R E V E N I C E
?
By Mark Ryavec
Many years ago I joined with other residents to research the
prospects for Venice to detach from Los Angeles and form an
independent city. At that time frustration
with scores of gang-related shootings in Oakwood and under-policing along the
Boardwalk, lack of resident parking and the on-going loss of Venice’s Craftsman
architecture led many Venetians to think that we could manage our town better
than the bureaucrats downtown. T-shirts were printed to publicize our cause;
they showed an iconic Venice
pillar capped by our unique capital on one side and the call to action –
REVENICE – on the reverse.
We got an incorporation guide from the Los Angeles County
Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCO) that laid out the steps. We then obtained the relevant tax revenue data
for Venice, entered it into the formula provided in the guide and determined
that Venice would have enough revenue, from property, sales, and hotel
occupancy tax and other fees, to easily support a municipal government with all
the usual services. Instead of setting
up its own police department, the City of Venice
would have had to contract with the County for the services of the Sheriff’s
Department, but many smaller cities have done this for years, including Malibu and West Hollywood. With the tremendous increase in property tax
assessments over the last 25 years, triggered by Proposition 13 as sales occur,
I doubt there is any question that the City of Venice could support itself today.
The stumbling block at that time was the State law governing
detachment of an area from an existing city.
The law gave the voters of the host city the right by a majority vote to
reject the detachment proposal of the smaller area, as we saw in the failure of
the San Fernando Valley to win independence in
2002. Valleyites voted by a bare 50.7
majority to secede while the rest of Los
Angeles rejected the proposal by a 2 to 1 margin. Case closed for the Valley.
With new calls for cityhood for Venice, I revisited the steps necessary to secede
and found that since 2002 the State has made it even more difficult. While Government Code Section 56751 provides
a process for detachment, it also gives the host city the right to kill the
proposal by a simple declaration asking that the secession bid be
terminated. Even if the City Council
does not kill it early in the process, under the State law voters citywide
would still have to approve Venice
secession. This is not likely, due to the
historic opposition of city labor unions to the prospect of losing union jobs
or the generous salaries, benefits and pensions they now enjoy (smaller cities
rarely pay as well as Los Angeles).
However, Venice
is a special case. While other areas of Los Angeles were simply unincorporated territory when they
were annexed by Los Angeles,
we were an independent city when we voted to annex ourselves to the City in
1926. That history of independence
should give us standing to ask for an easier path back to cityhood.
So, for those who wish to pursue cityhood I offer the
following Motion for consideration by the Venice Neighborhood Council:
Whereas, Venice
was an independent city when residents voted in 1926 to annex itself to the
City of Los Angeles;
and
Whereas, Venice
residents deserve the right to consider reversing that decision free from the
burden of it being rejected by other residents living in the rest of Los Angeles; and
Whereas, Venice residents desire the
increased responsiveness of municipal government seen in smaller units of local
government, such as our neighbors Santa Monica, Culver City, Malibu and West
Hollywood; and
Whereas, Venice is not well served by a city
government with only 15 council people for a population of almost four million
residents;
Now, therefore be it resolved that the
Venice Neighborhood Council formally requests the City of Los Angeles to sponsor and support
State legislation to amend the Cortese-Knox-Hertzberg Local Government Reorganization
Act of 2000 to void the City’s right to cause the termination of a detachment
request pending before a local area formation commission submitted by a former
city which earlier voted to join the City of Los Angeles; and further, to amend
that Act to remove the City of Los Angeles’ right to subject detachment of a
former city now located within its borders to a vote of all voters in the
jurisdiction of the City of Los Angeles.
These amendments would leave the decision to secede with the
registered votes of Venice
– as it should be. We have been married
for a while, it hasn’t worked out all that well, and now we’d like to go our
separate way.
The other option that I see is for Venice and other like-minded districts to
pursue amendments to the City Charter to create a means to matriculate from the
neighborhood council model to a new, yet to be defined borough government model. Under a borough system, control of many city
services and decision-making powers would devolve to local residents.
Here are some examples for consideration:
A new seven member borough council – elected by district to
ensure representation of all parts of Venice
- would be able to choose a local police commander from three candidates
submitted for consideration by the Los Angeles Chief of Police. The commander would be physically officed in Venice and would control officers assigned to Venice.
Under a similar system, there would be Venice administrators for most city
departments chosen from qualified candidates submitted by the heads of certain city
departments. So, there would be
borough-appointed heads of parks, street services, sanitation, urban forestry,
planning, parking enforcement, etc., in Venice
(We probably would not need a local director for DWP service, and
certainly not for the Harbor Department or LAX.)
Planning decisions would be made by a zoning administrator
assigned and officed in Venice
and initial appeals would go to a Venice Planning Commission appointed by the
borough council. The Venice commission would replace the West Los
Angeles Area Planning Commission, with appeals going to the borough council not
the City Council, as is the current practice.
Planning laws – such as revisions to the Venice Local
Coastal Specific Plan - would be drafted by the Planning Department’s Venice representative in
consultation with the Venice Planning Commission, though would require final
approval of the Los Angeles City Council.
Eventually a percentage of all revenue generated in Venice would remain in a separate Venice account of the City’s Finance
Department and it would be used for discretionary projects selected by the
borough council.
Under a borough model, the voices of Venice residents would move from being
advisory to a degree of local control.
The process to move towards borough councils with devolved
city powers would be initiated by a charter reform commission - appointed by
the City Council - charged with developing the specific language to submit to
city voters. In my model, moving from a
neighborhood council to the borough model would require a vote of each
district’s residents. The City might
also set some minimum period for operation of a district’s neighborhood council
before it could propose to graduate to the borough system.
For many years residents of Venice
have felt neglected by the City of Los
Angeles. This
disillusionment stretches all the way back to the 1926 annexation vote and the
subsequent filling in of the original canals by the engineers of the City of
Los Angeles and the failure over many decades of the City to honor its annexation
promise to build a sewage treatment plant to keep sewage from Ballona Creek
from washing up on Venice beaches. This
frustration has certainly continued over the 28 years I have resided in Venice; sometimes I think
it is only our incredible weather, sun and sea air that keeps us from outright
revolt at the conditions foisted upon us by an uncaring and incompetent city
government.
Unfortunately, little will change until Venice re-establishes cityhood or wins back a
modicum of control of city services and decisions under a borough government.
