I hope our newsletter finds you well. HUGE thanks to all of our Neighborhood Council board members who came out to speak on Tuesday’s City Council’s Health, Education and Neighborhood Councils Committee meeting about Council File 15-1022-S2 regarding Neighborhood Council elections and online voting. Much of the public comment was in favor of moving the Neighborhood Council elections from 2018 to 2019 and to continue with online voting. Everyone Counts, the online voting vendor, was also there to speak on the security and submitted a letter as well. The HENC Committee did not take any action that day, but provided instructions for more reports regarding outreach and online voting security from EmpowerLA and City Clerk for their August 22, 2017 meeting where they will take action to make a recommendation about the election timing and online voting. If your Neighborhood Council is meeting in the next few weeks, you can still take action and file a Community Impact Statement, or you can speak as an individual on the matter.

Congratulations to our 2017 Neighborhood Council Civic Youth class for completing the summer program on Monday! They spent their last day at the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant learning about wastewater treatment. Many thanks to our awesome youth for taking on this program to become great advocates and to our staffers, particularly Semee Park, Jasmine Elbarbary, Vanessa Serrano and Mary Kim, for making it happen!

I was happy to stop by the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Institute of Architects this morning to conduct another Neighborhood Council 101 information session with their members. As planning and land use issues are big in every Neighborhood Council, my hope is that we can recruit more stakeholders in the field to our Councils in order to provide more expertise on boards. In combination with our partnership with the Planning Department to conduct planning trainings citywide and with the work of PlanCheckNC, we want Neighborhood Council members to be knowledgeable in how to effectively weigh in on planning and land use projects before them for their communities. The Neighborhood Council Planning 101 Workshops continues on Tuesday in the Central area. Check out our EmpowerLA Calendar [insert link] for all event time and locations.

Don’t forget that PlanCheckNC meetings tomorrow and the Congress of Neighborhoods Planning Committee meets on Sunday.

Have a wonderful weekend!