I hope our newsletter finds you well. We are very happy to welcome our new Harbor area Commissioner, Josh LaFarga, to the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners! Commissioner LaFarga was confirmed by City Council and will be attending his first special Commission meeting today when the Commissioners will be selecting the EmpowerLA Award winners. The awards will be presented later tonight at the EmpowerLA Award and Neighborhood Council Volunteer Recognition Event at City Hall so I hope to see you there. Many thanks to outgoing Harbor area Commissioner Victor Medina for his years of great service to the Neighborhood Council system!

I was really excited to attend the Bel Air Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council Emergency Preparedness Committee meeting on Wednesday night. Many thanks to the Chair Chuck Maginnis for working to bring together different emergency preparedness groups around the city and county to share best practices on this very important topic. I invited EP gurus Linda Pruett (Lake Balboa Neighborhood Council) and Bill Hopkins (Granada Hills North Neighborhood Council) from the Valley to talk about their work with their Valley Disaster Preparedness Fair, which is on October 3, 2015. We also heard from LA County experts, Beth Burnam of the North Topanga Canyon Fire Safe Council and Bryce Anderson and James Grasso from the Topanga Coalition for Emergency Preparedness,who have great resources for disaster survival, such as their guide. After 3 hours of passionate sharing from ham radios to El Nino preparation, I'm hoping we have the beginnings of a new citywide Neighborhood Council alliance for emergency preparedness. If your Neighborhood Council doesn't have an emergency preparedness committee, I highly recommend creating one to start looking at ways to keep your community safe in times of disaster. If you already have an EP committee, then let's start connecting citywide with each other so look for more information on this soon.

Last night, I was at the Valley Alliance of Neighborhood Councils will Chair and Founder Jill Banks Barad, who is also one of our LADWP Commissioners, invited representatives of the LAUSD to discuss partnering with Neighborhood Councils on a "Bucket Brigade." There are 60,000 drinking fountains in the LAUSD schools, and they are all flushed daily to clear the pipes. The water from this just goes down the drain now. Jill is encouraging the start of a "Bucket Brigade" where Neighborhood Councils and community members can sponsor the purchase of buckets to save the water and use it for the gardening around the schools. Great outside the box thinking to save the drop!

We have another Election Town Hall tomorrow at the Hollywood Constituent Center, 6501 Fountain Ave., starting at 1 pm. We'll be combining the follow up discussion on the Neighborhood Council Grievance Panels in terms of remedies as they will be used to address election challenges. After the town hall, I'll be stopping by the Canoga Park Neighborhood Council's All American City 10 year anniversary. On Sunday, don't forget to check out electric cars for the National Drive Electric Week.

Have a great weekend and keep cool!