Too much coffee, man, and I suppose that means that we're learning how to be happy. Somebody has to do it, so it might as well be us. It's not like g-d's decided to share the rules, anyway..
This is a good time to be Verde, so we enjoy it as long as it lasts. Last week, we took another very important, very small step toward the vague something we daily pursue, we put plants in the greenhouse! Take a look, ain't they purty (clearly, I've more learning to do on this whole camera exposure thing):
Something else is happening, something we've kind of hoped for but weren't sure about, but the first reviews are in and so far so good.
So, in communities like ours, low income communities, where a lot of people don't speak english and really aren't familiar with the notion that others folks give a crap about their ideas and needs and hopes anyway, changes can come to the neighborhood without anybody knowing about them or having a chance to say what they think.
This neighborhood has almost no parks, local folks load up the kids into a van and take them a couple neighborhoods away to play soccer, to run around, to have a picnic. There's a big site right here in the neighborhood, a 25 acre capped landfill formerly known as Killingsworth Fast Disposal (see pg 14). Now, a master planning process is underway for the Thomas Cully Park, a new park to be located over the landfill. It's a pretty standard process, with periodic workshops/open houses at a local church where folks talk about what they want from a new park.
Well, despite the fact that there's a largely Latino affordable housing community with 321 units, many with large families, only a few of these residents attended the open houses - tho, oddly enough, they did manage to get photographed and placed on the project's website
(hey! that's not right! making fun of the consultants for putting the 4 brown people who attended the session on the website! - I'm just saying...)
Well, we tried something different. We laminated the 11x17 final concepts (Concept E and Concept F), and made many photocopies of the questionnaire. The next morning, Nursery Crew Members reviewed the maps and questionnaire, then incorporated outreach into their time spent maintaining Hacienda CDC's affordable housing properties. In one week of sharing this information, we collected, translated into english, and forwarded to the the consultant team 25 questionnaires, connecting community folk to a process which is going to have a great impact on their daily lives and which, to date, had failed to secure their participation.
We're going to try this some more, with later phases of the Thomas Cully Park Master Plan process, as well as with a new project coming into the neighborhood, the Cully Green Street planning process
