Wards Corner Civic League

Anthony Burfoot has been invited to come speak at our next civic league meeting on June 15, 2009 at 6:45pm at the Fitness & Wellness Center.

Here is the President’s message for June:

Dear Neighbors,

The June meeting will mark the last meeting of the first half of the civic league year until we resume our schedule again in September. Summer is just around the corner and schools will be out and hopefully we will all enjoy some vacation time. Over the summer, please continue to enjoy the Norfolk Fitness and Wellness Center. There are over 7000 members now. If you are not a member please consider joining. Please take advantage of this facility in our back yard. Also we will be distributing Flags on the Fourth thanks to the efforts of our Treasurer Ray Duron. The flags come to us courtesy of Senator Ralph Northam and Delegate Paula Miller. We need your help on this endeavor as well, so please contact Ray if you would like to help distribute flags on the 4th. Ray, thanks for coordinating this effort. I know you will once again do an outstanding job for this patriotic event, as we will see all of our streets impressively lined with American flags.

I wish to thank Barbara Ross for her continued dedicated service as our newsletter editor. She has done an excellent job preparing the newsletter each month for the past five years. This takes a significant amount of time to complete and Barbara’s newsletters are informative and always on time. Barbara, we thank you for your service and look forward to your newsletters again in the fall. Enjoy your two months of newsletter free time. Also a special thanks to Joan Griffey and Ray Duron for keeping the records of our meetings and ensuring that our finances are in order. Joan, also thank you for your great efforts as Chair of the Beautification Committee with the Greater Wards Corner Partnership. Your tenacity does pay off. A thank you to Sue Classick for organizing the delivery of our newsletters each month with our many newsletter carriers. This also is no small task. Finally, a special thanks to Martin Thomas Jr. for his service as Vice President, providing us needed guidance at our Executive Committee meetings and for keeping our website up to date. Thank you all!

Mega kudos go to Shahana Magee and the neighbors in the Pinehurst section of our civic league. These folks know how to organize a petition drive and get action from the city of Norfolk. Through their efforts and addressing a problem the right way they were able to get the city to approve several stop signs at the cross streets of Cedar Level and Colonial Ave. with Burleigh and Maycox Avenues. This is the way problems and action to correct those problems should be addressed and accomplished. The power of the action is in the coordinated effort of a group of vocal citizens. While the role of the civic league is to assist in addressing neighborhood problems and to stand behind neighbors seeking relief from those problems, it is the group that is immediately affected which speaks out and gets the job done. My congratulations go to you all for a job well done. Let all of us learn from your coordinated efforts.

For those of you attending our last civic league meeting where Councilman Winn and Williams spoke to us, I want you to think about what you heard from them. Were you happy and satisfied with their words to us about their efforts to improve Wards Corner? If you were, so be it. If you were not and did not like what you heard or thought it was a repeat of what has been said time and time again, please let them know that you are not satisfied with the attention being given to Wards Corner. Remember the power is in the group and only by all of us speaking out and demanding improvements for our area will that action happen. I know I will continue pushing for improvements for Wards Corner but we need to do this together.

Your job over the summer is to think about what improvements you would like to see in your and our neighborhood. Please let any member of the Executive Committee know what these improvements should be. Do you want improved lighting at the North Shore playground? Do you want more enforcement of cars parking on lawns? Do you see areas of city infrastructure (streets, curbs and gutters, etc.) in our neighborhood that need addressing? Is crime a problem that needs to be addressed more aggressively? Think about what improvements you would really like to see in the entire Wards Corner area. When we meet in September, hopefully we will have a list of these needs that we can share with you.

Finally please have a safe, relaxing and enjoyable summer. We will continue our work to improve our area throughout the summer. We hope to see you again in the fall at our September meeting.

Thanks, Jim English

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