I hope this newsletter finds you well. This past week has been amazingly educational. Last Friday, I spent the day at a General Managers retreat where we began the dialogue of how to work more effectively together on Mayor Garcetti’s priorities for the City. The Mayor dropped by several times during the day to participate with us and told us to be “bold” in our decision making. He carried on this message of being bold in his keynote to Neighborhood Council leaders at the Congress of Neighborhoods on Saturday when encouraging them to connect with their stakeholders in creating a dialogue with City Hall. It was a really good opportunity to connect with one another, and I’d like to thank Mayor Garcetti and his team, particularly Deputy Mayor of Budget and Innovation, Rick Cole, for making it happen.
On Saturday, thanks to the awesome Congress Chair, Cindy Cleghorn (who got a Certificate of Appreciation from Mayor Garcetti), the Congress Planning Committee and our staff, led by the amazing Thomas Soong, we had an outstanding Congress of Neighborhoods with over 700 participants packed into the workshops to get their “Keys to Success.” More than half of the Neighborhood Council leaders that day were new to the system, and this was their first Congress. We celebrated the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners EmpowerLA Award winners during lunch, which, thanks to the ingenious layout, had no lines for the first time. At the last action session, we had a full house in Council Chambers where Denyse Selesnick led a wonderful presentation by many of the Neighborhood Council alliances on their recommendations for the Neighborhood Council leaders to take back for consideration. The VANC even distributed a handout. In addition to doing the welcome at the start of the Congress, I had the honor of closing as well, and I emphasized the transformative power of Neighborhood Councils on the City of Los Angeles (see below for a summary of my close). The general feedback I’ve heard was that it was another successful event to mingle, share and learn from one another so many thanks to everyone who took part!
This week, I drove up to San Francisco to take in the Code for America Summit where I spent 3 days in awe of the possibilities of responsive, connected and innovative government. This annual gathering of civic technology leaders was so inspiring that it blew my mind about the next evolution of government. Please see my article below for more details. While in the midst of all these excited civic and tech geeks (which included a Glassell Park Neighborhood Council board member – Yay!), Mayor Garcetti released his Fiscal Year 2015-2016 Budget Policy and Goals letter. I was happy to be reminded that Los Angeles is being led by a Mayor who embraces the core of what the summit was about – using open data to design government for and with the people – even when we are in a budget deficit. So I’m coming back with many wonderful ideas on how better to support Neighborhood Councils and connect them with the City family, and I couldn’t be more excited to work with Neighborhood Council leaders to make this happen.
Next week, don’t forget that we’ll be starting our listening tour around the City on the new checking account system – what’s working, what’s not working, and how do we get to win-win. We’re piggybacking on the funding trainings so you’ll have an opportunity to review the current process again before giving us feedback. If you can’t make it, we’ll have a survey online as well that will go out next week. Check out our calendar for the dates.
As always, thanks for all the work you do to Empower LA! Have a great weekend!
Best,
Grayce Liu,
General Manager
Department of Neighborhood Empowerment aka EmpowerLA