At the Congress of Neighborhoods on Saturday, I was asked to do an “inspirational” close. No pressure, of course, and please be sure to make it only 4-5 minutes long. Naturally, I freaked out wondering what I could say to folks who are constantly an inspiration to me. Luckily, I had completed a General Manager retreat the day before the Congress, and two ideas really resonated with me and my work with the Neighborhood Councils.

I prepared ten slides and called it: The Power of Neighborhood Councils to Transform the City of Los Angeles. These slides were just visuals focused on 2 things: Neighborhood Council Community Impact Statements and Outreach wrapped in the difference between “change” and “transformation.”

At the GM retreat, one of the presenters told us that the difference between a change and a transformation is really the time frame and the final nature of the outcome. A change can be incremental and go back and forth between what it was and what it changed to depending on the situation. On the other hand, a transformation is typically quite sudden and once transformed, can never go back to its original state. Think a caterpillar to a butterfly or a tadpole to a frog.

As a Neighborhood Council geek, I often dream the “What if’s” of Neighborhood Councils and think that would be such a cool change if that happened. What if Neighborhood Council board members focused on being advisory bodies to the City and connecting to all of their stakeholders? With this new understanding of definitions, however, I realized I had been dreaming of transformations all this time instead, and that’s what I shared to close the Congress.

Here’s an agenda from last week’s City Council meeting where Neighborhood Councils could have filed Community Impact Statements on 20 Council Files, but every time, the phrase “None submitted” was on the bottom of each Council File item instead. Side note – Only Neighborhood Councils have the ability to have their opinion listed ON the City Council agenda via Community Impact Statements. It’s a very powerful tool, but only 154 were filed last fiscal year.

LA City Council Agenda 9-23-14

 

While some items were requests for reports that didn’t need a Community Impact Statement, here’s a budget item on tree trimming that affects every part of the City, but there were no Community Impact Statements filed by Neighborhood Councils.

item no 15 - CF 14-0600-S182

So come dream with me now. What if some Neighborhood Councils filed Community Impact Statements on this item, and it looked like this?

What if - CIS

That would be a good change, but here is when we get to a transformation.

a transformation

Can you imagine the City Council agenda with several action items looking like this – all 95 Neighborhood Councils weighing in on an issue affecting Los Angeles? I can.

Now, let’s start dreaming about Neighborhood Council outreach. With many Neighborhood Councils having a stakeholder database of 300-500 people, what would transformational outreach look like instead?

Transformation Outreach

Why did I want Neighborhood Councils to get this visual? Because I wanted them to compare the numbers that transformational outreach can bring today.

Transformation Outreach 2

Yes, I know that there is a difference between Neighborhood Council stakeholders and registered voters, but if Neighborhood Councils focused connecting to stakeholders citywide, they’d get to transformational outreach numbers and really start to come into their power.

I was going to end with those two points: Community Impact Statements and Transformational Outreach because these are two things Neighborhood Councils can begin working on immediately, but I had to throw in Budget at the last minute because I’d heard from Neighborhood Council leaders that the Department needed to support them better and to focus on empowering them instead of focusing on all the rules. I hear that, and I have to say that our small staff of 21 full time employees are big advocates of the 95 Neighborhood Councils. We are always trying to find a way to support a Neighborhood Council in the work they do for their community. Folks need to understand though that with a small staff and a large workload, much of the work has to be standardized to make anything work, and even that is not enough until we get a change in the Neighborhood Council system Budget.

With that, I ended with a quote we were given at the GM retreat that I loved. I justified the replacement of the word “change” to “transform” because I am Chinese so it still made it a Chinese Proverb.

Chinese Proverb

Thank you for Empowering Yourself at the Congress. Now go Empower Your Community, Empower LA and Transform the world!

NC Congress 2014 Council Chambers

Click here for the whole presentation.