DONE WATCH--City Councilmember José Huizar and former President George W. Bush share some unfortunate traits proving due diligence isn't their strong suit.

DONE WATCH--The Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates are an elected team of NC members who spend thousand of hours meeting annually with departments and unions, to review wants and needs, and to scrub through the city budget, in order to report to the Mayor and City Council on matters of budget and city services. 

DONE WATCH-First, a little history. Since its inception, the “Department” has been plagued with complaint after complaint ranging from complete lack of response to utter ineptness. Motion after motion that could be misconstrued or abused has followed, creating a greater window for abuse and plenty of excusesto be used by the same bureaucrats trying to hold on to their six figure jobs. 

EASTSIDER-As a civic activist who has served on a neighborhood council, I am deeply concerned about the future of the Neighborhood Council system itself. The following is a letter I wrote to Councilmember David Ryu about the problematic performance of the Department of Neighborhood Emplowerment (DONE) and the need for change. (Photo above: DONE GM Grayce Leiu and LA Controller Ron Galperin.)

DONE WATCH--There's bad luck and there's bad timing, and many times through no fault of anyone in particular, people get walloped by both.  It's the wrong-time/wrong-place situation we attribute to freakishly unavoidable car wrecks. 

EASTSIDER-It is not a secret that the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) is broken. It is equally evident that something like 90 percent of their woes are self-inflicted wounds by Grayce Liu, the DONE staff and their assigned City Attorney. So, what should we do?