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Department of Neighborhood Empowerment
Newsletter
October 39,
2005
Re:
BUDGET DAY. DAY OF SERVICE. ELECTION TIME REMINDER.
BUDGET DAY: A SUCCESS!
Somewhere between 300 and 400 people attended Budget Day Saturday. It was standing room only in the City Council Chamber. That easily smashed the record.
The turnout and the quality of the interaction between the Neighborhood Council leaders and the City Hall folks was a major milestone in the evolution of the system.
We will be collecting the questions that were asked during the breakout sessions, adding the answers, and posting all that on our website. We'll let you know when it's available.
We found three newspaper articles in Sunday's papers, and those can be found on our website by clicking on Newsroom>Articles, or by clicking here .
Preparing this event was draining on us. Remember that the Mayor's office staff is new, and we've been through this a couple of times. The Mayor's budget director is new, has never been in charge of a city budget, and has a staff of ..... count 'em .... one person. As a result many requests and concerns from Neighborhood Councils could not be attended to properly. We haven't yet got the train totally back on the track because federal labor law will be requiring us to allow staff to take time off to compensate them for the overtime that was required to make Budget Day as successful as it was. Thank you for understanding.
DAY OF SERVICE NEXT SATURDAY
Those of you who attended Budget Day, head the Mayor explain why he believes that the Citywide Day of Service this Saturday, October 8, is so important. For a reminder about the day and the contact people in the Mayor's office click here .
ELECTION TIME REMINDER
As we near each city or county election period, we remind Neighborhood Council leaders about the rules regarding endorsing or supporting candidates or ballot measures. The advice letter from the City Attorney can be found by going to our website and clicking on Reference Library>Legal Advice or by clicking here .
Neighborhood Councils are prohibited from endorsing political candidates. Individual board members may make endorsements in their personal capacity. Individual board member must make clear that their actions are in a personal capacity and not imply that their endorsements is made by or on behalf of the Neighborhood Council. The bottom line is that a Neighborhood Council can endorse a measure but not a candidate. It cannot spend money to support or oppose either a candidate or a measure. These are the same rules that apply to the City Councils. Board members, as individuals, can do what they want. But, t he City Attorney advises that any such endorsements should be in your individual name, e.g ., "John Doe endorses Joe "Mad Dog" Smith for State Assembly." However, if you decide to use your title, and you are making a verbal endorsement, you should state something like, "I am speaking in my individual capacity and not on behalf of the Mountain High Neighborhood Council. If the endorsement is to appear in print, you should insist that next to your title, after your name, there should be an asterisk, e.g ., "John Doe, President, Mountain High Neighborhood Council.*" At the bottom of the same page where your endorsement is listed, there should be a disclaimer explaining the asterisk, e.g ., "*Titles are used for identification purposes only." You may have seen this quite a bit on political mailers. Since you don't often know how your name will be used when you give, you should make this clear at the time you sign the endorsement card or give permission to the campaign to use your name.
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Greg Nelson
gnelson@mailbox.lacity.org
866 / LA HELPS
213 / 485-1360
213 / 485-4608 fax
done@mailbox.lacity.org
email
www.lacityneighborhoods.com
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