Homewood Nation

Four people attended last night's meeting of Block Watch Plus, the monthly gathering for Homewood residents to share information, strategize, and raise concerns about issues that require a response from beyond the community.

The simple agenda sparked enough discussion to fill the allotted meeting time of 6 - 7:30 pm. There were four items:

A membership campaign. I reiterated my desire to make BWP unavoidable - i.e., the resident group that people must deal with in order to do anything major in Homewood - and my goal to have 65 active members, or about 1 percent of Homewood's population. The group agreed to begin distributing flyers at community events and gatherings, and in particular, to plan a special meeting for September 19 that will include a potluck dinner ("Bring a dish, bring a friend" - that was from Lawanda Long, who appears to have a gift for sloganeering.)

An illegal dumpsite cleanup. Allegheny Cleanways is doing a cleanup of an illegal dumpsite on Forest Way on June 29. For more details, and to volunteer, call 412 381 1301.

Finance Street. Verna Adams, a resident of Finance Street, spoke about ongoing traffic problems arising from the narrowness of the street, the use of one side of the street for parking, and the amount of traffic on the street, including trucks who seem to use it to avoid Penn Avenue between Homewood and Braddock. The problems include residents' cars being damaged, sometimes totaled. She will convene a meeting with neighbors for them to decide collectively what they want; most likely that will be, to have at least a portion of Finance made into a one-way street. Then BWP will walk with them through the process of getting that, so that we can all learn together how to get things done.

Newsletter. Attendees at the January BWP meeting had expressed a desire for Homewood to have a community newsletter. Tonight I laid out a simple plan for producing one. The plan ties into the community meeting schedule that I envision for neighborhood.

Under that schedule, Thursday would be the night that Homewood residents with varying levels of responsibility for community matters meet:

1st Thursday - Block captains

2nd Thursday - Block associations

3rd Thursday - Block Watch Plus

4th Thursday - Community Meeting

Each meeting would potentially generate information for the newsletter. On the Friday morning after the Homewood Community Meeting, the newsletter committee could slap together all the info from the month, squish it into three pages (the back page being reserved for a community calendar, which the YMCA already does), and voila - a newsletter. We ship it that afternoon, and Homewood is informed.

We plan to produce our first issue at the end of July, for August. Want to help? Email me at elwin@homewoodnation.com.