CITY OF LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA

Transcription

1 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS TSILAH BURMAN DANIEL GATICA EUN SOOK LEE REV. DR. LEWIS LOGAN LINDA LUCKS DIANE MIDDLETON MICHELE SIQUEIROS BIANCA VITE COMMISSION EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TELEPHONE: (213) CITY OF LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA ANTONIO R. VILLARAIGOSA MAYOR DEPARTMENT OF NEIGHBORHOOD EMPOWERMENT 334-B EAST SECOND STREET LOS ANGELES, CA TELEPHONE: (213) TOLL-FREE: FAX: (213) LISA W. SARNO INTERIM GENERAL MANAGER ARTURO PIÑA ASSISTANT GENERAL MANAGER MINUTES AGENDA ITEM # 3 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS DEPARTMENT OF NEIGHBORHOOD EMPOWERMENT SPECIAL MEETING THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 08, :30 P.M. Kaiser Permanente Harbor City South Normandie Avenue Conference Center, Room A-2 (At North-East corner of Normandie Avenue and Permanente Way) Harbor City, CA COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: Linda Lucks Tsilah Burman Eun Sook Lee Rev. Dr. Lewis Logan Michele Siqueiros DEPARTMENT STAFF PRESENT: Lisa W. Sarno, Interim General Manager Arturo Piña, Assistant General Manager Donyale Hall, Senior Project Coordinator Rosa Arcadia, Project Coordinator Bianca Vite, Commission Executive Assistant CITY ATTORNEY REPRESENTATIVE: Darren Martinez, Deputy City Attorney 1. Introduction 2. Call to Order: President Lucks called the meeting to order at 6:38 p.m. President Luck welcomed two 912 Commissioners, John Mavar and Esther Cepeda. 3. Approval of the minutes of January 8, 2007 ACTION: Commissioner Burman moved to adopt the minutes, Commissioner Lee seconded. Vote 4-Ayes No s -0 Motion carries. 4. Discussion with selected Neighborhood Council representatives wishing to report concerns, operations, and best practices including, but not limited to representatives from Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council and Harbor City Neighborhood Council. AN EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY - AFFIRMATIVE ACTION EMPLOYER

2 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS PAGE 2 President Lucks took a moment to acknowledge the presence of John Mavar and Esther Cepeda, both members of the Neighborbood Council Review Commission. Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council - Mr. Joe Gatlin, President of Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council, reported the following: Board composition -17 seats on our board, all 17 are filled. Stakeholder status - If you live there, if you work there, if you have any association with any type of business there, church, school, education, shop on a regular basis. It's pretty hard not to be a stakeholder in Central if you do something in our community. Diversity of the board? Eight men and nine women. Ethnic make up - three blacks, one Indian, one Australian, five Hispanics and seven white. How often do we meet? We meet once a month and we have once a month executive board. So we have an executive board that meets two weeks prior to our regular meeting so we have time to do our Brown Act notices. How many attend our average meeting? We normally do 35 to 50. Right now we're probably getting larger numbers. We normally meet at the Harry Bridges Institute in San Pedro. We've been meeting there for over five years, in which we're very happy with it. Best Practices: What I'm doing, we're going to our great restaurants every month for our neighborhood council meetings. The 13th of this month we'll be at Ante's. The next month will be Papa Dockas*. We're going into downtown central area. Not only are we inviting our stakeholders there and we're feeding them -- not a full meal, but hors d'oeuvres -- and showing off what we have at these great restaurants. We're also inviting businesses from the downtown to show off what they have. There's also a perception for those maybe not new to our community or don't really understand it, that it might be dangerous to shop downtown or go to these restaurants at night. So our meetings start at 6:30, they end around 9:30, 10:00 o'clock. So we are trying to show that it is safe to be downtown in San Pedro. We also have our cruise ship terminals, which touch Central again, which is right across the street in the Harbor. We want to get that business to start coming in. We also have over 2300 units that are being built right now, which will come once that people will be moving into this year. And we want those people. And they're all Downtown San Pedro. And we want those people to understand that it's safe to be there and where to go. So that's another reason we're moving and having outreach on that. Our executive board, we have normally around ten people. When we have hot topics, that number can really swell. We've had as many as a hundred or more. How often do you notify of these meetings? We notify them on a monthly basis. We have spots around town that we Brown Act different things, we do the Internet. We're trying everything we can and we've been pretty successful. We also have a housing project that the government subsidizes. It's 850 homes, which is also in our area. And we have two of our board members go through Rancho San Pedro, which is the projects, on a daily basis and talk to them. In fact, we had one of their members on our board, which we are really happy about. We were able to get Maria on our board. She spoke only Spanish, so we had interpreters come in. But her mother got sick and she had to come off the board. How do we determine our agenda? At the executive board meetings we set the agenda. We have one of the most diverse boards there is you'll find anywhere, and they're out there everyday. We have quite a cross-section from labor, business, social groups on our board. And so they'll get their contacts and say what they want on our board. They meet at our executive board, then from there, we Brown Act it two weeks later, we have a meeting. We meet every second Tuesday.

3 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS PAGE 3 How do we insure everyone within your boundaries has a seat at the table? To give you an example, our president for the last five years lived outside our boundaries. My current secretary, she lives in Carson but she works in Pedro inside those boundaries. Because of the Harbor and what we have, we have such a diverse group that we have so many different ways to send out this information and we're really proud of that. Probably one of the few councils you'll ever come into where people say we don't have a voice. You have a voice in Central. And if you don't, we'll make sure you do. We're real proud of that. Real proud of that. What is the best practices you would you like to share with other NC's? I think that the fact we're so inclusive. If you're part of San Pedro in some way and, again, we feel that San Pedro -- Central San Pedro is the heart of San Pedro -- then you have a voice. We've never stopped anyone from coming to vote. We've never asked anyone to do anything. Because I don't care where you live in Pedro, some time you're going to be doing something important. You're going to be on some committee, belong to some club, own some business, something in Central. And so we do everything we can to encourage all of that. Also, in the middle of Central is the only public high school is San Pedro High School. So it's hard to say who or who isn't. So we encourage all that. The biggest challenge facing your neighborhood council? Right now my biggest problem on neighborhood council is the dollars and money. We're happy with the money that we get for the neighborhood councils. Very happy with it. We have groups that come in and we say, sure, you can have this amount of dollars for your outreach, and it takes so long to pay them off. If we could have a smoother way -- or a quick checklist on how do we get the money to these people. This is what you need, tell us exactly. Make it easy for us. How do you spend your money? Right now we're trying to spend most of our money on outreach. It's still a challenge to let everyone know we are here. For example, last year was the first time that we actually joined the Christmas parade and we had floats and banners. And because our community is so diverse, we had it in six different languages, huge beautiful banners. How do you spend your money? A magical place in San Pedro is the Warner Grand Theater, it is the anchor for our downtown San Pedro. It was built in 1931, it's just beautiful. Right now we do what we can to have events there and bring people into our downtown to, again, be part of what's going on in Central San Pedro. I spend it on that much as I can. How much unspent funds does your NC have accumulated? We have about $40,000 still, a lot of it is earmarked, we just haven't spent it yet because we haven't been able to get it out yet. I would just hate for that to be a stumbling block because there's a lot of good causes and a lot of times people come to us and they're on a shoestring, they need their money. And we say, sure, we'll give you this or that; and we help them do their outreach. Then we run into this roadblock. So that's been a problem. But overall, it's been a good experience for us. I've been part of the board almost five years. I was a board member, I was vice president. I'm currently president. I'm also on another board in San Pedro. And I think it's overall working well, and I'm really happy with what's going on in our board. Harbor City Neighborhood Council Esther Cepeda with the Harbor City Neighborhood Council, and also a Neighborhood Council Review Commission commissioner gave the BONC a little bit of history about herself and her neighborhood council. She ran for election in 2003, after her father had passed away. He had a seat on the board and she wanted to

4 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS PAGE 4 follow in his footsteps and get involved with her community. Overall, it's been a really good experience. Ms. Cepeda stated the following: Board consists of 13 seats, all of which are filled. Our community consists of about 26,000 people in the Harbor City community. Our stakeholder status -- approximately 46 percent Hispanic, 17 percent African American, and the rest is a mixture of Asian, Caucasian. What is the diversity of our board? We've broken it down to several homeowners on the board. One business, one educator and one nonprofit, seven men, and six women. How often do we meet? We meet twice a month on the third and fourth Wednesday of every month. We hold our stakeholder meeting on the third Wednesday, and the board meets on the fourth. We meet in the multipurpose room of Narbonne High School, and that's scheduled to change soon with the Harbor City Harbor Gateway Public Library that has recently opened. They have many subcommittees; the beautification committee, outreach, bylaws, and education, public safety, library, street repair, and of course the neighborhood council review commission committee. All the subcommittees meet at least once a month, sometimes twice or even three times. Participation is even extended to stakeholders, which we've had several stakeholders interested in committees. We have a wonderful stakeholder, retired gentleman, that helps us with our website and our outreach committee. When it comes to outreach, we notify our stakeholders with a flyer done in English and Spanish. The flyer is hand delivered from South Bay vocational, which is wonderful organization of disabled individuals that do a fairly good job delivering flyers to about the 9,000 homes in our community. We also started doing newsletters this past year with the intention of doing them at least twice a year. How do we insure everyone within our boundaries has a seat at the table? We would never ever turn anybody away. We're continuing to come up with as many outreach methods as we can to reach other individuals in our community that really need to be represented. They need to come to our meetings. So outreach is always a battle. I don't believe that battle will ever go away, but we're doing the best we can. Joanne Valle also addressed the Commission and made the following statements: How do we ensure there's a diversity to our stakeholder status? One of the things that we're lacking highly is engaging the youth of the community. One of the ways that we have encouraged that is to lower the age to 16 to be a voter -- who can vote and also sit on the board. We are working very closely with Narbonne High School in hopes that we're going to stir some interest in how important it is for the youth to be involved. I imagine there's other neighborhood councils facing that same challenges to see someone besides gray hair sitting out there. Best practices. I think one of the ones that we worked on that was very effective was to realize that our community it is not just a little island in itself. We have neighbors, and they are -- in the outside of the city of Los Angeles. And so we had one incident where the property was actually in the city of Los Angeles, but the neighbors that would be affected by this car wash was actually in Lomita. And so we pondered about this in how we were going to help our community, even though with have no influence with the city of Lomita, we can certainly help our neighbors. We facilitated several meetings with the Lomita neighbors and the owner of the property who wanted to develop the car wash. It

5 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS PAGE 5 took about three meetings to really come up with some solutions that was going to be workable for both the owner of the car wash, the proposed car wash, and also for those Lomita residents. It turned out to be really a win-win situation. And also, it developed relationships between another city. We have some areas that have a Harbor City mailing address, but are unincorporated areas. Out of our realm of influence, but still they come to our neighborhood councils. And they wish they were in the city actually. They told us they wanted to be in the city. So we're happy to hear that. And we are engaging them with different issues that can deal with us. And we do some influence with some county folks that we can help some of those issues, because they don't have anybody to go to. One of greatest challenges for all neighborhood councils is outreach. Trying to think out of the box. How can we do something creative, right? Especially, giving to the gated communities. And what we've done in the past was to use the reverse directory, which is a street directory. And we look at our sign-in sheet. Who signs in? What area are they from? And you sit there and you say, okay, there was nobody from this area, or here's a gated community over here, and we start making random phone calls inviting them to the neighborhood council meeting, helping that gated community to know they are part of our community. I think also engaging businesses is a challenge. It's real difficult to have business feel why they should be at the table. And it's a little scare tactic in saying, you know what, they're going to start telling you how to do business. The other challenge we have is, how do we encourage new leadership? We need to develop new leadership within our community. And I think one of those ways might be to bring up issues at our meetings that's going to be of interest to all ages, and then engage them in leadership. Maybe we need to do some training for those younger folks in our community, see that they can make a difference. The last challenge is really near and dear to our hearts is our day labor issue. Right now we do have an official day labor site that is going to be closed in two months. We're very concerned. We've been working probably six months trying to find a good location to relocate that, but unfortunately we're having a hard time finding a location for that day labor site. We spend our money in many different ways. Youth is a real issue for us. For the last four years we have funded a mediation program that's in Narbonne High School. It's keeping temperatures down at the high school level, which is a real challenge when the schools are so overcrowded. We hired a company to come out and help us with the graffiti issue. GAP does a great job but they were not tracking, and they can only do so much. So they were actually -- this company was tracking the graffiti. He would go out and take pictures of the graffiti and they were putting it into a computer system and there were several arrests that were made through this program. We also funded another program for younger students, and that was called the token of kindness. We purchased these tokens. Each teacher was given a token in the classroom. The teacher had to do an act of kindness to a child, and then she gave that token to that child. So the child could only hang on to that token for 24 hours. And they had to do an act of kindness and pass that token on. Now, it's still being tracked over the Internet. There's an Internet where they actually track the tokens. The other thing Harbor City has is a problem with our image. So we took advantage of Reggie the alligator, okay. And we're still taking advantage of his spirit. His spirit is still out there. And so we did a rally, and we developed T-shirts with Reggie on them, gave them to our stakeholders. We had this great meeting, we had close to 300 people attend

6 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS PAGE 6 that rally. I'm not sure if they just wanted the T-shirt or if they were so happy that we were making Reggie the official resident of Harbor City. So it was kind of a fun, light-hearted thing to do. To improve our image, we've placed beautiful flags along our major streets. They say, Harbor City, old town, new spirit. We re really happy that that was done. Every three months we do these clean-ups to encourage the neighborhoods to clean up their own garages and their own streets and sidewalks with dumpsters and large-item pickup. Outreach activities include: placing palm trees on PCH, to help them improve the image of PCH, purchasing infrastructure sound system and cameras. Also we partnered with Harbor City/Harbor Gateway Chamber in helping Santa Clause come to the Harbor City and the Gateway, and giving out candy canes to about 10,000. We also partnered with Ken Malloy, Harbor Regional Park PAB board, where we did an event called, a day in the park. And that was an awareness for people to come to Harbor Regional Park and to see what a great, wonderful park was there. And we had a lot of Reggie watchers, but nobody found him. We also support our Boys and Girls Club. That's also an asset we have in our communities. We had a holiday lighting contest. We have about $40,000 left in our budget for the 2007 budget. We have programs that we want to sponsor, more literacy programs, things that are going to help the community and help our image of Harbor City. Commissioner Comments: Commissioner Lee inquired what is the cause leading to the relocation of the day laborer site? Ms Valle responded that this was the only spot they could use for a staging area for equipment for the work to be done. They're going to be closing down Vermont Avenue and doing a lot of work on there. Commissioner Middleton commended them for their work on behalf of their neighbors in Lomita and assisting them with their carwash issue and mediating. President Lucks commended them for the programs that they are funding, particularly the mediation program at Narbonne High School and wondered what the amount is that you funded and how many participants were there? This should be included as a best practice on the DONE website. Ms. Valle responded that it s about $6,000 for the full September to June, traditional school year, and we have 3700 students. So we're hitting about 300 to 400 students in this mediation program. 5. Discussion and Presentation by City Attorney Work Place Violence Unit Vivienne Swanigan, Deputy City Attorney IV, of the City Attorney's Office of Labor Relations Unit, Workplace Violence Unit, gave the BONC a presentation on workplace violence within the neighborhood councils. In the past year or so, there's been a rapid increase. The DONE incidents -- the incidents of workplace violence that have occurred within the last six months, or reported incidents, include neighborhood council members reporting that a fellow neighborhood council member is harassing or intimidating them. It includes a stakeholder and two others confronting a neighborhood council member in a hostile manner after a meeting, based on things that had happened during the meeting. It concludes numerous allegations of threatening conduct, Brown Act violations, theft and belligerent behavior within a particular neighborhood council. It includes a neighborhood council member threatening because what tends to happen is you have a situation where people are disagreeing, maybe

7 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS PAGE 7 about the budget or you know what types of activities should be set and so forth. And because of the disagreement, and there may be a person on the neighborhood council who's what we call a difficult person. A person who is more aggressive, perhaps who doesn't communicate in a style that, you know, other people can easily relate to. The types of behavior that are covered by the policy are listed within the policy. They include violent physical acts, direct or implied threats to do harm to person or property. So property is included too, as long as the damage is related to your work. Workplace violence basically is -- consists of either actual violence or attempted violence. You know, you shoot at somebody whether you hit them or miss them. Or a threat of violence or -- this is all the first element for workplace violence -- or the behavior that we commonly call stocking behavior, course of conduct over a period of time that would cause a reasonable person to be afraid. So that's a first element you have. And then the second element you have is the actual connection or nexus to the workplace. In this case it would be the connection or nexus to the person's as a neighborhood council, you know, or even in your case as commissioners on BONC. Goal is to have the members of the community feel free to participate in a neighborhood council without fear of assault or injury or reprisal. We believe that training and discrimination, harassment, retaliation, conflict management, and workplace violence is a really important aspect of achieving that goal. And, ideally, that training should be mandatory for our neighborhood council members. Her unit is available to provide you with workplace violence training as well. Because there are many commissions that haven't received it, and don't understand they are covered by a workplace violence policy as well, and they can call us anytime. And we'd be happy to provide that. Number one, it would provide you with knowledge for your own safety, and number two, it would give you knowledge about the training that we would be presenting to the neighborhood councils. My telephone number (213) If you'd like to arrange that, just agendize it and we will come and be happy to talk with you. Commissioner Comments: Commissioner Burman commented that she and Commissioner Gatica are on the ad-hoc public safety committee. And that they had the benefit of having a preview, of this presentation. It was really eye-opening for her, and she really appreciated the distinction that was made between seriously annoying and annoying. Commissioner Logan expressed concerns over the use of the term difficult person, to which Ms. Swanigan stated that she is open to discussing new phraseology for use in future presentations. Commissioner Middleton stated that she at first didn t think this topic was going to be specific to the neighborhood councils since it was agendized as workplace violence. Ms. Swanigan: Actually, our handout for the training, the title of it is, "Tools and Rules." So I don't know if that helps a little bit. That's the big letters at the top, "Tools and Rules for Neighborhood Councils," that we came up with. But one additional thing very quickly, is that we are actually urging DONE to set up trainings for each of the seven areas. Because, obviously, we don't have the time to be able to go out to, you know, 86 neighborhood councils. So we want to set up the training for the seven different areas so we have manageable groups of

8 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS PAGE 8 People. Public Comments: Public Comments were heard from Diane Nave who stated that as any good organization, we're always trying to improve. And like many of the stakeholders, we struggle with what really constitutes a stakeholder. Now, I didn't hear the others tonight saying they had, but I know others have struggled with that. We understand that the definition we propose is not acceptable to this body, so we've withdrawn that request until our council has had the opportunity to go back and review it and possibly refine it. John Mavar welcomed the BONC to the Harbor Gateway and distributed San Pedro magazines for every member of the BONC. Jim McQuiston stated that while the BONC minutes are quite thorough he is disappointed that they do not include the comments from the public, only their names. He also expressed disappointment that he came prepared to offer comments on item #8 and he arrived only to find that the applicant had requested that it be withdrawn from tonight s agenda. Robert Gelfand stated that he is upset that the Stakeholder definition change for Northwest San Pedro NC has been withdrawn because his neighborhood council did something similar over a year ago. Erik Sanjurjo distributed a letter from Councilmember Janice Hahn addressed to the BONC. She wanted to go on record stating her philosophical objection to removing any stakeholder category. Specifically, she believes that religious organizations and nonprofits need to be respected. She is opposed to the proposed stakeholder definition of the North- west San Pedro Neighborhood Council. Item 10 was taken out of order in order to allow Commissioner Logan to leave as he fell ill. 10. Reports from Ad-hoc Committee- Commissioner Logan s ad hoc committee report on Training and Capacity Building was taken out of order so that he was able to go home due to illness. Commissioner Logan reported that he was proud to meet with commissioner -- chair -- Commission President Linda Lucks, Commissioner Eun Sook Lee, and develop a suggested prescriptive for training and capacity building. This particular report is regarding strengthening and expanding the training and capacity support provided to neighborhood councils. The response to the details of the city controller's audit of DONE, as well as recommendations and comments from abroad set of stakeholders, neighborhood councils, 912 Commission, the media, et cetera, BONC has established this committee to strengthen and expand the training and capacity support provided to neighborhood councils. Commissioner Discussion: Commissioner Middleton stated that this is an excellent report and that she agrees with dividing the proposed training into three primarily groups. On operating a successful organization, just what I found in terms of the ad-hoc committees I sit on, I would add also train on how to develop a budget, and how to access funds. And that could get into the delegation of bookkeepers, all that kind of stuff. Because it seems those are two areas, folks. I mean, there wouldn't be unspent funds if people had a budget.

9 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS PAGE 9 Public comments were received from Robert Gelfand who expressed discontent with required training, and Jim McQuiston who stated that the neighborhood councils are suppose to monitor the delivery of services. 7. Discussion and possible action including approving/disapproving a contract between the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment and Lynden J. Court Reporters and Assoc. Inc. for transcription services. Presentation was made by Mike Vitkievics regarding the contract for professional services for the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners meetings. ACTION:Commissioner Burman moved that we approve the contract for professional services, the professional service agreement with Lynden J. and Associates, Commissioner Middleton Seconded. VOTE: Ayes- 4 No s 0 Motion carries. 8. PUBLIC HEARING and DETERMINATION by the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners on the application to amend the bylaws submitted by North West San Pedro Neighborhood Council (File No ); Date of certification: February 12, ACTION:The applicant submitted a written request to the BONC to withdraw this item from tonight s agenda. 9. Discussion and possible board action amending Article IV (Rules 4.1 and 4.2) of the Commission s Operating Policies and Procedures, including specific amendments to the procedures for notifying and requiring input from Neighborhood Councils in the policy creating and adopting process of the Commission. Commissioner Middleton read her proposed changes to the Operating Policies and Procedures and fellow commissioners added their recommended changes and comments. After much discussion, the following action was taken: Commissioner Middleton moved that we amend Article IV of the Commission s operating policies and procedures by deleting section 4.1 and deleting section 4.2 and substituting the following as the new Article IV. The Board of Neighborhood Commission Statement on Policy Development. That the title of article IV be changed to read: Commission Statement on Policy Development The purpose of this policy is to allow the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (BONC) to formulate policies in a deliberate manner with appropriate input including transparency in adequate item for stakeholder participation when considering adoption of a policy the following steps should be taken: 1)To refer to and appropriate BONC Ad hoc committee 1a) the first step should be notice to the neighborhood councils describing the topic under discussion inviting input by addressed to the Chair Ad Hoc Committee and sent to the Commission Executive Assistant within 30 days of the date notice is given. The Notice should be given in multiple forms including but not limited to e-blast and DONE newsletter. No CHANGE to 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E, NO CHANGE TO 2, 2A, 2B, 3 will read: At the end of discussion at BONC meeting, Commissioners to decide by simple majority vote whether to continue item for a second BONC meeting, to schedule a special meeting, or to take action at end of discussion. One of the factors to be considered will be the quantity and quality of public comment. Second: Commissioner Lee ACTION: Vote Ayes-4, No s-0 Motion carries.

10 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS PAGE Discussion and possible action adopting a Vision Statement for the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners President Lucks stated that this whole discussion is a result of our board retreat, which we have been dealing with, how are we going to develop policy for neighborhood council input. So this didn't come out of the air, this is something we have been talking about and talking about since our board retreat some months ago. Discussion included minor changes to the proposed Vision Statement and the possibility that they would table the Vision Statement to another meeting. After much discussion, the following action was taken. PUBLIC COMMENT: Jim McQuiston one thing that he would think you want to put into the vision statement to the Department we really want to make sure nc s are doing what they are suppose to be doing. They are supposed to monitor, they shall monitor the services of the City of Los Angeles. ACTION: Commissioner Middleton read for the record and moved that the following Vision Statement be adopted: The Board of Neighborhood Commissioners is committed to ensuring that the City Charter and the Plan are realized. We use the authority granted BONC by the Charter to set policies that will ensure that the Neighborhood Councils are indeed diverse, inclusive, and representative of all community stakeholders. We believe that the Neighborhood Councils must retain their individuality as to the issues that make a difference in their community. By increasing access to city government and by being able to better obtain city services, we believe the quality of life will be improved for everyone living in L.A. We support the Neighborhood Councils to achieve participation not just as an end in and of itself but to reach these greater goals. Commissioner Lucks asked the question: All those in favor of adopting the Vision Statement. Vote Ayes-4 No s -0 Motion carries. 11. Reports from Ad Hoc Committees including but not limited to: Established Ad Hoc Committee Reports including but not limited to: 1) Outreach Ad Hoc Committee Co-Chairs Burman and Middleton, member Logan Commissioner Middleton reported the following: Community organizing training should be offered to help neighborhood council members learn how to outreach through organizing. We need to consider outreach on a citywide scale and a neighborhood council scale. Neighborhood council members should be trained in how to conduct a needs assessment and how to identify the needs of the various stakeholders in the community. We want to look at what Mark Ridley-Thomas did when he was a council member with reference to the empowerment congress. Outreach should be discussed with reference to effectiveness. We need numbers as a way to measure effectiveness. We want to start with best practices. The first thing that we did is we wanted to find out from Ms. Sarno how to get the best practices we hear at BONC meetings up on the website quickly. And what other ways we can disseminate the information to neighborhood councils. An inquiry was made of Ms. Sarno, and she was responded in about 45

11 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS PAGE 11 minutes. But best practices were up on the website. We defined best practices as meeting the criteria that the method utilized increased civic participation, diversity, and stakeholder representation. Second, the ad-hoc outreach committee members want to meet with a sampling of neighborhood councils that have been particularly successful in outreach from different parts of the city to gather information. Finally, we would like to develop a survey to be distributed by project advocates asking for information regarding outreach best practices to be compiled by committee members and posted and sent to all the neighborhood councils. Now, along with that, one concrete thing we did -- and, again, draft, draft, draft, first look. Everyone is aware that when neighborhood councils attend our BONC meetings they're given a list of questions. We've modified those questions and we wanted input and we can, maybe after our next meeting, get this out to all the commissioners and staff, but this is just our tentative thoughts. When providing reports to BONC, we want to divide it into two sections. We think there's some things the project advocates should answer. Because as we've seen, we want to get these reports to get the information. But there's some streamline things that the project advocates have that are numbers. We want the project advocates to tell us the following: How many stakeholders were in the neighborhood council area at the time of the certification? What is ethnic breakdown? What was the date of the last election? How many people voted? How many board seats? How many seats are currently filled? And what we are envisioning is that the project advocates could give us that information in 60 seconds, that we don't need a lot of elaboration, we need numbers, background. Then the neighborhood council rep reporting who answer the following: Provide the number of board members by sex, race or ethnicity, and stakeholder status. Do you have an outreach plan? If yes, please attach a copy. What methods are you using? What are the results of each method utilized? For example, we passed out 200 leaflets at an elementary school about our next neighborhood council meeting, and ten parents attended that meeting. 12, what outreach method have you tried that did not bring more participants? 13, what outreach method was particularly successful at reaching a specific stakeholder group? 2) Self assessment Ad Hoc Committee- Chair Middleton, members Lucks, Siqueiros They are in preparation with a draft document that has not been reviewed by Commissioner Middleton. President Lucks read the written report from the self-assessment ad-hoc committee. This is a recommended course of action to meet the requirement for a biannual self-assessment of the neighborhood councils. Commissioner Middleton added that she was very, very concerned about this self-assessment form. Of all the work we're doing this is really important and significant. When she understood that it has been a mandated requirement that the neighborhood councils provide a self-assessment form every two years, and the department could not identify anything in any files indicating anybody had ever done this. If you don't have that evaluation, how can you say what's good, what's bad, what you want to change. So we really want to get going on this one. 3) Public Safety Ad Hoc Committee Co-Chairs Burman and Gatica Commissioner Burman reported that she and Commissioner Gatica met with staff and with Vivienne from the workplace violence unit and, basically, talked about a lot of the same things that she presented this evening. We haven't come up with any sort of recommendations at this point, but we are looking into this issue and we'll have more to report next meeting.

12 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS PAGE 12 4) Bylaws Ad Hoc Committee Chair Gatica, members Burman and Lee Commissioner Burman reported that Commissioner Gatica and she met with staff and asked staff to help put together a list of what items should and could be standardized within the bylaws. Agreed that there are obviously, some areas that can be and other areas that can't. We'll be working with staff on that. 5) Elections Ad Hoc Committee Chair Siqueiros, member Gatica No members present to report. 6) Training and Capacity Building Ad Hoc Committee Chair Logan, members Lee, Lucks This report was taken out of order and heard earlier this evening. 7) Grants and Funding Ad Hoc Committee Chair Lee, member Middleton Commissioner Lee gave a verbal report. Commissioner Middleton and she did meet on January 31st. and discussed several primary concerns and issues that the would like to address, including 1) how neighborhood councils spend funds, 2)how they access funds, and 3)how they are able to conduct a proper audit to account for funds used and spent. They also wanted to address the issue of how we could support neighborhood councils to insure proper financial management. They were concerned about the fact that we had several neighborhood councils or many neighborhood councils that have had difficulty in completing the necessarily paperwork to be reimbursed in a timely fashion. And we had questions about whether neighborhood councils would benefit from guidance that would encourage them to establish a processing criteria for making mini-grants and also provide some sample application forms for neighborhood councils to use. Our next step that we would like to take is to hold a meeting with Kevin McNeely, who we understand is the DONE staff in charge of funding, to better understand what could be done by BONC to address these issues. Commissioner Middleton added that as far as the audit, they wanted to review the issues raised by Controller Chick's recent audit, and they wanted to talk about the necessities of the neighborhood councils developing annual budgets. In our view, neighborhood councils would benefit from specific guidance and support. We wanted to talk about, we thought it might be helpful to use guidelines to allocate a base percentage of funds for core operational expenses, such as bookkeepers, office administrators, and that sort of thing. We definitely want to look at some guidelines that would be helpful. And we really think the first order of business is sitting down with Mr. McNeely. We need to meet with Mr. McNeely. I have a lot of questions about grants in terms of how is setting up a grant program different from what's done now and so on. And we just were informed yesterday that there's something going to ENC on February 27th. And if I read this correctly, it is the proposal on setting up a grant program. And since the ad-hoc committee didn't talk about it, we didn't follow any of the things that had to do with policy in terms of telling the neighborhood councils, and nothing will have come to BONC. Given the fact that we just passed a policy on how we're going to set policies, I was concerned about this going to be another situation where people get a memo that says, here's what the deal is on grants, and anybody had a chance to talk about it. Interim GM Sarno stated that that particular piece has been out there for a while now. It was something that was before the Education and Neighborhood Committee last year. There was several items that were in question, which we needed to work with our city attorney on. And one of the reasons why we asked the Education and Neighborhoods Committee to postpone it last year for implementation is, one, it talked about additional capacity -- we need to look at

13 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS PAGE 13 additional capacity for the department in order to handle the workload that would be coming in. And, two, we are changing banks. So part of that is that we wanted to make sure that we were able to accommodate, and also workout the logistics and the legal details of that grant program. Commissioner Middleton wants to make sure the other commissioners know that what she s talking about is something called a neighborhood purposes grant program. And the recommendation is to request the office of the city attorney to modified or amend the ordinance to allow this to happen. And the fact that this would be going to ENC without our board ever having talked about it. And, I mean, I have a memo that says April City Attorney Darren Martinez commented that actually -- and I just may not recall correctly, but I think that a previous incarnation of this board was asked to provide input with respect. Because the way this is proceeding is it's proceeding as an ordinance. And a previous incarnation of this board I believe provided input and recommendations with respect to that ordinance. Commissioner Middleton asked if it was just never implemented? Because, again, I'm just a little concerned that whatever a previous board may have been, our board said, let's form an ad-hoc funding committee to talk about grants. And today we said, hey, if we're going to pass any policies, here's what we're going to do. And all of a sudden they're going to say, hey, I never knew about this grant program. How come we couldn't be heard. And we're going to have to say, oops, they did it. Those other folks did it. And I'm uncomfortable with that. 12. Reports from Commissioners on attendance at 912 Commission Meetings Commissioner Siqueiros attended and submitted a written report which included the following: the 912 Commission did pass a motion to adopt a recommendation that the city adopt a system for community file numbers with three neighborhood councils signing onto do that on a two-year pilot project with the sunset clause. There was also discussion that it really -- wasn't really necessarily since the community impact statements do the same thing. But they vote to do that as well. It was a very interesting discussion, as all of them are. I did have a short meeting with the executive director Sonenshein prior to that meeting, which was interesting. He would like to meet with all the commissioners. He did meet with Commissioner Gatica yesterday. And I believe Commissioner Gatica is, again, continuing to try to get other meetings with the rest of you in the next short period of time. And I urge you to also look at NCRCLA.org website because they do staff reports, et cetera. 13. General Manager s Report - Lisa W. Sarno, Interim General Manager provided the BONC an update of recent department activities regarding training classes being done in collaboration with the Community Development Department, Empowerment Academy classes, a planning update for the Congress of Neighborhoods, information bulletins pertaining to funding, treasurers operational policy, use of affidavits, neighborhood council roll-over funds field staff, conflict of interest training. In addition the department has provided the neighborhood councils with a budget template. Commissioner Middleton requested that they receive copies of the NC Status reports and the field staff assignment sheets periodically. 14. Commission Business - Comments from Commissioners on subject matters within the Board s jurisdiction Future agenda items: President Lucks reported that she has been active. She attended the mayor's budget day break-out session. And out of that she went to the West Side Area Neighborhood Council and

14 BOARD OF NEIGHBORHOOD COMMISSIONERS PAGE 14 started to organize a collaboration of the 14 West Side Neighborhood Councils -- to work together on big Sunday to do a collaborative project, which I think will be the first time it will be something like that done. So far, I have quite a few signed up and very excited going back to their neighborhood councils to see if they can do a project together; and then perhaps do a big picnic altogether. Her neighborhood council as a best practices is having a series of three retreats, which has never been done, to team build and come up with direction. And I hope to be able to share that after the third, because it's been very exciting for our previously extremely dysfunctional but not quite functional -- semi-functional neighborhood council. It's really moving forward. And that it is very important that they all attend the Neighborhood Council Review Commission meetings. Commissioner Burman reported that she and Commissioner Middleton have worked assiduously on the agenda development for the joint ENC and BONC meeting scheduled for February 21, 2007 at 5 o clock in Room 350, City Hall. President Lucks would like to ask staff if they could prepare or develop a report recommending a program to recognize neighborhood councils who do good work and deserve recognition; perhaps, with the inclusion of a BONC liaison to develop that program. Commissioner Middleton expressed concern about information bulletin number , the one formulating the minimum amount of funds to be spent, not withstanding the fact that it has been sent out as an informational bulletin. Although there is a demand, a must-formulate budget that a minimum of 25 percent be spent on outreach efforts, there is no definition of what that means and how the 25 percent is to be spent. Secondly, when this is agendized, I would appreciate a report from the city attorney on the legality of this. Because I too have had questions raised with reference to the community improvement portion of that. And I just generally would like to have a discussion with the city attorney on what can be mandated with these budgets, as far as secretarial staff, all kinds of things. So I would just appreciate that being put on the agenda. Having it noticed so if people want to comment, they have the opportunity to do so. I just think there may be some problem with this one, and I'd like to talk about it. 15. Future Board of Neighborhood Commissioner Meetings We have a special meeting on February 21st with BONC and ENC. And I would ask Ms. Vite to poll the commissioners to make sure we have attendance and who to expect. We have a special meeting on March 5th to rehear the Rampart Village Neighborhood Council public hearing on certification. It will be held at Virgil Middle School. We've cancelled the regular meeting on March 6, again, to accommodate the city elections. 16. Future Charter section 912 Neighborhood Council Review Commission meetings are listed on our agenda. The Neighborhood Council Review Commission has a public hearing on February 15th, a governance meeting on February 20th, which I highly recommend you attend. 17. Motion to Adjourn - Commissioner Burman moved, Commissioner Lucks seconded, meeting adjourned at 11:15 p.m.