Charter reform promised many changes in the relationship between citizens and city government, but inaction was not one of them.
Yet inaction might be the most positive term for the Office of Community & Civic Life’s handling of funding contracts for the four district coalition offices serving neighborhood associations in the city.
This month, the District 4 Coalition board discussed OCCL’s failure to renew annual funding contracts or provide the associated funding more than two months into the fiscal year. A week later OCCL paid the fourth quarter of the fiscal year ending in June, but it still had presented no proposed contract or funds for the current year, Darlene Urban Garrett, District 4 Coalition executive director, told the NW Examiner.
As a result, the office is operating on reserve funds.
“Despite the best efforts of all four coalitions to get a contract and try to get a budget approved, and an initial payment, which was due July 1, there's been no update,” coalition President Jessie Burke told her board.
City Councilor Candace Avalos asked Burke if anyone in OCCL had responded to her pleas for information, “To which I said, ‘Of course not,’” Burke said.
“The organization that oversees us knows nothing about your priceless value as neighborhood associations,” Garrett told her board.
The Examiner was also unable to get answers from the city. The OCCL website has no staff directory and provides only one general email address and phone number.
It is unconscionable that the City’s Office of Civic and Community Life takes so long to provide the neighborhood associations with funding approved by the City Council.
I hear the payments may have been made late last week, but also that long delayed payments have been routine for a number of years.
I mean it’s almost the end of the first quarter of the new fiscal year. Can you imagine how OCCL employees would feel if they hadn’t been paid since July 1. This is absurd and not fair to the neighborhood associations.