by Guest Writer Lawrence Bouett
THE HCNC SUBDIVISION FRAUD–A blog dated 4/20/2018 detailed the many inconsistencies and outright lies connected to the fraudulent neighborhood council subdivision application of the Historic Cultural North Neighborhood Council Formation Committee (HCNNCFC).
Make no mistake: the primary purpose of this travesty is to consolidate political power for a hand full of people in Chinatown at the expense of the stakeholder caucuses of Victor Heights, El Pueblo de Los Angeles, and Solano Canyon. The Arts District and Little Tokyo, stakeholder caucuses that are presently members of the Historic Cultural Neighborhood Council (HCNC), were deliberately cut out of the HCNC by the HCNNC subdivision proposal with claims that they were working “against” Chinatown.
“CHINATOWN” PRESS CONFERENCE
Mei Lau a board member seated on the HCNC just last month along with the HCNNCFC staged a so-called ‘press conference’ at 11:30 a.m. on 5/19 in Chinatown, ostensibly to explain their divisive subdivision proposal. In truth, it was a travesty fraught with half-truths, distortions of the truth, falsehoods, and outright lies. The press conference was called by Mei Lau a new HCNC board member seated just last month. You can view the flyer for the press conference here.
Ms. Lau claimed that its purpose was to announce a “… subdivision of Historic Cultural Neighborhood Council (HCNC) into north and south.” To be clear: this is a false. The proposal does not mention anything, anywhere, about a southernportion of the division of the HCNC.
The formation committee (those who called the press conference, along with their co-conspirators) cannot make their case with the truth, so they resort to half-truths, innuendo, faulty logic — and yes, lies.
One of the primary authors of the HCNNC subdivision application is new HCNC Board member Angelica Lopez Moyes who does not reside in in the area. Ms. Moyes uses the technique of asserting that everything she says is true, with the expectation that her word alone thereby constitutes the veracity of whatever she says, and that her word, alone, should be sufficient as proof. A classic example of this technique is her statement that the HCNC “… no longer has the capacity to serve all areas effectively.” Notice that Ms. Moyes provides no proof of this ridiculous statement of her personal opinion; yet she expects it to be believed simply because she has said it.
Never letting an exaggeration go to waste, Ms. Moyes would also have us believe that her every utterance is true and correct in every particular. Unfortunately, this, too, is nothing more than a smoke screen — to what purpose, one can only guess. One might consider these comments about some of Ms. Moyes’ past history. Can we really rationally lend credence to anything Ms. Moyes says? You can read about some of her checkered past here. That she is promulgating this travesty against the HCNC is disturbing, to say the least. The man in the photographs in the link, above, is her one-time boyfriend, Tad Wanawine, the President of the Echo Park Neighborhood Council, who helped drive the EPNC to vote in favor of the sub-division prior to the HCNC even being made aware a subdivision was happening. This was a clear conflict of interest in due to his association with Ms. Moyes. In addition, the boundary change favoring EPNC appears to also be a motivating factor since the HCNC said no to EPNC on the change.
MAKE NO MISTAKE: THE HCNNC SUBDIVISION APPLICATION IS ALL ABOUT A POLITICAL POWER-GRAB BY CERTAIN MEMBERS OF CHINATOWN
The flawed logic here is that Chinatown, Victor Heights, El Pueblo de los Angeles, and Solano Canyon are all quiet, residential communities that share much in common. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is that Victor Heights and Solano Canyon are, in fact, quiet, residential communities. El Pueblo is not particularly residential and is centered around the Plaza. Chinatown, on the other hand, is very-much development-oriented, and it is clearly the intent of the proposed subdivision to consolidate what political power is available to a neighborhood council into the hands of specific Chinatown members at the expense of the surrounding stakeholder caucuses.
The existing HCNC does not want the subdivision
The board of directors of the HCNC has submitted a Community Impact Statement (CIS) in opposition to the subdivision proposal. This CIS was addressed to the Los Angeles City Council. You can read the CIS from the HCNC here.
THE SUBDIVIDED NC’S BYLAWS WERE RE-WRITTEN TO CONVINCE CHINATOWN STAKEHOLDERS OF THE SUB-DIVISIONS “LEGITIMACY”
One of the obligations of a subdivision formation committee is to write proposed bylaws for the new NC if it is approved. However, there now exist not one, but two sets of bylaws for the HCNNC: one that exists on the City’s website and is presumably the official set of bylaws, and the other that was re-written by Ms. Moyes, in which she sets out criteria that will effectively eliminate the possibility of many existing HCNC board members to continue onto the new board, if the subdivision were to be ultimately approved.
This is yet another example of the political power-grab on the part of a factioned Chinatown members and the devious tactics employed by Ms. Moyes.
The HCNNC bylaws on the City’s website (the ‘official’ bylaws) may be found here.
On the other hand, the re-written bylaws that unseat seated HCNC Board members may be found here.
The critical change that Ms. Moyes inserted is the paragraph entitled “Additional Requirements for Board Eligibility”, in which she picked a magical number of 30 months (“one and a quarter terms”); any board member’s having served longer than that term becomes ineligible to carry over to the new board. Nowhere does Ms. Moyes explain the logic of her reasoning; but suffice it to say that Ms. Moyes is using this very criterion as her argument that ‘some board members will not be able to serve on the new board’ as a selling point to garner support for the subdivision.
One in particular is Don Toy who is seated with Moyes and Solano sellout Phyllis Ling at the ridiculous press conference. We wonder if Mr. Toy is aware he is getting bounced.
THE SUBDIVISION APPLICATION COULD NOT EXIST WITHOUT THE COOPERATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT (DONE)
This ill-conceived and fraudulent HCNC subdivision application would never have seen the light of day and survived scrutiny were it not for the dereliction of duty, collusion, and denial of due process on the part of the DONE, the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, which is a City-charted entity. DONE employees are public servants, sworn to uphold the law and the policies and procedures of the City of Los Angeles. Yet there are multiple examples where this has not been done. Such violations leave these public servants subject to administrative, civil, and, in extreme cases, criminal penalties as a result of their actions; yet the Deputy City Attorneys who are charged with advising City entities such as DONE have turned a blind eye to such misdeeds.
The HCNNC subdivision application is ill-conceived and fraudulent. It must be withdrawn in its entirety.
(Lawrence Bouett is the great-great-grandson of Francisco Solano and an HCNC stakeholder. His blog can be found at https://www.solanocanyon.org/solanoblog.)