SESSION 2
10:50 AM – NOON
FUNDING MECHANICS, NEW NC FUNDING PORTAL & SPECIAL FUNDS
ROOM: 1020
Coordinator: EmpowerLA
Speaker(s): Mario Hernandez & Mr. Chavez, Office of the City Clerk
Check back for workshop description.
ORGANIZING DIVERSITY OUTREACH THROUGH THE ARTS
ROOM: 1060
Coordinator: Dorsay Dujon, Make MusicLA
Panelists: Karen Louis, Deputy Director, Arts for LA; Karen Mack, Founder & Executive Director, LA Commons; Leticia Rhi Buckley, Director of Communications and Marketing, Los Angeles County Arts Commission; Trevor Davis, Co-Chair of the Arts and Culture Committee for the Empowerment Congress and is on Hon. Mark Ridley-Thomas’s team who worked on the County Cultural plan
This workshop will introduce some innovative approaches to outreach and community organizing, which Neighborhood Councils can use to invite more diversity in their recruitment and enthusiasm for local civic engagement across the board. While these are arts-based tools, NC leaders do not need to be artists to utilize them to engage their constituents. There are cultural leaders standing by ready to support, promote and reinvigorate your efforts. Join this panel of distinguished arts and culture leaders from across the City and County to hear all the ways that arts and culture can bring a breath of fresh air to your work within your Neighborhood Council. Discover ways to:
- facilitate more civic innovation within meetings
- invite engagement from underrepresented voices in your region
- catalyze impactful messaging to get the word out
Don’t miss out on this exciting and inspiring workshop.
HOW TO RUN A SUCCESSFUL MEETING
ROOM: 1035
Coordinator/Speaker: Ivan Spiegel, Parliamentarian
Running an effective meeting is an art, not a science. The group must accomplish real work, participants must have an opportunity to be heard, and they should believe that the process is fair. That’s a tall order for a meeting chair, especially if you have never managed a large public meeting. Nevertheless, these are essential skills for board presidents as well as committee chairs. Learn how to create a clear, descriptive agenda with time targets and ways of keeping your stakeholders aware of the procedures. Where does the Brown Act come into play and how does it help to ensure the integrity of your meetings? Robert’s Rules of Order is only one framework for fair meeting control; there are other options that can sometimes be more effective. Learn what role a parliamentarian can play to help plan a meeting. Tips and best practices on how to run a more effective meeting, most of which you can’t learn in a textbook.
LEGAL ISSUES AFFECTING NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCILS
ROOM: Controller’s Conference Room (City Hall East, 3rd Floor)
Coordinator/Speaker: Carmen Hawkins, Deputy City Attorney
This workshop presents an overview of state and city laws pertaining to Neighborhood Councils, and tells you how to successfully navigate legal matters commonly arising in Neighborhood Councils, and where to seek appropriate advice. This workshop will also include how to avoid going into “exhaustive efforts” or the “freezing of funds”. Who has access to a City Attorney when you need one and when to ask ? This is also the workshop where you’ll see the top Neighborhood Council inquiries both inside and outside the Neighborhood Council system that the City Attorney receives with thought provoking conversation on how to avoid obstacles to your Neighborhood Council’s success. The City Attorney’s advice is advice. The actions of the board member and the board responsibilities. What happens to the advocacy when your Board takes a position and who carries it through.
LEADERSHIP SKILLS
ROOM: 1010
Coordinator/Speaker: Jill Banks Barad, Founder and Chair Valley Alliance of Neighborhood Councils, Past President Sherman Oaks NC (SONC), Commissioner LADWP
What are the traits that make a successful leader? This workshop is a MUST for Neighborhood Council presidents, board members and committee chairs to develop the know-how and confidence to effectively lead their councils, conduct successful meetings, and motivate their boards and committees to be functioning and effective. Also included, how to create and work with an Executive Committee and how to organize a meaningful Board Retreat to build rapport and work as a team. The topics will also include: Developing the social skills necessary to be a leader; how to put together a meeting that will ensure action, attract the public and keep within time constraints; how to maintain control at meetings and still be fair; how to create leadership in others; and how to deal with public comment and controversial issues.
HOW TO WORK WITH CITY DEPARTMENTS
ROOM: Public Works Room
Coordinator/Moderator: Marlene Savage, NC Congress Planning Committee / Former Board Member, Del Rey, Mid City West NCs
Speakers: Daniel Hackney, Environmental Affairs Officer, Clean Up Green Up Omsbudsman, NC Liaison, LA Sanitation; Khalil Garios, P.E., Manager, Solid Resources Processing & Construction Division, LA Santitation; Greg Spotts, M.P.P., Assistant Director, Chief Sustainability Officer, LA Bureau of Street Services
Discussion with key staff from the City’s largest departments: L.A. Sanitation and Bureau of Street Services.
L.A.’s BUMPY ROAD TO BILLBOARD RECOGNITION
ROOM: 1025
Coordinator: Barbara Broide, WRAC
The good, the bad, and the ugly and the outcome is important to your Community.
WHO LIVES HERE? FINDING OUR UNDERREPRESENTED STAKEHOLDERS
ROOM: 1050
Coordinator/Speaker: Jay Handal, Treasurer, West Los Angeles NC
Speakers: Luz Castillo, Data Dissemination Specialist, Office of the U.S. Census; Jeronimo Garcia, Oazacan Federation of Indigenous Communities in California; Milagros Lizarraga, Former president of Peru Village LA & Former Chair of CHNC; General Jeff, Skid Row Advocate; Rosa Max, Urban Sustainability Urban Farms
There are tens of thousands of stakeholders in your NC’s boundaries. Do you know who they are and how to find them? Come and hear first hand about how individual board members helped their NC make a difference by searching out and promoting groups within their district that previous boards had not served, nor in many cases, did not know they existed in their district. Learn how you can reach out, touch, and engage the diverse and under represented in your neighborhood.
NO MORE STUPID BOXES: HOW TO BUILD GOOD APARTMENTS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
ROOM: 1070
Coordinator/Moderator: Jay Ross, Stakeholder/Real Estate Developer
Panelists: Martin Leitner, AIA, Perkins+Will; Tom Steidl, AIA, Gensler
Neighbors complain that many new apartments are ugly stucco boxes with no articulation, little green space, and amateurish designs that result in fortresses disconnected from the street. But that does not need to be the case! Two architects explain what other cities have done to raise the bar for design and neighborhood compatibility. Looking from the outside in, the panel explores how new apartment buildings can contribute to neighborhood vitality. The panel will also explain how construction and financial considerations influence design decisions. The panel will provide real-world benchmarks that NCs can use to evaluate if a project will better their neighborhood. This is how your Los Angeles NC can do it — and YOU can demand that developers build better housing in your community.
THE CIVICS OF WATER AND POWER
ROOM: 4th Floor Media Room
Coordinator: Tony Wilkinson
Speakers: Jack Humphreville, President DWP Advocacy Committee, 2017 Budget Advocate, DWP and Budget Representative, Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council, Columnist for CityWatch
Perpetual drought and environmental issues like global warming make dinner table conversations about water and power. The people of LA own their utility. It is a $7.5 billion business, the biggest ‘muni’ in the US. Unlike investor-owned utilities and the state Public Utilities Commission, LADWP engineers often speak plain English. If you want to know what is going on and want to have some input into water and power choices, you only need to know where to look. This workshop explores the special relationship between Neighborhood Councils and DWP called an MOU, the work of the Ratepayer Advocate, and the work of the Mayor, DWP Board and City Council. The focus is on YOU, and how you can be part of the process.
LADWP senior management and technical specialists will present most of the material in this workshop. An effort will be made to touch on all of the work at DWP that attracts public interest, along with ways to get more information. A full list of the speakers will be available before the Congress.
YOUR DREAMS FOR A LIVABLE LA: THE GENERAL PLAN
ROOM: Council Chambers
Coordinator: Cindy Cleghorn, Chair of the Congress of Neighborhoods
Panelists: Jill Stewart, Coalition to Preserve LA; Ileana Wachtel, Coalition to Preserve LA; Dick Platkin, City Watch LA columnist; David Wolf, MyCity.Is planning organization
The panel will explain the importance of robust political participation in the entire General Plan update process based on the following: A successful General Plan is a bottoms-up document, not a top-down one; State of California has recently issued its General Plan Guidelines 2017, the first update of these guidelines in 14 years; The State Guidelines stress the importance of public participation in all aspects of preparing, adopting, implementing, and monitoring the entire General Plan, which in Los Angeles means all of the Citywide elements and all of the Community Plans. While City Planning, has updated several of each in recent years, they, too, will need to be amended to be fully consistent with the new citywide elements, whether mandatory or optional, as well as the new Community Plans updates.