Please find attached a draft RCAC participation guide, which may serve
as a starting point for our retreat in February and help new chairs in
the meantime. This guide may also help CACs recruit new chairs by
providing a quick introduction to their role in the RCAC. It begins:
> Welcome to the RCAC! This guide is intended to help you learn about
> your responsibilities and resources as a new member so you can
> participate quickly and fully.
*The need for a guide.* I realized after our meeting last week that I
had not been clear on my need for RCAC-specific training. While the
Neighborhood College has been very useful and interesting, it does not
address key information that RCAC members need to know. Attending other
CAC meetings will help one understand how a meeting is run, appropriate
topics, and so forth, but won't reveal when newsletters are due or that
you don't need to pay for parking when representing your CAC at a City
Council meeting.
Is the city website enough? Not at this point. For example, thecity
website
<http://www.raleighnc.gov/neighbors/content/CommServices/Articles/CitizensAd…>
says:
> The RCAC meets each month to allow CAC leaders to share information.
When I started representing my CAC on the RCAC in July, I was eager to
attend my first meeting. Thank heavens I asked Bill Padgett to carpool,
because he told me that the RCAC never meets in August. I would have
shown up alone at night in the city parking garage and then had to pay
to leave -- not a good start.
*What's in this draft.* This draft includes information that would have
been useful to me as a new chair and strives to cover some topics that
I've heard others ask about. For the most part, I assembled the guide
using introductions from the city website and documents, with links are
provided for more information. In response to a question at last week's
meeting, I also included a suggested attire, using these definitions
<http://fashion.about.com/cs/glossary/a/partydefinition.htm>. Wikipedia
has a nice section
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dress_code_%28Western%29> on the
appropriateness of national dress, but only addresses what men should
wear. I included the election dates in the calendar and the city
councilors who represent a CAC on the contact list to remind us that our
contacts may change. Some new members might not know that they have a
councilor for their district plus two at-large councilors.
Questions and suggestions are in [ brackets ]. I still have many
questions after nearly 18 months as a chair, many years as an active CAC
member, and attending half of the Neighborhood College. I may have some
things dead wrong; if so, please send me a correction.
*Refining and maintaining the guide.* If you'd like to send corrections
or additions to the guide, I'd be happy to assemble them and create
another draft before our retreat in February.
Dwayne, would you please send the existing RCAC training manual that
Bill Padget mentioned to the chairs who have joined since it was written
three years ago? Or perhaps to all of us, so we can use it to enhance or
replace this draft?
The guide will need to be maintained to be useful. We should discuss
maintenance at the retreat. I'd consider doing that if the group would
like me to and if city staff will provide the specific contact
information for each CAC and make sure new RCAC members get a copy.
*Thanks* to Ana Pardo and Bill Padgett for advice when I first decided
to run for chair, to Mark Vander Borgh for being my mentor, to Jonathan
Edwards for being a patient and helpful Community Services Specialist,
and to all of you for answering questions as they came up.
... Linda Watson
Chair, Glenwood CAC
Everyone,
My neighborhood has two leaf collections last year. Also, I remember
seeing ads in the N&O showing in which section of the city leaf collections
would be done next. This year, to my knowledge, nothing has been posted in
the N&O other than a statement indicating that leaf collections would begin
on November 15 and no specific areas of the city were listed as the starting
point.
I, too, wish the CAC's had been notified so the CAC chairs could list the
collection dates in their newsletters.
Mary Belle
RCAC Members,
I want to share this letter from the Mordecai CAC to the head of
Public Works regarding Leaf Collection.
Basically, the majority of residents were not ready for this service
and also think the service is being applied too early in the season.
1. Do you agree with our concern?
2. INFORM your CAC district about their leaf pick-up, since we didn't
do a very good job of that! You can learn from our mistake.
Cheers,
Reid Serozi, Mordecai CAC
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Reid Serozi <reid(a)serozi.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 12:58 PM
Subject: Annual Leaf Collection Feedback
To: carl.dawson(a)raleighnc.gov
Cc: Eugene Weeks <eweeks1(a)bellsouth.net>, Russ Stephenson
<Russ(a)russstephenson.com>
Hello Carl Dawson,
I would like to raise a concern about the annual leaf collection
service performing clean-up too early in the season and the next wave
of service is not scheduled till after the New Year’s Holiday, per the
information online.
http://www.raleighnc.gov/search/content/PWksStreetMaint/Articles/AnnualLeaf…
I am the chairman of the Mordecai Citizens Advisory Council district,
which our community / neighborhoods fall in SECTION E of the scheduled
annual leaf collection.
Concerns were raised today as the city street maintenance crews are
moving through our CAC district today (section E) and will continue
through Friday.
The abundance of leafs have not fallen from the trees and the majority
of residences have not moved leafs to the curb, which makes the
service appear to be unproductive at this time.
We understand the leaf collection service starts the same time each
year and also changes the direction around the city to be fair. We
also understand new leaf collection equipment has been purchased,
which has increased the speed of pick-up greatly.
May we suggest the leaf collection is started per some level of
science, instead of a regular hard set date?
May we suggest the second wave of service is applied before the New
Year Holiday?
Bottom line, the Mordecai CAC residents are very grateful for this
excellent service. Thou we are concerned this type of service is not
being applied at the correct time. We are concerned about the amount
of time until residents see the second wave of leaf collection, since
piles of organic matter contribute to storm water, parking, snow
removal, sidewalk, and driving issues along our streets.
Again, we are extremely grateful for this city service and we hope our
feedback improves the quality.
CC’ing council members.
--
===
Reid Serozi
Mordecai Citizens Advisory Council
(919) 807-1878
http://www.serozi.com/reid
Good Morning
I hope that you all are having a great weekend. As you may have heard, several of the municipalities in Wake County (including Raleigh) are investigating the possibility establishing smoke free park ordinances. Advocates for Health in Action is administering a survey to evaluate the public's interest in this.
We would appreciate you sharing this survey with your CACs. The link is
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/smokefreeparks
Thank you for your consideration.
Laura
Laura Aiken, MA, MHA
Director, Advocates for Health in Action
Community Outreach, WakeMed Health & Hospitals
(919) 350-8366 (office)
(919) 630-2095 (cell)
www.advocatesforhealthinaction.org<http://www.advocatesforhealthinaction.org/>
