I hope our newsletter finds you well.

It's been a busy week in City Hall meeting with City Council staff about our budget request. Your Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates have been at every Budget & Finance Committee meeting weighing in on the various department budget requests. The Budget Advocates are also agendized to speak at the Budget & Finance Committee meeting on Monday, May 4th, as well. Many thanks to their continued hard work on the City budget on behalf of the Neighborhood Council system!!

Council President Herb Wesson has put together a motion after his initial listening tour with Neighborhood Councils, which covers everything from Community Impact Statements to Neighborhood Council being allowed time to speak at City Council and commission/board meetings to Neighborhood Council accepting donations. We really appreciate Council President Wesson taking up these issues and look forward to working with him and Councilmembers Paul Krekorian, Nuri Martinez and Mitch O'Farrell on them in the Education & Neighborhoods Committee this month.

Neighborhood Council leaders have been in the news this week. Empowerment Congress Southeast Chair, Karen Lawrence, was at a groundbreaking of a long awaited new entertainment center in South LA. Twin sisters, America and Penelope Lopez, who are Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council board members, were honored by the LA County Board of Supervisors for taking the top $10,000 prize at the AT&T Women in Tech Challenge for a wearable, trackable police body camera they designed. America also just graduated from the Neighborhood Council Civic University. BIG congratulations to Karen, America and Penelope for their successes!!

We got a great pic from Neighborhood Council Valley Village President Tony Braswell on his board members, Suzanne Lewis, Paulette Stokes, Ginny Hatfield and Cathy Flynn's outreach efforts to get free bus bench advertising in their community. Whenever there is bus bench that hasn't been secured for other paid advertising, they get to drop in their sign for 30 days free advertising. Pretty nifty! Thanks for the awesome work NCVV!!

The Board of Neighborhood Commissioners will be meeting next Tuesday night at the Iman Cultural Center on the Westside. They'll be starting the conversation on the consequences for Neighborhood Council Board Member Code of Conduct Policy violations so please join us for this important topic. Please note, too, that the final deadline to comply with the Code of Conduct before board member removal is May 3rd. Much appreciation to the 1410 Neighborhood Council board members who have completed their Code of Conduct requirement!

If I don't see you at the LANCC meeting tomorrow, have a great weekend!

Best,

Grayce Liu,
General Manager
Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (aka) EmpowerLA