Hope you and your family are safe and enjoying the Mar Vista summer.
This summer has been very busy for the MVCC. In June, we launched the new and improved
MarVista.org, the City held its first-ever Vote-By-Mail elections for the entire Neighborhood Council System, and the fiscal year ended (which always adds work). July saw the seating of eleven new board members with four incumbents, the election of the MVCC Officers, and the new committee structure.
August is also busy with the beginning of committee meetings--the first is tonight at 6:30pm,
Planning & Land Use Management (PLUM), tomorrow evening is
Transportation & Infrastructure (T&I) at 6pm, and the
Outreach Committee on Thursday at 6:30pm. To view our monthly schedule, please visit
MarVista.org/Calendar
As mentioned above, we have made some committee changes. These changes are an earnest effort to make the MVCC more in-line as to why the Neighborhood Council System (NC) was created:
to provide a voice for the community regarding "matters to be considered by the City Council, City Council Committees, and City boards or commissions...PRIOR to the City Council making a decision on a matter of local concern." (emphasis mine)
Last fiscal year, the MVCC had 15 committees/subcommittees that required chair appointments for monthly meetings. The number of stakeholders appointed roughly equaled the number of elected board members and the number of subcommittees outnumbered the parent committees.
In my two and a half years of attending MVCC meetings, I have witnessed lion-hearted stakeholders burnt out by too many subcommittee meetings, and/or the burdensome legalities of chairing a committee.
Remember, if a stakeholder is appointed as a chair, they no longer are a stakeholder. Our governing body requires they take the same training (~4.5 hours) and be held accountable to the same governing documents as if they had been elected to the board. One of the best governing documents (i.e., The Brown Act which creates a transparent government), also requires that chairs guard "against discussing matters that are likely to be issues within the subject matter jurisdiction" of the MVCC whether at a "informal gathering", through "serial meetings or intermediary", or with "technological devices". This does put a damper on discussing local matters with friends who might also chair a committee or is a board member.
Since
stakeholders are the reason we exist, we needed to scale back so stakeholders could once again fully participate in the process by doing research, reporting, discussing, and making recommendations on how the MVCC should vote. We must always be stakeholder-friendly!
So, welcome stakeholders! We hope you enjoy the new schedule.
We have scaled back from 15 to 7 meetings a month. The meetings will be held Tuesday thru Thursday evenings the first two weeks of the month. To accommodate the Tuesday thru Thursday schedule, and to allow stakeholders to attend both the Venice
and Mar Vista Board of Directors' meetings, the Board of Directors' meeting has been moved to the third Wednesday of the month.
We hope this new schedule will encourage you to fully participate in the process and make a difference in Mar Vista!
Please visit the new and improved
MarVista.org to
Find Your Zone , check the
Calendar for upcoming meetings, get to know more about your Neighborhood Council, and discover how you would like to participate in helping Mar Vista!
Please feel free to contact us, we are here to serve. Have a great week!
