I hope our newsletter finds you well. It was a very exciting start of the week when Mayor Eric Garcetti and First Lady Amy Elaine Wakeland presented the first ever report on the status of women and girls in Los Angeles, which was the result of a great collaboration with Mayor Garcetti’s Office, the City’s Commission on the Status of Women and Mount Saint Mary’s University. The first 2 of 5 parts were released and in part 2 on Leadership (p. 10), there is a great analysis on women leaders in the Neighborhood Council system broken down by Neighborhood Council. Currently, 38% of Neighborhood Council board members are women with 41% of those women in executive officer positions. That’s a great start to representing the 50% of women who are in Los Angeles, and we look forward to continuing to recruit more women into our Neighborhood Council system.
Last night was the start of Mayor Garcetti’s first Neighborhood Council Civic University, a collaboration with Cal State LA’s Pat Brown Institute, the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners and EmpowerLA. Mayor Garcetti stopped by to welcome and inspire the 120 Neighborhood Council leaders to learn how to balance the science and art of the political system from the Civic U and then not only practice, but educate others in order to create new and effective City leaders. Executive Director of the Pat Brown Institute and BFF (Best Friends Forever) of Neighborhood Councils, Raphael Sonenshein, gave a wonderful presentation on the City power structure. From the comments I heard, I think it’s safe to say that everyone there thought he was pure awesome! The Civic U was a big event to pull together so many thanks Mayor Garcetti and his great team, Cal State LA, Raphe and the Pat Brown Institute team, our Commissioners, particularly Karen Mack and Len Shaffer who participated in the organizing, Deputy City Attorney Darren Martinez for handling the legal issues and of course, our fantastic staff who worked to get all the translations, tech, funding, parking and other logistics together: Stephen Box, Leyla Campos, Armando Ruiz, Sevak Paramazian, Jose Galdamez, Diana Ionescu and Arin Abedian, Monique Collins, Taneda Larios, Melvin Canas and Tom Soong. We’re looking forward to the next session on how Neighborhood Councils can successfully influence City Hall.
The Board of Neighborhood Commissioners meeting for April 7th has been cancelled and rescheduled to April 9th at 1 pm in City Hall. Council President Herb Wesson will be attending to speak on the plans for the Education & Neighborhoods Committee. Please note, too, that the Commission’s Neighborhood Council Board Member Code of Conduct Policy goes into effect today after the 3 month extension they provided to Neighborhood Councils. If you haven’t completed your Code of Conduct requirements, you can do so online under Board Member Trainings.
I hope to see you at the LANCC tomorrow where Council President Wesson will be stopping by. Have a great weekend!
Best,
Grayce Liu,
General Manager
Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (aka) EmpowerLA
