I hope this newsletter finds you well. I'm excited to tell you that our Nation Builder campaign finally launched this week with Mayor Garcetti sending out an email to 80,000 people in Los Angeles to get involved with Neighborhood Councils as a candidate, voter or volunteer. This is the first time that we are doing citywide outreach on this scale so we are working out the kinks with Nation Builder and will soon be giving Neighborhood Councils access to the registered voter database that is part of the campaign (more info below). Our Nextdoor campaign is also growing steadily with over 50 Neighborhood Councils signed up to connect with their neighbors. Nextdoor Los Angeles has over 26,000 registered users and is growing faster than San Francisco, Chicago, New York and San Diego because of the Neighborhood Council involvement so if you haven't activated your Nextdoor accounts, get connected!

Another outreach tool that you may want to try for your community is ABC7 Listens. Here's a sample. I received an email from North Hollywood North East Neighborhood Council President Ernie Moscoso last week that his Neighborhood Council, along with Mid-Town North Hollywood and North Hollywood North West Neighborhood Councils organized an event with ABC7 Listens where community members can tell ABC7's top managers what they should cover in their community. When I dropped by, Neighborhood Council leaders along with community folks and even Councilmember Krekorian stood in line patiently to do their pitches. There were many suggestions to feature the great work of Neighborhood Councils more.

I'm also pleased to share that part of our funding and field teams have moved out to our Valley office at Van Nuys City Hall so that they can better support the Neighborhood Councils there. We are also reorganizing our downtown office to create more space for our staff and Neighborhood Council leaders to drop in and work when they are at City Hall. So please stop by and check out the changes, which should be completed by mid-March. If you need a work space, please call ahead so that we can make sure one is ready for you.

There's so much more going on, but I'm off now to our department's budget workshop with the Mayor's Office and CAO today and Region 2 elections in the Valley tomorrow. I'll also be stopping by the LANCC tomorrow as well as to congratulate the Chair, Terrence Gomes, who is also one of our awesome IEAs/C4C/Budget Advocates, for his recognition in City Council today (more below). Be safe this weekend and stay dry!