Pocket – Greenhaven Community Association

Our group had a very productive meeting last Wednesday and it was great to have so many new members in attendance.  The first item that we covered was the upcoming Pocket/Greenhaven Family BBQ.  This event will be happening on June 10th from 10:30-1 at Garcia Bend Park.  Our group will be one of the event “partners” and so far up to 70 people have RSVP’d that they will be attending.  Both Fiona and Erin have done an amazing job organizing the event.  Be sure to mark the event and your calendar and I hope everyone can attend.

The next item on the agenda was Devin’s great idea to have a
“Pocket/Greenhaven Community Awards” ceremony. Devin suggested this event be modeled after Councilmember Ashby’s awards event in her district and that we should plan on having it sometime next Spring.

Regarding our continued goal of advocating for more retail and restaurants options in the Promenade Shopping Center, we discussed various plans to move ahead on the issue.  I shared that the information listed on the shopping center’s website was not up to date and the attempt to phone the owners did not work.  The next steps we planned to take were as follows:

-I will reach out to my optometrist who has an office in the shopping center.

-Tristan will reach out to Region Business, Sacramento Economic Council and our city’s finance director regarding supporting the shopping center.

-Mary will reach out to her contacts with PBIDs throughout the city to get advice on how we can better advocate for businesses in the Promenade.

Recently one of the major runways was shut down at Sacramento Executive Airport.  Jim shared with us how this was done as cost cutting measure by the county.  Unfortunately, shutting the runway down has led to more planes flying over our neighborhood.  Jim will continue the look into the issue and we’ll plan to host a community meeting sometime this summer to give our neighbors more of an opportunity to weigh in on these changes.

Our community association will soon have a monthly column in the Pocket News and we’ll also be hosting another series of crop swaps this summer.  We also decided to be involved in this year’s Pocket 4th of July Parade.  The idea was to have us walk as a group holding a banner and throwing candy.  Tristan has also offered the use of his old Lincoln Continental.  We’ll correspond more via email regarding the parade over the next few weeks.

The issue of cluster mailbox break-ins has not gone away.  Our group agreed that we could use a portion of our next meeting to host a community forum to address the issue.  Kathi Windheim has offered to contact SacPD to help answer questions at the forum as well.  We’ll start work on getting the word out about the meeting in the next week.

Finally we elected our first board.  The results are as follows:

Seat 1 – Pat

Seat 2 – Will

Seat 3 – Erin

Seat 4 – Tristian

Seat 5 – Devin

Seat 6 – Jim Geary

Seat 7 – Mary

The board will meet in the new few weeks to elect officers.  Thank you again to everyone who made it out last Wednesday.  I am very proud of the group we have put together.  It’s exciting to have so many opportunities to make the Pocket/Greenhaven neighborhood a better place.  Thank you for your continued help and support.

We started off our last meeting with a robust discussion around what the content of our letter to the owners of the Promenade Shopping Center should consist of. The group decided that instead of sending a letter with information from our survey  that we should instead invite them to our next meeting.  The goal of inviting them to our meeting
would give us a chance to speak with them personally about the information that we gathered in our survey.  Our letter to the owners would then start with a brief explanation of who we are and explain the concerns our neighbors have about the vacancies at the shopping center.  This would allow the owners to clear up any misconceptions regarding the vacancies and we could share with them the data we
gathered showing there is significant interest in supporting new retail and restaurants in the shopping center.  I’ll be reworking the letter and I’ll send out another rough draft for everyone to review in the next few days.

Regarding our bylaws, we once again did a thorough review of what we thought our group’s guiding document should entail.   One of the big changes we looked at was a change to our group’s name.  The discussion regarding our group’s name revolved what we felt the purpose of our group entailed.  While we all agreed that our main goal was to be a
“community forum,” we also discussed what name our group should consist of to have the greatest impact.  The group felt that going with the name, Pocket/Greenhaven Community Association would be the best step forward now that we had firmly established ourselves.  At the same time it was stressed that we should also include “A Community Forum” with our title so that community members would also feel
welcome to join and discuss pertinent neighborhood issues.   After a few minor changes we unanimously voted to accept our bylaws. I will be reaching out to neighborhood services to have us officially added to the city website.  We will also vote on our our board members at the next meeting.

Our final topic of the evening was the upcoming family event that is planned for the morning of June 10th at Garcia Bend Park.  Fiona, Devin and Erin have done an amazing job  with the planning.  They have been able to enlist the Pocket Moms group, Vice-Mayor Jennings office and possibly the Fire Dept. to help host our BBQ.  As more details become available we’ll make sure to share them with the group.

Our next meeting will be held at Robbie Waters Library on May 24th from 6-8 PM.  I’ll be sure to send out a revised version of the letter soon and we’ll continue to discuss our progress in working with the owners of the Promenade Shopping Center via email over the next few weeks.  Thank you all again for your help and support.  I am very proud of all that our group has accomplished in little over a year.
We have founded an important organization that will continue to make our neighborhood better for years to come.  I’m looking forward to continuing to work with you all.