A Message From Bong Water Kim of un-EMPOWER L.A. - UPDATE on Status of Neighborhood Council Roll Over Funds (They ain't rollin'!)

NUTTY WANNABEES UPDATE:

Update on the Status of Neighborhood Council Roll Over Funds

Date: January 27, 2010

To: Neighborhood Council Friends and Colleagues

From: BongHwan (BH) Kim, General Manager, Department of Neighborhood Empowerment

This is to update you on the status of NC roll over funds from prior fiscal years. As I stated in prior Eblasts (copies attached) the Department is in the midst of reconciling accounts for all 89 NCs since the beginning of the NC Funding Program. When the Program was first designed, there was no system in place which could accommodate for the subsequent implementation of the rollover policy and confirmation of roll over balances on annual basis. As you know, additional issues, including the transition from the Bank of America Stored Value card to the US Bank Purchasing Card, complicated the entire reconciliation process that we are facing today. We anticipate completing the accounting work and notifying NCs of their balances by mid March.

Reminder: NCs are not authorized to tap into what you believe to be your roll over balances until our Department has completed the accounting for each NC and given you formal written approval based upon the reconciliation with our financial records. Submission of a revised budget, including your roll over, does not constitute approval from our Department to spend more than the current fiscal year's allocation of $45,000. Because the City's accounting system maintains aggregate amounts by Fiscal Year and not by individual NC, we can only confirm balances after we have accomplished a complete reconciliation for each NC account for each Fiscal Year. We will establish an appeal process for those NCs who dispute our final balance determination.

I apologize for the delays in giving you access to the roll over funds. However, because the accounting system was not originally designed to accommodate this System, it is critical that we manually retrace the financial records for all NCs in order to establish an accurate, going-forward balance. As you know, the systemic deficiency is compounded by severe staff cutbacks and work furloughs that are affecting our entire Department, particularly the NC Funding Unit. Your patience and understanding is greatly appreciated.