among board members and, in some cases, close adherents of the council were character-
ized by conviviality and mutual respect. Moreover, in each case, councils’ inner circle of
highly committed stakeholders included members with marital or shared familial ties.
These patterns suggest that board members’ participation in the council offered not only

235
the personal satisfactions of exercising skills and capacities in the service of the com-
munity but also the social rewards of doing so in the company of people with whom they
enjoyed spending time. Solidary incentives also contribute to explaining the EHNC’s
youthful organizers’ success in attracting younger stakeholders during the council’s
formation period. However, why young council leaders at the core of both the East
Hollywood and Boyle Heights councils’ operations were initially attracted to community
governance work remains one of the puzzling aspects of the case studies, given that
participation in voluntary organizations is skewed toward older adults (Verba et al.,
1995).
Another possible explanation for council leaders’ commitment lies in the open-
ended design of the neighborhood council system itself. As described in Chapter 2, the
neighborhood council system made few formal demands on council officers, while at the
same time offering funding to operationalize a development agenda as they saw fit. This
framing, coupled with relatively low barriers to entry into the council as an elected board
member, may have held a particular appeal for entrepreneurially oriented stakeholders
who foresaw an opportunity to enact personal visions of community improvement.
Although the low level of funding available to councils was inadequate to finance
dramatic community change efforts, leaders in all of the case study councils used funds
as a way to build relationships within the community, which might over time provide the
infrastructure for broader community-based change efforts in concert with outside
agencies.
Although the three cases studied here present strong evidence to support the thesis
that indigenous leadership forms a strong foundational asset on which local governance

236
in poor communities can build, reliance on the spirit, will, and native skills of indigenous
leaders to make a difference in their community in the absence of stronger institutional
supports for leadership could forecast lack of stability in “empowered” councils over
time. Intra- and/or extra-board conflict has figured in the history of each of the case
examples, yet little support for conflict resolution was available to leaders. Rather, con-
flicts were escalated to the grievance or decertification processes—wrenching measures
that were hard on all involved—or simply allowed to stew. Board turnover, which occurs
every 2 years, may easily leave gaps in board capacity, particularly if key positions (in
my observation, those of President and Secretary)—are weak. Moreover, enthusiasm
for and commitment to voluntary work is easily sapped by conflict, lack of access to
resources, and the competing demands of everyday life. Ted Thomas, the retired
president of the PMHCC, seemed to express as much in voicing doubts that the level of
his council’s operations could be sustained in the absence of retirees without making
neighborhood council offices paid positions.
Organizational Development
From the perspective of Chaskin’s community capacity-building model, locally
based organizations are the workhorses through which local leaders enact community
development. The model assumes that organizational operations are subject to strategic
interventions that can improve the organization’s overall function. Organizational
capacity-building efforts may include such measures as assistance with strategic
planning, conflict resolution, or targeted training to bolster a weak organizational
function.

237
As noted above, all of the examples in this study demonstrated some level of
organizational dysfunction in the course of their history. Boyle Heights suffered from
intraboard conflict and hostilities between the board and stakeholders, as well as lack of
clarity concerning board members’ roles and responsibilities. Park Mesa Heights was at
one point so riven with conflict that the only reasonable intervention appeared to be
organizational dissolution. East Hollywood experienced a slow development process,
simmering tensions that hobbled their planning function, and calls from board members
for greater strategic focus.
Formal responsibility for organizational development within the neighborhood
councils system fell to DONE. Consistent with the Charter and Plan, DONE supported
neighborhood leaders in the organizational formation process and has subsequently
offered various types of voluntary training on a regional basis. Training tailored to the
specific needs of individual councils is offered only when scant resources are available,
and generally only upon council leaders’ request. For example, a DONE project
coordinator assigned to one of the case study councils observed in an interview that the
council could benefit from strategic planning training but had not offered the training
because the council had not asked.
As a result, the case study councils reported receiving intensive support in their
formation period—an EHNC member praised DONE Project Coordinator Christine
Jerian as a “key figure” in their organizing process; George Kelley, the PMHCC’s first
board president, had similar commendation for DONE Project Coordinator Donyale Hall.
However, there were reports of little organizational development support after the board
was seated beyond obligatory training in fiduciary responsibility and avoiding conflicts

238
of interest. East Hollywood participated in a board leadership retreat, but participants
expressed disappointment that the retreat was informationally focused on decoding
personality types rather than on skill building. Otherwise, interview respondents reported
having received support from DONE mostly in the form of technical assistance: instruc-
tion in putting together agendas, help with translations, and the like. The BYNC availed
itself of advice from the City Attorney’s office in handling grievances and disruptions
during meetings.
In some cases, council members took it upon themselves to redress organizational
deficits. For example, in East Hollywood, which seemed the most focused on organiza-
tional development of the three councils, an executive board member reported seeking
other members to engage them more fully in council activities. Another East Hollywood
board member reported the desire to facilitate an intervention to brook some of the
tension that had developed among board members.
However, the primary means by which the case study councils addressed
organizational deficits was the electoral process. This was most apparent in Boyle
Heights and Park Mesa Heights, where electoral turnover was instrumental in purging
boards of dysfunctional elements. In the Park Mesa Heights area, this process was
facilitated by activist stakeholders who petitioned the community to have specific board
members removed from office. The effectiveness of the electoral process as a mechanism
of organizational development in these cases is ironic, given that one of the sharpest
criticisms of the neighborhood council system has been the generally low level of
stakeholder turnout at elections.

239
In East Hollywood, electoral leadership change also played a part in organiza-
tional development, although in this case elections were internal to the board. The
council’s mid-term Executive Board election marked not only a difficult rite of passage
for a fledgling board whose members were suddenly pitted against one another for
executive offices, but also a turning point in leadership style and sensibility. In contrast to
Elson Trinidad’s intensely local moorings and folksy sensibilities, which had done so
much to lay the council’s foundation, the ascension to Council President by David Bell,
an attorney with a professional manner, seemed to signal the council’s intention to assert
itself as a player in local governance issues.
Two of the case study councils sought to create new organizations in order to
expand their community’s organizational capacity or leverage the capacity of the council.
PMHCC slowly pursued steps toward organizing local businesses under a business
improvement district and filed paperwork to create at 501(c)(3) organization that would
collaborate with the council on fundraising and economic development. The East Holly-
wood Arts and Culture Committee was considering establishing ArtCycle as a separate,
nonprofit entity that would focus on fundraising, arts programming, and open space
planning.
Organizing and Mobilization
Although the community capacity-building strategy of community organizing has
long been associated with mobilizing elements of a community for political advocacy,
Chaskin et al. (2001) defined organizing broadly as “the process of bringing people
together to solve collective problems and address collective goals” (p. 93). Within the
neighborhood council context, organizing and mobilization can be understood to refer

240
primarily to the critical but mundane tasks of recruiting leadership and mobilizing stake-
holder participation in council meetings and events. In rarer instances, the case study
councils used mobilization practices to apply political pressure to achieve a collective
end.
In interviews with council stakeholders, those who addressed the issue of stake-
holder participation and engagement in council activities almost uniformly expressed
disappointment and frustration over what they considered to be low levels of participa-
tion. Respondents often mentioned seeing the same faces at their council’s general meet-
ings and commented on the difficulty of engaging new members in the substantive work
of the council through committee participation. Leaders in Park Mesa Heights also
expressed frustration over the lack of stakeholder turnout at meetings with local agencies
in instances where a show of solidarity could influence decision making.
As noted in Chapter 2, responsibility for outreach fell directly to councils, who
received no substantive assistance for this function from DONE. Difficulty in attracting
participation appeared connected at least in part to boards’ diminishing enthusiasm for
outreach over time as the responsibilities of office holding overtook the amount of time
members were willing or able devote to council work. For example, the EHNC, which
initially made a name for itself based on stakeholders’ enduring commitment to outreach,
found it difficult to sustain energy for outreach after seating officers and commencing
with the substantive work of the council, despite instituting a policy that explicitly made
board members responsible for outreach to their constituency. Similarly, much of the
PMHCC’s outreach work was concentrated at the beginning of the board’s term, when
the council was trying to reestablish itself within the community after surviving the threat

241
of decertification. Of all the councils, Boyle Heights appeared most satisfied with its
outreach efforts, perhaps because the council limited the scope of its outreach function to
a plan that structured outreach around preplanned community events. However, even in
Boyle Heights, outreach did not necessarily translate into direct participation by stake-
holders in council activities.
Arguably, participation in councils lagged also because councils had little
accountability for performing outreach beyond the budget that board members had them-
selves set for this purpose, and accountability to stakeholders at large, assuming that
stakeholders were aware of the council’s existence. Indeed, the case study councils’
budgeted allocations for outreach varied considerably, from 43% in East Hollywood to
20% in Boyle Heights and Park Mesa Heights, suggesting the discretion that councils
held in choosing to perform this function.
Councils’ attempts to reach out to stakeholders for the purposes of engagement
can usefully be categorized along the dimensions of generalized or targeted outreach, and
direct (e.g., face-to-face) or indirect efforts. Across the councils studied here, the most
common approach to mobilizing participation was generalized outreach to individual
stakeholders conducted through indirect means. E-mail, favored by councils for its effici-
ency and low cost, was the most heavily used form of communication with stakeholders.
All of the case study councils maintained a listserv of stakeholders to whom they regu-
larly sent notices of meetings and events. All of the councils also relied on distribution of
either hard-copy mailings or indirect (i.e., third-party) fliers as a means of communicat-
ing meeting dates.

242
Councils also performed generalized outreach through direct means. This fre-
quently took the form of “tabling” at community events, which offered councils an
opportunity to gain exposure within the community and to connect directly with stake-
holders to collect contact information, answer questions, and offer information about
council activities. Tabling was often paired with giveaways of inexpensive publicity
items emblazoned with the council logo and contact information. Among the councils,
Boyle Heights was the most strategic in its use of giveaway items for outreach. The
council allocated 10% of its 2009-2010 budget for this purpose and identified eight large
community events at which giveaways would be conducted. The council also conditioned
giveaways on stakeholders’ provision of contact information, helping it to amass a sub-
stantial database of contacts numbering in the thousands. Outreach through tabling was
generally facilitated by councils’ contacts with event organizers (often nonprofit
organizations or city agencies) who invited or allowed the council to set up a table free of
charge.
On rarer occasions, councils targeted outreach to specific groups of stakeholders.
In some cases this took an indirect form, as in the case of the East Hollywood council,
which targeted outreach to Hispanic stakeholders by collaborating with local schools to
send home with students fliers written in Spanish. However, targeted outreach seemed
most effective when it was conducted face to face around an issue that appealed to com-
munity members’ immediate self-interest. Hence, for example, East Hollywood’s larger-
than-usual meeting turnout after members distributed fliers door to door in the neighbor-
hood surrounding the locale of a homicide, and its successful efforts to organize stake-
holders to participate in beautification projects in their immediate neighborhood.

243
Occasionally, councils mobilized action through appeals to organizations and
networks rather than individuals. Boyle Heights offered a clear example of this in its
mobilization against the Hollenbeck Police Station mural. To ensure strong turnout at
their Town Hall meeting, council leaders reached out broadly to their counterparts in
nonprofit and voluntary organizations across the community. Both Boyle Heights and
Park Mesa Heights reached out to media outlets outside the community to gain coverage
of their Town Hall gatherings. By contrast, East Hollywood mobilized participation in
their ArtCycle event by publicizing it through online affinity group networks organized
around cycling and the arts. ArtCycle organizers also publicized the event through direct
targeted means by distributing fliers to participants in an ArtWalk that took place in
nearby downtown Los Angeles shortly before the ArtCycle date.
Recruitment to positions of responsibility within the neighborhood council
appears to have taken place through both generalized outreach and highly personal
recruitment appeals. Networks of personal relationships appeared to be a mechanism of
recruitment in all of the case study councils. This dynamic was most explicit in Park
Mesa Heights, where Ted Thomas specifically recruited his wife and neighbor to run for
executive office as part of a slate of candidates; it was also evident in marital, familial
and pre-existing friendships in Boyle Heights and East Hollywood. Council leaders also
recruited participation through personal appeals to community-based acquaintances or
business associates. In both Park Mesa Heights and East Hollywood, for example,
council leaders reached out to contacts developed in the context of their leadership within
the neighborhood council to fill vacant board seats. Some board members also reported
cultivating leadership talent within the community to ensure successors to themselves on

244
the board. For example, Elson Trinidad, who decided not to run for re-election to the East
Hollywood board, mentored several aspiring board members through the election pro-
cess. However, in East Hollywood at least, generalized outreach also appeared to be an
effective way of recruiting stakeholder engagement in the council. Several interview
respondents in that council recalled that they had first become involved after receiving a
notice in the mail about neighborhood council elections.
Organizational Collaboration
Organizational collaboration, the final capacity-building strategy in Chaskin’s
framework and a primary tenet of the asset-based community development approach
(Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993), assumes that capacity is built when relationships exist
among organizational entities within a community that can foster partnerships and
collective planning. Organizational collaboration, in theory, helps a community to
become more than the sum of its parts by coordinating action across organizational
entities and leveraging its collective resources in the production of goods and services.
As inclusive representative bodies, neighborhood councils were effectively estab-
lished as “broker organizations” (Chaskin et al., 2001), with the potential to develop as an
intermediary for building relationships between community-based organizations. In prac-
tice, however, the ties between the neighborhood councils in this study and the organiza-
tions within their communities were relatively weak.
The majority of the focal councils’ collaborative interactions with other local
entities were confined to thin resource-based exchanges with nonprofit or government-
based organizations. Often, the neighborhood councils were benefactors in these relation-
ships. All of the councils maintained a budget for community improvement, from which

245
they allocated funds to supplicant organizations for various programmatic purposes.
Occasionally, the neighborhood councils were beneficiaries of resources, as when
organizations granted meeting space resources or outreach tabling privileges to councils
free of charge or at low cost. A few relationships with other organizations developed into
partnerships on specific projects or functions. East Hollywood appeared to be the most
successful of the three councils in this respect, collaborating with a local library, a city
museum, and—in one of the few exchanges involving a private entity—an art gallery on
arts-related programming. The BHNC was most active in brokering exchanges with
community-based organizations, both granting resources to supplicant organizations and
helping them to connect with additional resources within the community.
At the time this investigation, none of the councils had elevated their intracom-
munity relations to the level of planning or policy collaboratives, although EHNC
collaborated with other neighborhood councils to produce an event focused on regional
transportation planning. In the PMHCC, overlapping physical planning efforts initiated
independently by the nonprofit Hyde Park Organizational Partnership for Empowerment
(HOPE) and the PMHCC proved difficult to reconcile because of the council’s
impatience with the slow pace of the HOPE effort and, in one observer’s view, HOPE’s
lack of communication with the neighborhood council regarding its planning process
(observation by Ta-Lecia Arbor at a PMHCC general meeting, August 8, 2009).
The case study councils’ weak performance along the dimension of organizational
collaboration seemingly reflected both the difficulty of establishing effective organiza-
tional partnerships and board members’ lack of tenure within the council. To the extent
that substantive partnerships require a base of trust between collaborating entities, and

246
trust generally requires time to develop, it is not particularly surprising that the case study
councils had not established a meaningful level of trust. In all of the case study areas,
councils were either newly formed, as in the example of East Hollywood, or had boards
that had been significantly reconstituted in the wake of tumultuous or conflicted previous
leadership. As a result, council leaders were in the process of forging new relationships
between the council and organizational entities during the investigation period.
A salient question is whether the councils’ nascent exchanges and growing famili-
arity with area organizations can set the stage for more intensive interorganizational
engagement at a later date, and whether the councils will have sufficient continuity and
resources going forward to make viable collaborations beyond superficial exchanges.
Given that neighborhood council board terms are only 2 years and that councils are
almost entirely reliant on voluntary labor, councils may not prove attractive as partners to
nonprofit agencies that are accountable for community outcomes.
Summary
As the discussion above indicates, the elements of capacity that Chaskin and his
colleagues describe were shown to be means by which the case study neighborhood
councils’ capacity as governance organizations was developed. Councils were
empowered by rich veins of leadership talent and commitment from within the com-
munity, stabilized after periods of disruption and grew from experience, used organizing
and mobilization tactics as a means of calling attention to community issues and influenc-
ing decision making, and collaborated with other community-based organizations to
extend resources and produce events and programs. However, the extent to which these
capacities developed or failed to develop had little to do with conscious interventions to

247
build capacity, as previewed in the framework posited by Chaskin et al. (2001). Rather,
capacity was frequently engendered or inhibited by the structure and terms of the
neighborhood council reform itself.
As predicted in the Chaskin model, each of the case study communities was
endowed with a pool of native human capacity upon which local governance leadership
could be based. However, this leadership was both emergent, in keeping with the self-
organizing structure of the neighborhood council reform, and, to a lesser extent, culti-
vated through the efforts of existing leadership to fill vacant board seats or committees.
For the most part, leaders presented themselves for office through the electoral process,
and leaders’ capacity for the work of governance inhered in their existing talents,
qualities, and skills, as well as those learned in the process of leadership itself. Little
assistance for the development of leadership skills was provided from entities outside of
the council. The question is why community leaders chose to invest their capacities and
resources and the neighborhood council process rather than some other form of com-
munity service. I argue that leaders were attracted to the neighborhood council system
precisely because of system’s open-ended, self-determined institutional design. If the
neighborhood council offered few supports for community leadership and little formal
power, it also made few demands while offering at least nominal funding to back the
council’s basic operations, support community building activities, and enable leaders to
initiate a development agenda. For community governance entrepreneurs who could
envision leveraging the council’s status as a governmental entity to gain support for a
community-based agenda and attract funding to enact it, the self-determined nature of

248
neighborhood councils may well have appeared to be an inviting opportunity for
community service.
In a similar fashion, councils developed as organizational entities in both an
organic fashion, as a product of on-the-job learning and emerging circumstances, and
through the electoral processes to which neighborhood councils are subject. Councils
strengthened core competencies largely through experimentation and refining existing
practices, and they matched organizational competencies to community needs to expand
into new roles and functions. They also sought to create new organizations where limits
on the neighborhood council’s function prevented desired action. However, the focal
neighborhood councils proved less adept at handling internal conflict. In cases where
such conflict proved debilitating, neighborhood councils were stabilized and renewed
through the routine processes of board elections.
The processes of organizing and organizational collaboration were also evident
among the councils’ activities but tended to be employed more as tactical strategies to
address immediate needs than as stable elements of governance capacity. While each
neighborhood council used organizing strategies effectively, organizing activity was
confined mostly to one-time mobilizations of stakeholders around a particular issue.
Neighborhood councils’ coproductive arrangements with government agencies aside,
organizational collaborations consisted mostly in thin resource-based exchanges, as
opposed to partnership in the production of goods and services.
With these emergent elements of capacity in place, the question is whether gains
in capacity can be sustained. Will leaders continue to show enthusiasm and commitment
for governance despite the challenges of engaging participation in council activities and

249
the lack of resources and power to advance a development agenda? Will there be suffici-
ent continuity of leadership so that successful practices become institutionalized? Will
funding continue at a level that makes it worthwhile for community leaders to continue
their work for the council? Will gains in capacity be vulnerable to organizational conflict
in the absence of strong capacity for managing and resolving conflict?
The continuity of leadership in the councils in the recent round of elections
suggests that, at least in the short term, leaders derive sufficient satisfaction from their
work on behalf of the council to continue to function as officers. Councils have retained
from one to two thirds of their board memberships, which suggests that capacity gains
over the past 2 years can continue. However, more in question is the City’s ability and
political will to continue to fund neighborhood councils at a level that attracts leadership
and facilitates action. It is questionable whether the neighborhood council system would
continue to operate without such funding. John Dean, the PMHCC Treasurer, framed this
perfectly at a general meeting in which the council’s budget was discussed: “We will
keep our doors open as long as the city continues to fund us.”
Capacity Building and Accountable Autonomy
In contrast to the asset-based capacity building framework presented by Chaskin
et al. (2001), Fung (2004) presented the creation of local governance capacity as a pro-
duct of state-centered participatory governance programs that join local units of munici-
pal agencies in partnerships with local stakeholders to solve community problems. Fung’s
model is organized around the principles of local decision-making autonomy—which
builds citizens’ commitment to the process and promotes their ownership of results and
outcomes—and accountability for action on the part of both citizens and the city. These

250
arrangements are strengthened by limiting both the substantive and functional scope of
the governance programs, tying decision making to carefully structured deliberative
processes, and making institutional supports available to operationalize local action.
From an institutional standpoint, the Los Angeles neighborhood council reform is
clearly different in structure and intent from the governance arrangements proposed by
Fung, particularly along the dimensions of authority and accountability. As opposed to
delegated authority over a particular functional area of governance, neighborhood
councils hold no formal powers of decision making under the Charter, yet hold broad
discretion over the scope of their community development activities. Although neighbor-
hood councils are procedurally accountable to the City for a variety of administrative
functions, and the Charter established broad directives making City agencies accountable
to councils for service delivery, councils are not substantively accountable to the City for
either specific actions or outcomes, nor have measures holding City agencies accountable
to councils been implemented in practice.
Nevertheless, Fung’s framework offers a useful point of departure for coming to
terms with the role that the institutional design of the neighborhood council system
played in engendering capacity among the case study councils. This section considers the
relevance of each of the elements of Fung’s model—autonomy, accountability, scope,
deliberation, institutional supports, networking across the city, and redistribution of
resources—in constituting governance capacity in the neighborhood council context, with
particular attention to the ways in which these elements are specified by Fung. It is con-
cluded that, while these design characteristics have an evident impact on capacity, the
mechanisms by which effects are expressed differ from those described by Fung.

251
Autonomy
In Fung’s model of empowered citizen participation, governance capacity is
forged at the interstices of tensions between freedoms and limitations. One such tension
is that between citizens’ autonomy to act and the context of their authority. In Fung’s
formulation, citizens are empowered by delegated authority over decision making for
public action, but this authority is limited to the specific functional domain of the govern-
ment institution that “hosts” citizen participation (in Fung’s examples, the Chicago police
department and school district). Moreover, authority is confined to direct problem solving
in conjunction with administrative officials rather than broad administrative oversight.
Hence, decision-making autonomy within the parameters of such programs takes place
within circumscribed terms defined by the institutional hosts.
By contrast, the provisions of the Los Angeles neighborhood council reform
reverse citizens’ relationship to autonomy and authority. The reform grants neighbor-
hoods only advisory power over public affairs, with no formal authority over decision
making. However, local citizens are functionally autonomous in the sense that they are
free to determine their council’s priorities and agenda, and they operate without inter-
ference from the City in the day-to-day workings of their council. In theory and practice,
neighborhood councils are empowered to address any issue they see fit to address, using
any means at their disposal. In addition, councils are entrusted with public funds and
given broad latitude over expenditure of those funds.
Indeed, the provision of public funding was arguably the central factor in animat-
ing autonomy among the case study councils. Although funding for neighborhood
councils has been tokenistic, access to funds combined with discretion over action

252
enabled neighborhood council leaders to forge roles as agents of change within their
community.
As opposed to receiving authority that was delegated to them, leaders appropri-
ated power by leveraging funding provided by the City to enact a development agenda
pertinent to their community’s needs. For the most part, this meant building a foundation
of relationships with government agencies and other organizational entities within the
community and establishing a sense of community identity that would serve the purposes
of community development. All three councils instituted a grant program through which
they distributed funding to support a wide variety of organizational programming within
the community and collaborated with other community-based entities on basic projects,
such as community clean-ups and beautification. East Hollywood took further steps
toward establishing ongoing relationships with local organizations in the co-production of
community events. Park Mesa Heights and Boyle Heights forged co-productive relation-
ships with local government agencies.
All three councils leveraged city funding to build a sense of community identity
that would reinforce their development efforts. Park Mesa Heights and Boyle Heights
concentrated on efforts that built community pride and interest, such as the PMHCC
banner program and Boyle Heights’ multicultural parade. In East Hollywood, where
community identity had to be built from scratch, the EHNC’s Arts and Culture committee
sought to anchor identity around cultural inclusion and generative creativity with the
conception and production of ArtCycle.
Although all of these efforts are still unfolding, councils’ fledgling relationship
networks and identity campaigns can potentially strengthen leadership for more

253
ambitious development efforts, for example around community planning (already
underway in Park Mesa Heights and, to a lesser extent, in East Hollywood) and policy
advocacy. However, building on existing agendas will rely on councils’ ability to institu-
tionalize and extend the lessons of autonomy to successive leadership teams. Immediate
prospects for this look hopeful in Park Mesa Heights and East Hollywood, where many
existing board members were either re-elected to their positions or are running unopposed
in upcoming elections. In East Hollywood, where 7 of 17 EHNC board members were re-
elected, including President David Bell and Jennifer Moran, the highly active chair of the
council’s arts and culture committee, which suggests a strong base of continuity as the
council matures over the next 2 years. Bell expressed optimism that new board members,
whom he described as similar to old board members in terms of youth and enthusiasm,
would bring needed fresh energy to the council. In order to smooth the transition between
boards and keep outgoing board members and committee members engaged in council
work, the previous board allocated funds to hold a council retreat facilitated by Stephen
Box, an East Hollywood stakeholder and political activist who previously worked with
DONE as an elections mediator.
Leadership continuity is similarly assured in Park Mesa Heights, where 8 of 13
board members, including council president Ted Thomas, will return to office in an
election in which none of the council seats is opposed. Among the remaining 5 open
seats, Kahllid Al-Alim, the chair of the council’s Stakeholder Action Committee and a
previous PMHCC board member, will return to office as resident representative from
Hyde Park. All of the candidates are running as a slate, suggesting a unity of purpose that
was articulated by candidates during their election statements at a recent general council

254
meeting. Many of the candidates expressed satisfaction with the council’s direction and a
desire to contribute to the council’s continued success and development.
Accountability
The primary creative tension in the community capacity-building model described
by Fung is that between autonomy and accountability. Whereas autonomy provides an
incentive for citizen participation in local governance, accountability provides a check on
citizen’s commitment to the process and the effectiveness of citizen-directed action. In
Fung’s framework, accountability between citizen actors and those within the host insti-
tution is mutual. Citizens make decisions that commit institutional actors to particular
courses of action, but they must also take responsibility for follow-up actions that will
assist city-based actors to complete their duties. As a decision-and-action unit, citizens
and institutional actors are also accountable to higher levels of institutional management
for results, which are monitored within the host institution.
Institutional accountability of this nature plays little part in the neighborhood
council system, which emphasizes procedural and fiduciary—but not substantive—
accountability of councils to the City, and, in the worst case, wields decertification as a
tool against councils that fail to comply with regulatory guidelines. However, as noted
above, representative accountability to stakeholders proved to be an important compon-
ent in building organizational capacity within the case study neighborhood councils. This
was especially true in Park Mesa Heights, where stakeholder demands for voice, trans-
parency, procedural compliance with the Brown Act, and responsiveness from the
council led to stakeholder action to remove ineffective board members. In all of the
councils, democratic accountability to stakeholders or fellow board members through

255
electoral processes played a role in renewing leadership and restoring operational
functionality to the council.
Of course, the strength of this form of accountability rests on informed, bottom-up
stakeholder engagement in the electoral process—a consistent point of weakness across
the neighborhood council system, where average turnout ranged from 325 to 407 votes
cast in the five election cycles between 2002 and 2006 (Neighborhood Council Review
Commission, 2007). The difficulty in achieving robust electoral participation was illus-
trated by EHNC, who set an ambitious goal of attracting 2,000 stakeholders to the polls
in 2010 but succeeding in drawing only 390 voters, despite extensive outreach efforts and
day-of-election attractions such as an ice cream truck that distributed free treats and
costumed performers who distributed fliers.
As a mechanism for building capacity, electoral accountability also requires that
voters be sufficiently aware of their councils’ operation to make informed choices about
leadership. This points again to the importance of participatory engagement of stake-
holders in the everyday working of their council, a stubbornly challenging issue for
neighborhood councils system wide. In the absence of strong electoral and participatory
mechanisms and institutional supports for organizational capacity building, organiza-
tional capacity would appear to be vulnerable to cycles of effective and ineffective
leadership, as the histories of Park Mesa Heights and Boyle Heights suggest.
Scope
Fung’s formula for empowering local governance in poor communities relies not
only on limiting the functional domain of citizen participation but also on reducing the
scope of citizen action to the process of solving tangible problems rather than addressing

256
the root causes of problems. Fung argued that curtailing the scope of citizen decision
making to practical action within the purview of host institutions builds citizen interest in
and commitment to the governance process that otherwise might be squandered on
discussion of broader problems that cannot readily be resolved by citizens with the
resources available to them.
Neighborhood councils were procedurally distinct from Fung’s deliberative
groups; nevertheless, they bore similarities in terms of playing a problem-solving
function. As in Fung’s groups, the neighborhood councils in the study served as a place
where community problems could surface from the grass roots and find support and
resolution. This was most vividly illustrated in the example of Park Mesa Heights, where
an individual stakeholder promulgated the issue of the FEMA flood plain maps to the
PMHCC board, which prioritized and publicized the issue and garnered political support
to arrive at a resolution. Park Mesa Heights also conducted informal problem solving
with the police.
However, as argued earlier in this paper, one of the primary attractions of the
form of citizen governance offered by the neighborhood council system would appear to
be the permissive nature of the system’s design with regard to the functional and
substantive scope of councils’ activities. To the extent that leaders within the case study
areas were motivated to serve on the council out of a sense of connection to their
community as a whole, neighborhood councils offered a singular platform for average
citizens to pursue a broad range of community improvement actions, according to their
interests, abilities, and perceptions of the community’s needs. Hence, while council work
demands time and skill on the part of participants while offering very little support, it also

257
offers a blank tableau for creative expression of those skills, which, in the best case,
attracts qualified and motivated leaders.
In practice, the councils that formed the focus of this study adopted agendas that
called for multiple forms of action, including community building, planning, mobilization
(as described above), and production. The primary action focus across all of the case
study areas was community building, to which councils devoted significant funds through
their neighborhood grant programs and time and resources for identity-building events
and programs. Park Mesa Heights and East Hollywood also took an activist role in
advancing multidimensional planning agendas that variously involved economic and jobs
development, transportation, and park development. In the case of Park Mesa Heights,
planning has proceeded through routine channels of engagement with city officials
initiated by the council. In East Hollywood, planning has taken a more entrepreneurial
cast, with the joint production with other neighborhood councils of Town Hall meetings
that highlighted community based planning visions and street actions to raise awareness
about the community’s need for open space.
Boyle Heights and Park Mesa Heights chose to engage in co-productive relation-
ships with city agencies, both as constituent service providers and in developing working
relationships with the police. The councils’ production function resembled the participa-
tory arrangements described by Fung in that it involved citizens and public officials in
joint problem solving. Between these councils, Park Mesa Heights’ interaction with their
local police division at general meetings, in which citizens and police officers traded
information and triangulated actions to resolve specific problems brought forth by
citizens, most closely approximated Fung’s ideal of empowered participatory

258
governance. However, councils members’ demands for public safety services were
neither strategic in the vein of the prioritized action initiated by Fung’s groups nor
binding on officers to fulfill.
Deliberation
In Fung’s model, empowered local decision making relies on what Fung referred
to as “pragmatic deliberation,” a consensus-based process in which citizens collectively
identify and prioritize problems and debate and choose solutions. Citizens receive train-
ing in methods of problem analysis and the boundaries around the types of problems that
are eligible for consideration, both of which are worked out in advance between the
institutional hosts and community stakeholders but are left to self-regulate around
deliberative norms of reasonableness, attentive listening, and openness to alternatives.
As discussed above, the institutional framework of decision making within the
neighborhood council system is much broader than the arrangements that Fung described.
Neighborhood councils have discretion to choose their deliberative method and are free
to address a wide range of problems through whatever means they see fit to use. In each
of the cases studied here, deliberative decision making was structured conventionally
around the rules of parliamentary procedure—specifically, Robert’s Rules of Order—and
culminated in board member-only voting. In some instances, the formality associated
with this style of governance proved cumbersome or problematic. Even in East Holly-
wood, where a number of board members were well versed in Robert’s Rules, meetings
occasionally stalled as members conferred over minor procedural issues. Ironically, in
Boyle Heights, parliamentary procedure morphed into a deliberative pathology as

259
stakeholders well versed in use of Roberts’ Rules held the board accountable to the
procedure’s exacting requirements.
A more critical distinction between interaction in the neighborhood council
setting and that in the groups described by Fung lay in the purposes of speech within the
interactive forum and the assumptions about what constitutes citizen empowerment.
Within the model of accountable autonomy, empowerment inheres in citizens’ ability to
direct public action on the basis of collectively made decisions about specific problems.
To this end, care is taken to bound interaction so that speech remains focused on prob-
lems that are within the host institution’s power to address, and to discourage political
“venting” (Fung, 2004, p. 77), which is viewed as disempowering in so far as it may
distract attention from problem solving and turn some participants away. By contrast,
within the structure of the neighborhood council reform, empowerment is premised on
citizens’ right to speak and be heard by their stakeholder peers. Among the examples
explored in this study, speech was used not only to surface and solve problems but also to
voice hopes, issue warnings, express political outrage, and build solidarity. Within
acceptable limits, expressions of anger, frustration, distrust, and other misgivings were
part and parcel of the empowerment process. Moreover, within these same communica-
tive channels, stakeholders also made expressions of gratitude, satisfaction, and approval
for positive developments in the community.
Among the cases examples, two factors in particular facilitated empowerment
through political voice and expression: councils’ separation of discursive interaction
among board members and stakeholders from the deliberative decision making by the
board on agendized business, and flexibility in the application of Robert’s Rules of Order

260
in the facilitation of group interaction. In Park Mesa Heights, empowered discursive
communication was promoted through the council’s practice of holding monthly meet-
ings of its general stakeholdership on the Saturday morning before the Tuesday evening
meeting of its board. The Saturday gatherings facilitated stakeholder participation in
council activities and provided a privileged space in which community members could
focus on information sharing, problem identification, and expressions of appreciation, as
well as grievances. Similarly, East Hollywood prefaced its board meetings with a
“community voices” segment that engaged nonelected stakeholders, board members,
representatives from local institutions, and invited guests in broad-ranging conversations
about issues of local import or interest. Boyle Heights did not formally distinguish
between discursive and deliberative forums, but organized business so that items requir-
ing board decision were grouped toward the end of the agenda.
Another important factor in empowering voice was the extent to which groups
were able to use Robert’s Rules of Order in a flexible manner to synchronize the group’s
interactive style with the political speech norms in their particular area. In Park Mesa
Heights where institutional distrust ran deep, PMHCC president Ted Thomas was
explicitly attentive to allowing time for individual stakeholders to hold the floor and
accommodating highly charged speech without interruption. This style was facilitated by
what might be described as collective religious norms of civility, in which stakeholders
also bore witness to anger and hostility without attempts at intervention. In Boyle
Heights, where institutional trust also runs high but norms of civility are lower, Juan
Romero adhered closely to Robert’s Rules during meetings but was lenient in enforcing

261
time limits on public speakers. In East Hollywood, communal norms of civility facilitated
speech that was unobtrusively structured around procedural rules.
Institutional Supports
In the model of accountable autonomy, the term institutional supports refers
primarily to resources that are supplied under the auspices of government but are not a
formal part of the institutional design of the citizen governance program. In Fung’s
examples, institutional supports extended to institutional hosts’ financial support of
citizen governance reforms, improved interagency communication, and changes in the
legislative and regulatory background of institutional operations that facilitated the
conditions of accountable autonomy.
As the operational history of the neighborhood council system as a whole
suggests, one of the remarkable aspects of the Los Angeles neighborhood governance
reform is the extent to which neighborhood councils have functioned in the absence of
strong centralized supports for their operation. As described in Chapter 2, the City’s
meager financial support for DONE has been meager, particularly by the standards of the
City’s of Portland’s well-regarded neighborhood governance system after which the Los
Angeles system was in part modeled, which has seriously undermined DONE’s ability to
provide the operational supports to neighborhood councils outlined in the City Charter
provision and Neighborhood Council Plan. Nor have City administrative agencies, which
are famously “siloed” both functionally and operationally, coordinated their efforts to be
more responsive to neighborhood councils’ service demands.
In the case study examples, deriving support from institutional resources was a
function of judicious use of direct discretionary funding provided by the City, combined

262
with proactive engagement of local government institutions. As suggested above, direct
access to discretionary funds, while tokenistic at best, was a crucial factor in empowering
neighborhood council action. In each case, councils leveraged available funds to cover
not only basic operating expenses but the fundaments of a community development
agenda, including, in the case of Park Mesa Heights, expenses associated with establish-
ing a 501(c)(3) organization through which to raise additional funds.
In all three cases, the councils also received support for community development
activities from the office of their City Council representative that have historically played
the role of service integration and constituent assistance. Support from City Council
district offices ranged from symbolic gestures to include neighborhood councils as
partners in Councilmember-sponsored events, cash donations and logistical assistance
with neighborhood council-sponsored events, and substantive help with service delivery,
planning, and policy issues. The extent of City Council office involvement in neighbor-
hood council affairs varied from council to council and had to be forged independently at
neighborhood councils’ initiative. This was in part due to concern within district offices
to infringe on the neighborhood council’s independent standing and the absence of
acceptable norms of working relationships between neighborhood council and City
Council offices, which are still evolving.
Neighborhood councils were supported in their activities through informal work-
ing relationships with city agencies, particularly local police precincts. As with City
Council district offices, these arrangements were forged independently and differed by
council. In Park Mesa Heights and to some extent in East Hollywood, council members
and police officers engaged in informal community policing around face-to-face

263
information sharing and problem identification. In Boyle Heights, community policing
arrangements were informal but revolved more around the open lines of communication
regarding management of the neighborhood council’s safe passage program. No attempt
to standardize such relationships appears to be under consideration.
Networking Across Neighborhoods
Another component of capacity building in the accountable autonomy framework
is the presence of centralized mechanisms for identifying and disseminating successful
community intervention strategies across neighborhood governance units. In the Los
Angeles context, this role is assigned in the Neighborhood Council Plan to DONE, which
maintains video clips and written information about neighborhood council “best prac-
tices” on its website and helps to coordinate information-sharing seminars at the annual
Congress of Neighborhoods. DONE will also help individual neighborhood councils that
are seeking ideas or information in a specific area to connect with other councils with
experience in that area.
Among the case study neighborhood councils, only East Hollywood reported
benefitting from formal resources of this nature, including information gained from
attendance at Congress Meetings and referrals from DONE to neighborhood councils
with innovative and/or successful outreach practices. Indeed, the councils in the study
were more often the providers of information to others, sometimes to their detriment.
Members from EHNC, for example, regularly participated in the Congress as presenters
on the use of electronic media for outreach. Park Mesa Heights provided information on
the process for installing street banners and responded to requests for information about

264
FEMA flood plain maps, to the point where the FEMA issue has become a distraction
from the other business of the council.
Redistribution of Resources
Fung suggested that, for the arrangements of accountable autonomy to be truly
empowering of poor communities, mechanisms must be present that redistribute
resources to the neediest neighborhoods, as defined by performance measures or some
other metric or formula. In the case of the neighborhood council reform, a redistribution
policy was codified within the Neighborhood Council Plan, which directed DONE to
prioritize assistance with education, outreach, and training among areas that have tradi-
tionally low rates of participation in government. By this standard, all three of the neigh-
borhood councils in this study would arguably qualify for prioritized assistance, although
it is not clear whether the councils had actually been prioritized for the minimal support
that they received: a board retreat in the case of East Hollywood, technical assistance
with procedural issues in Boyle Heights, nothing in the case of Park Mesa Heights.
In any event, none of the council members who were interviewed for the study
appeared to expect or even desire additional support from DONE. However, this may
have reflected a general sense of the limitations of DONE’s ability to offer support and
the councils’ generally dim view of the relevance of training and other support provided
by DONE based on their experience, rather than lack of recognition of a need of support-
ive services. East Hollywood was the most proactive among the case study councils in
accessing supportive resources, for example by seeking training in physical planning
processes and organizing a retreat to ensure a smooth transition between elected boards.
In both cases, the council allocated resources from its own funding stream to pay for

265
these resources. Interview respondents in Park Mesa Heights, which received the fewest
resources from DONE and suffered under DONE’s poor management of the neighbor-
hood council funding program, expressed the view that DONE contributed to the short-
age of resources available to councils, advocating that the department be dismantled and
its funding be reallocated directly to neighborhood councils.
Summary
As a governance capacity-building model, little about the dimensions of account-
able autonomy as specified by Fung was relevant to the way in which governance
capacity was built among the neighborhood councils in this study. The neighborhoods
councils’ ability to make meaningful improvements in their communities while anchored
in a general institutional framework and making use of deliberative and, in some cases,
problem-solving processes, did not depend on narrowness of endeavor, intensive
government monitoring, or a rich structure of supports. In this respect, the case study
examples taken together seem to stand as a refutation of Fung’s model, not in its details
but in its conception of local empowerment. However, the accountable autonomy frame-
work usefully draws attention to the relationships among the elements of autonomy,
accountability, scope, and institutional supports in designing a broader model of local
governance in which empowerment is understood as the result of interaction between
community-based resources and supportive institutional framing. This discussion is
presented below.
Implications for Theory: Joining Community
Assets and Institutional Design
This study has sought to illuminate the factors that empower quasi-institutional,
“hybrid” community governance arrangements in which an institutional structure and

266
local assets combine to produce capacity for local governance. The study explored an
empirical example of a hybrid arrangement—neighborhood councils in the City of Los
Angeles—in light of two existing capacity-building frameworks: one that emphasizes the
importance of the institutional environment, and the other that emphasizes the assets
inherent to the local place. Yet to the extent that the integrity of these models was predi-
cated on conditions that differed from those of the neighborhood council reform, they
meshed uneasily with the particular patterns of governance capacity exhibited by the
neighborhood councils examined in this study. In Chaskin’s model, which is not specific-
ally geared to the development of organizational capacity, as in the case of the neighbor-
hood council reform, but rather to development of capacity across the community as a
whole, development occurs in an extra-institutional fashion through interventions backed
by outside actors (e.g., charitable foundations) that seek to engage and potentiate latent
community assets. In the case of Fung’s model, capacity is inseparable from the institu-
tional environment that hosts community governance and sets the parameters that bind
citizens and their institutional hosts in defined relationships of power, authority, and
accountability. Indeed, even the capacity-building framework implicit in the design and
implementation of the neighborhood council reform, which combined weak institutional
controls with strong indigenous leadership at the grassroots, was not sufficient to explain
the actual manifestation of capacity within the neighborhood council system at the micro
level.
Nevertheless, the application of these models to an analysis of the case examples
from the neighborhood council reform usefully highlighted individual factors relevant to
capacity building in a hybrid context. Moving from analysis to synthesis, this section

267
draws on the findings reported above to consider how the three capacity-building
frameworks delineated in the study can be reconciled and adapted to create an alternate
model of capacity building that comports with hybrid governance arrangements.
Specifically, I advance a model of supported self-determination, which conceives of
capacity as a product of the interaction among a minimal framework of institutional
parameters, broadly autonomous citizen action, and strong institutional supports for key
governance functions. In addition to its deliberate framing around hybrid governance
contexts, supported self-determination differs from Fung’s accountable autonomy
framework and Chaskin’s community capacity building model in its view of community
agency. While both Chaskin’s and Fung’s models portray communities as functionally
deficient in the absence of a capacity-building partner, the supported self-determination
approach suggests that communities require only the proper incentives to actualize
latent leadership, which is largely sufficient to the successful conduct of community
governance.
The following discussion first identifies those elements of the capacity-building
models that did not appear to be relevant to building capacity in the context of the
neighborhood council cases and that are not included as dimensions of supported self-
determination. It then identifies elements that can be reframed to better suit a hybrid
governance structure. Finally, it draws on the experiences of the three case study councils
to derive the four principles of supported self-determination—empowered leadership,
broadly autonomous governance units, representative accountability, and enhancing the
communicative sphere—and suggests the means and mechanisms by which the principles
may be operationalized.

268
Theory Building: Eliminations and Adaptations
Although many of the elements of Chaskin’s and Fung’s models of capacity
building spoke broadly to the nature of governance capacity among the case study
examples and are adapted and incorporated into the model of supported self-determina-
tion discussed below, a number of elements have been omitted from the model, not
because they are in themselves undesirable but because they held little or questionable
relevance to capacity in the case study councils. These included the strategies of
organizational development and collaboration as conceived in Chaskin’s model and, from
Fung’s model, the capacity-building elements of networking across neighborhood entities
and redistribution of resources.
The types of organizational development interventions previewed by Chaskin—
for example, assistance with strategic planning—were notably absent from neighborhood
council operations, a casualty of DONE’s curtailed training function. Rather, organiza-
tional development among the case study councils was largely a function of electoral
accountability, which is discussed in the model of supported self-determination as an
element of representative accountability. Dynamics of organizational collaboration—
including collaborations across neighborhood councils in the vein of Fung’s description
of networked inquiry—although present, were also an anemic aspect of councils’
function, whether due to the difficulty of establishing meaningful interorganizational
partnerships, councils’ lack of the trust-based relationships necessary to such partner-
ships, or both. However, councils’ own creation of partner organizations to assist with
fund raising and other strategic roles may prove central to council operations as these
organizations take root and mature, requiring revisions to the specification of supported
self-determination at some later date.

269
Despite its inherent value as a mechanism of fairness and equity, a final element
from the accountable autonomy model—redistribution of support and resources to the
neediest areas—is also omitted from the supported self-determination framework given
lack of clarity, based on the available evidence from the case study findings, as to how
need would be determined. To the extent that all of the councils examined for this study
might be deemed “needy” on the basis of their socioeconomic profile yet operate as
solidly functional organizations, precisely what constitutes need in the neighborhood
council context requires further investigation.
A larger group of elements from the capacity-building models bear a relationship
to the dynamics of capacity exhibited in the neighborhood council case studies but are
broadened or otherwise reframed within the supported self-determination model. These
include the notion of leadership development described by Chaskin and the concepts of
autonomy, scope, accountability, and deliberation put forward by Fung.
In both Chaskin’s model and the model of capacity building embedded within the
design of the neighborhood council reform, leadership is considered to consist primarily
in a set of skills or knowledge that can be engendered or improved through training.
However, the experiences of the case study councils suggested that leadership skills were
less important than leadership qualities in promoting the councils’ endeavors. Hence, for
the purposes of specifying the mechanisms of empowered leadership in hybrid govern-
ance contexts, leadership development is reframed as an exercise in inspiring and culti-
vating central qualities of leadership through the institutional design of the governance
arrangements and reliance on related supports within the institutional environment.

270
The supported self-determination framework also draws on the features of auto-
nomy and scope, accountability, and deliberation—core elements of Fung’s model of
accountable autonomy—but reformulates them to reflect the conditions of the hybrid
governance environment. Autonomy, in particular, is significantly reconceptualized in the
new model in light of the case study councils’ demonstrated ability to pursue a broad
array of community improvement activities with little oversight or support from central
authorities. In contrast to Fung’s framing of autonomy as delegated authority within the
narrow strictures of a particular institutional setting, autonomy is recast in supported self-
determination as citizens’ autonomy in determining their scope of action. As in the neigh-
borhood council cases, governance action within a broad conception of autonomy might
reflect the political, production, and development functions modeled in, although not
empowered by, the design and implementation of the neighborhood council reform, as
well as the organizing and mobilization strategy identified in Chaskin’s community
capacity building model. The supported self-determination framework also reinterprets
the capacity-building mechanism of accountability based on the case study examples.
Whereas in Fung’s model accountability refers to a monitoring function performed by a
central authority, the case studies highlighted the importance of electoral accountability
to stakeholders, which is treated in the new model under the broader principle of repre-
sentative accountability.
The feature of deliberation, which is presented in Fung’s model as a procedural
method for arriving at decision making consensus, is reconceptualized in the model of
supported self-determination as an element of the communicative sphere that serves to
build community and support the integrative function of citizen participation described in

271
Chapter 2. Understood as a process-driven act of public togetherness rather than as a
means to an end, deliberative exchange plays a vital role in constituting community
capacity for governance action and, as argued below, should be enhanced through
centrally provided supports.
The Principles of Supported Self-Determination
This section presents a consideration of the four principles of supported self-
determination, each of which is elaborated. These principles are presented as a pre-
liminary set of necessary and sufficient conditions for community empowerment, subject
to reconsideration on the basis of further research and testing.
Empowered Leadership
Among the many indigenous resources that animated governance within the three
case study communities—leadership skills and qualities, social networks and capital,
organizational assets, and cognitive resources of community members—none was more
important than the individuals who stepped forward to serve their communities on a
voluntary basis. Whether in the form of the elected president who set the direction for the
council’s work or the lay stakeholder who took charge of a small working group, engaged
individual leadership in all its manifestations was the driving force behind the accom-
plishments of all of the neighborhood councils in the study. While the leaders in the case
study councils collectively possessed an impressive array of leadership skills that they
employed in their capacity as neighborhood representatives, the cases suggested that
leadership qualities were more important than skills in promoting the councils’ success.
Foremost among these was the quality of commitment, one of the baseline characteristics
of community capacity identified by Chaskin.

272
In the Los Angeles neighborhood council context, leaders’ commitment to the
neighborhood governance process was essential, given the many challenges associated
with this form of governance: significant demands upon time, exposure to public conflict
and hostility, bureaucratic obligations and impediments to action—hardships for which
leaders received neither compensation nor substantive support from the City in managing.
In all of the cases, most of the work of the council fell to a relatively small core of excep-
tionally committed leaders who served on multiple committees in addition to fulfilling
representative and administrative roles within the council, suggesting the truth in
Margaret Mead’s well-worn dictum never to underestimate the power of a small group of
committed people to change the world.
From this perspective, engendering governance capacity might thus be posited as
a question of institutional design: How might the institutional environment in which
citizen governance operates help to keep small cores of leaders committed? Alternatively,
one might ask, how can the institutional environment be designed to reduce barriers to
commitment? Answering these questions requires an understanding of the sources of
leaders’ commitment so that levers may be applied to actively support and preserve it or
so that steps may be taken to remove impediments to commitment.
From the case examples, commitment appeared to have many sources, the most
prosaic but important of which was access to an unrestricted source of funding. As
argued above, the broadly discretionary terms of the neighborhood council funding pro-
gram were an essential factor in attracting and retaining qualified leaders in neighborhood
governance, despite the seemingly insignificant level of funding relative to the scale of
community needs. For all of the councils, funding provided a base of operational and

273
development support without which, in my estimation, councils would likely cease
development activities and operate minimally as community review boards. In this
respect, autonomy over scope and authority over spending are related, as discussed
further under the principle of autonomy. The general point in terms of institutional design
is that commitment can be incentivized by giving citizens spending discretion over even
small amounts of money, although the threshold below which leaders lose interest in
governance is likely to vary by community, depending on the community’s spending
priorities.
33

Commitment among neighborhood council leaders in the study was also founded
on the basis of leaders’ sense of community, which Chaskin identified as a conditioning
influence on capacity building. Many of the committed leaders in the study were long-
time residents of their communities, with a deeply felt sense of place rooted in historical
experience, knowledge of community resources, and locally based social ties. In other
instances, particularly in East Hollywood, committed leaders initially had fewer concrete
ties to the area but recognized and appreciated various social and physical elements
within the boundaries of the neighborhood council and developed greater connectedness
to the community in the process of participating in neighborhood governance. These
phenomena suggest the wisdom of organizing community governance around organically
defined neighborhoods, as was done in Los Angeles on the basis of findings reported by

33
For example, in Park Mesa Heights, cuts in spending below the level necessary
to maintain an office and pay for basic operational expenses such as outreach, which
accounted for roughly $20,000 in the council’s budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year,
would likely threaten the council’s operation, while in East Hollywood, which keeps
overhead costs low, the council would likely continue to operate on the basis of minimal
funding to seed arts programming.

274
Berry et al. (1993) regarding the characteristics of successful municipal governance
programs as a means of reinforcing and capitalizing on leaders’ sense of place and
community.
Available time resources, the lack of which were identified by Verba et al. (1995)
as a barrier to participation in civic voluntarism, constituted another basis of commitment
among the leaders in the case study councils, to the extent that commitment is defined the
ability to invest significant amounts of time in neighborhood council activities. Indeed,
access to unfettered time often seemed to mark the distinction between the truly involved
participants in the councils and those whose contribution was primarily to participate in
meetings. Although institutional arrangements cannot alleviate individuals’ time conflicts
short, perhaps, of making community governance posts salaried positions, considered
design would keep bureaucracy to a minimum and alleviate community members of the
most time-consuming aspects of their work. Empowering commitment in this way would
also entail ensuring that institutions to which governance bodies are procedurally
accountable have sufficient resources to support accountability functions. As seen in the
case of Park Mesa Heights, where the council’s protracted entanglement with DONE
over accounting issues discouraged two prominent board members from running for
reelection (one eventually did run), lack of institutional commitment to support council
operations adequately can easily undermine citizen leaders’ dedication to community
governance.
Findings from research on the neighborhood council system as a whole as well as
the experiences of the case study councils suggest that skills and mechanisms for conflict
management and resolution is likely another component in building leaders’ confidence

275
and commitment to voluntary community governance. As reported in Chapter 2, research
on neighborhood councils system wide showed that many neighborhood leaders identi-
fied conflict among stakeholders to be among their councils’ major challenges. This was
clearly the case in Boyle Heights, where board/stakeholder conflict disrupted the flow of
council meetings and twice escalated into exchanges that resulted in formal grievances
against the council, costing the board in time and energy resources. As a matter of equip-
ping board members to handle stressful interpersonal or intergroup situations and secur-
ing their personal safety,
34
empowered community governance programs would feature
mandatory skill-building conflict management training for all board members, as well as
centralized mechanisms for intervention when community-based conflict persists and
holding leaders accountable for standards of conduct.
Broadly Autonomous Governance Bodies
Another finding from the case studies concerned the relationship between govern-
ance capacity and the nature and scope of governance units’ autonomy. While the terms
of autonomy remain unspecified in Chaskin’s institutionally abstract community capacity
model, Fung argued for a functional definition of citizen empowerment in which citizen
governance bodies are vested with actual authority over decisions within narrowly speci-
fied domains of co-production but are limited in the scope of group decision making to
practical problem solving. Although this investigation was not structured to either affirm
or refute the community improvement results produced under such arrangements, the

34
The City of Los Angeles appears to recognize the vulnerability of neighborhood
council leaders to community-level conflict and has instituted training modules on pre-
venting workplace violence. However, participation in this training is not mandatory and
the training does not build skills in conflict management and resolution.

276
neighborhood council case examples suggested that the terms of citizen action need not
be so narrowly circumscribed for citizens to be effective at generating desired change
within their communities. Neighborhood councils observed in this investigation were
successful at taking largely independent action within multiple arenas—political, plan-
ning, community-building, deliberative, and co-productive—and in seeking help from
institutional partners to advance their community development agendas without being
endowed with any formal authority over public action. Hence, while autonomy to make
binding decisions in connection with community welfare may be a desirable component
of community governance programs, the case studies suggest that it is not a necessary
one.
Rather, a community governance framework that takes seriously the capacity of
ordinary citizens to successfully take action on behalf of their community, in the vein of
Chaskin and advocates of asset-based community development more generally, would
offer citizens a broad scope within which to enact a community change agenda of their
collective choosing and would be based on a definition of citizen empowerment as
authority that is seized rather than delegated. Indeed, neighborhood council leaders with
whom I spoke expressed implicit faith in the capacity of the community to shape the
governance opportunity offered under the terms of the neighborhood council reform to
their own ends, a sentiment articulated by a stakeholder from Boyle Heights: “I think our
neighborhood council can be anything we want it to be.”
Broad terms of autonomy in the architecture of community governance arrange-
ments need not preclude more narrowly defined forms of empowerment, such as that
described by Fung. Indeed, the informal co-productive arrangements developed

277
spontaneously between councils and city agencies suggest that more powerful forms of
engagement could play an important role in citizen-defined community change agendas,
both in terms of strengthening critical public functions within the community (i.e., polic-
ing, public education) and engaging larger numbers of citizens within a coordinated
community change effort.
Representative Accountability
A puzzling lacunae in the capacity-building models advanced by both Chaskin
and Fung is the absence of mechanisms for representation within community governance,
particularly given that representation of stakeholder interests is a central theme in the
literature on deliberative decision making (Innes, 1996) and that critics have drawn
attention to the increasing gulf between community development corporations and the
local citizens whom they purport to serve (Stoecker, 1997). By contrast, the framework of
the Los Angeles reform underscores the centrality of representation and representative
accountability in community governance and suggests the value of thinking about repre-
sentation in an explicitly nuanced manner, as proposed by Guo and Musso (2007), in
order to support representation along specific dimensions.
The case study examples suggested that robust community governance arrange-
ments would seek to operationalize the formal, descriptive, participatory, and substantive
aspects of representative capacity. Formal arrangements, which establish the ways in
which leaders are selected, focuses attention on the value of electoral processes of com-
munity governance. In the case study examples, elections proved to be a powerful means
by which communities held leaders accountable for action, leading to new cadres of
leadership in both Boyle Heights and Park Mesa Heights after conflict within the ranks of

278
previous leadership hobbled the neighborhood councils’ function. Electoral processes
within community-level governance can be strengthened and given greater legitimacy by
centralized administration of elections by a city authority, as in the Los Angeles case,
where elections are now handled by the City Clerk’s office, and by centralized support to
broadly engage community members in the elections.
The case studies reinforced Guo and Musso’s (2007) observation that Los
Angeles stakeholders’ efforts to operationalize descriptive representation in creating their
governance structures—the extent to which a governing body looks like its constitu-
ency—emphasized functional and geographic interests rather than reproduction of
politically relevant demographic characteristics of the community. This suggests that
self-organized representation at the level of community governance may reflect the on-
the-ground realities of race, class, and ethnic differences within the community only to
the extent that stakeholders associated with these characteristics are either geographically
concentrated within the community or affiliate under the auspices of a community-based
organization. To the extent that those who possess local knowledge of the function and
dynamics of a community are best positioned to determine an appropriate descriptive
structure for its representation, governance frameworks can support descriptive repre-
sentation by allowing communities the autonomy to determine their governing board and
committee structures, so long as communities are able to justify the rationale for their
choices. However, frameworks can also strengthen descriptive representation through
provision of centralized support for targeted outreach and organizing in order to engage
participatory representation in governance arrangements by members of groups that are
not formally represented on the board.

279
This leads to the broader point highlighted by Guo and Musso (2007) about the
value of participatory representation in the community governance context. Higher levels
of engaged participatory representation—the extent to which local governance organiza-
tions have direct contact with community stakeholders through stakeholder participation
in the organizations’ activities—serve the practical purpose of spreading governance
workload and build legitimacy for the representative organization. Moreover, observation
of the case study councils suggested that mobilization and pressure politics continues to
play a part in the political repertoire of historically disenfranchised communities, which
in turn suggests that strong participatory representation is a key to building political
capacity in these areas. Again, governance arrangements that build in centralized sup-
ports for targeted outreach and organizing can help to develop this important aspect of
representation.
Guo and Musso (2007) also called attention to the importance of substantive
representation—the degree to which the work and activities of the community represent-
ing organization reflect the substantive interests of the community at large—in establish-
ing the legitimacy of community governance. Substantive representation is particularly
central to legitimacy in poor areas, given empirical findings that voluntary civic leaders
in poor neighborhoods are likely to be more affluent and better educated than the consti-
tuents whom they represent (Cnaan, 1991), opening the door for mismatches in substant-
ive interests and further political disenfranchisement of poor stakeholders. In Los
Angeles, the neighborhood council plan included a mechanism that might be used to
gauge council’s substantive representative capacity—a biannual survey of stakeholder
satisfaction—but resources have not been allocated by the City to assist communities in

280
performing this function. Among the case study councils, both East Hollywood and Park
Mesa Heights initiated stakeholder surveys and other means of gathering information
from stakeholders, but these efforts were unsystematic and resulted in a relatively low
number of responses. Meanwhile, some leaders in the case study councils expressed a
desire to empower their council’s direction and activities with a substantive knowledge of
their community’s needs and priorities. Given the level of expertise and time involved in
conducting community-based research that will meaningfully illuminate community
interests, centralized support for the research function is also indicated within a model of
supported self-determination.
Enhancing the Communicative Sphere
The final principle of a reconceptualized approach to building community
governance capacity concerns enhancing the quality of the “participatory surround,”
which potentially includes any gathering in which community stakeholders convene for
the conduct of business but particularly refers to general meetings of the community
governance stakeholdership. Chaskin’s model ignores this dimension of capacity
completely, while in Fung’s formulation empowering participatory encounters is largely
a function of minimizing the potential for pathologies of participation—primarily
domination by experts or factions—to detract from deliberative decision making.
As emphasized in the findings reported in Chapter 5, decision making in the
neighborhood council cases was neither the sole nor even most important purpose of
community governance gatherings. Rather, gatherings served practical, political, social,
and integrative purposes, often spontaneously and simultaneously. While they are often
taken for granted or put down as dull or dated, that community meetings are an

281
undervalued asset of community governance that deserves interested consideration and
supportive treatment.
From a purely practical standpoint, community gatherings in the case study
councils offered stakeholders an opportunity to educate themselves about issues that
affected them in the community, impart or exchange information, and seek support for
community projects. At a greater level of complexity, they constituted a privileged
political space in which communities and their members could make speech claims,
articulate demands, express collective intentions, and forge the gathering of spirit that has
empowered localities across time to defend against perceived wrongs to the community.
The exercise of political speech within the bounds of communally accepted norms of
civility (referred to in Chapter 2 as the integrative capacity of community governance)
built the power of the participatory forum to promote individual growth and develop-
ment, which in turn reinforced the community’s ability to act on its own behalf. The
integrative effects of this mode of community governance seemed particularly pro-
nounced in the historically disenfranchised communities of Boyle Heights and Park Mesa
Heights, where the communal surround of neighborhood councils appeared to furnish a
needed outlet for political expression.
Perhaps most important among the case study councils, community governance
gatherings were also a place for the elaboration of the social project of community
making. Gatherings provided a context in which community members could collectively
establish, refine, and re-define the sources of their community identity; forge social
connections and develop group norms of togetherness; trace and (re-)interpret community
history; recognize community achievements; and, as repeated encounters bred familiarity,

282
be in the company of friends. Although the value of this function of community govern-
ance is difficult to measure in a meaningful way, the fluid common currency of com-
munity that can be built only through time in one another’s presence is surely at the root
of empowered community governance.
Local governance arrangements that sought to maximize the practical, political,
integrative, and social contributions to governance capacity generated through participa-
tory encounters would comprehend a variety of tools and supports for enriching the
quality of interactions. One such support might be training in alternatives to parliament-
ary procedure as a style of meeting management. Although all three of the case study
councils employed Robert’s Rules of Order with success, at least in terms of managing
meeting for efficiency and order, the formality of parliamentary procedure and the fact
that each of the councils took liberties in interpreting the procedure suggests that a more
consensually oriented procedural style might be better suited to the integrative and
community-making purposes of neighborhood councils. Another measure that would
support the meeting function is centralized provision of translation and child care
services, as well as matching funds to encourage neighborhood councils to build food
service into their meeting budgets. In the Los Angeles context, the Neighborhood Council
Plan recognizes the desirability of connecting neighborhood councils with translation and
child care service providers (although not food); however, no centralized resources are
available to support these services. Providing such services within a community govern-
ance framework would send a powerful symbolic message that community governance
involves bringing the community—including non-English speakers and families with
young children—into the communicative sphere.

283
Chapter Conclusion
This study was inspired by the apparent conflict between two prominent models
of capacity building for community governance and the seeming inability of either of
these models to explain the governance capacity generated under the terms of the City of
Los Angeles’ neighborhood council reform. It has ended by sketching the contours of a
new, institutionally supported capacity-building framework, inspired by local-level
investigation of neighborhood council operations in three underserved communities,
which conceptualizes empowered community governance as the product of the inter-
actions among three forces: (a) committed, broadly autonomous leadership developed
and elected from the grassroots; (b) centrally administered elections to hold governance
representatives accountable to community stakeholders; and (c) centralized, institution-
ally based efforts to reduce obstacles to leadership commitment and enhance the quality
of the participatory environment.
In concluding, I call for additional research to test the assumptions of the
supported self-determination framework on a broader array of hybrid governance
organizations and direct attention to the fact that makers of capacity-building models,
however well intentioned, embed in their models assumptions about the nature of
capacity and empowerment in local communities that have very real consequences for the
citizens whom they purport to empower.
I was recently reminded of this point by a wonderfully incisive e-mail from David
Bell, the EHNC president. Bell, who is beginning his second term as a neighborhood
council representative, was responding to my inquiry about what, if anything, he would
change about the neighborhood council system to further empower neighborhood
councils. His response, while gratifyingly resonant with my own conclusions about better

284
empowering community-based governance, unmistakably telegraphs the crankiness and
impatience that community leaders the world over must feel about the presumptions of
institutional efforts to build governance capacity.
We don’t need a lot of oversight, we don’t need a lot of interference, we don’t
need a lot of bureaucratic foot-dragging when it comes to spending the (let’s face
it) paperclip money that we get to spend on our neighborhood. East Hollywood
has 53,000 residents. The EHNC is the only governmental or quasi-governmental
organization focused exclusively on this extremely underserved population. Yet
we have an annual budget less than a typical coffee shop. Just give us the money
and get out of our way. Do an audit to make sure no one is stealing from the NC
and give us training if we ask for it. (Personal communication, June 19, 2010,
quoted with permission)
Bell’s stark assessment of the value of the empowerment that the Los Angeles
system has to offer yields the tenets of yet another framework for community capacity
building that would-be capacity builders would do well to consider: Sometimes, citizen
governance is a leap of faith, and sometimes empowerment is all about the paperclip
money.

285
REFERENCES
Abers, R. N. (2003). Reflections on what makes empowered participatory governance
happen. In A. Fung & E. O. Wright (Eds.), Deepening democracy: Institutional
innovations in empowered participatory governance (pp. 200-236). New York,
NY: Verso.
Arnstein, S. R. (1969). A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Plan-
ning Association 35, 216-224.
Baldassare, M. (2003). PPIC Statewide Survey: Special survey of Los Angeles in collabo-
ration with the University of Southern California. San Francisco, CA: Public
Policy Institute of California.
Barber, B. (2003). Strong democracy: Participatory politics for a new age. Los Angeles,
CA: University of California Press.
Berger, P. L., & Neuhaus, R. J. (1977). To empower people: The role of mediating
structures in public policy. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for
Public Policy Research.
Berry, J. M., Portney, K., & Thomson, K. (1993). Rebirth of urban democracy. Wash-
ington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Blume, H. (2009). L.A. mayor takes charge of new Boyle Heights school. Retrieved from
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/01/local/me-lausd1
Bourdieu, P. (1985). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory
and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-258). New York, NY:
Greenwood.
Box, R. C. (1998). Citizen governance: Leading American communities into the 21st
century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Box, R. C., & Sagen, D. A. (1998). Working with citizens: Breaking down barriers to
citizen self-governance. In C. S. King & C. Stivers (Eds.), Government is us:
Public administration in an anti-government era (pp.158-172). Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
Boyte, H. C. (1980). The backyard revolution: Understanding the new citizens’ move-
ment. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Briggs, X. (2008). Community building: New (and old) lessons about the politics of
problem-solving in American cities. In J. DeFilippis & S. Saegert (Eds.), The
community development reader (pp. 36-40). New York, NY: Routledge.
Chambers, E. (2003). Roots for radicals: Organizing for power, action, and justice. New
York, NY: Continuum.

286
Chaskin, R. J. (2001). Building community capacity: A definitional framework and case
studies from a comprehensive community initiative. Urban Affairs Review, 36,
291-323.
Chaskin, R. J., Brown, P., Venkatesh, S., & Vidal, A. (2001). Building community
capacity. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
Chaskin, R. J., & Garg, S. (1997). The issue of governance in neighborhood-based initia-
tives. Urban Affairs Review, 32, 631-661.
City of Los Angeles. (1999). City of Los Angeles charter. Retrieved from
http://done.lacity.org/dnn/Default.aspx?tabid=107
City of Los Angeles. (2001). Plan for a citywide system of neighborhood councils. Re-
trieved from http://done.lacity.org/dnn/Default.aspx?tabid=107
City of Los Angeles, Board of Neighborhood Commissioners. (2007). East Hollywood
Neighborhood Council certification hearing, Board of Neighborhood Com-
missioners, City of Los Angeles, April 19, 2007. Retrieved from http://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=c2bkn38QZ4w&feature=PlayList&p=B1F268F383566A3
6&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=3
City of Los Angeles, Administrative Officer. (2010). Budget documents. Retrieved from
http://cao.lacity.org/budgetsum/budgtsum.htm
City of Los Angeles, City Controller. (2010). Adopted budget. Retrieved from http://
controller.lacity.org/AdoptedBudget/index.htm
City of Los Angeles, Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. (2008). Roster of
neighborhood councils. Los Angeles, CA: Author.
City of Portland, Management and Finance. (2010). FY 2009-10 adopted budget and city
budget archives. Retrieved from http://www.portlandonline.com/omf/index
.cfm?c=26048
Cnaan, R. A. (1991). Neighborhood-representing organizations: How democratic are
they? Social Science Review, 65, 614-634.
Cohen, J. (1989). Deliberative democracy and democratic legitimacy. In A. Hamlin & P.
Pettit (Eds.), The good polity (pp. 17–34). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Community members invited to “imagine East Hollywood.” (2009, November). East
Hollywood Neighborhood News [Electronic version]. Retrieved from http://www
.easthollywood.net/EHnews/0911_ehnews.html#LETTER.BLOCK6.
Conlan, T. J. (1998). From new federalism to devolution: Twenty-five years of inter-
governmental reform. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Cooper, T. L., & Musso, J. A. (1999). The potential for neighborhood council involve-
ment in American metropolitan governance. International Journal of Organiza-
tion Theory and Behavior, 1(2), 199-232.

287
Cox, F. M., Erlich, J., Rothman, J., & Tropman, J. E. (Eds.). (1979). Strategies of com-
munity organization (3rd ed.). Itasca, IL: Peacock.
Craig, G. (2007). Community capacity-building: Something old, something new? Critical
Social Policy, 27, 335-359.
DeFilippis, J. (2001). The myth of social capital in community development. Housing
Policy Debate, 12, 781-806.
DeFilippis, J. (2008). Community control and development: The long view. In J.
DeFilippis & S. Saegert (Eds.), The community development reader (pp. 28-35).
New York, NY: Routledge.
DeFilippis, J., & Saegert, S. (2008). Communities develop: The question is how? In J.
DeFilippis & S. Saegert (Eds.), The community development reader (pp. 1-6).
New York, NY: Routledge.
Delgado, G. (1994). Beyond the politics of place: New directions in community organiz-
ing in the 1990s. Oakland, CA: Applied Research Center.
Diamond, J. (2004). Local regeneration initiatives and capacity building: Whose
“capacity” and “building” for what? Community Development Journal, 39, 177-
205.
East Hollywood Neighborhood Council. (Producer). (n.d.). East Hollywood on the move:
A transportation/planning vision. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=h7lwFBEoNCs
Eichler, M. (1998). Organizing’s past, present and future: Look to the future, learn from
the past. Shelterforce Online, 101. Retrieved from http://www.nhi.org/online/
issues/101/eichler.html
Fiorina, M. P. (1999). Extreme voices: A dark side of civic engagement. In T. Skocpol &
M. Fiorina (Eds.), Civic engagement in American democracy (pp. 395-425).
Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Fischer, F. (2006). Participatory governance as deliberative empowerment: The cultural
politics of discursive space. American Review of Public Administration, 36(1), 19-
40.
Fung, A. (2004). Empowered participation: Reinventing urban democracy. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Fung, A., & Wright, E. O. (2003). Deepening democracy: Institutional innovations in
empowered participatory governance. New York, NY: Verso.
Glickman, N. J., & Servon, L. J. (2003). By the numbers: Measuring community
development corporations’ capacity. Journal of Planning Education and
Research, 22, 240-256.

288
Guo, C., & Musso, J. A. (2007). Representation in nonprofit and voluntary organizations:
A conceptual framework. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 36, 308-326.
Gutmann, A., & Thompson D. (2004) Why deliberative democracy? Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Hammer, C., & Wildavsky, A. (1983). The open-ended, semistructured interview: An
(almost) operational guide. In A. Wildavsky (Ed.), Craftways: On the organiza-
tion of scholarly work (2nd ed., pp. 57-95). Edison, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Hibbing, J. R., & Theiss-Morse, E. (2002). Stealth democracy: American’ beliefs about
how government should work. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Hogen-Esch, T. (2002). Recapturing suburbia: Urban secession and the politics of
growth in Los Angeles, Boston, and Seattle (Unpublished doctoral dissertation).
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.
Innes, J. E. (1996). Planning through consensus building: A new view of the compre-
hensive planning ideal Journal of the American Planning Association, 62, 460-
472.
Jacobs, A. B. (1985). Looking at cities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Jun, K., & Musso, J. (2007). Explaining descriptive representation in neighborhood
context: Formal rules and community context in Los Angeles. Journal of Civil
Society, 3(1), 39-58.
Kettl, D. F. (2000). The transformation of governance: Globalization, devolution, and the
role of government. Public Administration Review, 60, 488-497.
King, C. S., & Stivers, C. (1998). Introduction: The anti-government era. In C. S. King &
C. Stivers (Eds.), Government is us: Public administration in an anti-government
era (pp. 3-18). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Kingsley, G. T., McNeely, J. B., & Gibson, J. O. (1997). Community building coming of
age. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute.
Kitsuse, A., Banerjee, T., Polyzoides, C., & Cooper, T. L. (2002). On common ground:
Neighborhood councils and territorial choice in Los Angeles. Los Angeles, CA:
University of Southern California, Civic Engagement Initiative.
Kretzmann, J. P., & McKnight, J. L. (1993). Building communities from the inside out: A
path toward finding and mobilizing a community’s assets. Evanston, IL: North-
western University Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research.
Lieberson, S. (1969). Measuring population diversity. American Sociological Review, 34,
850-862.

289
Lincove, E., Cooper, T. L., Musso, J. A., & Sharfenberg, J. (2002). Mobilizing the
grassroots: Outreach, community organizing, and the system of neighborhood
councils in Los Angeles. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California,
Neighborhood Participation Project.
Lopez, J. (2010, August 29). Young Latino artists envision an arts district in East Los
Angeles. Los Angeles Times [electronic version]. Retrieved from http://www
.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-boyleart29-2009aug29,0,6237603
.story
Los Angeles Times. (2010). Boyle Heights profile, mapping L.A. Retrieved from
http://projects.latimes.com/mapping-la/neighborhoods/neighborhood/boyle-
heights/
Loury, G. (1977). A dynamic theory of racial income differences. In P. Wallace & A.
LaMond (Eds.), Women, minorities, and employment discrimination (pp. 153-
188). Lexington, MA: Heath.
Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lynch, K. (1995). A process of community visual survey. In K. Lynch, T. Banerjee, &
M. Southworth (Eds.), City sense and city design: Writings and projects of Kevin
Lynch (pp. 263-286). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mansbridge, J. J. (1980). Beyond adversary democracy. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Mayer, S. E. (1994). Building community capacity: The potential of community founda-
tions. Minneapolis, MN: Rainbow Research, Inc.
McAdam, D. (1999). Political process and the development of Black insurgency, 1930-
1970 (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
McGinty, S. (2002). Community capacity building. Paper presented at the Australian As-
sociation for Research in Education Conference, Brisbane, Australia.
Mowbray, M. (2005). Community capacity building or state opportunism? Community
Development Journal, 40, 255-264.
Musso, J. A., & Kitsuse, A. (2002, September). Urban regimes, social movements, and
the politics of neighborhood councils in Los Angeles. Paper presented at Haynes
Research Conference, “Reform, Los Angeles Style: The Theory and Practice of
Urban Governance at Century's Turn,” University of Southern California, School
of Policy, Planning and Development.
Musso, J. A., Kitsuse, A., Lincove, E., Sithole, M., & Cooper, T. L. (2002). Planning
neighborhood councils in Los Angeles: Self-determination on a shoestring. Los
Angeles, CA: University of Southern California Neighborhood Participation
Project.

290
Musso, J. A., Kitsuse, A., Okumu, L., Sheller, A., Sithole, M., & Steinberger, J. (2003).
Planning neighborhood councils in Los Angeles: Self-determination on a shoe-
string. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California Neighborhood Par-
ticipation Project.
Musso, J. A., Weare, C., & Cooper, T. L. (2002). Neighborhood councils in Los Angeles:
A midterm status report. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California
Urban Initiative.
Musso, J. A., Weare, C., Elliot, M., Kitsuse, A., & Shiau, E. (2007). Toward community
engagement in city governance: Evaluating neighborhood council reform in Los
Angeles. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California Civic Engagement
Initiative.
Musso, J., Weare, C., & Jun, K. (2008). Democracy by design: The institutionalization of
community participation networks in Los Angeles. Los Angeles, CA: University
of Southern California.
Neighborhood Council Review Commission. (2007). The neighborhood council system:
Past, present, and future. Los Angeles, CA: City of Los Angeles.
Neighborhood Participation Project. (2000). Creating neighborhood councils: A report
on emerging issues. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California Civic
Engagement Initiative.
Nye, N., & Glickman, N. J. (2000). Working together: Building capacity for community
development. Housing Policy Debate, 11(1), 163-198.
O’Connor, A. (1999). Swimming against the tide: A brief history of federal policy in
poor communities. In R. F. Ferguson & W. T. Dickens (Eds.), Urban problems
and community development (pp. 77-136). New York, NY: Routledge.
Pateman, C. (1970). Participation and democratic theory. New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Pavey, J. L. Muth, A. B., Ostermeier, D., & Steiner Davis, M. L. E. (2007). Building
capacity for local governance: An application of interactional theory to develop-
ing a community of interest. Rural Sociology, 72(1), 90-110.
Putnam, R. D. (1993). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Putnam, R. D. (1995). Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. Journal of
Democracy, 6(1), 65-78.
Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community.
New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Putnam, R. D. (2007). E pluribus unum: Diversity and community in the 21st century.
Scandinavian Political Studies Journal, 30(2), 137-174.

291
Reston, M. (2009, October 8). Los Angeles neighborhood councils’ cash tempts some.
Los Angeles Times [electronic version]. Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/
news/local/la-me-neighborhood-treasurers8-2009oct08,0,7223018.story
Rhodes, R. A. W. (1996). The new governance: Governing without government. Political
Studies, 44, 652-667.
Saegert, S. (2005). Community building and civic capacity. Retrieved from
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/atf/cf/%7BDEB6F227-659B-4EC8-8F84-
8DF23CA704F5%7D/CommunityBuildingCivicCapacity.pdf
Sager, T. (1994). Communicative planning theory. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate.
Sampson, R. J. (1997). What community supplies. In J. DeFilippis & S. Saegert (Eds.),
The community development reader (pp. 163-173). New York, NY: Routledge.
Sánchez, G. J. (1993). Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, culture, and identity in
Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Sánchez, G. J. (2004). “What’s good for Boyle Heights is good for the Jews”: Creating
multiracialism on the Eastside during the 1950s. American Quarterly, 56, 633-
661.
Santow, M. E. (2007). Running in place: Saul Alinsky, race, and community organizing.
In M. Orr (Ed.), Transforming the city: Community organizing and the challenge
of political change (pp. 28-55). Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Savitch, H. V. (1998). Global challenge and institutional capacity or, How we can refit
local administration for the next century. Administration & Society, 30, 248-273.
Sonenshein, R. (1993). Politics in black and white: Race and power in Los Angeles.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sonenshein, R. (2004). The city at stake: Secession, reform, and the battle for Los
Angeles. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Stoecker, R. (1997). The CDC model of urban development: A critique and an alterna-
tive. In J. DeFilippis & S. Saegert (Eds.), The community development reader (pp.
214-224). New York, NY: Routledge.
Tedmanson, D. (2003). Whose capacity needs building? Open hearts and empty hands:
Reflections on capacity building in remote communities. Paper presented at the
4th International Critical Management Studies Conference, University of South
Australia.
Timney, M. M. (1998). Overcoming administrative barriers to citizen participation: Citi-
zens as partners, not adversaries. In C. S. King & C. Stivers (Eds.), Government is
us: Public administration in an anti-government era (pp. 88-101). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.

292
Traynor, B. (2008). Community building: Limitations and promises. In J. DeFilippis & S.
Saegert (Eds.), The community development reader (pp. 214-224). New York,
NY: Routledge.
Trinidad, E. (Producer). (2007). This is East Hollywood. Retrieved from http://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=_bw9l91i_Bc
U.S. Census Bureau. (2000a). State and county quickfacts: Los Angeles (city), California,
2010. Retrieved from http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/0644000.html
U.S. Census Bureau. (2000b). State and county quickfacts: Portland (city), Oregon, 2010.
Retrieved from http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/41/4159000.html
Verba, S., Schlozman, K. L., & Brady, H. E. (1995). Voice and equality: Civic voluntar-
ism in American politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wallis, A., Crocker, J. P., & Schechter, B. (1998). Social capital and community build-
ing: Part one. National Civic Review, 87, 253-271.
Williams, C. C. (2004). Community capacity building: A critical evaluation of the third
sector approach. Review of Policy Research, 21, 729-739.
Yin, R. K. (2003). Case study research: Design and methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
Young, I. M. (1999). State, civil society, and social justice. In I. Shapiro & C. Hacker-
Cordon (Eds.), Democracy’s value (pp. 141-161). New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and democracy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

293
APPENDIX A

CASE SELECTION CANDIDATES

294

295

296

297

298

299
APPENDIX B

CASE SELECTION: OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

(As of October 2008)

Known Support from, or Interaction with, Institutional Agents

Boyle Heights NC. Fellow doctoral student (currently doing research on community re-
development in various parts of the city) reports that BHNC seems to be functional and
fairly robust, if also conservative and oriented toward homeowners’ interests. DONE
source reports that this NC has had a lot of internal conflict, some of it stemming from
their large board size, difficulty in getting people to attend meetings, and their rules on
quorums. BH has recently reduced its board size from 51 to 35, which may improve its
capacity. In their survey responses BHNC board members reported completing an MOU
with the Department of Water and Power and were apparently also active in resisting the
DWP rate hike.

Central San Pedro. The Port is a major physical presence here. In the next-door com-
munity of Wilmington, the NC had extensive interaction with the Port and was involved
in a number of major projects with them. This may also be true of Central San Pedro,
which lists the “Bridge to Breakwater Project” among its activities, and has a Committee
on Port Safety and Security.

Empowerment Congress North, which incorporates USC, is among the cluster of neigh-
borhood organizations established in the ‘90s as the Eighth District Empowerment
Congress by then-LA City Council member Mark Ridley Thomas. It’s not clear whether
the supports that MRT gave to the Empowerment Congress have continued under subse-
quent city council leadership (now Bernard Parks, though parts of EC North also fall in
the 1
st
and 9
th
districts. It’s also not clear what, if any, leadership or support is provided
by USC. The NC seems to be quite neighborhood oriented. In the NPP’s 2006 survey of
board members, one respondent noted the NC had been working on reaching out to block
clubs to increase participation. Otherwise they seem to be very oriented to “classic”
neighborhood improvement activities, like community events and public safety.

United Neighborhoods NC joins the communities of Historic Arlington Heights, West
Adams, and Jefferson Park. It straddles the 10 Freeway south of Crenshaw. This NC has
been involved in substantive planning issues that have engaged them in ongoing relation-
ships with both the CRA (Washington Corridor Specific Plan) and LAUSD (new school
sites).

300
Outliers of Various Types

Wilshire Center/Koreatown and Downtown LA both have neighborhood councils that are
polarized between relatively affluent, connected populations, and significantly disenfran-
chised populations. Downtown has a large homeless population (DLANC has the lowest
median household income of all NCs) but a hyper-connected NC board that represents
many powerful downtown interests.

Koreatown is divided by race, class, and culture. While the resident population is primar-
ily Latino and poor, the business community (and the NC Board) is primarily Korean-
American.

Historic-Cultural NC, is located in the oldest part of downtown Los Angeles, and incor-
porates Little Tokyo, Chinatown, and the Artists District. Historic Cultural has the
highest percentage of Asians in the sample, as well as the largest number of community
organizations per capita of any LA neighborhood council, presumably due to the large
number of services offered to both the immigrant and aged populations, as well as vari-
ous arts-oriented organizations. The area’s low level of income likely reflects the large
number of residents who live in low-income housing in Little Tokyo that give priority to
seniors. Not sure what the artists district influence is on the NC these days.

East Hollywood. DONE source both lives in East Hollywood and has worked with this
NC in her capacity as a project coordinator. She characterizes this NC as having inten-
tionally set out to be a progressive, inclusive neighborhood council and having “done it
right” from the start. The initial organizing for the NC began with the current president,
Elson Trinidad and his circle of friends (many of whom are bicycle activists) but has
broadened from there. Organizing went on for four to five years before NC certification.
Virtually all of the area’s constituencies—Thais, Armenians, non-profits—have a con-
nection to the council. The Board includes a lot of residents with connections to public
affairs: the City Attorney of Glendale, someone connected with the Los Angeles Neigh-
borhood Land Trust, a young graduate of Teach for America—as well as longtime resi-
dents with a strong sense of place. I recently spoke with the NC President, Elton
Trinidad, in connection with other research. He says that because East Hollywood has a
relatively young population, the NC is trying to make innovative use of communications
for outreach, though I’m not sure what this means (I assume it means electronic out-
reach).

While many board members have broad networks, the area has not really yuppified. The
large percentage of whites in East Hollywood (see demographics) presumably reflect a
large Armenian population. NC meetings regularly draw a small but diverse set of par-
ticipants. The bylaws apparently allow relatively open access to the agenda, and partici-
pation from non-board community members.

301
So far they have focused on community-oriented activities like fairs, public art, and
public safety issues. They do a lot around bicycle activism: they were the first NC to
adopt the bicyclists bill of rights (bicycle circulation is a bellwether for community) they
do evening rides in the community to promote eyes on the street, and one of the com-
munity organizations in the area is Bicycle Kitchen/La Bicicocina, a volunteer-run non-
profit where people can go to build or repair their bicycles. BK was co-founded by an
artist and a local bicycle messenger/martial artist/eco-villager.

The NC is just beginning to take on issues of development, and has recently had some
problems internally on a development issue which has them reviewing “process” issues,
particularly surrounding the relationship between committee recommendations and board
action.

Large Immigrant Populations

MacArthur Park has been successful at attracting residents and business people as well as
representatives from non-profits that serve the area and, per DONE source, are pretty
functional. The President is a trustee of a local church, one board members owns a recy-
cling business, the treasurer is a Korean store owner, a Spanish-speaker on the board does
translation at every meeting. One of the projects they’ve been working on is using art to
bring back MacArthur Park.

Pico-Union has recently imploded with the resignation of their President and Treasurer
under allegations of fiduciary abuses.

Moderate Record of Accomplishment

CANNDU (Community and Neighbors for Ninth District Unity) board members cited
business community involvement, design of a park, and emergency response training as
accomplishments in the NPP board member survey.

Central Hollywood. Per DONE source, the board would be more effective if it had a
more strategic focus. Leadership is small (7-9 board members); land use committee is
relatively engaged and sophisticated. A positive working relationship with the homeless.

Greater Echo Park Elysian survey respondents listed a Christmas parade, increased stake-
holder participation, and increased involvement in planning issues as accomplishments.
Growing strife within the board and between board and stakeholders (self-interested
leadership; verbal “attacks” on stakeholders at meetings) and lack of outreach to the
Latino community were listed as challenges.

Hollywood Studio District. A community-oriented NC focused on planning/land use,
beautification, and emergency preparedness. Board is mostly older, composed of long-
time residents, a couple of small and one large developer, a representative from

302
Paramount. The head of the planning committee is a retired landscape architect that’s
pretty savvy. The developers are constructive. Things seem to be civilized and functional
but not too dynamic.

West Adams. Survey responses suggest that this council spent a lot of time initially con-
centrating on outreach and were just beginning to build a record of accomplishments,
which included a forum for local businesses, influencing LAUSD school location choice,
and participating in the CRA’s Adams-LaBrea developer selection process.

Low Record of Accomplishment

Board member survey respondents of the Empowerment Congress SE identified “more
educational approaches to problems” and street paving as accomplishments.

The Lincoln Heights NC has had a history of political fractiousness which initially para-
lyzed it. Per DONE source, the outgoing president is David Galaviz, who is Director of
Community Outreach for USC Civic and Community Relations. Over the past two years
he has got the board in shape and recently delivered them to a city clerk election in July.
The new president is Elena Popp, a housing activist and attorney who used to be on the
Venice NC board. The NC’s main accomplishment so far has been the annual production
of a big Christmas Parade.

Park Mesa Heights NC board members report stagnation of council (couldn’t meet
quorum for more than 6 months), loss of stakeholder participation at meetings, loss of
office space and website, and resignation of several board members. Things now seem to
be improving.

South Central NC cited difficulty in finding dedicated community members to participate
on their board and did not identify NC accomplishments in the NPP survey.

The Watts community has been heavily studied and has expressed distrustfulness toward
NPP researchers in the past, though doctoral researcher has recently conducted successful
interviews with NC board members. Watts does not seem to have established a strong
record of accomplishment.

Not surveyed in 2006/No further information at this time

Central Alameda

303
APPENDIX C
INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
Respondent Background

Tell me a little about yourself. How is it that you come to be associated with this com-
munity? How long have you lived or worked here? How did you get involved with the
neighborhood council?

Ability to solve problems

What problems have you faced and how have you overcome them? Who mobilized to
address the problem and how? What resources did you draw on? What types of com-
munication were used?

What assets do you think you have as a community? As a board?
What challenges do you have as a community? As a board?

Have you or any of your board members participated in leadership training or other types
of training, either individually or as a group?

Outcomes

What would you regard as successful outcomes for your neighborhood council? What
successes have you had as a council over the past two years?

Participatory processes

What processes are used by the council to insure participation and voice? What processes
are in place to mediate conflict?

Do you see your neighborhood council as representative of the community? How so?

Sources of outside support

Has the council ever worked with city agencies or other types of organizations outside of
the community to solve community problems? Tell me about that. Why did you start?
What was their role? What did they do? What did you do? What was the outcome?

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This study investigates the factors that generate local-level capacity for community governance in low-material-resource communities. Two current models of capacity building suggest competing ways in which community governance capacity may be built, whether through the “bottom-up” interaction of indigenous local resources with interventions designed to enhance those resources, or through a “top-down” approach in which local capacity is instantiated through the design of state-centered citizen participation programs. Drawing on the “hybrid” example of the City of Los Angeles’ neighborhood council system, which combines an institutional framework of local governance with reliance on indigenous resources, the study engages a micro-level comparison of the means and mechanisms that produce governance capacity within three neighborhood council organizations using the competing frameworks to structure analysis. The investigation concludes by offering a model of supported self-determination, which suggests how top-down and bottom-up approaches to capacity building may be reconciled.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

A view from below: the development and role of organizational social capital in neighborhood regeneration in Los Angeles

PDF

Community foundations and new governance networks: three studies exploring the role of regionally-networked philanthropic organizations in local problem-solving

PDF

A framework for good local governance: achieving prosperity in an increasingly complex environment

PDF

Foreign-related activities of the Chinese local governments and agents of globalization: a case study of 31 provinces in mainland China

PDF

Beyond the limits to planning for equity: the emergence of community benefits agreements as empowerment models in participatory processes

PDF

The twilight of the local redevelopment era: the past, present, and future of urban revitalization and urban economic development in Nevada and California

PDF

Civic associations, local governance and conflict prevention in Indonesia

PDF

How does collaborative governance work? The experience of collaborative community-building practices in Korea

PDF

Governance networks: internal governance structure, boundary setting and effectiveness

PDF

Civic expression in Little Tokyo: how art and culture empowers communities and transforms public participation

PDF

Governing public goods: how representation and political power in local and regional institutions shape inequalities

PDF

Digital storytelling as participatory media practice for empowerment: the case of the Chinese immigrants in the San Gabriel Valley

PDF

In the art of revolution: integrating community arts into the existing development work of non-government organizations in Guatemala and El Salvador

PDF

The effects of interlocal collaboration on local economic performance: investigation of Korean cases

PDF

Avoiding middle-class planning 2.0: media arts and the future of urban planning

PDF

Why go green? Cities' adoption of local renewable energy policies and urban sustainability certifications

PDF

A framework for evaluating urban policy and its impact on social determinants of health (SDoH)

PDF

Three essays on the causes and consequences of China’s governance reforms

PDF

The impact of social capital: a case study on the role of social capital in the restoration and recovery of communities after disasters

PDF

The role of international school teacher leaders in building leadership capacity within their teams

Asset Metadata

Creator Kitsuse, Alicia (author)

Core Title Community, empowerment, and the city: sources of capacity in local governance

School School of Policy, Planning, and Development

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Planning

Publication Date 08/07/2010

Defense Date 06/24/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag citizen empowerment,community building,community capacity,local self-determination,OAI-PMH Harvest,participatory governance

Place Name California (states), Los Angeles (city or populated place)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Musso, Juliet A. (committee chair), Sloane, David C. (committee member), Weare, Christopher (committee member), Wong, Janelle S. (committee member)

Creator Email kitsuse@mac.com,kitsuse@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3341

Unique identifier UC160761

Identifier etd-Kitsuse-3762 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-380460 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3341 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Kitsuse-3762.pdf

Dmrecord 380460

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Kitsuse, Alicia

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu