It is very important that the voices of neighborhood councils, their board members, and stakeholders be heard before or during this hearing. If you cannot attend in person (the meeting starts at 10 a.m.), you should send your e-mail message to the City Council President Eric Garcetti at Councilmember.Garcetti@lacity.org This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it and to your own council member(s) asking them to read your message aloud at the meeting. Tell them that you want them to help let your voice be heard. Don’t forget that each neighborhood council gets three City Hall parking passes that you can use. You will need to find out who in your neighborhood council has the passes.

At risk is the $50,000 that each neighborhood council receives through the Neighborhood Council Funding Program. The Council’s Budget and Finance Committee has been seriously discussing reducing that amount. No specific numbers have been discussed during the meetings, but there are reports that the cut could be as high as one-third.

No one from the neighborhoods has yet spoken at any of the committee meetings. If the silence continues, it’s fair to assume that the council members could look at the neighborhood council funds as easy prey to be had for the taking.

If you choose to speak out, here are some points you could make:

1. Due to previous and currently planned reductions in DONE’s operating budget, neighborhood councils will have to use more of their $50,000 to pay for election outreach, training, the Congress of Neighborhoods, and possibly other expenses.

2. In adopting the current Neighborhood Council Funding Program, the City Council agreed that it would allow neighborhood councils to “rollover” unused funds for three years as long as the unused amount doesn’t exceed $100,000. This was designed to avoid forcing neighborhood councils to spend money needlessly and foolishly at the end of each year to avoid losing the money. To change this rule in the middle of the game, without discussing it with the neighborhood councils, would be acting in bad faith. Imagine how a city employee’s union would react to such an action.

3. No one has surveyed each neighborhood council to find out why some of them have large amounts of unspent money. There may be good reasons. Some may be banking money waiting for the City Attorney to draft the ordinance that would implement the proposal made by Councilman Dennis Zine in 2004 to allow neighborhood councils to grant some of their funds to nonprofit community organizations. If you have an answer regarding your neighborhood council, it would be helpful to include it.

4. The Neighborhood Council Funding Program began as an experiment. Before significant changes are made, such as reducing the amount of allocated money, DONE should conduct a thorough analysis of the program along with the neighborhood councils, and report the findings to the mayor and City Council.

5. The mayor felt that the $50,000 allocation should not be reduced.

6. The Plan for a Citywide System of Neighborhood Council requires that "money be provided in the budget each year for certified Neighborhood Councils for costs related to the functions, operations, and duties of being a certified Neighborhood Council ..." "[That shall] include, but are not limited to, meeting and office space, office equipment, computers, supplies, and communications, such as the costs associated with newsletters, postage, or printing written materials." The Charter requires that NCs have "a system through which the neighborhood council will communicate with
stakeholders on a regular basis. The idea of allocating $50,000 to the neighborhood councils was to reduce the amount of additional bureaucracy that DONE would need to meet this requirement.

7. Neighborhood councils need more help from DONE in understanding the best ways to use this money, and how to generate outside income such as applying for grants.

8. Neighborhood councils will bi- and multi-lingual translation needs are required to spend a disproportionate amount of their funds on this critical need. Cuts would be especially severe on them.

Deep cuts could quiet … at the least, lower the volume on … the voices of LA’s neighborhoods. Now’s the time. Use yours or, lose it.

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Greg Nelson writes for CityWatch. He can be reached at: gregn213@cox.net. This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it)

To send an e-mail message to any City Council member, follow this format: Councilmember.[lastname]@lacity.org.

It would also be helpful if you would send a copy of your message to DONE’s Interim General Manager BongHwan Kim at BongHwan.Kim@lacity.org.

This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it. He needs to have your messages with him during the private discussions that he has with the council members.

CityWatch
Vol 6 Issue 39
Pub: 5-13, 2008

http://www.citywatchla.com/content/view/1238/

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Here's another part of the same issue, also from the "Citywatch" newsletter:

Councils Offering Little Resistance to
Losing $$ NC Funds

Written/Edited by Sara Epstein

To the surprise of many … and the delight of some … City Council Budget Committee members, neighborhood councils have offered little resistance to the idea of cutting their funding.

In two weeks of budget hearings, neighborhood council representatives have appeared to advice on all manner of department and fiscal issues … including funding for artists. But not a single NC stakeholder showed during the discussion of NC funding and Department of Neighborhood Empowerment budget cuts. The result has left some council members with the belief that council are OK with losing as much as a third of their $50,000 city support and the millions of unspent funds they have banked.

As one analyst noted, “What else is the committee to think? If the councils themselves don't care, why should it be left of to the city council to defend the neighborhood council funding?”

Even more baffling for some is the lack of involvement in the process in light of the … some believe … excessive salaries exposed by the Daily News. 

With the 2008-09 City Budget … City Council version … due out next week, time is running out on neighborhood councils to influence the decision on NC funding.

Councilman Jack Weiss' office has announced that NCs will have one last shot this Friday, when City Council is set to devote their meeting to taking public input on the budget. Hancock Parker Keith Bright says, “I strongly recommend that neighborhood councils show up, unless they are prepared to run their council business for $15,000 or $20,000 less, while city employees by the thousands earning more than $100,000 a year will not lose a single dime, and make themselves heard.”

But then again, who knows, maybe it's not about dollars for neighborhood councils. Maybe, as some have suggested, it's mostly about stopping developers. Or not.

In any case, for certain, City Hall will be watching.

(Info: Stakeholder input on the 200809 budget. City Council meeting-Friday, May 16 at 10 a.m. at City Hall.)