When a flier was circulated last month announcing the candidate’s forum sponsored by the city’s official Neighborhood Associations; there was an immediate outcry because of one small sentence that said that recordings would not be allowed.** For better or worse, the city’s seven neighborhood associations have to play by certain rules, including following the state’s open meetings laws, as part of receiving official recognition and funding from the city even though they are non-profits. There was a sigh of relief when a new poster came out with that line removed and in its place a note that a recording would be made available.
Unnoticed by most at first, myself included, was that the list of sponsoring organizations had shrunk. A list that formerly included every Neighborhood Association was now missing the Ocean Park Association. Over the past several days, Santa Moncia Next has tried to get to the bottom of why OPA, which is sometimes an outlier in how Neighborhood Associations conduct business, was now excluded from the event.
Santa Monica Next came into possession of an email from OPA president Sean Besser to the rest of the OPA Board claiming that the group decided to remove itself as a sponsor after they were removed from the planning meetings where questions, moderators and an event format would be decided.
In the email, Besser says that everything was going smoothly in the planning process until, after receiving questions from people questioning the “no recordings” rule, reached out to the City Attorney for clarification. After the City Attorney’s office stated in no uncertain terms that banning cameras was not legal in a city sponsored meeting, he shared that with the rest of the planning committee. From there, OPA was promptly removed from the committee by Northeast Neighbors Chair Patricia Crane who was leading the effort.
Besser, who asked that he not be quoted for this story and did not provide aforementioned email to Next, says he tried to patch things up with Crane and the committee after he was disparaged at the monthly meeting of the Neighborhood Councils for bringing the camera issue to the committee’s attention by Crane. While Besser was not at the meeting, it was attended by a pair of OPA Board members.
When asked to comment on why OPA decided to remove itself as a sponsor, Crane responded, “I don’t feel comfortable discussing OPA’s decision to withdraw as sponsors. They know that they are most welcome to be with us on Sunday for the event, but there was a disagreement about process.”
Crane also claimed the initial ban on recordings wasn’t about limiting access to what the candidates said but encouraging people to attend in person. However, given that Crane has previously tried to stop Santa Monica Next contributor Jason Mastbaum from attending a public event at a public park so he could record it, those concerns felt justified at the time.
“We had originally hoped that if folks were discouraged from using their cameras to record that they might come in person. In the old days we all went in person and it was great,” Crane wrote. “It was clarified by the City that we cannot prevent people from using their phones to record, however annoying that can be.”
OPA is often an outlier when discussing Santa Monica’s Neighborhood Associations. Many associations take strong positions and write bombastic letters about civic needs, sometimes spreading misinformation that bleeds into the city’s public policies. OPA, in Besser’s own words from this Daily Press op/ed, “feels we can best serve the community by 1. raising awareness of such issues with the community at large, 2. general education of their facts and details, and 3. connecting and empowering community members who are passionate about an issue to join together to fight for their beliefs.”
In short, OPA is the least political of the neighborhood associations and their exclusion should raise eyebrows at best and serious concerns at worst.
Are these concerns warranted? Find out for yourself this Sunday at 3:00 p.m. (doors open at 2:00 and seating is limited) when six of the city’s neighborhood associations invite you to their candidate forum at Lincoln Middle School, 1501 California Avenue.
*** Full disclosure, I was one of the people that questioned this in the comments to a post, now deleted, in a Facebook forum devoted to Santa Monica government.
