I hope our newsletter finds you well.
On Saturday, I was happy to see City Council President Herb Wesson at the LANCC. He spent nearly 2 hours speaking about his plans for the Education & Neighborhoods Committee and taking questions and suggestions from the Neighborhood Council leaders. Some of his proposals were to increase Neighborhood Councils’ yearly allocation, reinstate a smaller rollover of funds from fiscal year to fiscal year and develop a donation acceptance policy for the Neighborhood Councils. Council President Wesson then visited with the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners on Thursday to discuss these issues along with our Department staffing needs before stopping at the VANC that evening to do another listening session. He’ll be doing additional town halls around the City to continue the discussion for the next several months. We’re excited to work with Council President Wesson and the Neighborhood Councils on these new policies!
Speaking of great partnerships, after releasing his awesome Sustainable City pLAn earlier this week, Mayor Eric Garcetti partnered with, among others, the Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance to launch his “Save the Drop” water conservation campaign. Chair Laura Mack as well as LADWP Commissioner and VANC Chair Jill Banks Barad were with Mayor Garcetti and GM Marcie Edwards in Van Nuys yesterday at the press release for the campaign (more info below). Every Neighborhood Council will be invited to join the campaign and collaborate with their stakeholders to save the drop!
The Neighborhood Council Budget Day has been rescheduled to Saturday, June 26th, at City Hall. Please select your Budget Representatives to send to the Budget Day where they will electing your new Budget Advocates for the year. This election has been moved up to align with the City’s budget process, which as we learned from our great second Civic University session with Pat Brown Institute Executive Director Raphael Sonenshein on Wednesday night, starts in June. More info below on how your Neighborhood Council can contribute to the Budget Advocates and/or Congress this year.
I’m sure that everyone attending Civic U will agree that Raphe continued to provide compelling and entertaining information on how Neighborhood Councils can influence City Hall this week. We also had a guest speaker, Abhi Nemani, our first Chief Data Officer in the City of Los Angeles, who showed how Neighborhood Councils could easily use the data on data.lacity.org to pull reports on crime or building permits (and lots of other data, too!) in every Neighborhood Council. Check out the information and online discussions at empowerla.org/civicu/.
The VANC had a full agenda last night with not only Council President Wesson, but also our super LADOT GM Seleta Reynolds who spoke on the LADOT’s strategic plan. The VANC then turned to share some Council Files that Neighborhood Councils should submit Community Impact Statements on: 15-0373 (Exempt Positions for Neighborhood Empowerment, 15-0389 (Giving Neighborhood Councils extra time to speak at City Council), 15-0273 (Having CAO review the recommendations of the Budget Advocates 2015 White Paper), and 14-1635 (short-term rental regulations, i.e. Air BnB issue). Thanks to the VANC for keeping Neighborhood Councils connected to City Hall! I encourage other Neighborhood Councils around the City to continue to do Community Impact Statements. We’re at 165 around the City, which is nearly to our goal of 200 this fiscal year.
Lastly, congratulations to our Neighborhood Empowerment Advocate, Amber Meshack, for graduating from the LAFD Leadership Academy this week! We very much appreciate Amber for stepping up to take this on despite her heavy workload as well as the LAFD for providing this amazing 4 month leadership program for free to other City departments.
PlanCheckNC and the Congress Planning Committee meet tomorrow in South LA, and I’ll be stopping by Chatsworth Neighborhood Council’s cool Day of the Horse event on Sunday. If I don’t see you around, have an excellent weekend!
Best,
Grayce Liu,
General Manager
Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (aka) EmpowerLA
