Neighborhood Councils get their day...
In the "Special meeting" of the City Council at 11:am is this tidbit...ITEM NO. (3) -Motion Required -Two Reports on One File
RULES AND ELECTIONS and EDUCATION AND NEIGHBORHOODS COMMITTEES’ REPORTS relative to non-community impact statements received from Neighborhood Councils (NCs) initiating or impacting City policies.
A. RULES AND ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
Recommendations for Council action:
1 ADOPT a policy methodology requiring certified NCs to submit a Community Initiative Statement (CIS) with three NC sign-on signatures which will trigger creation of a Council file and its referral as appropriate to one or more Council Committees.
2 INSTRUCT the City Clerk, with the assistance of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment,to prepare the guidelines for implementation of CIS procedures and report back to the Rules and Elections Committee within 30 days.
3 REFER the matter to the Neighborhood Council Review Commission for review of the policy, upon completion of a six month initial implementation period.
B. EDUCATION AND NEIGHBORHOODS COMMITTEE
Recommendation for Council action:
APPROVE Neighborhood Councils submitting original proposals to Council for legislative consideration.
Make no mistake, if this passes it will be a HUGE victory for Neighborhood Councils. What it means is that the Neighborhood Councils will be able to refer LEGISLATIVE ISSUES to the City Council and committies for action. The City Council will still have final say of course, but this is another wall crumbling down.
There are many naysayers on this blog, but my guess is that any normal person can see the Neighborhood Councils are prying the fingrs of power from the City Council one finger at a time.
Your thoughts?
Posted by Councilman John @ 8/16/2006 12:03:00 AM
4 Comments:
It will be fun to watch City Council pander to the NC's today while upstairs their staffers will be blogging about how useless the NC's are.
Makes you wonder if the bosses talk to their staff.
May Sam, Councilman John, et al. -- Thanks for the plug for today's hearing and for the vote of confidence in the measure itself. It has been a year and half since the SLNC introduced the proposal and in that time, we've gone from no support (one city council chief of staff laughed and said I was crazy when he read it) to a record 50 NCs and 2 committees supporting the idea.
It's hard to argue that NCs aren't amassing something like power for their communities. Or, even sillier, that we're running around doing the Council's bidding. I hope things like this encourage more people to participate in city government - which, ater all, is the point of all this.
NC folks should definitely show up at City Hall at 11:00 AM (or, more likely, 11:30 or so) to plead our case. It's far from a done deal, but we're getting close.
Thanks again for keeping it in everyone's sights.
Referred Back to Committee ... some power
The power will have to come later, in the form of sweet revenge. I think neighborhood councils know what I mean.
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