HSDNC Resignation Responses and Reactions

On February 15, 2022, nine of the eleven board members of the Hollywood Studio District Neighborhood Council (HSDNC) resigned from the board. We emailed our resignation letter and posted it on the HSDNC website (at https://www.hsdnc.org/2023/02/majority-of-the-hsdnc-board-resigns-in-protest-of-done/ which is no longer available) and Facebook page.

A lot of things happened next, which I will attempt to catalog here.

As an aside, this is an important time for the HSDNC and for neighborhood councils in general. It is election season. For the HSDNC, election day is April 30. The deadline to file as a candidate was February 14. In preparation, LAist/KPCC published this excellent explainer on the NC system from Brianna Lee and dedicated a segment of Airtalk to the NC system.

Seven hours after our resignation letter was emailed, I received a confirmation from DONE that the HSDNC roster had been updated. As far as I know, this is the only contact I or any other of the resigning board members have received from DONE since resigning.

Michael Tessler, our most recent chairperson, added additional thoughts to the HSDNC website (https://www.hsdnc.org/2023/02/a-statement-from-the-hsdnc-chair-regarding-dones-actions/) which are no longer available.

Jon Peltz at KnockLA wrote an in-depth article covering a history of bad behavior by the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment in general and by Mario Hernandez in particular.

Frank Stoltz covered it for LAist/KPCC and MSN.

Bob Gelfand’s scathing commentary was published in CityWatch.

On Saturday February 18, Rachel Beltrán, the general manager of DONE, sent a 6,300 word letter to all NC board members defending the department and blaming the board members for not knowing the ins and outs of procedures in the department.

Michael Tessler published his point-by-point response in a post on Medium. Bob Gelfand published an equally scathing follow-up on CityWatch.