As I look back over the past year, it’s hard to believe my term as CPNA’s president is all but over! We’ve had a tremendous year, reaching a major milestone on a couple of our College Park traditions, continuing others, and supporting a new venture in our
community garden.
While it was my first year as president, it was the twenty-fourth year for the College Park Neighborhood Association, and a great one at that. However, it is far from a one man show—our success is because of the hard work of many many individuals who love College Park and contribute to it in so many different ways.
So, this is my chance to look back over the past year and thank you all for your part in making this year great! Let’s review…
Monthly Meetings
One of the things we strive to do is connect our neighborhood with government and business and anything or anyone who might impact us. To that end we hold our monthly meetings, and we had some incredible meetings and presentations this year.
Our Commissioner visited regularly to keep us up to date with the City. We also had visits and presentations from government representatives including State Representative Scott Randolph, Mayor Buddy Dyer, Police Chief Paul Rooney, School Board Representative Nancy Robinsson and all of the local public school principals. We also had great presentations from other guests, including Jody Barry from Florida Hospital, Ginger Corless of the LYMMO project, and others from OUC, CPP, OJA and many, many more.
We learned a lot and were able to provide feedback about many projects impacting our neighborhood, including the LYMMO expansion, Florida Hospital’s Health Village, and Princeton Elementary School’s construction. From all of us on the board to all of our presenters, thank you for giving your time to share your knowledge with us, answering our questions, and soliciting our opinions.
This coming year, we already have plans for LYMMO to return (in January) and update us on a College Park route to and from the Sunrail. We hope to have a presentation about the Creative Village to our south (date pending). We also intend to continue our tradition inviting candidates in local elections to come and speak with us. So there is a lot to look forward to.
Events
One of the other things we do is try to bring the community together, and hold events that benefit the children of College Park. While many residents come to our meetings, we may best be known for our events; namely CPNA’s:
This year we celebrated twenty years of the College Park Historic Homes Tour and Sunday in the Park events! Mayor Dyer even
issued a proclamation about our twenty year milestone, and Commissioner Stuart
donated 20 trees to the neighborhood for this important anniversary. Many thanks to Bruce Thomas, who has run Sunday in the Park for the last several years and Jodi Rubin who has run the Historic Homes tour for even more. These events are part of the fabric of College Park and your dedication and hard work over the years is what has made them so loved.
We also held our annual
Easter Egg Hunt, thanks to Mike Norato. As usual the hunt was fast and furious and the kids loved finding the eggs and visiting with the Easter bunny.
Finally, we held our newest event for the second time,
Movies in the Park, thanks to Allie Loveland’s leadership. I think everyone who braved the chill air will agree that it was great to hang out with friends and family and watch the original Willy Wonka in Dartmouth Park. We hope to do this more often next year and hope to see you there!
Committees
Less visible to many is the hard work of our committees. Our committees do everything from taking care of the College Park Gateway Signs we built, to monitoring traffic, to managing our membership, to arranging treats for our meetings, and more. Thank you to all of our committee chairs and members who keep an eye out for these special interests. We are the beneficiaries of your hard work and appreciate your time and dedication.
In Closing
So as you can see, it was a year filled with great things. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve as your neighborhood association president—I am thrilled to have the chance to give back to a community that has given me so much.
And thank you to everyone who helped us in this our twenty-fourth year. Here’s to a great twenty-fifth!
Though I won’t be president next year, I’m sure I’ll see you at the meetings, the events, and all around this great neighborhood of College Park.
