GNWCIA Town Hall Meeting Report...

My wife and I made the short trip down to the Lodge of the Great Northwest to attend the Town Hall Meeting of the Great Northwest Community Improvement Association (GNWCIA), in order to go over and ask questions about the annual budget. Only problem was, we arrived what we thought was early, only to find that we had pretty much missed the meeting. Needless to say, I'll keep the notes brief:

I only had a brief minute to look over the budget line items before the meeting was wrapping up. Of special interest to me was that the A-Team has received an increase in proposed funding up to $1,000 for the year. I asked the directors if they had included funding for paint and such to go above and beyond normal maintenance needs - basically so we could start having more matching colors to use for graffiti abatement. The answer was "yes". And I was also told that the City of San Antonio is helping us with a program where, if we can present and certify (I'm not sure of the full details here) that we have volunteers doing clean-up of tagging, we can obtain additional assistance with paint (not just the recycled mixed paint we currently use, but real matched paint) and other supplies.

The final comment of the event came from Mr. Joe Martinez who lauded the board of directors for putting together a good budget. Hey, you can't ask for more than that.

Of course, Joe and I did discuss several issues following the meeting. One thing that may be aired out is the issue of these fancy new electronic marquees.

Previously (last year I guess), the board had approved $70K to renovate or repair the marquees throughout the GNW community. For this budget, the board is proposing to spend a total of $75K (and again, I'll have to check the figures on this) to install two of the spiffy electronic marquess - one on the main drag in Silver Creek and one on the main drag in Emerald Valley. The other marquees would not be the electronic ones, but would be upgraded versions of the standard kind where you have to manually replace the letters.

Being a cheap skate, I initially had a few issues with this. My primary concern would be wasting money on something we don't need, followed closely by the worry of vandals shooting out the marquee lights. But in understanding the total cost for this investment and some of the details regarding upkeep costs (replacement light panels) I can live with the $75K investment, and apparently, so can the rest of the people in the GNW. I only mention this because, aside from my wife and I, and the Directors at the meeting, there were only a hand full (and I really mean, a single hand full) of other residents at the town hall meeting. And of course, I recognized them from the small group that attends the board meetings.

I suspect people were burnt out from all that civic duty taking place on the 4th.