BY AARON WALKER
White Rock

Editor,

David Izraelevitz is resorting to some interesting tactics in his final days in office. At the November 15 council meeting during “Upcoming Agenda Items”, Councilor Izraelevitz asked for an ordinance to be written up for introduction at councils next meeting (11/29). This ordinance is to restructure the Community Development Advisory Board (CDAB) to a task force vs. an advisory board. An advisory board is an ongoing board that continues to make recommendations and has an ongoing membership, whereas a task force has a sunset date. This is what Councilor Izraelevitz wants, he wants to kill CDAB. He never wanted CDAB to exist in the first place, and so with his final time in office will do everything he can to get rid of it.

The new chapter 18 nuisance code isn’t even adopted yet. Council hasn’t even discussed it yet, and here he is wanting to kill off CDAB. This doesn’t make any logical sense, especially since the new nuisance code is still riddled with issues. The timing makes perfect sense: he certainly has the backing of Councilors Sara Scott and Denise Derkacs, two councilors who would love our county to become an HOA. He only has to convince one other councilor to adopt the new chapter 18 nuisance code and kill off CDAB and everything goes on exactly how he wants it: overreach.

Here is what must be done: ANY vote on the fate of the updated nuisance code and CDAB needs to wait until the new council is seated in January. This is too important of an issue to let outgoing councilors ignore public sentiment and hijack on their way out. This would also give the council time to source additional public feedback on the still problematic nuisance code. Taking things slowly and getting them right is the only correct answer at this juncture.

Don’t let the tactics of Councilor Izraelevitz give the county a pass at overreach. CDAB was created BECAUSE the county was overstepping its bounds and the citizens were not happy about it. LET COUNCIL KNOW! E-mail them: countycouncil@lacnm.us and let them know that they should slow this process down and give the new council the say.

There is ZERO harm in slowing down and making sure the nuisance code is where it needs to be. There is ZERO harm in keeping CDAB as an advisory board until we see if there are unintended consequences of the new code that need to be addressed.

 I spent years working for a bipartisan approach to a nuisance code on CDAB, and I will not let Councilor Izraelevitz finish killing off CDAB like this. This is something he’s been trying to do from the beginning. If we take this just a little bit slower, we can still get this right. Once it’s done and implemented correctly? THEN we can see about sunsetting CDAB in the form of a task force. We MUST get it right first. E-mail council, please.