What's in a neighborhood council? Ask Zach Behrens, a 26-year-old member of the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council, and you'll hear about the opportunity to get directly involved in local government, making tangible, specific changes to improve your neighborhood. And while neighborhood councils are not primarily made up of 20-somethings, government newbies have a wide-open shot at getting one of these elected positions.
Behrens' position with SONC interested me partly because of Zach's age, and partly because I was trying to get a better sense of what a neighborhood council does. Many -- perhaps most -- Angelenos don't even know that our city has neighborhood councils. These councils were created in 1999 as part of a major charter reform initiative designed to "provide a forum for raising local issues, as well as providing a way to comment on city-wide matters," according to the Neighborhood Council Review Commission.
This is why Sherman Oaks boasts its own 21-member Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council (SONC). It acts as a "quasi-advisory" body to the city government, and directly addresses some of Sherman Oaks' smaller needs, using the $50,000 budget it gets from the city.
Behrens, like many other SONC candidates, ran unopposed; he was elected as the business representative of the 5th district of Sherman Oaks (7 total districts, each with a residential, business, and at-large representative) in September 2006. Since, Behrens has been busy considering LAPD surveillance cameras for some graffiti-prone areas, addressing trespassing issues in an area that blurs government inter-agency duties and boundaries -- and writing about some of this work on his own blog, In the Oaks. He also co-edits LAist, and does freelance "computer work" to pay the bills.
Somewhat amazingly, Behrens got his neighborhood council position with just 32 votes! In fact, a total of just 429 voters -- among 60,921 eligible -- turned out to elect SONC members. The low voter turnout is emblematic of how unknown and unrecognized neighborhood councils are in general; SONC has to market itself, courting voters to the polls for a small, separate neighborhood election.
All of the work is done on a volunteer basis; volunteer work for the government is something Behrens says he'd love to do full time, if he could: "Once you get the government bug, it's hard to let go. You start to understand how the whole system of city services work and it's kind of addicting. You look around the city and see things differently. From traffic signals to parking limits to public art to police, it's all a framework put together by one organization. it's quite amazing. I love it."
Want to get involved in your neighborhood council? Visit the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) to find your neighborhood council and find out how you can participate.
