Controversy Again in the upcoming Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council Elections
"Vera Padilla's 2008 Lincoln High School Memo"
"Vera Padilla falsely identify as Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council Member"
Thursday, April 29, 2010 will see another round of Neighborhood Council Elections and in Lincoln Heights, controversy is again the norm.
In the flyer pictured above regarding the Business Improvement District Meeting on Tuesday, one can see that Vera Padilla is listed as an member of the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council.
One little problem, Vera Padilla is not a current member of the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council. She was elected as Vice-President in the last elections in 2008, but never took the Oath of Office. This was due to the Lincoln High School memo pictured on top, which was an blatant conflict of interest and cause the school administration to cease holding meetings at the campus. Padilla was replace by Erika Gallo, who is running for President in this upcoming election cycle.
The irony here is that Padilla is running for a position in Thursday's election as an "Community Base Organization Rep", in which three people are elected but only two, including Padilla, are running. Thus, Padilla needs only one vote to get elected.
But Padilla's actions may cause an ethics investigation on why she would allow a community flyer to go public, with the false information. But then this would not be the first time that Padilla was found to be ethically-challenged in regards to Lincoln Heights community affairs.
This episode comes on top of some questionable actions by LHNC members yesterday at the Second Annual Ramona Gardens Fashion Show. Assemblyman Kevin De Leon was on hand to give certificates of appreciations to the groups and community members who helped in the successful event.
One of the certificates was given to the LHNC for their donation of $2,000 for this event. Accepting the award on the behalf of the LHNC was Esther Rojas, who is running against current Vice-President Erika Gallo for President in Thursday's election. Rojas along with LHNC Treasurer Frank Wada and Nancy Rojas, proceeded to politicize the event by passing out their slate flyers for the "Action Team". It should be noted here that the whole LHNC voted to approve this donation and should be commended for their support. Thus, none of the slates in this election had no business in pushing their political agendas at Saturday's event.
** This blogger should note here, that he is an candidate for Treasurer on the "Club Lincoln Slate" with Erika Gallo, Claudia Agraz, David Correa, Lupe Guillen, Ted Juarez, Elena Popp and others, in this election. But as a community member involved in the Fashion Show, I did not want to denigrate this positive occasion by campaigning during the proceedings.
Also should note here, that opposite points of view can be posted here at Mayor Sam in the comment section.
Your thoughts..................
Scott Johnson in CD 14
Posted by Red Spot in CD 14 @ 4/25/2010 08:51:00 AM
13 Comments:
Some neighborhood councils do not have enough people to even make a quorum. And, voting will not matter because the people that are running will be automatically voted in because there is not enough people running.
And, some neighborhood councils have done no notification at all ( not sure if DONE was suppose to or the NC) of outreach or letting the neighborhood know there is an election going on.
Maybe some can post who is suppose to let the community know elections are going on and other information. My NC has had no communication about voting even with NC board members.
This is a really narrow band of interest compared to all the other things going on in the city. Region G elections are on Thursday. I don't see that passing out flyers is any election or ethical violation. It MAY IMPLY that the event was set up by the group mentioned, but that's up for interpretation.
You really might consider that the idea of DeLeon, Fabian Nunez' pal, giving the certificate to the NC for facilitating the event was some sort of pandering to NC or vice versa, but even that is a weak connection.
You don't say WHO put the flyer together. A lot of times, that's the problem. They don't check for accuracy of much and fill in with what they recall from the last time around.
I don't think there's much here without some better context to see the big picture that you're complaining about. I think this doesn't rate the concern you think it does, at least as it's presented.
I hear Boyle Heights' NC is a bit more of a contest, though. Anything on that?
Good luck on the election. I think the city clerk's page has the link to the candidates for each NC. You could put up a link and it would be a better form of disclosure, but please don't cut and paste it- it sounds like there's lots of people running in this NC.
in cd-14
I just found out yesterday that my neighborhood council is having elections this coming Thursday.
I only found out by running into a previous office holder. There's been no outreach that I've seen. I was told that's because the city clerks office is now running the election.
So if any of you are eligible to vote in the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council, the election is Thursday at the Highland Park Rec, Center.
Also in CD 14
The Neighborhood Councils are a constant source of irritation to Mayor Villaraigosa. In his view they are a bunch of people with too much knowledge about city business, and he cannot control them the way he'd like to. That's why virtually all funding for the NC's will either dry up, or will be so hard to access as to be nonexistent.
The Mayor's doing the same thing with another City entity that he cannot control; the City Attorney who this week sharply reacted to the Mayor's 2010-2011 Budget slashing 18% from the City Attorney's finances.
Trutnanich came into office with a 2009-2010 budget that was already reduced by 18% from Rock's last year, so overall, the Mayor has slashed the City Attorney by 36% - more than any other City Department. On top of the budget cut were some unexpected expenses; $1M in salaries for the eight 'at will' people Rocky tenured, and about $1.5M in unpaid bills that Rocky failed to pay.
Despite those setbacks, and while many accuse Trutanich of being a "bully" or a "bull in a china store," the inconvenient truth for photo-op play-pretend democrat politicians, it that Trutanich's administration has actually done more in 10 months, than Rocky could do in 8 years. It's a fact that has the Mayor spitting blood on a daily basis, has democrats generally worried, and democrat bloggers like 'Mulholland Terrace' busy cutting and pasting the well-worn jabs that are becoming increasingly hysterical and vitriolic.
The Mayor, for his part, was deeply humiliated when his pick for City Attorney failed to perform on election night. That, as well as the Mayor's own disappointing electoral performance, put an end to his dream to become Governor. The Mayor also shot himself in the foot by backing the wrong horse in the Presidential race, endorsing Hillary Clinton and thereby ending any chance of becoming US Ambassador to Mexico - his fallback should the Governor thing not happen.
So now the Mayor is fighting back, lashing out at the City Attorney in the name of 'shared sacrifice' while he makes a 2.75% cut in his own budget.
Whatever you say about Phil's recall effort, it's hard to find any reason to like this Mayor, and despite Phil's limitations, it seems that Villaraigosa's childish tit for tat behavior is doing more for the recall than Phil's best efforts ever could.
The frustrating thing for democrats is seeing their elected heroes behaving like heels, and suffering the humiliation of seeing a 'decline to state' former Republican showing them up at every juncture.
Perhaps it's a sign of things to come in November?
RED SPOT, WE ARE NEARLY A WEEK INTO THE RECALL. CAN YOU PLEASE START PRESSURING PHIL AND WALTER TO PROVIDE AN UPDATE? I DONT WANT TO INVEST MY HEART IN THIS IF THESE PEOPLE ARE JUST JOKERS.
Can't seem to recall your topic.
Awwww, Red Sput crying again about something that only he cares about.
Why didn't you run with Hugo Pacheco, Mary Pacheco, Manny Ramirez, Stephen Lampson so they could destroy the council again.
OR better yet, you should have run with Robert Vega so he could quit a third time.
Keep on losin' you big lovable loser.
Here is a link to one of the City Clerk's Election information pages. It has links that include NCs links for individual data under each of the 9 regions, Lincoln Heights is in Region G with the NCs in the East/Northeast area.
There are 90 NCs. Westwood NC came in to be certified too late to be in this process. Some regions are done, and some still will be coming up next month.
The outreach was not the City Clerk's responsibility; each NC had that job. Council cut out lots of money from the plan and when the NCs said it could be done cheaper within the NC process and not using the City Clerk's office, they really considered making the change midstream, which would really have be a disaster to try to gear up for that change.
That was especially scary a possibility when the Council members saw dollar signs by scuttling the Clerk's laid out process for who-knows-what as a substitute. These CMs just are so short sighted and outright wasteful nitwits when they act collectively.
Some can think alone ok, but others alonew or with an encyclopedia are still nitwits in how they manage city business.
Each Council meeting just shows more examples of this. Does anyone know if they stopped the voting machine from showing an automatic "Yes" vote? I heard Zine tell one member after a vote, "We will change that to a 'NO' vote for you." I guess he could not get back to his seat fast enough to manually vote. Nitwits, very well paid nitwits at $15 grand a month, plus perks.
The only person I've heard crying in this neighborhood is Vera Padilla - who compromised her employment at Lincoln High School and was forced to retire. Then, after winning Vice-President, she never took the office and quietly disappeared. She's turning into Steve Kasten with Frank Wada and Martha "Sevin" (wtf?) Riley as her very own puppets.
Everyone knows those two are gullible and cowards that just follow the crowd.
were is oscar when you need him?
The City clerk will not overturn any NC election, no matter how noxious the behavior is.
Billy Hays, on the Foothill Trails District NC board and running again, not only MODERATED all of the candidates' forums, but he put his name on all of the official, supposedly neutral flyers for the FTDNC because he was election committee chair and he refused to recuse himself.
Hays was relected by 10 votes.
The City Clerk disallowed all election challenges.
As for what went on at the Greater Griffith Park NC, well - Griffith Park Wayist will be publishing that mockery in the near future.
The motto for those running for NC boards:
Do and behave however you want. Violate ethics. Violate the law. Violate common decency.
You're good.
ABOUT THE NC ELECTIONS:
This is a link to the City Clerk's pdf page on NC elections that I left off yesterday or whenever I posted the reference. It's for the whole NC election system so you can check election days, candidates and filed candidate statements by going to specific NCs.
http://cityclerk.lacity.org/election/ncdocs/Election%20Information%20listed%20by%20Region.pdf
The pages with "UPDATE" notations are the ones to check for election items.
I just finished reading the latest post by Scott today on the LH situation and suggest some better formatting, use of italics, quotation marks, indents and so on to try not to get readers totally lost in the story that jumps around by source and time and whatever other way it can be hiding the ball.
It's a post that's sounding as mixed up as it could be. You could just imagine if the mayor dropped his speech, picked it up in whatever random order he finds it, and then read it with all the continuity mixed up. Not that this particular example would be much better when everything IS in order and read out loud. And that's still the case considering that SOMEBODY ELSE writes what he says.
A little shorter text length could help cut down this torture of trying to figure the story out. We might still be lost, but it would end faster.
Yes! Where are those losers Hugo and Mary Pacheco, Manny Ramirez, Robert Vega and Stephen Sarinana Lampson? The last I heard their buddy Scott Lively got the Ugandans to provide the death penalty for being gay, but before that Lively sent a threatening letter to former Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council treasurer George Pantazis on behalf of the Pachecos in order to intimidate him on a variety of false charges. Speaking of false charges, the Pachecos thrive on them. No, Mary, George's son Dino did not run for office with false credentials, as you accused him of doing. And, no, I did not stalk you as you falsely announced at a LHNC meeting, although I have plenty of footge of you giving me goo-goo eyes at that meeting. And, no, gays did not get AIDS from having sex with apes in Africa as you falsely announced in flyers you passed around at Sacred Heart (yeccch!) Church.
Is there anything you losers DON'T lie about?
Ken Camp, Los Angeles
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