I hope our newsletter finds you well and that you spent a pleasant Father’s Day.
I want to say thank you to all those who showed up to our Ethics & Open Government and Funding Trainings on Wednesday June 19 at the CD 9 Field Office. Over 60 people came to the training, standing room only. Way to show up South LA! The session was conducted by the City Attorney’s Office, represented by Ms. Carmen Hawkins who did an outstanding job. We also featured our very knowledgeable Funding Team, which was represented by Betty Won-Oyama. The Funding Training covered the requirement for treasurers, card holders and second signatories and some folks even signed up and took care of some requirements for the checking account system. Assisting on site with logistics, guidance and trouble-shooting were our veteran Neighborhood Empowerment Advocates (NEA), Taneda Larios, and Lisette Covarrubias. Kudos to our NEAs for helping make an outreach push for attendance at these very important trainings!
A huge thanks goes out to Councilmember Curren Price (CD 9) and his Field Deputies Ms. Nora Gutierrez and Mr. Jose Ugarte for the all their help and support in order to execute this training session, even staying till 10:30 p.m. so that the room would remain open for the participants!
Due to the overwhelming positive responses from all of you across the City with regards to Ethics and Open Government,, we are working on bringing you additional trainings in this subject by City Attorney’s Office; we hope to visit areas of the City that have not yet benefitted from this training. We will be announcing some dates and possible locations shortly. Alternatively, you may visit our website in order to complete the Ethics & Open Government training online.
Bylaws moratorium will be lifted on July 1, 2014 and will be reinstated back on April 2015. Please get us your bylaw adjustments applications as early as possible, so that we may plan accordingly and anticipate on any changes that need to be scheduled with our Board of Neighborhood Commissioners. If you need any technical assistance on bylaws, please let us know and your NEA will be happy to provide you with the assistance.
I am very excited to report that we continue conducting our basic board orientation through our Leadership Academy and as of today we have trained 75 Neighborhood Councils! 75 NCs have given us the opportunity to come in and provide you with our 90 minute basic board orientation. It has been a difficult task given our staffing levels, however we are very happy that we can come out to you and give you that one on one assistance. We are coming close to wrapping up our board orientation efforts and we will be sending you a survey where we will ask you to provide feedback on the board orientations. We want to be able to improve and enhance our services and support to you so your feedback will be very much appreciated. With board orientation trainings nearing an end, we will be looking at the requests we have received for individual board retreats. If you’d like more information on what a “board retreat” entails, give us a call and we are happy to help you assess if your groups wants and/or needs a board retreat.
I trust that by now, many of you have discussed the most recent Commission posting policy. Please let us know if you have any questions on posting and the new requirements. Remember that we are available through our NCSupport@lacity.org to review and post your agendas. We provide you valuable feedback so that you can improve your agendas, if need be. For general questions, you may reach us via our Department’s Help Line at (213) 978-1551. As an added note, last week we said goodbye to one of our assistants Mr. Stephen Gluck; Stephen will be missed and we wish him well with his career endeavours.
As always, thank you for all the great work that you do to support your community and this great Neighborhood Council System!
If you have any questions, please contact us at NCSupport@lacity.org or via telephone at (213) 978-1551. Have a great weekend!
Leyla A. Campos
Director of Field Operations
