Five L.A. city councilmembers who who held a hearing of their Ad-hoc
Committee on Redistricting in Westchester, April 23, encountered anger,
lack of trust and widespread support for secession from a standing-room
only crowd.

Only two of more than 50 speakers supported a plan that would impose
Council District 11 in place of Council District 6. If the plan is
approved, the scheduled election for a new councilmember representing
Venice, Mar Vista, Westchester, Playa del Rey and other westside
communities next year would be delayed until 2005. Cindy Miscikowski,
who currently represents District 11 would become the westside's
councilmember without an election.

All speakers from Venice condemned the removal of Council District 6.
They included Mindy Meyer, Sheila Bernard, John Kertisz, Kelley Willis,
DeDe Audet, Steve Clare and me (some other leaders of the Grassroots
Venice Neighborhood Council attended but did not speak). Even so, we
Venetians were much more polite that speakers from Westchester and Playa
del Rey who were obviously infuriated over the removal of councilmember
Ruth Galanter and a proposal to take LAX out of the district.
Westchester has been a hotbed of opposition to expansion of the airport.

To the dismay of the councilmembers, quite a number of speakers
expressed their probable support for Valley secession, and possibly
their own. Not one speaker spoke against secession.

Many of the speakers were also alarmed at the prospect of Cindy
Miscikowski, who is married to a prominent Marina deleloper, Doug Ring,
making decisions on issues ranging from LAX expansion to Playa Vista.
Some were concerned that she would not vote on issues due to possible
conflict-of-interest problems. Others were concerned that she would vote
(with the developers).

The councilmembers in attendance, Jack Weiss, Jan Perry, Dennis Zine,
Nick Pacheco and Eric Garcetti, were told by a number of speakers that
their credibility was on the line. They were accused of lying, not
understanding the issues, not listening and talking down to the
audience. Several speakers noted that at a Feb. 13 hearing of the
Redistricting Commission at Daniel Webster school in West L.A., attended
by around a thousand people, keeping District 6 in place was support by
a 3 to 1 margin of speakers. The Commission voted to recommend moving
the district to the east Valley anyway. Attempts by Weiss, Zine and
others to win the trust of the audience largely backfired. Weiss, at one
point, implied that the redistricting issue wasn't very important, and
received howls and boos of protest. Zine complained to the largely
working class audience that he had been up since 6 am and at meetings
around the city.

Ruth Galanter was the first speaker. She suggested a "compromise"
whereby the district would move to the east Valley, but the move would
not be implemented until her term was up in 2003. This "compromise"
would still leave westside voters without an election until 2005.

In my remarks, I noted that some military dictatorships don't even last
that long (2-3 years), and that the council should "redeem our faith in
Los Angeles" by leaving District 6 where it is so that the election can
take place as scheduled in 2003. Otherwise, I said, support for
secession - including restoration of the city of Venice - would
mushroom. Quite a few speakers agreed.

Jim Smith