Neighbood Meeting

This just in from Jerry Frankhouser, President of Bayside West Neighborhood Association:




On Friday afternoon, we received a "Good Neighbor Notice" from counsel for the DeBartolo group.
DeBartolo is requesting a Formal Decision on the number of trips they want to and from Georgetown in a day. Tampa City Council made some changes in the code on March 17, 2011 that would give Georgetown developers a problem. They want to be "grandfathered in." They say they are entitled to 6314 trips to and from in one day. That is a LOT. Just imagine the traffic on W.Fair Oaks and S.Westshore.



Please come to a special meeting of Bayside West Neighborhood Association at Jan Platt Library Tuesday, April 26 at 7:00pm in the StoryTime room. Go all the way into the library; turn left and go to the second door on your left. You personally expressed concern about the Georgetown project in the past. That is why I am including you in this email notice. We need to come together now on a strategy for having their petition denied. The deadline to submit a response is May 6, 2011.

I will attempt to have someone from the City to talk to us. Please let me know if you are coming.
Thank you.

Jerry's home phone: 839-1066

The Final Friendship Club Dinner - 2010 Season

It was great to see more than 100 residents at tonight's final dinner of the season. Alice Disharoon has done a fantastic job in her beginning months as the 2011-2012 Friendship Club President. The dinners have been well-organized, and beautifully decorated. The entertainment has been wonderful, especially that circus guy on the unicycle a couple months ago. I don't think this park has laughed like that for years.
The block committees are working, so far, to host the parties. If the blocks don't volunteer, they say the dinners won't happen. We all need to take an active part in our community.

God bless our cooks! Tonight Joe, Matt, Chuck, Wes, and Tony S. prepared the salad, chicken and vegetables. Karen P went into the kitchen to help serve. What an unbelievably devoted group they are!

The entertainment tonight was great. One little thought, however. Both entertainers did sing well, however, so did our participants. I just wish the DJ would have stopped his singing once in awhile to let the crowd hear itself. I love hearing our sing-alongs. I hope they never stop.

Thank you Alice and her Board for their work and planning. Thanks for  voting to provide supplies for more improvemenets to the hall this summer.

Pull Tops Collections Help Local Kids

Shriners Hospital recently sent a Thank You note to Mama's Kitchen, at 5524 S Dale Mabry, where our neighborhood collection of pull tabs get deposited periodically. Here it is, in part:
       "On behalf of the Shriners Hospitals for Children-Tampa, I would like to thank you for the generous donation of can tabs. Collecting tabs is a time-consuming effort, and we are thankful for your commitment to this project. Although they might seem small, the can tabs quickly add up and bring in thousands of dollars each year to support the Shriners' mission.
       "You can be assured that your contribution will be used to help keep smiles on the faces of our patients and their families."
       The letter goes on to describe the research and teaching programs and all the horrific conditions that receive care and family services through Shriners Hospitals. How blessed we are with our healthy families  to never have experienced the true level of Shriners care. Please continue to save your pull tabs in the Info Room, and please don't attempt to recycle our collection yourself. There are people designated to collect and turn in the tabs. Keep up the good work. Thank you.

Neighborhood Owl

Its almost midnight, the deck doors are open, the house is quiet, and I'm listening to the "Hoot Hootie Hoot, Whoo Whoo" of the owl that has been hanging around our waterfront for that past several weeks. Its very close tonight, but I still can't see it.
Our home in Illinois was in a very wooded area, and we frequently heard the calls of owls at night, screech owls and horned owls. Its very comforting to listen to this, knowing that they are quietly decimating the rodent population every night.
If you can't sleep some night, take a walk towards the water, and listen to our visitor. There he goes again....

Benches are Placed

The board approved the bench committee's suggested placement for new benches, and early this morning, the process began. Two solid concrete benches were placed on Pelican Point, replacing the aged spindley wood and metal benches of days gone by. If anyone asks, those old ones were trashed. They were rusted, rotten, and unfit for any further safe use by our residents.

Six brand new solid concrete benches were placed at Sunset Point this morning.  A few new volunteers, Claude Pegdan and George Blanchette, added their support  placing the wooden slats, while Ed Scobee and Richard Gauss muscled the 160 pound bench ends into position. Etel Helbig and I refinished the scrapes and dings on the newly sanded/stained 2x4 slats.They were perfect before they were stacked and moved about.

Removing an old bench

Leonard Helbig and Mike Ross arrived to assist in the placement of benches five, six, seven and eight on the Point and closer to the pavilion. There were two crappy rusted pipe benches east and west of the pavillion that were totally removed and replaced today with these new concrete replacements. Some of the slats on these old benches literally fell apart when they were moved, the hardware was so corroded.  The memorials plaques will be replaced soon.

One little item of interest of which every resident needs to be aware: when the bobcat was filled with 700-800 pounds of concrete, our diligent maintenance crew decided to fill the front tires with air. Richard noticed nesting very near the air spigot on the tire, a Black Widow spider.  His diligence prevented a catastrophe, and perhaps even, the death of one of our employees. I was there, I saw the little sucker smashed under the foot of one of our volunteers. I did write an article in the Outlook about these spiders a year ago or so. Brown recluse spiders too. Be aware! They are here.

The Bedores donated the champagne for the workers to share. Thanks! Thanks to everyone who helped. Len, Tony, and Mike... you are Heroes! Thanks to Wes for cleaning the old plaques



Workers Celebrating



Claude helping

April 5, 2011

 A day of contrasts

8am



8pm