I hope this newsletter finds you well. I’m having a bit of a slow start catching up on work unfortunately because I was rear-ended on the freeway my first day back to work last week and have been mostly out of the office recovering. Sadly, my little electric car is also out of commission so I haven’t been able to do my free EmpowerLA advertising as I drive around the City. Hopefully, we will both be 100% in the next few weeks.
In the meantime, our staff is still hard at work supporting the Neighborhood Councils. The field team has conducted 83 Neighborhood Council board orientations around the City. Many thanks to them and to the Neighborhood Councils who participated so that we can start off the new boards with a strong foundation. Our funding team is working on smoothing out any kinks with the new checking account system. As your Neighborhood Council is using the new system, please let us know of suggestions you may have to improve any part of it. We’ve already gotten some positive feedback from folks who found making payments to be wonderfully easier.
We had another international visitor from Equatorial New Guinea, Central Africa, visit us on Monday to learn about Neighborhood Councils. Thanks to our NEA,Taneda Larios, for hosting him in Spanish! Check out Taneda’s article below on the visit. We will be welcoming another international visitor on Monday, July 28th, Mayor Joaquin Alfredo Peñate of Santa Ana, El Salvador. He will be coming to learn more about the Neighborhood Council system and the Neighborhood Prosecutors Program so we will be co-hosting him with City Attorney Mike Feuer. A big thank you to our NEA, Melvin Cañas, for doing all the legwork to set this visit up.
As always, thanks for all you do to Empower LA! Have a relaxing weekend!
Best,
Grayce Liu,
General Manager
Department of Neighborhood Empowerment aka EmpowerLA
