Adam and I blog about the importance of neighborhoods and contributing in whatever way you feel comfortable to the community around you. As we mentioned before, the last year and a half since moving to Rochester has kept us busy. But we decided that we are always going to be busy. And if we wanted to follow through with one of our goals when moving to Rochester, being part of our neighborhood and community, there was no time like the present. We re-energized RocVille (as rough as it still is around the edges) and started blogging. We want you to know that we don’t just sit around from the safety of our desks and blog about doing something. Although we have been slowly getting to know our neighbors, we are now are tackling our goal of actually getting involved in a more active way.

In knee-deep snow we trudged up the street to meet with the current president of our specific neighborhood association, Park Central NA, yesterday. We were put in touch with him through Jimmy Catalano, who is the head of the overall neighborhood coalition for the entire Park Avenue neighborhood, the Park Avenue Neighborhood Coalition. The Park Ave area is pretty big, so there are lots of small associations and block clubs that encompass just a few streets, which allows those nearby neighbors to know each other and do things together.

The Park Central Neighborhood Association hasn’t been that active. Adam and I want to help revive it. The current president, who has been in the neighborhood for a long time, is interested too. So, we decided over coffee and snow yesterday to do just that.
Our goals are simple:

1. Give our neighbors an opportunity to know each other.
As the president of the association said yesterday, “If you twist an ankle while running on my street, I want you to know who lives where so you can ask for help.

Adam and I also want the few kids in the neighborhood to have a safety net of neighbors around them.

2. Have one or two social functions a year.
We don’t need a treasurer or a dues to do this. Everyone who wants to participate can bring a dish and socialize with their neighbors. This goal ties into the first goal.

3. Keep neighbors informed of important information.
We want neighbors to know what businesses are coming in, crime statistics, upcoming events and what issues are being discussed. Everyone who lives here is invited to participate in both the Park Avenue Neighborhood Coalition and Park Avenue Revitalization Committee. We want to keep our neighbors informed of meetings and other events, so they can participate if they want to.

Adam and I plan to set up a web site to provide that information. We actually don’t know how necessary meetings are for the little neighborhood group specifically, since issues affecting the neighborhood are addressed by the over-arching organizations in which we can all participate. We just want our neighbors to have an opportunity to know and support one another
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Once the snow stops, we’ll start with the neighbors we know and move on to the ones we don’t yet know. We are trying to keep the “Baby Steps” mantra in mind while we jump into these things, given that we work and have kids to raise. There is so much we want to do. Baby Steps.

We’ll learn as we go and are looking forward to sharing our experiences with you here.