Department of Neighborhood Empowerment
Newsletter

August 29, 2003

Re: Funding Program Improvements. New Training Program. Invite to City’s Birthday Party. Another Community Impact Statement. Congratulations to Hollywood United.

FUNDING PROGRAM IMPROVEMENTS

By this time, you should have received notice about the proposed guidelines for how Neighborhood Councils will be able to lease or acquire office space. As mentioned, those guidelines will be on our home page after midnight tonight.

At the same, we have been working tirelessly to correct problems with the funding program.

Yesterday, the City family (Mayor’s Office, City Treasurer, City Controller, City Attorney, and DONE) met to provide us with thoughts regarding the “blocks” that have been attached to the Commercial Prepaid Cards (the ones we used to call the Stored Value Cards.)

As a result, you should now be able to make legitimate purchases that had been blocked. Most importantly, e-commerce has been unblocked. The problem remains that it is nearly impossible to know how each business has coded itself for tax purposes. If you don’t believe us, ask any business what their Merchant Category Code is. It’s a four-digit number. But beware. Because we don’t know how each business has coded itself, you may still run across situations in which your card isn’t accepted. Make sure that we know right away.

PDQ, the firm that provides you with staff, still can’t tell us what their MCC code is. We’ve unblocked every code we could think of that might apply to them.

Now let’s deal with some urban myths.

You are not prohibited from renting a post office box because it involved a commitment of more than one month. Go for it!

You are not now, nor were you ever in a situation in which you would lose your $12,500 quarterly allotment if you didn’t use it all.

It’s perfectly OK for you use your money to pay for an ISP or an URL.

TRAINING

Once again, we are asking for your suggestions, if you haven’t provided them already, regarding the type of training that you feel you need. We are putting an impressive and aggressive training program that provides additional focus on the needs of those who find themselves as new board members, and wanting to know more about how to become the world’s best board member.

INVITE TO CITY’S BIRTHDAY PARTY

You are invited to join in celebrating the 222nd Birthday of the City of Los Angeles on Thursday, September 4, 2003, 5-8:00 p.m. at El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles (at Olvera Street at Cesar Chavez and Main St. near the Union Station.)

For more information on the event location, please visit www.lacity.org/ELP.
RSVP (213) 978-2616
Live Entertainment & Refreshments.

ANOTHER COMMUNITY IMPACT STATEMENT

If you subscribe the City Council agendas, check item 13. It includes another Community Impact Statement. This one was received from the Greater Griffith Park Neighborhood Council, and impressively includes their board vote (11-2) and the arguments put forth by those two “no” votes. Very impressive! A best practice to be sure.

HOLLYWOOD UNITED

At the recent street fair, Hollywood United signed up 20-25 new stakholders, and in the process of seeking Budget Day inputs they “signed up” 150-200 more people. The folks they came in contact with new about the NC and thanked them for their efforts.

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Greg Nelson

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