ERNC Elections Over; Did You Vote? Did You Know? Exec. Comm. Meets Tonight

Tonight, Tuesday, April 29, 2014, The Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council's Executive Committee meets at the Coffee Table Restaurant, 7 pm (subject to change) where it will be setting the Agenda for the next Tuesday meeting of the full board on May 6th. Tonight's meeting will be covering the details of moving on and installing the new and returning members of the ERNC. A board orientation is also another matter that is expected to be part of next Tuesday's meeting. Then add in any new and ongoing agenda items next week's meeting should be very busy,

The election "winners" outcome has been distributed online by the ERNC. That only shows the outcome but not a breakdown of all votes cast.  I was a a candidate for the newly created office of "At Large Director," that was won by David Greene.  Of three candidates for that office, only David and I were at the Candidate Forum last week that had more candidates than audience members, serving more to introduce candidates to each other than to the public.

Results of all voting is in attached photo of the "Canvas of Votes," posted by the volunteer election officials assigned to ERNC's election.  Besides the numbers of votes cast, a very small number of eligible Eagle Rock voters actually participated. Why is that?  It is attributable in part to lack of interest for those who were actually aware of the election, and then, for the the many others, they just did not know of the election, the candidates, or even the ERNC itself, sufficiently to make a choice on voting.  In the end, it's an "outreach' problem, but one that has to be addressed by the new mixture of new and old Board members to serve for the next two-year term.

   If you will see from the photo of the "Election Canvass" sheet that was posted at Eagle Rock City Hall, there were 242 ballots cast for all of Eagle Rock. It's a very low number for an election that includes a generous definition for "stakeholder."   Qualifications generally include anyone 16 years or above, and including those living, working, owning real property, having a businees or employed in Eagle Rock, as well as attending school here. In NC elections, the widest scope of voters possible is considered.   Further, in being all-inclusive of a community, voting requires no citizenship requirement, nor is legal status required.  Some assorted items of documentation under other categories is necessary to confirm Eagle Rock eligibility, and that may be cumbersome for some to find.

All NC elections will allow a voter to cast a ballot, even if missing some required documentation since there are 3 days allowed to fax or otherwise present the information, making the "Provisional Ballot" part of the vote count. In other words, you aren't turned away if you still need a missing item to complete the voter registration.

The low numbers of votes are what I consider to be a lack of attention to what should be the principal task of an NC, reaching the stakeholders.  That can begin the process of creating an ongoing communication with any information exchange enabled or enhanced by having established that condition by deliberate and thoughtful attention, instead of simple and ineffective presumptions.

The measure of the extent that "outreach" has been achieved has to be what you see in the election process.  That goes for both the candidate recruitment and the notice of the election itself.  The various elections among the 12 NC regions represent widely divergent outreach efforts.

Locally, I think we are among those with a "needs improvement" as far as rating the election process for this year.  As I made contact with persons in seeking votes, most persons were either not aware of the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council, or even of the fact of election, or both. Many had a notion of the ERNC but not much more.  However, many in Eagle Rock are fully aware of the ERNC, especially the persons being more involved in local activities.  The work at hand is to reach the others.

As the low voter numbers bear out, our "outreach" is not doing any significant job of informing any broad base of persons in Eagle Rock of the Eagle Rock NC and what its purposes are.

 As for any question about the "purposes" of any NC,  there are some basic sources.  The City Charter and the Neighborhood Council Plan, as well as the enabling city ordinances, shape the function as an organizational plan.  One direct but often unheeded direction for an NC is in acting as a conduit to the city government, advisory to council and mayor, based on the views the neighborhood constituency. Another function that is unevenly handled by NCs is the monitoring of delivery of city services, so that we get the best level possible and see where problems may exist to get addressed by the city.

How all this outreach is achieved is left largely to each NC, with a currently set budget of $37,000, coming from the city's tax dollars, available to address that function.  The "funding" process has evolved in many areas to be the understood function of an NC, replacing in priority, actually informing the neighborhood of the NC's purposes and the relevant city operations that affect the public.  Many NCs have already established themselves in the minds of their community, so developing more communication exchanges as the rest of the process for those NCs is less of a task than for areas that still don't really know much about their NC.

There are many training sessions to help develop and use communication modes to accomplish contact with the public.  I have noted that ERNC members have rarely attended activities beyond the boundaries of Eagle Rock, losing out on what's offered by that participation.  An unused form of media so far is of various direct mailings to the neighborhoods, and at a low cost per piece in a database-enabled manner that can be done for target areas or groups, and so on. That was part of the several outreach modes in a few presentations offered several times these past months for a better election impact. 

A task to be addressed during upcoming term of office for ERNC should be to increase the participation by voters and also increase meeting attendance.  This should be accomplished if more of the ERNC Bylaws-specified functions become enabled. Another source for improvement can be found in the involvement with activities in the system that are designed to remedy deficiencies that have arisen by past customary practices that a board may have inherited and followed.

All considered, the next election in 2016 should have some improvement in voter participation, at least in proportion to current city elections, if we see that expected heightened outreach efforts.  More people will become aware of what is available to them and what they can do for their own voices to be heard.