RECENT COMMENTS
Meeting to draft guidelines for future Church Hill Christmas House Tours
Dear CHA members and neighbors,
At the recent Jan.15th meeting of the CHA, a Membership Committee was formed to draft written guidelines for future Church Hill Christmas House Tours. This has been prompted by numerous concerns of the inclusion in this year’s Historic Church Hill House Tour of properties that were for rent, unoccupied and undecorated. See the attached minutes of the meeting in this newsletter for more background.
The House Tour is a large part of the fundraising efforts of the CHA which enables our Association to continue to invest in many good causes within our community. This event invites all of Richmond, Virginia and beyond to our unique and wonderful neighborhood.
… The purpose of these guidelines is to allow the membership to decide how they wish to direct the future make-up of the House Tour. The aim is to document and maintain the quality of our tour and its almost fifty year history.
I agreed to head up this effort with the assistance of a number of Church Hill neighbors. We would like to have a draft of the guidelines placed in the April Newsletter for comment, review and suggestions by the neighborhood for an eventual vote by the members of the Church Hill Association.
This is YOUR neighborhood, OUR neighborhood! You and your input are important to the process and to the end result. The more input we can gather, the stronger the end result will be. If you would like to participate in the committee’s deliberations please contact me asap. Also please e-mail me with any suggestions, comments or ideas you would like to share with the committee; be sure to include your full name and email address as your ideas will be shared and credited appropriately.
All interested persons will be meeting on Monday, February 25, 7:00pm in St. John’s Church Parish Hall.
Thank you in advance.
Jim Beckner
jamesgbeckner@aol.com
What a transparent attempt at keeping information on this subject out of the reach of Church Hill residents! This notice was supposed to be placed in the first edition of the new association newsletter and was sent to the CHA president to be forwarded to the editor over a month ago!!! Those responsible for this amateurish attempt at keeping the neighborhood uninformed should be ashamed. I will make sure your identity is well known to our neighbors.
What are you even talking about, Jean? How is posting something on the Internet a conspiracy to to cover something up?
This open letter was supposed to be put in the CHA newsletter and was forwarded over a month ago to the CHA president to be run in the first issue. Instead, it not only didn’t make it into the newsletter, but it got stuck in this obscure place. That’s what I am talking about.
“this obscure place”
I love watching old people use the internet.
Leddy, This posting is obscure compared to a posting in the Church Hill newsletter. Would you look under a three month old article entitled “decorated” for an upcoming committee meeting to draft house tour guidelines? I am glad you like to watch old people learn new things. I only hope you find kind “young” people to help you as much as I have when you are old.
Hey folks!
I’m on the older side of things myself, not sure how I feel about that.
Regardless, I’ve got some numbers for y’all:
From the notice about the return of the newsletter: “Our CHA newsletter reaches over 1,600 doorsteps and businesses monthly”
Last month, CHPN had 15,464 unique visitors and close to 100,000 pageviews.
The delivery of the newsletter you were lucky if you got it delivered the Sunday prior to the monthly meeting.
Your meeting is the following Tuesday night, so an announcement at the meeting should keep folks informed.
I tend to find more information here, you most likely get a broader readership.
Jean–
What Church Hill newsletter? As you may have noticed from other posts on this “obscure” site, the newsletter is not currently being printed. No conspiracy, just reality. No newsletter ready to go = no place to post. And posting here, as John points out, does indeed reach a vastly wider audience. I hope you plan to join the committee. More volunteers focusing their energy on the holiday weekend will be terrific, I think, for everyone concerned.
The newsletter has been resurrected and is being run by a paid editor. I am the reason there is a committee and I am on it. The purpose of this committee is to focus on the quality of the house tour and to get as much input from the neighborhood as possible. This years house tour was an embarrassment to Church Hill and an offense to all past chairpersons who did the necessary work to pull together an event that our neighborhood could take pride in.
Jean, you’ve got to be kidding. First, the CHA newsletter has been dead for months due to mean spirited critics hounding each newsletter volunteer into resignation. There is no conspiracy. Name names? How about the volunteers who get bullied by neighbors name names. Second, this site is the single least obscure community news source in the region by every objective standard. Third, to the volunteers who are restarting the CHA newsletter: for every mean email with baseless conspiracies in it, there are 50 of us who are grateful to you for your efforts.
John m, Thank you for the new headings which are more descriptive of the issue at hand!
Dear Neighbor, I don’t understand the points you are trying to make, however, I hope you are not attributing to me “hounding and bullying” of anyone. As you can see, I use my real name as I have nothing to hide and yes there is a mean spirited vein that needs to stop!
I hereby call on every member of the CHA to come to the next CHA meeting and demand Jean’s removal from the Christmas tour committee for 1) maligning previous well-executed and well-intentioned previous volunteer efforts and 2) being unfit to lead a balanced, reasonable, informed discussion on anything.
John, thank you for trying to tamp down the age references. I found Leddy’s comment snarky at best, though I’m well aware that prejudice against those over forty is all around. And thanks also for pointing out what I already knew, that Church Hill People’s News is a widely read blog.
As to the newsletter, I was told last night that the newsletter is supposed to be out today, just in time to announce a meeting tomorrow. While I am happy that it is going to be published, a little more advance time in the distribution would be a good idea. (Doubtful that I will get mine distributed tonight, next weekend is more likely).
Jean, I had seen this notice from Jim Beckner a week ago when it was first posted here. If I saw it then so did many others; note John’s numbers that disprove the use of the wording ‘obscure’ please. One does not need to look at the older thread titled ‘decorated’ as this thread has the correct headline.
Finally, also to Jean, I was a volunteer on this year’s house tour and I did not find it an embarrassment at all. Then again, I didn’t go to all of the sites that were open, and I understand your concern with some of them, so good luck with your committee. I’ve also been a volunteer over the years so I hope something positive comes of it and of this thread. I’ve found that I have less patience with ‘snarky’ people and their remarks as I get older so your response was much kinder than mine would have been.
The conversation in this thread is why I am glad that I don’t live in Church Hill “proper”. I live in Chimborazo, thank you. With all the good things and the bad things happening in this community – all the things that really matter and will continue to make a difference next year and the year after – is this seriously what you all want to spew about? The comments here reinforce why I never say yes when asked to be on the CH Holiday House Tour. You all scare me a lot more than the drug dealer that does business across the street from my house.
crd,Thank you for your input. again, the purpose of this exercise is to get input from as many people as possible on the issues, hopefully with a positive outcome. Not everyone is going to agree on everything, however many comments support my opinion of the house tour.
AS for dear neighbor, I have never claimed to be balanced. I am old, and old people are unbalanced. I still don’t get your point and I don’ think it is worth any more of my effort to try to. I do agree that as many people as possible should come to our meetings and not limit participation to “members” only, It is a neighborhood thing.
Snarky is a good word!!!!
Lucky Canine, I LOVE your comment! Seriously people, while I appreciate everyone’s efforts to improve the neighborhood in any way they can, we have WAY bigger issues to handle rather than bicker with each other over the newsletter, house tour, conspiracies, etc. Wasn’t it just last week that a random house was shot into in the 800 block of N. 27th St? Perhaps we all need to be a little more mindful of the bigger picture going on in this neighborhood. If we’re ever going to solve these bigger problems, it’ll have to be done together as a team.
Magneto, I support your sentiment.
Magneto, Yes we need to work as a team and not promote self interest which is what I was attempting to explain. I have lived here since 1978 and although I have never had any problems, I started the Church Hill Crime Watch. Some of my neighbors homes were getting broken into three and four times within several months. We literally walked the area in shifts with walkie talkies given to us by the police that did not work,( cell phones did not exist yet) and the best we could do was run to the nearest house and call the police if something happened. Yes crime is a priority but if you wait until that is under total control, nothing else will ever get done.
The CHA meeting on the 19th was sparsely attended. Instead of spewing out “snarkey” anonymous comments under cover of an alias, the neighborhood needs to come to the CHA meetings and participate. It appears that if nobody knows your real identity, facts and civility don’t matter as much!
I felt dejected that “dear neighbor” did not reveal themselves as was promised. I invite you over for coffee to discuss issues face to face in a respectful manner.