Pico Neighborhood Council

The Pico Neighborhood Council had a pretty successful year last year. This is what we accomplished:

EVENTS:

1. Health Fair,
2. Art Festival,
3. Saturn School Backpacks,
4. Computer for Senior Center,
5. Two turkey give-aways,
6. Chamber Music,
7. Charter school support,
8. Easter baskets,
9. L.A. Marathon support,
10. Toy give-away,
11. Carthay Center Elementary Butterfly Garden,
12. Pico Revitalization Banner support,
13. Singing Cop,
14. Mosquito Fish,
15. Holiday Stroll.

LAND USE & DEVELOPMENT:

We've had significant input on:

1. Medians along PICO,
2. 5353 Pico Dining restaurant,
3. Cochran Tower (sprint),
4. Orange Grove Ave condos,
5. General code enforcement of trash cleanup & graffiti.

POLITICAL:

Pico/Olympic Traffic Initiative - Defeating the mayor's office in his desire to circumvent the legal requirement for an Environmental Impact Report (EIR). Although we've won the battle (joined by 20 other groups of home owners and 7 other neighborhood councils) we haven't won the war. The mayor plans to move forward in securing an EIR and thus his idea for 2 one-way blvds. We must strengthen our business district and continue to be vocal to defeat this. A Business Improvement District (BID) is currently in development which will go far in helping us toward that goal.

PlanCheckNC - getting us involved earlier in the planning process so that we are not put into a 'reactive' position but instead working more closely with city planning and developers.Community

Visibility - building relationships with other councils, council congresses, fixlosangeles.com, CD10 and other supportive gov't offices. We are getting noticed, congratulated and are starting to be taken seriously. It's a long process that can only succeed with ongoing communication and involvement with these organizations.

ADMINISTRATIVE:

1. New office,
2. Three working computer workstations with software,
3. High speed printer,
4. Website redesign with functional updates, greater managability, syndication features and cross community support,
5. Completely revamped financial reporting,
6. Complete transparency (with several congratulatory emails from D.O.N.E.),
7. Effectively spent 84% of our annual $50K allotment (includes earmarked funds). We still have to put a dent on funds from prior years.

As you can see, we have a lot to be proud of! I hope that we continue on strengthening our organization, our stakeholders and our relationships within the community. It's going to be a great year.

Best,

Scott McNeely
President