News flash! Every week, following the Board meeting, Supervisor Kuehl picks five items you might find interesting, important, and/or fun. It’s your way to get a quick rundown of several highlights of the meeting in no more than 5 minutes! Looking for more? Click here to get the entire agenda.
Before getting down to a jam-packed agenda, the Board kicked off the meeting with a poignant and whimsical invocation (video will be below) by my dear friend Laura Geller, Rabbi Emerita of Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills.
How do you feel about lower utility bills, increasing the percentage of green energy that powers your home and creating good green jobs?
After years of hard work, the Board unanimously approved a motion to launch a “Green Power” initiative offering businesses and residents a way to reduce greenhouse gases, and possibly reduce their electricity rates as well, beginning in 2018. Really exciting stuff, and, as it passed, I was thinking of former Supervisor Don Knabe, who was critically important in making this a reality!
Read More: LA Ushers in Earth Week With Innovative Power Initiative
In a large disaster, such as a major earthquake or a terrorist attack, thousands of lives could be lost due to an inadequate supply of blood for a sudden onslaught of victims.
USBloodDonors.org is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public service organization that attempts to address this occasional gap between blood bank supply and demand by creating a “stand-by” program that contacts individuals who voluntarily pre-register to donate blood in the event of an emergent need. Volunteers register their name, blood type (if known), an e-mail address or phone number, and zip code in a privacy-protected donor registry.
Potential donors are notified on a real-time basis by e-mail or text when life-threatening shortages exist in their geographic area so they can help by either donating blood or getting the word out in the community via social media.
I teamed up with Supervisor Kathryn Barger for a motion to have LA County join this critically important program by creating special announcements to be included in our employee payroll statements as well as the County’s monthly employee newsletter, regarding opportunities for employees to voluntarily register with USBloodDonors.org as “stand-by” blood donors in the event of an urgent or emergent need.
LA County oversees the largest juvenile justice system in the country, and we’re striving to fundamentally change and improve care in our three juvenile halls and thirteen juvenile camps.
This week we brought in the so-called “Team of Twelve” (pictured at the top of page) behind Campus Kilpatrick, a new juvenile facility opening this year that will usher in the LA Model, a collaborative effort of the County and community partners to create a state-of-the-art, residential setting, focused on therapeutic, holistic, and small-group treatment.
You can read more about the amazing new campus here, and big thanks to these individuals who helped make it happen: Our own Justice Deputy Sherry Gold, Katheryn Beigh, Bill Stanton, Angie Wolf, Barbara Lona, Carol Biondi, Michelle Newall, Leslie Rehak, Jamal Thrower, Karen Streich, Diana Velasquez, Patricia Soung, Fesia Davenport, Anna Hom-Wong, Alberto Ramirez, Dave Mitchell, David Oh, Denise Grande, Sheila Mitchell, Denise Herz, Kim McGill.
Have an overdue book or unpaid fines? Then grab those books and head to the library and see what you’ve been missing!
The Board joined Skye Patrick, our fantastic new County Library Director, in declaring May as “Fine Forgiveness Month” at our 87 libraries serving 3.4 million residents.
From May 1 to 31, 2017, LA County Library’s Fine Forgiveness Month will offer a one-month “amnesty” period that will allow library customers to return overdue materials without paying the applicable fees, and will also waive accumulated overdue fines on already-returned materials. The last fine forgiveness program was implemented in 2008 and yielded over one hundred thousand returned materials! In addition to fostering goodwill in local communities and removing barriers by allowing patrons to access library services once again, the program has the added benefit of allowing the Library to recover valuable materials which may not otherwise be returned for use by other customers.