Department of Neighborhood Empowerment
Newsletter

November 4, 2003

Re: New Web Site. Electronic Neighborhood. Congress Results. Congress Planning Meeting Set.

NEW WEB SITE

Maybe by the time you read this, our new Web site will be up. It’s http://www.lacityneighborhoods.com/. We don’t control when the city’s computer allows this Web site to be launched. Hopefully, it will make it easier for you to find the information you want. Immediately, we will be making improvements, including the photographs. If you have color photographs of your neighborhood that you’d like posted, please let us know. Then we’ll be adding lots of additional information.

THE ELECTRONIC NEIGHBORHOOD

Speaking of Web sites, wanna see something cool? Go to the city’s home page at http://www.lacity.org/. Then go to the Library Department and look for the Electronic Neighborhood. Or try this direct link http://www.lapl.org/elec_neigh/wien.html. It’s a treasure trove of information about our city’s neighborhoods. My favorite is the photo library. You could spend a day looking at old photos of our neighborhoods. If you attended the Congress of Neighborhoods on Saturday, you saw many of these photos displayed on the big screens in the morning.

CONGRESS RESULTS

Speaking of the Congress, over 500 people pre-registered. We counted another 200 who came in as “walk ups.” Add to that those who just walked in that we didn’t know about, and we ended up with a pretty well-attended event.

As I mentioned at the Congress, each one of these events has been shaped with the guidance of the Neighborhood Council leaders. If you would like to provide your comments about last Saturday’s event, and provide suggestions about how shape the next one in about 6 months, the first opportunity to do this in person will be Thursday, November 13 from 7 – 9 p.m. in Room 1060 of City Hall. For questions, call Emily White toll-free at 866 LA HELPS.

Photographs were taken at the event, but as you can understand, it’s going to take a while for us to go through each one, figure out who’s in the pic, e-mail copies to them, and post them on our Web site. Be patient. We’ve got a 20% vacancy factor now, and several people scheduled their vacations after the Congress, so things aren’t going as fast as we’d like.

As you are probably aware, the Mayor was not able to deliver his welcoming speech at the opening of the event due to a funeral. Instead, he was available for 15 minutes during the time that people were gathering in the main room and meeting in the caucus rooms. Literally, at the last second his staff urged him to visit the caucus rooms. I want to thank those who were understand and gave him a few brief moments to deliver the message that he was about to deliver in the main room.

Addtionally, the event was attended by Controller Laura Chick, and city council members Janice Hahn, Bernard Parks, Tony Cardenas, Dennis Zine, Wendy Greuel, Tom LaBonge, Martin Ludlow, and Antonio Villaraigosa.

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Greg Nelson

866 / LA HELPS
213 / 485-1360
213 / 485-4608 fax
done@mailbox.lacity.org email
www.lacityneighborhoods.com website