SPECIAL Open Letter on NC Funding Cut to $11,200
- Department of Neighborhood Empowement
by Greg Nelson

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is from Greg Nelson, former DONE Department General Manager, and is a special explanation sent to "LANCissues -- the website for the many citywide and regional issues facing LA's emerging Neighborhood Councils," also an effort under the umbrella of LA Community Policing. It was sent through our e-group, which we invite you to visit and join after reading this Open Letter. PLEASE SEE LINKS BELOW.

May 6, 2009

Let me try and answer some of the questions that you all have been raising.

There really wasn't a vote in committee. I viewed the committee meeting this morning online at the city's website. Smith and Parks led the attack. The CLA was prepared to suggested one way to launch the attack. At the end, Parks made a suggestion, the one you're now reading about. It was one of those "without objection" type of moments. Parks made his suggestion and nobody else on the committee objected or spoke up. The committee still needs to meet again and cast its final votes. That should be May 12.

NCs and the individuals within them need to decide if they're going to propose a compromise or draw the line here. Throughout the Neighborhood Council File issue, the NCs kept giving and giving, negotiating with no one in reality, and they ended up with the City Council deciding that all board members needed to fill out extensive forms about their financial and property holdings in order to voice their opinions. So you've got a choice here: assume that the other council members will be looking for compromise, and try and craft one with what little time you have, or demand that the council members support the mayor's proposal.

Because time is short, I wouldn't worry about calling NC meetings in order to have them adopt positions. Much more powerful than how many NCs take a position on this matter, and much more important than how many Community Impact Statements are filed (remember that the City Council stopped allowing them to be printed on agendas) is how many INDIVDUALS apply pressure to the City Council members. This is about pure politics and how to apply it. It's all about volume.

At the same time, there could be a steady flow of speakers who come to the City Council meetings between now and then, and use Public Comment time to express their feelings.

What apalls me is that while this is going on, the City Council brags that it is taking a 10% cut along with everyone else. But their slush fund, the Council District Community Services fund, has been recommended by the mayor to be funded once again at $1,500,000, or $100,000 per City Council district. No 10% reduction there. The money is doled out at the discretion of the Council member, but unlike expenditures made in public meetings by the NCs, the Council member decides secretly how to spend the money. Try going to the city's website, or the city budget to find out how this money is spent and you won't find anything.

Making matters worse is that the Council members are allowed to rollover unused money from this fund each year, something that they want to prohibit the NCs from doing, and the Council members quietly give themselves permission each year to transfer unused funds to their office budgets to pay for staff salaries.

~ Greg Nelson

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LANCissues.org -- the website
for the many citywide and regional issues
facing LA's emerging Neighborhood Councils

web site
www.LANCissues.org

e-group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LANCissues

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