I hope our newsletter finds you well. We are so very excited about the Congress of Neighborhoods tomorrow! If you heart all things Neighborhood Councils like we do, then the Congress is the place to be tomorrow. With Council President Herb Wesson opening the Congress and Mayor Eric Garcetti closing the day, you’ll have 40 workshops to choose from as you mingle with City officials and other Neighborhood Council leaders throughout the day while being fed lovely food all for FREE! How awesome is that? You can even head over to the Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance’s Happy Hour event after the Congress if you can’t get enough. I look forward to seeing everyone there.
On Monday, the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners met and after giving our updates, I hurried over to the Budget & Finance Committee meeting to present our report on Council File 15-1022. This report provided an update on the election policy for Community Interest Stakeholder for online voting. The action from the committee, which was approved by City Council the next day, included moving forward on providing the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners the authority to further define the length and scope of the term “substantial and ongoing” for Community Interest Stakeholders. Please provide your comments to the Commissioners on your suggestions for this clarification by emailing commission@empowerla.org.
On Tuesday, we had a very successful day at nine Los Angeles community colleges educating them on LA city government and the Neighborhood Council system with the Office of the City Clerk for National Voter Registration Day. We did 50 presentations with City Clerk staff to over 1550 students that day where we introduced ELA (pronounced E-la) our new EmpowerLA mascot, who was a hit with everyone.
Many thanks to Sandra Mendoza at the City Clerk’s Office for being the lead on this event and to our new staffer, Octaviano Rios, for organizing on the EmpowerLA side!
I took ELA out to USC the next night where I did a presentation on Neighborhood Councils to graduate students studying our system. They were impressed not only with ELA, but also with the can-do attitudes of the volunteers in the Neighborhood Councils they had visited. Stories such as the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Coalition, West Los Angeles Sawtelle Neighborhood Council and Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council partnering with Councilmember Jose Huizar today to take homeless veterans from Skid Row to the VA Medical Center in West LA for services showed them how Neighborhood Councils can connect Angelenos to government in great collaborations.
BIG thank you to Neighborhood Councils for continuing to inspire us here at EmpowerLA!
See you at the Congress tomorrow!!
Best,
Grayce Liu,
General Manager
Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (aka) EmpowerLA
