I hope our newsletter finds you well. I’m so excited that Mayor Eric Garcetti, First Lady Amy Elaine Wakeland and the Getty House Foundation Board of Directors are focusing on “Women Who Lead Our Neighborhood Councils” for their Women’s Leadership Series program next week. We have over 40% of the board seats in the Neighborhood Council system occupied by women and more than half of our Neighborhood Council alliances are led by women, too. I’m looking forward to connecting with our women Neighborhood Council board members on Thursday at the beautiful Getty House. If you haven’t responded to your invitation yet, please make sure that you RSVP with your name and Neighborhood Council by Monday, October 24, 2016.
We’ve been busy this week putting together the draft of our budget for next fiscal year. We’ll be meeting with the Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates next week to go over our proposals. Many thanks to our Budget Advocates who have started meeting with all of the City departments on their budgets! They do an amazing job each year on their white paper recommendations for the budget. Please make sure that your Neighborhood Council agendizes them to provide City budget updates at your board meetings so you can keep your community in the know.
I was happy to get out into the Korean American community yesterday to talk about the importance of civic engagement and how Neighborhood Councils play a part in it. The Korean Resource Center held a great event for hundreds of seniors to register voters and to do a ballot workshop in order to inform them of the measures and how it affects their lives. You can read more about it below. I reminded folks that voting is the end of the civic engagement process, and if they wanted to stay involved all the time, they should join their Neighborhood Council or even do simple things like downloading myLA311 on their phones to report issues on City services or stay connected to City Hall. Don’t forget that Monday, October 24, 2016, is the last day to register to vote!
Speaking of staying connected to City Hall, I was happy to participate in Mayor Eric Garcetti’s iChangeLA event at City Hall today where we celebrated civic innovation in the City of Los Angeles. As part of Innovate LA 2016, it was great to see City employees being honored for their innovations and to share about our experience in the Google Angels Lab on civic engagement. Congratulations to Department of Cultural Affairs & Community Partners for receiving the Mayor’s Civic Innovation Award for “The Arts Activation Fund.” We’ll be putting a budget ask for continued civic engagement innovations that I think will be amazing for Los Angeles.
Don’t forget the Neighborhood Council Emergency Preparedness Alliance meets tomorrow. Have a wonderful weekend!
