In the midst of the presidential election season, the Westwood Neighborhood Council will hold its own election event tonight ““ a forum between council candidates and community members.
The Westwood Neighborhood Council, an elected board responsible for providing services for the Westwood community and advising the Los Angeles City Council, is currently getting ready for its second election since the organization was formed in 2010.
The election takes place on Oct. 28 at the Westwood Recreation Center on South Sepulveda Boulevard.
The Office of the City Clerk is mandated to organize events pertaining to council elections, but could not this year because of financial restrictions, said Tony Wilkinson, the moderator of the forum and an independent election administrator from the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment.
The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, which supports neighborhood councils in Los Angeles, is organizing the election and tonight’s forum instead.
During the event, 35 candidates running for 19 board seats with two-year terms will meet with and answer questions from Westwood stakeholders. Five of the seats are uncontested.
Each candidate will have two minutes to make a statement about why they should be elected.
“We let everyone not only ask questions but shake hands and meet people,” Wilkinson said. “We thought it would be a way to get the best of both worlds, how they look standing and speaking formally and finding out how they are in an intimate (setting).”
Among the contested positions are four seats for homeowners, four seats for business owners and four seats for people who rent a house or an apartment, which includes students living in dorms.
Roxane Stern, a longtime Westwood resident who was involved in forming the council, said anyone who owns property, rents property or works in Westwood can vote.
Third-year history student Angus Beverly currently holds a rental residential group director seat and is running for the student director seat unopposed. He hopes students will come out to the forum and vote in the election in an effort to be more involved in the community, he said.
“I think it’s important (students vote) because they live here, any decisions made can affect them. They have a stake in the community,” Stern said.
Samuel Haws, a second-year economics student who is running for a rental residential group director seat, said he hopes students will participate in the forum, given the large size of the UCLA student body relative to the number of residents in Westwood.
“Only five of (the 19 council) seats are even open for UCLA students,” Haws said. “It’s pretty alarming that we don’t have more of a say than we do (currently).”