Happy New Year, Beacon Hill!
I usually like making new year resolutions just so I can feel self-righteous for the two weeks it takes before I decide being virtuous is just overrated. The best resolutions are commitments to the work we’ve already begun. I’m thinking of the work in our community. Our priorities are simply a continuation of the hard work that has been going on for years. Priorities for the new year include controlling, in a humane way, the loose animals on our streets; crime; assuring affordable housing; providing a quality education for our kids in our local schools; protecting our neighborhood plan (Midtown Plan and NCD) and asking residents to abide by zoning regulations; creating a healthy food oasis with our community garden; creating revitalization of local and community responsive businesses in our commercial corridor; and struggling with issues of transients and their needs. We need volunteers to help with these issues that are about our own neighborhood. Are you willing to make a New Year’s commitment? Come join your neighbors to help make our great community even better and stronger. This community belongs to all of us and it takes a variety of voices and ideas to meet the challenges that it faces. Contact me (my information is at the back of the newsletter) or better still, come to the next BHANA meeting at 7:00 p.m. at Cotton Elementary on January 11th. It was a great holiday party thanks to Burnt Ends at 1725 Blanco. They were a generous benefactor, and the food was great! Special thanks to Cassy Lewis and Heart of the Neighborhood (HON) for such a wonderful job organizing the party, decorating, buying, and wrapping the children’s gifts and for purchasing the raffle rosemary plants. During the party, I visited with a lot of neighbors, young people, who told me that they were returning to Beacon Hill where their parents or grandparents still live. They told me stories of how they spent much of their childhoods here and now are moving back. Please contact me to record your stories as well as the stories of your parents and grandparents. We could feature them in this newsletter. So the new year begins by honoring the old one: Thank you to all the people who have given of themselves to work on behalf of our community this past year. Here’s to a great 2016! Cheers!
Cynthia Merla Spielman, President