Bates Area Civic Association

Hi neighbors,

This blog moderator is back from a glorious vacation feeling rested and reinvigorated.  And I have thought for ways to make the blog better. It’s been a work in progress since it started a few months ago.  It’s ALWAYS open for neighbors’ ideas.

Neighborhood discussion/debate over our issues.

Neighbors can hit me up if they’d like to post regularly or once on one or various issues.  Right now we’ve got nine neighbors, including myself,  signed up as regular contributors.  They are listed on the sidebar.  We can have up to 30 and they can rotate.  The criteria is that postings be thoughtful,  working toward thoughtful information exchange,  and community betterment. Devoid of crude commentary or anything slanderous.  It’s great to talk about neighborhood problems, but it’s important to do so in a constructive way.  There’s a board of four of us from BACA that conceived the blog; anything controversial is discussed among among us and subject to being deleted. But there’s more about this in About BACA page.

Upcoming Events.

I’ve put relevant Upcoming Events put on a Bates Area Civic Association Google calendar.  I think you have to have a google account to add stuff. But it’s a public calendar for all to access.  This calendar appears on the Sidebar now of the blog.  My intent was to keep from cluttering up blog postings so that they may be less in number but perhaps more substantive.  An events calendar is important but I’m looking for ways to differentiate from the issues.

Weekly blog news roundup

In another measure to keep away clutter, I was thinking of summarizing weekly what are the issues and happenings in our local blogosphere, which is very rich.  My hope is to publish this on Friday or so.  It would look something like this post.

Official Web Site.

I’ve bought the name batesareacivicassociation.org to host an official web site for the BACA.  This would have meeting minutes, upcoming agendas, a list of officers and contacts.  Real basic stuff.  I know we used to have free hosting space and I’ve not really looked into this very much yet. But thinking ahead, this is my intent.  This blog would accompany that web site.

TruxtonCircle.org site.

I’m wondering what happened with that site.  It’s rich in content and has some interesting interactive capabilities. It just hasn’t been updated.  Now it seems the discussion board isn’t active anymore.  I wonder why?  If anyone has any knowledge of this site, I’d be interested in contacting the moderators and somehow pooling content.

Neighborhood issues.

As I can see it from my vantage – issues that have been on this blog’s radar are:  the billboards at NJ/P St NW,  the Dog Park proposal at Bundy parking lot, and the proposed Latin American Youth Center at the Cook School.  Of older concern but still around:  the CAPCS/Armstrong school,  public use of the track at Dunbar, vacant properties.  Finished:  Flower Power – which we need to post photos and who won etc.

Blog pages

At the top of the blog are various pages that say Home,  About BACA, News, Home Services, etc.  These are harder to maintain because I can’t just send a post, but I have to go into the individual page and edit.  Since this isn’t my day job, I want to keep it realistic.  The News page is great for non-neighbor blog visitors especially, but it’s laborious, so I’m trying to figure out how to make that better.  I’m interested in created a Profiles page where i interview neighbors on a regular basis and publish interviews here. Haven’t gotten to it yet.  I’ve started a Useful Contacts page, which needs still fleshing out.   The Home Services page gets a lot of hits and I think it’s pretty useful repository of neighborhood referrals for services.  I want to eventually make the Vacant Property page a watchdog page on nuisance properties, also a work in progress. Any help on this would be great.

OK that’s it for now.  Always looking for input to make this blog and our neighborhood better.  My philosophy is that if each of us takes the lead on one problem or issue at a time, we can make a big difference, one thing and one person at a time.  Thanks, Caryn