News~May08

May 2008

Walkability Update

Graffiti Update

Membership & Board

Community Announcements

Roosevelt's Centennial Celebration

is coming!

An Open House for the entire community with ties to Roosevelt over its 100-year history will be on Thursday, May 15 from 6 to 8 pm.

If you or your children or grandchildren attended Roosevelt, or if you have another connection with our school, please join us at the open house!

Plus, you can leave your mark on Roosevelt by purchasing an engraved brick, which will be laid in the school garden this summer.

Make a Difference Day & Plant Sale!

Saturday, May 17 from 9 to noon

At Roosevelt, we do not use pesticides to help with weed control. So, a few times a year we call on the community to help us pull, yank, and whack the weeds into submission.

Plus, the Roosevelt PTA holds a fabulous plant sale in front of the Time Garden! Come over and stock up!

Oh So Live Classical Concert

Sunday, May 18 at 6pm

Jorgensen Music Studio, 2013 Bethel St NE

35 seats available! Reserve your place by calling 456-5953.

Performers

Robert Bruce Jorgensen, piano, and Steven Lovinger, violin.

Music

Bach, Robert Jorgensen, Elgar, Bartok, Debussy, Liszt. Improvisation in modern style.

Suggested donation

$15, $10 students, children 12 and under, free.

Robert Bruce Jorgensen is a lifelong pianist, composer and teacher, who loves the NE neighborhood. His ambition is to share the greatest music with his community, to encourage food and energy self-sufficiency, to promote sustainability, and to have huge fun in the process. He currently has openings in his studio for three students.

Walkability Update

San Francisco St. Sidewalk Phase II: Quince Street to East Bay

It's a great day for our neighborhood!

The Olympia City Council votes to fund SF Sidewalk Project - Phase II!

Thanks in part to our long history of support of this project, to Joe Hyer's leadership and the willingness of his fellow Councilmembers on the Finance Committee - Joan Machlis and Craig Ottavelli - to think outside the box, and to the work of City staff to identify creative and responsible options to fund this project, the Council has approved funding for the project at their Council meeting on May 6. Start looking for big changes up San Francisco hill this summer!

Up until about two weeks ago, the City of Olympia was seriously considering postponing construction of the SF sidewalk project that would link Quince Street to East Bay Drive until as late as 2010. Given how important this project is to our neighborhood and how long we've been waiting for it to be built, NENA President Peter Guttchen has been working closely with Councilmember Joe Hyer to track the status of this project and to offer our neighborhood's strong support for completing this critical project this year. When this phase of the SF project is complete, there will be a sidewalk or trail all the way from downtown and places like the Farmers Market and Percival Landing to the Edison St. entrance to Mission Creek Park.

For details on the project, visit the City's project web page at SF Sidewalk Phase II.

Roosevelt School Parking Lot Improvements

Another win for our entire neighborhood today! We just received word that the Olympia School District has approved the parking lot redesign that we've been working on for over two years. This work started in 2006 when parents told us in the Roosevelt Traffic Safety Survey that they felt the entrance to our school was very dangerous for pedestrians and bicyclists, and very frustrating for commuters and bus drivers. A team of NENA folks partnered with Roosevelt Principal Domenico Spatolla-Knoll, teachers, and staff from the City, OSD, and WA Department of Transportation to redesign the school entrance. NENA used funds from our Thurston County Department of Health Healthy Steps grants to have this design engineered by Parametrix. Now that we have formal support from OSD, we will be preparing grant applications to get the funds necessary to complete this redesign.

In a nutshell, this redesign involves:

Relocating the school driveway about 100 feet east on San Francisco so commuters going through the intersection of Bethel and San Francisco can avoid school-related traffic.

Building a parent drop-off area, where parents can let their kids off at the curb near the school entrance, with room to pass cars and small buses that are stopped.

Building a raised sidewalk so kids walking from the northeast side of the school will not have to cross traffic as they enter the school grounds.

This raised sidewalk will also serve to divide the parking lot from the pull-through drop-off and pick-up area.

We always welcome your input. Please let melinda@neneighborhood know what you think!
NENA working on another Thurston County Public Health STEPs grant

Our Healthy Steps grant work is about to begin! You've already given us great ideas for our NE Olympia Walkaround Guide. As we prepare our destination map and wayfinding signs, we'd like your input about local parks, businesses, and other places you frequent.

We're assembling a few hearty volunteers to take a walk with City Sidewalk and NeighborWoods staff to discuss where sidewalks, crosswalks, curb cuts, and street trees should go. This 2-hour walk, which will take place from 9:30 to 11:30 on May 16, is vital to kick-start planning for sidewalks to our neighborhood schools and parks. Interested in joining us? Please e-mail melinda@neneighborhood.org. We'll meet at the San Francisco St. Bakery at 9:30. Thank you!

Graffiti Update

Thanks to the hard work and responsiveness of our many partners, more than 100 taggings in our neighborhood have been "busted" since we started this effort last Fall. The success of this effort shows the power of community collaboration to solve what appear to be intractable problems. The list of partners on this project is long and include the young men and staff at the Touchstone group home, Qwest Communications, Puget Sound Energy, Comcast, InterCity Transit, Thurston County Public Works, Abbey Realty, Moonrise Homes, Sherman Williams, and staff from the City of Olympia's Police, Public Works, and Community Planning and Development Departments including Amy Stull, Jeannine Stewart, Rick Knostman, Bonnie Herrington, Chris Grabowski, and the City's Signs and Markings Section staff. I encourage you to get involved by taking digital photos of any taggings you see in our neighborhood and posting them on our "Graffiti Busters" blog. Go to http://www.xanga.com/signin.aspx and sign in using username: Nena_Oly and password: adrian.

NENA Membership & Board

Our next meeting will be on Wed. May 21 @ 7 pm at Robert Jorgensen's home (and music studio), located at 2013 Bethel St NE. Everyone is welcome to our board meetings, and we are now looking for new board members. These meetings are a chance for you to learn more about, and get involved in, making your neighborhood and community an even better place to live. If you're interested in specific issues affecting our neighborhood, would like to help NENA accomplish current goals, or lead NENA in new directions, please consider joining us!