Four-way stop
Council members to assume duties of disbanded anti-violence committee
By Andre Coleman 04/24/2008
Official efforts to stop youth violence in Pasadena will now be a battle fought primarily by the City Council.
On April 7, the council voted unanimously to replace the multijurisdictional 14-member Committee on Youth Development and Violence Prevention with a four-member council committee that does not yet have any members or even a name.
Representatives from the council, the Pasadena Unified School District, the Altadena Town Council and the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees all sat on the previous committee, which some critics claimed had become “bogged down in minutiae” as its members struggled to understand the many complex issues leading up to youth- and gang-related violence.
It is not known when the new committee will start or which four council members will participate. Council members Victor Gordo, Steve Madison, Jacque Robinson and Mayor Bill Bogaard sat on the previous committee.
“Some good things came out of the committee and we have some real momentum in working with the other agencies, but the staffing for the larger committee did not work out very well,” Bogaard said.
According to Bogaard, the city budgeted $50,000 for the committee. The other agencies agreed to provide funds for a total of $100,000.
But in the end, the school district did not pay, Pasadena City College put up $10,000 and Los Angeles County later awarded $20,000 to other youth organizations already working on the area’s gang problems.
“I found the process frustrating and I did not feel we were as effective as we could have been,” said School Board member Renatta Cooper.
“Making it part of the City Council, where it belongs, may be what needs to happen to move things forward,” Cooper said.
The original committee was approved by the council on Sept. 17, shortly after the death of 17-year-old Ebony Huel, who was shot and killed outside an illegal youth nightclub on Lincoln Avenue.
Huel’s death culminated a string of gang-involved shootings that resulted in the deaths of nine people dating back to December 2006 — with most of those incidents occurring in Northwest Pasadena. But Huel’s death sparked citywide outrage and concern.
“In the previous structure it was a lot of elected officials and no staff,” said Pasadena police spokeswoman Janet Pope Givens, the department’s liaison to the committee. “The elected officials didn’t have the staff capabilities to get the work done.”
That work included developing a master plan for youth development and violence prevention and using city staff to find out what resources exist, what resources are needed and how to fill in the gaps.
Supporters of the previous committee still want a say in what the council committee finally comes up with.
“I do think it is very important that one way or another we maintain the multijurisdictional input the earlier committee had and there are several mechanisms for doing that,” said Altadena Town Councilman Tim Kelly. “It is equally important we continue to hear from the community.”
The Pasadena council is considering using members of the earlier committee as advisers, said Robinson.
“Every board had to vet every decision and bring it back and then it had to go to the council,” Robinson observed. “I don’t think that means we don’t want PCC or PUSD to be involved. I still think it’s a collaborative effort and I still think every board will be represented at the meeting. I am still very much interested in being a part of it.
“There is no reason the new committee has to start from scratch,” she said. “We still have the subcommittee report for the youth master plan which has been approved by the council.”
So far this year there have been no homicides in Pasadena, and although nobody is giving the committee all of the credit for that reduction, Bogaard thinks that it may have helped.
“I like to think that the committee’s existence focused everybody’s attention, including parents and police efforts, on the problem,” Bogaard said. But, he said, “There is a cyclical nature to this activity and no one should suggest the committee has a silver bullet.”
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