After ousting two of its highest-ranking and longest-serving leaders, the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council will complete its overhaul and perhaps signal a new course on July 12, when board members elect a new president and vice president.
Ray Regalado, NWSPNC’s president for eight years, and Laurie Jacobs, whose vice presidency was part of nine years of board service, learned they had lost on June 30, when the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment released official results of the election. But those outcomes only confirmed preliminary counts.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Regalado said. “You never know what’s going to happen in this type of a process.”
Regalado received 70 votes to finish third in the race for two Park Western area seats behind Craig Goldfarb (102) and Dan Dixon (89). Jacobs received 65 votes, and finished fourth in a race for three at-large seats, losing to Angela Sumner (92), Cynthia Gonyea (86), and Gwen Henry (76).
Regalado also serves as a commissioner for the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners, or BONC. He works full time and his responsibilities as president and commissioner — as well as COVID-19 restrictions and his recovery from knee surgery — prevented him from doing a lot of campaigning.
“The president has a lot of responsibility on their shoulders to make sure that all the meetings are taking place, that everyone is doing what they need to do to represent the community, not their own personal agenda,” Regalado said. “It’s really a full load.”
Jacobs did not do a lot of campaigning either, as she also works full time and had a lot of meetings to attend as vice president, as well as outreach chair. She used social media and called people but did not go door-to-door. She put a slate together, which is a list of candidates that endorse each other.
“Any time I campaigned, I campaigned for other people too,” Jacobs said. “It’s not about me; it’s about the collaborative effort. So, it was extremely disappointing that someone didn’t understand how a slate works and tried to use that against me, calling it manipulative.”
Jacobs was referring to a flyer that was distributed that said she was trying to manipulate the board, and that she wanted to elect the people on the slate so that they would vote her way.
“Once I saw that someone had the time to do … a negative campaign, I wasn’t going to play that game,” Jacobs said.
She instead focused on her own experience and the work she has done for the board when she campaigned.
Board member John DiMeglio was not included on Jacobs’ slate, but he made a slate of his own with Goldfarb and two other people, all of whom were elected. DiMeglio did lots of campaigning, which helped him get re-elected, but he said he did not even speak to half the people he knew.
DiMeglio had several criticisms with the board, including the proposed properties the board has approved for construction. He said that even if the other two neighborhood councils in San Pedro do not approve a project, Northwest usually will. He owns an apartment building in San Pedro, and when he built it, he had to include two parking spaces per unit — while some modern projects do not even have half of that.
DiMeglio said he is one of the few dissenting voices on the board and that the rest of the board members tend to vote together. He said that it has been him against the whole board in the past, and that he had trouble getting motions passed.
Jacobs said that the city did not run the elections well. Because of the pandemic, it was all vote-by-mail, but stakeholders had to request ballots and send pictures of their IDs to prove they lived within each council’s boundaries. Jacobs said that some people received ballots after voting was already over.
Jacobs said that while she is disappointed that she was not re-elected, she is not going anywhere and she will continue to do community work. She runs a girl scout troop and she is an analyst for the South Bay Cities Council of governments working on using Measure 8 funds to help homeless people.
“I’m also the outreach chair; I run events; I’m on the budget and finance committee; I’m on the executive committee,” Jacobs said. “So, maybe a step back … is a good thing for me at this point.”
Regalado would not rule out running for the board again in the future once a seat is available — but he stressed he would only do so if he felt the board needed it.
“I have a certain skill set that has lent to … an effective neighborhood council running, where there has been very little controversy, where there has been very little contentious opportunities … for people to lash out,” Regalado said. “If I were to see that happening to our neighborhood council, which has avoided that over these last many years, I may decide to try to go back. But I mean if things are all … working so that people are being heard, people are being treated equitably and everyone is doing the job they’re elected to do, then why would I do that?”
One of the things Regalado has done as president is to build relationships with outside parties, including with people from the city. Regalado’s philosophy is to listen to his constituents and represent them, putting aside his own feelings.
“It’s a matter of just being able to be at the table, to have these discussions and to be able to address the needs of the people that you represent,” Regalado said. “That’s the important part of this kind of work. Unfortunately, there are some people who feel that … the work is needed around what they want to see.”
Regalado may not be on the board anymore — but he’ll still be involved in the council as a BONC commissioner. He represents region 12, which includes all the neighborhood councils in the Harbor Area.
“I still need to be able to clearly understand what’s happening within our region of neighborhood councils,” Regalado said. “My responsibility to neighborhood councils doesn’t end when that new board, new leadership is selected. It allows me to just get deeper into my other responsibilities as a commissioner.”