At 11:48 PM 6/20/01 -0500, Carol Becker wrote:
>There is a good reason that Council Members and the Mayor do not hold their
>own town meetings. Every neighborhood has a neighborhood organization that
>holds regular meetings. Council Members usually attend these meetings.
>Scheduling separate meetings would be redundant with the meetings for the
>neighborhood groups and create a second set of meetings for citizens to
>discuss many of the same topics. I would suggest that anyone who is feeling
>that they haven't gotten a chance to discuss a topic with their elected
>official through other means contact their neighborhood organization and ask
>when the next meeting is.
------------------------------------------------------
That's if your neighborhood has a functioning neighborhood organization.
Council Member Herron was conspictuous by his absence at the recent CNIA
annual meeting. To his credit, he did organize a meeting to talk about the
Motel Central independent of CNIA. Is the point of neighborhood
organizations to difuse accountability -- and make it more confusing for
neighbors to get their voices heard at City Hall -- or are they a way to
get more citizens engaged in City Governance matters?
Check out City Pages -- Burl Gilyard has an article about CNIA and Central
Neighborhood....
http://www.citypages.com/databank/22/1072/article9638.asp
Check out the related links -- CNIA chat is listed again.
I thought it was a good article -- it also mentions the possibility of a
new organization.
I would love to get a copy of the original signed and notarized disclaimer
that used the term embezzlement mentioned in the article.....
Here's some pertinent exerpts:
Given Metoyer's April announcement, Miller says, he had no choice but to
order an audit. "I'm not going to sit here and have an organization say that
they believe that $110,000 is missing and then say that they're not
responsible for it," asserts the NRP chief. But, Miller adds, he's more
concerned
with the way the CNIA appears to be operating now. He notes that the
organization has been using an ever-increasing percentage of its budget for
administrative costs, rather than for the implementation of actual programs
in the neighborhood. According to NRP figures in 1998, 22 percent of
CNIA expenditures went for administration; by 2000 that figure had climbed
to 41 percent. And from January through March of this year, no money
at all was spent on neighborhood programs.
Metoyer acknowledges that project work has slowed down but counters, "I'm
very confident that everything that's happened since we took office is
definitely in order."
And the quotes by yours truly:
At the most recent CNIA annual board meeting and election in May, there was
little public discussion of the impending audit. Metoyer and his allies
easily retained control of the board, prompting renewed cries that the new
regime had once again managed to stack the deck in its own favor. Says
Eva Young, who lost her bid for a board seat: "It was pretty much
preordained." But, she concedes, "There wasn't really an organized alternative
either."
The results of the audit aren't likely to change the tenor of neighborhood
politics in Central. Young says that some residents are talking about founding
a new organization, separate from the CNIA. "A lot of people that I've
talked to don't think there's much point in continuing to try and fix CNIA,
that
it might be better to start anew," she says.
But read the whole article.... I didn't know the financial information --
that's very interesting.....
Eva
Eva Young
Central
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