Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy - Blog #9

To get better acquainted with my organization I attended a Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy board meeting. The meetings are open to the public and are held monthly at various locations around the Los Angeles County.

The meeting I went to was held in Pacific Palisades at a campsite. It was because visitors and board members alike had to park at the park entrance and walk about a mile to the meeting location. The meeting started at 7:30 p.m. and last more than 2 hours. Leaving the meeting and trekking back through the forest to the cars was an interesting experience.

The board of directors consists of nine voting members, three ex efficio members and six legislative members. The board also has a twenty-six member Advisory Committee that meets jointly with the conservancy and contains a wide array of representatives.

The most interesting voting member of are Chairperson Elizabeth Cheadle, appointed by the Senate Rules Committee, William Burke, appointed by the California Coastal Commission, Edward J. Begley, Jr., appointed by the mayor of Los Angeles and James Berkus, appointed by the governor.

There are two empty legislative seats on the board but there are three senators Kuehl, Romero and Scott. One assemblywoman Brownly represents the majority of Malibu, Calabasas and surrounding coastal cities. Although there are legislative representatives those members are rarely at the meeting and aids are sent to the meeting.

I expected to see a bunch of tree huggers at the meeting all driving Prius’ and eating granola. The truth is that the board is political, different people and organizations appoint people to the board and many different interests are at work. Everyone in the room cares about the environment but these are not tree huggers.

The meeting was very long packed full of information. Take a look at the agenda. The first hour of the meeting was going over staff reporters from the numerous organizations and state agencies that work with the conservancy. There is an hour reserved for public comments. The interesting formatting had the comments section before any agenda items were talked about.

This meant that many of the members of the public that came to speak had 3 minutes and could not respond to any of the boards concerns, they could only deliver a speech and hope they covered the concerns of the council.

After the hour for public comments the board spoke about agenda items. Most of the items were about sending letter of compliance to others that were not upholding their part of agreements.