[Summit] John Lane's posting about SNA

[Dream W]

Hi John and everyone,
I feel compelled to respond to this email.  For one, I take it personally that there may be a sentiment out there that the SNA Board is anything less than completely transparent.  I try to end every one of my communications by inviting the entire world to our meetings (third Monday of every month, 7pm at Summit Commons, 99 Hillside).  I feel like a broken record doing that, but I always try to err on the side of over-inviting.  PLEASE COME to the meetings.  It's just a group of people sitting at a table talking about projects that interest us.  COME JOIN THE FUN.
The shortcoming on posting our doings on our website is a matter of labor hours, not of us being non-transparent.  We are an all-volunteer organization (another thing I say that gets boring), and as an all-volunteer organization we must sometimes choose between pursuing active projects (North Main St, Summit Music Festival, our newsletter, Summit For Sale yard sale, other social functions, community gardening, DIY workshops, etc) and administrative functions (updating the website).
We do potentially have a volunteer who wants to help us with those updates, and please know that if you are interested in helping in this way, an email to me or any other board member will get you in contact and on the road to helping.

So to recap, please come and help, and in doing so perhaps you will learn who we are and what we do.  Otherwise, there are some bits of info on the website that are not terribly outdated.  And here is where you will find a list of our board members, which you said you had trouble finding: http://www.sna.providence.ri.us/who-we-are/
Regarding crime and our Crime Watch, it is true that on this list there is often great concern over crime.  In addition, when we have polled the neighborhood on where people generally rate crime as an issue among other issues, crime is always in the top items.  
Because of this vocal concern over crime, we have worked with The Miriam Hospital to establish the Crime Watch of Summit Neighborhood (http://summitcrimewatch.org/).  This group can only be as effective as its membership, though.  The mere existence of a crime watch group - or a neighborhood association, for that matter - will not erase or even reduce the amount of crime in the area.  People have to get involved and work to make that happen.
But please know, the SNA board does in fact concern itself with crime in the neighborhood.  We just are at a loss of ideas on what to do about it.  Aside from being in close communication with Lt. John Ryan, our new district lieutenant, and working with the Crime Watch group, if there is something that you think we could be doing, please let us know!
Lastly, meetings are held on the third Monday of every month, 7pm at Summit Commons at 99 Hillside.  All are welcome and encouraged to attend.  We would love to have you.  While we normally have a full agenda of discussion items, we ALWAYS make room in the schedule for guests who pop in.  Or just come to watch and say hi.  We want to hear from you, this is your group.
Dean  SNA President   
PS - Not sure why my posts always get broken up with question marks.  Sorry it's difficult to read.
Message: 2
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2012 08:41:41 -0400
From: john lane <jlane0014 at gmail.com>
To: SUMMIT <summit at sna.providence.ri.us>
Subject: [Summit] Governance, web site and chats
Message-ID:
    <CAKbKfbURH5qd-cU7Edo25adaoEGWReprVb9BYc=KXL-d64VksA at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Just an observation about Summit, compared to other neighborhood
organizations.
It seems that sna is active in 2 different circles -
one is the general chat function.  Fantastic communication on all kinds of
issues from home improvement contractors to concerts.
The second is the board and it's functions, which is also more connected to
the web.
It appears that there may have been some issues with the board, which is
not as transparent as other groups.  For instance, the web site is not
really up to date.
And although there is a great concern about crime in the neighborhood,
including a home invastion, that does not seem to be reflected at the
board, other than referring the issue to a crime watch group.
Is there a reason that the board minutes are not posted on the web?

Just curious, out of personnel and academic interest.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.sna.providence.ri.us/pipermail/summit_sna.providence.ri.us/attachments/20120313/49ffa664/attachment-0001.html>


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://sna.providence.ri.us/pipermail/summit_sna.providence.ri.us/attachments/20120313/c4dd4f22/attachment.htm>