 |
Department of Neighborhood Empowerment
Newsletter
January
2, 2004
Happy New Year!
We have all accomplished a great deal during the last year, and
best news is that there are plenty of challenges and hard work in
store for us during the new year. That’s bad news for those who
expected this whole thing to be easy, and great news for those who
relish the opportunity to be part of building the nation’s pre-eminent
example of neighborhood empowerment.
Personally, my number one goal is to ensure that you are proud of
being a part of this effort.
We've certified a total of 81 Neighborhood Councils. 51 of them
during 2003. There were 51 Neighborhood Council elections held during
2003, and 66 Neighborhood Councils now have elected boards.
Our best guess is that we will need 16 more Neighborhood Councils
before the entire city is covered by a Neighborhood Council.
Clearly, we will be spending lots of time in 2004 helping Neighborhood
Councils with their first and second elections.
We've been busy trying to change the way government functions by
creating special rules and programs for Neighborhood Councils. Unfortunately,
our program began without any Neighborhood Council-specific systems
in place. Therefore, Neighborhood Councils have had to begin under
rules that treated them as if they were departments because those
were the only rules that existed. Given the fact that departments
aren’t totally happy with the system as it applies to them, it was
clear that many people would not want to participate in Neighborhood
Councils if they were treated like departments and smothered in
paperwork. Creating these special systems continues to be a priority
of the City Council and Mayor. We must all remember that departmental
staff gets paid to produce paperwork. Neighborhood Council leaders
are doing this after work, after family, and for free.
NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL FUNDING PROGRAM
First was the Neighborhood Council Funding Program, which established
a special process through which Neighborhood Councils could get
and spend their $50,000. Early in 2004, you can expect that our
first status report on the funding program will be presented to
the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners and the City Council, and
it may produce changes to the program.
HIRING STAFF
Second, arrangements were made for Neighborhood Councils to hire
staff through the city's contract with a temporary employment agency.
The new year is expected to bring us procedures through which Neighborhood
Councils will be able to enter into contracts for more permanent
staff and help.
OFFICE SPACE PLAN
Third, the Office Space Procedure plan was approved by the City
Council on December 2. An ordinance is being drafted, and it needs
the City Council's approval to finalize the new process which will
shorten the amount of time that it will take Neighborhood Councils
to lease or occupy office space from a best-case 4-6 months to 30-45
days.
THREE STATE LAWS
Next, you the City Council may begin dealing with three state laws
that the Neighborhood Councils feel treat them unfairly. Those are
the Brown Act, the Political Reform Act (the “conflict of interest
law”), and the Public Records Act. Some Neighborhood Councils argue
that these laws were written without any consideration being given
to the idea that entities like our Neighborhood Councils could exist.
Therefore, they argue that the rules that apply to city council
members may not allow Neighborhood Councils to achieve their City
Charter goal of promoting public participation.
Councilman LaBonge has submitted a motion regarding the Brown Act,
and Councilman Dennis Zine, during a recent committee meeting, expressed
his concerns about the Political Reform Act. 2004 will bring continued
discussions about whether or not it’s possible for Los Angeles to
develop its own version of these three laws that better achieves
the goals of the laws without treating the Neighborhood Council
leaders the same as people who vote on contracts worth hundreds
of millions of dollars.
CONGRESS OF NEIGHBORHOODS
Our two Congress of Neighborhoods events were very successful. The
one on April 5, 2003 attracted over 1,000 NC leaders, and offered
47 workshops. The second, on November 1, 2003 was turned into a
half-day session, and attracted over 600 Neighborhood Council leaders.
The Empowerment Academy was launched on November 1, and early 2004
will see the refinement of the Academy as an on-going training event
throughout the year. That may, in turn, allow the Congresses to
take on a new look. Expect that additional focus group meetings
will be held in early 2004 to involve the Neighborhood Council leaders
in the shaping of the next Congress.
PARTNERSHIP WITH CORO
A contract was signed with Coro at the end of 2003. Using their
own funds, Coro used their leadership program to produce Neighborhood
Council applications in five different parts of the city, and they
conducted a special leadership training program for current Neighborhood
Council leaders in Council District 10. They have just completed
their training program in Panorama City, and now they will focus
on another part of the city while playing a significant role in
the maturation of the Empowerment Academy. (Details to be announced
shortly.)
COMMUNITY IMPACT STATEMENT
The Community Impact Statement system was developed. Using fax or
e-mail, Neighborhood Councils can have their official positions
printed on the agendas of the City Council and its committees. It’s
probably safe to say that this has never been done before anywhere
in the nation. In 2004, you can expect that commissions will follow
BONC’s lead, and make this same offer to the Neighborhood Councils.
EARLY NOTIFICATION
Neighborhood Council leaders and city staff joined together to present
16 recommendations to the City Council to improve the city's early
notification system. They are working their way through the committee
system and to the City Council. Half went through the Education
and Neighborhoods Committee to the Rules and Elections Committee.
The other half remain in the E&N Committee. The recommendations
stress the need for the City to abide by the City Charter requirement
that Neighborhood Councils be notified as soon as possible about
new items that enter into the City’s system.
CLOSING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
Our department continues to offer free computers to all Neighborhood
Councils. This done so that eventually our department, and other
governmental agencies, can communicate quickly and electronically
with each Neighborhood Council. In a system of this size, a backbone
of electronic communication is essential. In 2004, you can expect
that we will be working more closely with the Neighborhood Councils
to show them the advantages of, and ensure that they have the ability
to, communicate quickly with their board members, and to abide by
the City Charter requirement that they communicate regularly with
their stakeholders.
BUDGET DAY / CITY BUDGET
Neighborhood Councils participated in the first Mayor’s Budget Day,
and in the budget prioritizing meetings that followed. For the first
time, the Mayor invited the Neighborhood Councils to have the same
access to him as the departments do in the development of the city
budget. Within the last couple of weeks, the system for developing
the city budget proposal has changed dramatically. Expect that the
role of the Neighborhood Councils in this new process will be announced
in the next couple of weeks.
CABLE TELEVISION ACCESS
Channel 35, the city's cable station, has offered to cablecast Neighborhood
Council programming, and notices of Neighborhood Council meetings
at a regular time during their broadcast schedule, and to produce
nine half-hour shows about the Neighborhood Council system. The
Department will continue to solicit your program ideas. It is possible
that the initial shows, at least, will highlight the accomplishments
of Neighborhood Councils as long as the accomplishments are of interest
to the general public. Time is getting short.
PUTTING NEIGHBORHOOD AGENDAS ON THE ENS
The City offered to make Neighborhood Council agendas available
to the public by subscription through the Early Notification System
just like the City Council agendas. We hope that Neighborhood Councils
will take advantage of this offer.
Expect the new year to produce the public database of neighborhood
organizations that the Charter requires us to provide. Presently,
we have most of the Neighborhood Council board members in a database,
and that information is provided to people upon request. But that’s
time consuming. The public database will make all that information
available to people on the Internet. They can sort and filter the
names, and produce lists, labels, or e-mail addresses just as we
can do now. Then we will embark on the time-consuming task of adding
other neighborhood groups into the public database. This will make
it easier for people to contact each other without relying too heavily
on the Department.
DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY
Our department began practicing “deliberative democracy” even before
the city’s burglar alarm controversy underscored the importance
of involving Neighborhood Councils in the development of new laws
and policies. Expect that in 2004 we will continue to lead the way
by involving Neighborhood Council leaders in the shaping of our
most important laws and policies. And in the process, we will be
changing city government from one that governs from the top down,
into one that governs from the bottom up.
ELECTION PROCEDURES
In 2004, we will be working hard to finish the election procedures,
deciding which ones should be enacted as citywide rules or laws,
and which ones should be recommendations. In the same way that the
election procedures are the product of our experience in elections,
we will be providing Neighborhood Councils with the benefit of our
experiences in helping Neighborhood Councils develop their bylaws.
DONATIONS ORDINANCE
A donations ordinance will be presented to the City Council in early
2004. It will prescribe the process through which our department
and each Neighborhood Council can receive, account for, and use
the donations they receive.
CITYWIDE ISSUES
At the last Congress, we saw a huge number of people gather together
to discuss how Neighborhood Councils can join together and begin
flexing their collective muscle on citywide issues. I expect that
this effort will evolve nicely in 2004. It will probably begin with
an issue that is thrust upon people, and which motivates people
to join together. And it will likely start with one or two people
who take the effort to mobilize the others.
WHEN GOING GETS TOUGH ….
And the Department did all and more this while experiencing about
a 20% vacancy factor all throughout the year due to the hiring freeze,
and while absorbing the same budget cuts as the other departments.
CITY BUDGET CRISIS
The City’s budget crisis is a serious one. Adding new positions,
which the Mayor suggested be done in the current budget, isn’t even
a remote thought. No one can be certain when we’ll be able to fill
any of our 13 vacancies. The key to easing the pain of the state
budget crisis is the proposed multi-billion bond issue. If approved
by the voters in March, it will take a while to prepare the bonds
for sale on the market where they will be sold incrementally. That
takes us to the end of fiscal year.
In the meantime, the City has to prepare for the worst. The Mayor’s
office has asked departments to prioritize its functions in a way
that has never been done. At the end of January, each department
will be given an opportunity to meet with special teams consisting
of our deputy mayor, the CAO, and the mayor’s budget team, and we’ll
present our priorities to them. The team will them go off and run
that list against the amount of money that our department will be
allocated. And certainly nobody has any idea what will happen to
the mayor’s proposed budget when it reaches the City Council.
The Mayor and the City Council have told the departments to prepare
for layoffs and/or furloughs because solving the problem through
voluntary vacancies may not do the trick.
Our goal is to lessen the impact of all this on the Neighborhood
Councils. We do continue to ask for your understanding. This is
not business as usual. Departments that had been able to attend
your meetings and special events may not be able to attend with
the same regularity. The staff of the Department of Neighborhood
Empowerment is governed by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act
and various Memorandums of Understanding with employee unions. What
little overtime money we started the year with is long gone. The
amount of “comp time” that an employee can accumulate is capped.
Often we have to force employees to take time off in order to stay
within the law.
Expect that we will be paying more attention to how each employee
uses their time to ensure that the highest priorities are given
attention.
REORGANIZATION / FISCAL CRISIS STYLE
Expect that early 2004 will bring a reorganization of the entire
department to take into account the realities of the budget crisis.
Even if the crisis hadn’t created this need, we would be been reorganizing
anyway to help us better deal with our shift from a heavy concentration
on organizing and certification to the business of empowerment.
CAN’T WE ALL GET ALONG?
Ultimately, it’s all about people. As we interact with each other,
as we feel frustration in not being able to accomplish as much as
we’d like as quickly as we like, we have to remember that the whole
idea of the Neighborhood Council system is to bring together people
who will likely disagree with each other. If the Neighborhood Council
boards truly represent the diversity of their areas, we will see
people from different backgrounds, different values, different political
and social beliefs, and different wants and needs, sitting as peers
and trying to get along for the sake of their neighborhood. The
system expects that the leaders of the Neighborhood Councils will
be the ones who teach the stakeholders. Expect that the new year
will give us an opportunity to provide our staff and the Neighborhood
Councils with the additional training all agree is needed.
And in 2004, you will see an increased effort to improve our relationships
with the Neighborhood Councils. We will ensure that our answers
are consistent, accurate, and known to all. We will give everyone
an answer, and explain the reasons for those answers. As the best
friend of Neighborhood Councils in City Hall, we will be their partners,
and advise them how to get done whatever it is that they want to
do.
LOOKING AHEAD
Again, I wish you a happy, productive, and fulfilling new year.
By this time next year, I hope that we will all be able to look
back and know that we’ve done something that nobody else in the
world has been able to do. And that we’ve done something that many
people said couldn’t be done.
Happy New Year!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Greg Nelson
866 / LA HELPS
213 / 485-1360
213 / 485-4608 fax
done@mailbox.lacity.org
email
www.lacityneighborhoods.com
website
|
|
