New Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council to be Sworn in Tuesday

The outgoing board of the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council will hand over its responsibilities to newly elected candidates Tuesday in what is likely to be one of the most significant shifts in power in the organization’s decade-long history.

The change of guard will be held at Eagle Rock City Hall at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Members of the public are welcome to attend—and especially Eagle Rock residents encouraged to do so.

Council member José Huizar is scheduled to preside over the swearing-in ceremony of the ERNC’s new board, which was elected last month amid allegations that so-called “factual-basis” stakeholders who neither live nor work in Eagle Rock had been offered $40 worth of free medical marijuana products to vote in the elections.

In an Oct. 23 motion in the Los Angeles City Council, Huizar called for "a comprehensive review of the definition and process for qualifying” as a community stakeholder. As many as 313 of the 792 votes cast in the Oct. 13 ERNC elections were from those claiming to be factual-basis stakeholders, Huizar pointed out in his motion, a vote on which is pending.

Among the first items on the new board’s agenda will be a review of the ERNC bylaws, particularly the factual-basis stakeholder clause, which the neighborhood council approved on May 3, 2011, according to outgoing ERNC President Michael Larsen.

In a recent e-mail to board members that was also sent to Eagle Rock Patch, Larsen pointed out that it wasn’t until the day before the Oct. 11, 2012 elections that the ERNC received a version of the bylaws approved by the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, which oversaw last month’s vote.

“DONE made several changes to our approved version,” Larsen said in his e-mail. “Some changes were explained, others were not.”

The ERNC bylaws can be viewed on the ERNC website—go to the "About" tab at the top and click on "Bylaws" in the drop-down menu.

Larsen asked ERNC board members to “pay particular attention” to the last page, Attachment B, of the bylaws, pertaining to “Governing Board Structure and Voting.” That section of the bylaws, added Larsen, “will be important to our discussion of items 3-4 on [Tuesday’s] agenda.” (The agenda is attached to this article.)

There have been three challenges to the preliminary results of the ERNC elections, none of which have so far been resolved. Larsen told Eagle Rock Patch that he had e-mailed the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment last Thursday, seeking an update, but had not heard back as of Monday night.

PDF copies of the challenges are attached here.

New ERNC members must be prepared to have their photographs taken on Tuesday for the ERNC website and to provide official public contact information (usually a phone number and an e-mail address) for use on their official ERNC business cards.