I hope our newsletter finds you well. We had a great meeting last Friday with the Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates about our proposed budget for next fiscal year. The Budget Advocates have divided themselves into different committees to review the various City department budgets. Our Budget Advocate committee, led by Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council member, Howard Katchen, reviewed the status of their recommendations in their previous white paper for our department. I’m happy to say that we are on track with the recommendations in addition to other requests for staffing and resources with the expected approval of the new Neighborhood Council subdivision policy on November 18, 2015 amongst other services. Many thanks to the Budget Advocates for the incredible amount of work they take on each year to review and make recommendations on the City budget and to the Mayor’s Office and City departments for supporting them in these efforts!
This week, I had the pleasure again of sitting as a panelist for the LAPD Commander interviews. As with the rest of the City family, the LAPD will lose many of their senior staff to retirement in the next 5 years. It was a privilege to help be a part of the selection process for the future leadership of LAPD, and I was very impressed with the caliber of the candidates. I’m also happy that we will be partnering with LAPD’s Community Relationship Division this year to outreach to Neighborhood Councils about LAPD’s programs to connect to neighborhoods.
I’m sure you’ve heard of all the El Niño preparations
by the various City departments as well as from Mayor Eric Garcetti, who will also be issuing a new executive directive on the matter today. Therefore, I’m really excited that Board of Neighborhood Commissioners President Len Shaffer is taking on the creation of a new Neighborhood Council alliance on emergency preparedness. He is already bringing the various City and County agencies together and is planning a launch on Saturday, November 21st. Much thanks to Councilmember David Ryu for being a partner in the launch! Emergency preparedness is not just about earthquakes. It’s about preparing for any natural or man made disaster from El Niño (floods, mudslides, etc.) to fire to pandemic disease (such as West Nile Virus) to cyber or terrorist attacks. I really think it’s critical that all of the Neighborhood Councils come together to work on toolkits for their communities to address these issues, which affect every community. More information to come soon, but be prepared to attend!
A reminder that our office will be closed on Wednesday, November 11th, in recognition of Veteran’s Day. If I don’t see you at the LANCC tomorrow, have a great weekend!
Best,
Grayce Liu,
General Manager
Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (aka) EmpowerLA
