Congress of Neighborhoods
Follow-up

April 9 / 10, 2003

April 9, 2003

Re: Congress Focus Group Follow-up Meeting. In preparation for the Congress of Neighborhoods, there were two focus group meetings. Each one with a different group of people attending. At the last meeting, it was decided that there would be a “debriefing” on Saturday, April 12 from 10 a.m. to noon.

I’ve got the feeling that many of the focus group members might have forgotten about this. If you would still like to attend and tell me your thoughts about this Congress and how the next one should be organized, please let me know ASAP.

I will reserve a committee room on the 10th Floor of City Hall for this Saturday. If no one wants to attend, I will cancel the meeting, and we will set another meeting for early May if the desire is to meet on a Saturday, or earlier if the desire is to meeting on a weekday evening.

Those of you who didn’t attend either of two past meetings are more than welcome to attend. As I mentioned at the Congress, it is my hope that we can have representation from each Neighborhood Council in the planning of all future Congresses.

Of course, you don’t need to attend these meetings to provide your input.

From the best we can tell, there were 1,000 Neighborhood Council leaders at the Congress in addition to the city staff.

We’ll transcribe the workshops as soon as possible and post them on our Web site.

Our out of town visitors were very impressed. Dr. Ken Thomson, whose books were the results of national studies, said, “It took other cities 10-12 years to get to the point you’re at.”

April 9, 2003

Re: Neighborhood Council Accomplishments

In the past, I have encouraged each Neighborhood Council to send me their most outstanding accomplishments. This is very important because this is one way that the success of your Neighborhood Council and the entire system will be measured.

Before and during the Congress of Neighborhoods, several members of the media have asked me a name a few of the most outstanding Neighborhood Council accomplishments.

Now we have another request. On April 17, the Mayor will be giving his State of City speech. I’d like to convince him to mention some Neighborhood Council accomplishments in that speech.

So by this Friday, I am hoping that you could save a couple of your most outstanding accomplishments with me. Eventually, we expect that your accomplishments will be maintained on our Web site.

April 10, 2003

Re: Congress Follow-up Meeting Postponed

Many thanks to those who responded to offer of a meeting this Saturday to review what happened at the Congress of Neighborhoods.

There will NOT be a meeting this Saturday, April 12.

The reason is that few members of the focus group remembered that they decided to meet on this day, and very few of the new faces who like to get involved are able to attend on such a short notice.

It was also felt that the meeting might be more meaningful if we were first able to assemble and summarize the evaluation formed that we collected.

There appears to be a desire to schedule a weekday evening meeting as soon as the evaluations are prepared.

As I mentioned at the Congress, I would like to eventually see input from each Neighborhood Council through a single representative. A way to begin the process of planning the next Congress, aside from organizing this follow-up meeting, is for Neighborhood Council representatives to begin meeting regionally to discuss how they would like to see the next Congress structured, and then we can come together citywide on a regular basis.

Greg Nelson

213 / 485-1360
866 / LA HELPS toll-free
213 / 485-4608 fax
done@mailbox.lacity.org email