Amid Turmoil, ASNC to Hold Special Meeting

Citing a lack of cooperation among board members, the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) has elected to take the reins of the Arroyo Seco Neighborhood Council's monthly meetings.

Board meetings have been wrought with contentious in-fighting between members since Decmeber of 2011, when DONE initiated an audit of the ASNC due to complaints about questionable animal welfare expenditures made by former

The board's funding remains frozen due to the audit, with no indication that that the freeze will be lifted any time soon.

While that audit is still ongoing, DONE General Manager BongHwan KIM said the department decided to take "exhaustive measures" to oversee the board due to the contentiousness that has arisen since the audit was announced.

"They seem to have some factions of groups that keep the board from conducting businesses," Kim said. "We're going to run some meetings and get mediators to hopefully get groups to come to an agreement of how they should work together."

Recently, battles have surfaced between ASNC members from Hermon and the rest of the board over funding for an and the effort by members of the Hermon community to .

At last week's ASNC meeting, members clashed again over the appointment of a new Hermon representative, Maggie Barto, who replaced recently resigned member Ken Kallman.

Though Barto received enough votes to earn a seat on the board, the appointment was opposed by every Hermon resident on the ASNC.

Kim told Patch that DONE that decertifying the ASNC would only be considered as a last resort, should mediation prove unsuccessful.

"If at the end of the process, they decide it's not workable, and [the factions] are going to keep holding up the business of the board, then we would consider decertification," Kim said. "That's a last resort. We've  only decertified three boards in the history of the neighborhood council system."

The ASNC will meet on Wednesday evening in the multipurpose room of for a special training session, to be conducted by the City Attorney's Office. The meeting will be open to the public.

"The training is being given by the City Attorney’s office as a mandatory measure to address the financial “irregularities” that have been uncovered by the DONE audit," Benedict said.

The training session begins at 6 p.m.