Rental Residential Group Director Endorsements 2014

Editor’s note: The Daily Bruin Editorial Board endorsed candidates for two of the four rental residential group director seats in this weekend’s Westwood Neighborhood Council election.

The editorial board represents the official stance of the Daily Bruin and is composed of four standing members – the editor-in-chief, managing editor, news editor and opinion editor – in addition to six staff representatives.

The endorsement process took place the week before voting. Endorsements were primarily based on a 30-minute interview that two to three members of the editorial board conducted with each candidate. During these interviews, candidates were able to discuss their platforms, knowledge of the Westwood Neighborhood Council and prior experience.

The board selected endorsements for the seats after discussing each candidate and taking a vote. All endorsed candidates received a majority vote from the board.

We encourage students to do their own research into this year’s candidates – and to vote in the elections on Sunday.

Armen Hadjimanoukian – Endorsed

We endorse Armen Hadjimanoukian for the Westwood Neighborhood Council renters seat because he has demonstrated an ability to use that body to accomplish tangible goals, a benchmark the organization too often fails to meet.

For instance, Hadjimanoukian partnered with other members to lobby the Los Angeles Department of Transportation to install a crosswalk by the residential dormitories on Gayley and Landfair. The LADOT is now surveying the site, where many students cross despite frequent traffic and poor visibility.

The Westwood Neighborhood Council is an advisory body, rendering opinions to the Los Angeles City Council rather than governing in its own right. Hadjimanoukian has shown this advisory capacity can nonetheless yield real, if modest, results.

We hope Hadjimanoukian, a third-year economics and international development student, will continue to successfully lobby the city to attend to the needs of Westwood residents and the UCLA population.

In particular, he can make good on his goal of boosting the safety of residents by improving the neighborhood’s lighting.

Although this goal is more often promised than delivered on, Hadjimanoukian’s record on the neighborhood council, along with his involvement in student government, leads us to believe that he is more likely than his opponents to make headway on this crucial issue.

Hadjimanoukian is the outgoing Facilities Commissioner on the Undergraduate Students Association Council. That role means he is familiar not only with the needs of students, but with the institutional agents working to meet those needs.

By leveraging that political capital, we believe Hadjimanoukian can lend students a powerful voice on the neighborhood council while also advocating for the interests of the wider renter community the position represents.

In his interview, Hadjimanoukian demonstrated a cognizance of both renter and student interests, which often diverge. For example, his view on a proposal to install a bike lane on Westwood Boulevard between Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevards was a nuanced one: though he supports the idea, he said he would change his opinion if facts emerged suggesting it would be a significant traffic and parking hazard.

In short, we have confidence that if elected, Hadjimanoukian will continue to succeed as a representative of renters and Westwood’s student population.

David Lorango – Endorsed

This board endorses David Lorango for a seat as a rental residential group director for the Westwood Neighborhood Council.

Lorango, a digital communications professional at Roll Global and a three-year resident of Westwood, will bring a strong background in business and management to the council, as well as ideas for tapping into easily accessible digital platforms to increase engagement from community members.

Lorango’s digitally-forward plans for the council center on expanding the use of Nextdoor, a social media platform that connects users based on their property’s location, providing a private online community for local stakeholders to communicate and share relevant developments in their community.

It’s not a new idea – many L.A. neighborhoods already use the network. But a platform like Nextdoor provides an easy-to-use space that should be palatable for Westwood’s residents, young and old.

In implementing this platform, Lorango’s focus must be convincing the council of the merits of this tool and, of course, encouraging residents to register and engage with one another on the network.

Lorango’s other platforms are less clear.

In an interview with the editorial board, Lorango said he hopes to bring greater accountability to Westwood Neighborhood Council’s projects, ensuring projects are completed within budget and tracking their efficacy over time to ensure they produce expected results.

It’s a noble goal, but it’s also one that all members of the council, or any governing body should consider part of their baseline responsibilities.

Like almost all the other renters seat candidates, Lorango said he also hopes to use a seat on the neighborhood council to foster a more attractive and sustainable environment in Westwood Village for businesses.

The Village is notorious for high turnover rates among businesses and oft-empty storefronts, problems all community members would like to mitigate. But these are long-term problems more easily tackled by the Westwood Business Improvement District than the neighborhood council.

Still, if Lorango can tap into his business expertise and his well-articulated assessment of the Village’s mismatch between the offerings of local businesses and the demands of the large UCLA population, perhaps some fresh ideas will surface.

Ryan Krebs – No Endorsement

This board does not endorse incumbent Ryan Krebs for a renters seat because his platforms, though helpful to Westwood Village as a whole, are largely unfeasible.

Krebs plans to continue to serve as the Westwood Neighborhood Council’s representative on the Westside Regional Alliance of Councils, another advisory board that has most recently delved into large-scale issues like seismic retrofitting throughout Los Angeles. While these efforts are ambitious, this board thinks Krebs would better serve the community by advocating for beautification and renovation projects that are smaller in scope and involve less red tape.

When asked about his platform to attract businesses to Westwood and keep them there, Krebs could offer nothing but vague plans. This board thinks Krebs’ two years of experience would serve him with important institutional knowledge of the council, but his platforms would need fleshing out to provide tangible accomplishments.

Austin Velez- No Endorsement

Austin Velez is an enthusiastic candidate whose platforms demonstrate a solid understanding of student renter concerns. Unfortunately, he had little knowledge of how to realize those platforms, revealing inexperience with the bureaucratic mechanisms of city government. Velez ultimately failed to outline anything but vague plans for achieving his goals.

Some highlights from his docket include a platform to improve conditions for the homeless population in Westwood, as well as the creation of a shuttle bus from Westwood to the North Village and the residential dormitories. These platforms are more creative than those of other candidates for the renters seat, and cater to student concerns as well as larger neighborhood-wide concerns. But Velez could produce no tangible plan to achieve either of these initiatives, both of which present several organizational challenges that even a more experienced candidate might be daunted by.

Ultimately, his lack of practical knowledge and specific plans cast serious doubts on his ability succeed in the renters seat.

Eugene Tseng – No Endorsement

Eugene Tseng’s vision to bring a student voice to the renters seat is well-founded but his inability to produce concrete goals for his platforms leaves him a less qualified candidate than some of his opponents.

Tseng has the necessary experience to tackle local government and actually complete goals. His work at town hall and his multiple connections in Los Angeles local government and student government would serve any candidate well.

But his limited platforms fail to take advantage of that experience. One of his platforms, revitalizing shopping and entertainment, was common to most candidates and his specific ideas to accomplish it were underwhelming. His other two platforms were not as common but his ideas continued to show little promise. To ensure a strong student voice, Tseng said he would go door-to-door, a curious way to accomplish outreach. His goals to increase student engagement events revolve exclusively around existing events like Bruins Night Out.

Tseng’s experience is strong but his less-than-clear vision would keep him from making significant accomplishments.

Jacob Finn – No Endorsement

Jacob Finn showed that he has ample concern for the Westwood renters he is running to represent. Unfortunately, his platforms are not developed enough to match his sincerity.

His most detailed idea, to have UCLA install lights on their property that would illuminate the dirt path between Montana Avenue and Sunset Boulevard on the school’s west side, is novel, but ultimately mistargeted. There are more significant areas of the neighborhood in need of lighting, yet Finn didn’t provide nearly enough detail for his plan to address this persistent concern.

In general, Finn’s platform was to identify and meet the safety needs of Westwood residents. But his plan to do so was vague and generic. Without a more solid set of strategies, we can’t endorse his candidacy.

For future elections, Finn would benefit from making sure his details live up to his zeal for the neighborhood.