Community Group Comes Up Short

What if you held an election and no one ran?

The bylaws of the Mar Vista Neighborhood Association call for 11 directors to sit on the board for two-year terms, but for the first time in the group's history, it came up distressingly short.

At the most recent election, only eight people tossed their hats into the ring. 

“We need help,” President Cary Gordon told the assembled crowd of approximately 60 residents at the gathering at in late January. “If you have some time and want to work for your community at the grassiest of grass-roots level.”

Seven of the eight candidates who attended the meeting all gave only brief statements, given that they were all shoo-ins for the positions. And they all concluded with a plea to find others to volunteer for the board.

Given the small community that is Mar Vista, and the fact that there is also an active Mar Vista Community Council with a slew of board members and committees, is it time for the Mar Vista Neighborhood Association to rethink the way it operates?

Outgoing association President Bryan Gordon said that down the line it might be worth looking into the way the association runs its board, but he didn’t think that that time was now. “This is our fifth election and we’ve always managed to find 11 people to run for the 11 positions, sometimes even one or two more,” he said.

Gordon moved into the neighborhood in the late 1990s and was instrumental in setting up the association when he realized that the community had no voice or body to represent it. “It was every man or woman for themselves,” he recalled. The Mar Vista Community Council was established a year after the Neighborhood Association, and Gordon said that beyond the occasional announcement of a park event or a road closure, the association and the council do not cover the same issues or even the same areas.

The neighborhood association covers the area between Centinela Ave and Inglewood Blvd bordered on the north by Charnock Rd and the south by Venice Blvd, and the 405 Freeway bordered on the north by Palms Blvd, and on the south by Venice Blvd and serves close to 1200 homes. The community council covers the entire neighborhood and serves over 25,000 people.

“[The association] is grass roots,” said Gordon. “[Unlike the council], we’re not bound by the Brown Act and not beholden by the city to find out how to spend $50,000 per year. We don’t have to appease the city of Los Angeles. We are devoted 100 percent to how we can better our community.” Gordon has served on the council in the past and said half their meetings were spent dealing with city bureaucratic issues.

When the association was established 11 years ago, “people came to learn about the issues affecting our community and to talk about them, rather than learning about what was happening to our neighborhood in the L.A. Times,” said Gordon.

But that was 11 years ago, and today, Gordon acknowledges that the neighborhood demographics are changing and that it is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit people to serve on the board.

“It’s a lot of time and commitment and other neighborhood associations that I visited —including Westdale and the Westside Civic Association have a lot of very old people who are either retired or have a lot of time on their hands. A geriatric crowd sees the value in civic participation. It’s not so easy with younger people.”

And that, he said, is part of the changing demographic in the Mar Vista Neighborhood Association's boundaries. This is the first year he won’t be on the board and he points out that he is the only person who has sat on the board who has children living at home. “We did have a couple of people who tried to be on the board,” he said. “But they simply couldn’t find the time.”

Revisiting the bylaws and perhaps lowering the number of board members required could be a valid discussion, Gordon said. “I’m pretty sure they can change the bylaws at any time, but I don’t know if they’d want to rush to do that when this is the first year we haven’t filled all the positions, but it’s certainly a worthwhile conversation to have.”

Despite this year’s recruiting hiccup, Gordon is adamant that the association is still an effective, working body and has made a real impact on the community. “We have given this community a voice and political capital with our City Council office,” he said. “We are on the map. When we ask for a seat at the table with our city councilman, we get it.”

Gordon also cited the association’s newsletter that is hand delivered to 1,200 homes every quarter by the association’s 75 block captains. “We have a captain for every block in Mar Vista. We do that because we feel it’s important to connect with our residents on a regular basis.”

It’s that sense of community that makes Gordon confident they’ll fill those remaining seats on the board. For now, the association is still looking for three good men or women to step up. According to Gordon, all you need is time, interest and a willingness to be civil with your neighbors.

“The association can give people a role and a voice in shaping our future,” he said. “That is the hallmark of Mar Vista. We stand out because we have a much more empowered community than some. It used to be hard to find anybody to take a stand, but now you have a lot of people in Mar Vista willing to stand up and be counted, which is great.”