Greetings, Neighborhood council Treasurers, Signers, Board Members, and stakeholders.
Outstanding MERs
This is a reminder to any NCs that received a letter on February 17, 2015 indicating that their past-due Monthly Expenditure Reports (MERs) were being assigned to a paid AppleOne staff person, please work with them to bring your Board into compliance as soon as possible. There is still time before the final deadline of February 27, when the Department will unfortunately have to freeze your funds.
Per the new NC Checking Account system and procedures, all Neighborhood Councils must submit their completed MERs to the Department within 10 days after the following month’s general NC Board meeting.
Budget Package for Fiscal Year 2015-16
It is time for your boards to begin discussion on your budgets for next fiscal year. To aid you in this process, the Department has prepared the necessary documents, instructions, and templates you will need and has posted them on our website at EmpowerLA.org. Please be mindful of the due dates for the online submission of this budget package which are listed here for your convenience:
Wednesday, July 1, 2015 – Strategic Plan, Outreach Survey, Adopted Budget, Board Vote Form
Wednesday, September 1, 2015 – Self-Assessment for Fiscal Year 2014-15
Fiscal Year End Deadlines
One of the major selling points and reasons for the changeover to the NC Checking Account system has always been to give your NCs the ability to spend down your funds in accordance with your budget up to the last possible day in the fiscal year. This would reduce the amount of funds that were swept by the City and increase your ability to leverage these funds to reach out to your communities and bring about a positive impact. In fulfillment of that expectation, the funding team has developed some guidelines on final dates to access your funds for this fiscal year before they are swept. First, the good news. The last day to swipe your bank card for a transaction, or issue an online bill payment will be Tuesday, June 30, 2015. We will work with Union Bank, Treasurers, and Signers, to determine the your NC’s final checking account balance on that day (including any payments issued that have not yet posted to the account). Any amount above that will be considered swept.
As many of you familiar with the funding process already know, there are certain categories of expenses that require the Department’s pre-authorization before payment can be issued. This includes Neighborhood Purpose Grants, Community Improvement Projects, Outreach events, and any expenses greater than $2,500. In our normal pre-authorization process, we ask for 3-5 business days to review your request before authorizing an expense, so with that in mind, and given the traditional deluge of requests that come in at the end of the fiscal year, we are requesting that you submit any pre-authorization requests to us by Monday, June 22, 2015. If your requests are submitted by that date, and include all of the necessary documentation, we will process your request by the June 30th deadline. If your requests come in after June 22, although we will not reject it, we cannot guarantee that you will get an authorization in time to issue payment and meet the June 30th deadline. Nonetheless, depending on the workload, we will always strive to assist you if at all possible and process your requests expeditiously.
Final Version of the Funding Forms
The final version of the Funding forms have been emailed to all NC Treasurers, Signers, and Presidents this past Monday. They are also posted on our newly revamped website. Again, a thousand thank you’s to all of you who chimed in and gave meaningful feedback as well as criticism which helped shape the forms into their final version.
