Central Area summit: care to volunteer?

The Central Area Development Association (see this summary of what they do) has invited our neighborhood to participate in their October 27th annual retreat. Here (in part) is what they ask:

Dear Miller Park Neighborhood Association,

The Central Area Development Association (CADA) is pleased to invite you to participate in the morning session of its annual retreat on Saturday, October 27th. We are soliciting your opinions of and vision for the future of the Central Area in a process to identify where and how CADA can best contribute to the development of the community.

As a community-based development association we rely upon your input and participation. It is not only a critical component to CADA’s mission and philosophy but to the Central Area’s health as a whole.

We ask that you review the following and then identify at least two individuals you believe will best represent your group at the retreat. Please have them come prepared to provide us with the following information as a consensus of your group:

• A brief history of the group - no more than 2 minutes
• Opinion of the Central Area as they see it today in regards to housing, economic development, education, crime, arts, opportunity, etc.
• Current focus of the group - short-term (up to 12 months) and long-term (12 months and beyond)
• Top two things the group would like to see accomplished in "their" area and how it would benefit the entire Central Area.

Note: please don't limit the 'kind' of things you'd like to see happen. Although CADA's primary line of business is affordable housing and CADA may not be the organization that fulfills your vision, we do partner with and delegate to other organizations in our efforts to revitalize the Central Area.

Please provide us with a written copy of your talking/bullet points. You may send this with your reply or give it to us at the retreat. As there will be potentially eight to ten groups attending, each group will have 15 minutes to speak and there will be a timekeeper to ensure that everyone is heard.

I'd be happy to volunteer (if you agree) and am writing to invite you to join (or replace) me. Drop me a note by Friday (Send to me: tayles@jps.net) with your contact info and I'll send it on to CADA. We could get together this weekend and work on the talking points they suggest.

As resources to think about what to say, I remind you of the Central Area's neighborhood planning efforts in the late 90's which resulted both in a general plan for the area and in a specific plan for the Madison-Miller area (see right side of blog page; "Madison-Miller Neighborhood Plan"). See links in this post for more background info.