I hope our newsletter finds you well.

Happy New Fiscal Year! Thanks to the Mayor’s Office, the Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates and our great staff, we ended last fiscal year with a great Budget Day. I was sorry to have missed it as I was out of the country that day (many thanks to Acting GM Stephen Box who kept everything flowing while I was gone!), but am looking forward to working with our new Budget Advocates. The Neighborhood Council Budget Day Survey is available for you to provide input on what you think the City’s budget priorities should be. Please take a few minutes to complete the survey. The Budget Advocates will be having their first meeting together for their retreat on July 18th. For more information, check out their website: http://ncbala.com/ 

The Board of Neighborhood Commissioner met on Tuesday night in Van Nuys to review our report to Council President Wesson’s Council Files 15-0524 and 15-0389 . If you haven’t had a chance to weigh in on these issues yet, you still have time to submit a Community Impact Statement since City Council is on recess and won’t review these issues until August. Please note that City Council Committees and assignments have changed for this fiscal year. Click here for the Committee assignments. The next Commission meeting will be on Monday, July 20th, at City Hall, and if you haven’t submitted for the EmpowerLA Awards yet, please do so we can recognize your Neighborhood Council for the great work you do!

I was excited to hold our online voting kick off planning meeting for the Neighborhood Councils 2016 elections with City Clerk and Everyone Counts this week. Thirty-five Neighborhood Councils voted to pilot online voting for their elections, and I’m thankful to them for taking this historic step to be more inclusive to their stakeholders. We’ll be finalizing the new Election Manual as well as taking feedback on other Neighborhood Council issues, such as the Funding Program and Grievance Panels, at a townhall on Saturday, July 25th from 12 pm to 4 pm. Invites will be going out next week with more details so save the date!

LADWP General Manager Marcie Edwards was out with her awesome DWP posse last night at the Valley Alliance of Neighborhood Councils to talk about the water and power rate requests from 2016-2020. She did a great presentation and told Neighborhood Councils that her team would be happy to make presentations at community meetings in the upcoming months. You can get all the facts of the rate requests on a new dedicated website: www.myladwp.com

Neighborhood Councils are still hard at work this summer. PlanCheckNC meets tomorrow at the Hollywood Constituent Center. With CERT season here, Neighborhood Councils are thinking safety – Foothill Trails District Neighborhood Council is holding an Emergency Preparedness Fair tomorrow (more below) and Westwood Neighborhood Council has one on Sunday.

If I don’t see you this weekend, have a super one!

Best,

Grayce Liu,
General Manager
Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (aka) EmpowerLA