November 2008

BongHwan (BH) Kim, General Manger for the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) was the guest speaker at our November Board meeting. He spoke about the role of neighborhood councils, support provided by DONE, and some proposed changes to the Neighborhood Council system.

"A council's role is advisory to the City Council. An NC's power is not so much in its formal role, but rather in its role as caretakers and stewards of the local quality of life while holding government more accountable," Kim said in describing his vision for councils. The opportunity is to take an issue, get the community to weigh in on it and bring the recommendation to the Councilman's office. NCs become more effective with sufficient notice about pending City Council decisions and a sophisticated understanding about how decisions are made at City Hall.

Asked about the ongoing challenge of effect NC outreach, he said that "the most effective outreach tool is relevance," tackling issues that the community cares about. He noted that the PRNC has done a great job with outreach.

He commented that he would like to see the role of DONE changing from payment processor and enforcer to capacity builder to enable NCs to expand their influence and reach. His challenge is to use 15 field staff to effectively serve 90 councils and 1,700 NC board members. Some ideas include changing the financial system to be one with more NC control and DONE verifying NC financial audits. Online ethics and best practices training would provide a common level of understanding among board members and online reporting of training completed by individual NC board members provides transparency and accountability.

He was careful to point out that his resources could shrink in light of the budget crisis and that there would probably be another look at reducing the $50,000 currently allocated per NC.