Fox Canyon Neighborhood Association, Inc.

State of the Association President's Report

The vision of Fox Canyon in the year 2002

"Our Civic Duty is to Labor Building the Neighborhood of Your Dreams"

Pastor Elder Williams, Honorable Guest, dear friends and fellow association members, citizens of Fox Canyon, once more I stand here tonight to perform my civic duty and inform my community about the job that you all have entrusted me, as president of this organization. Since its founding, FOUR YEARS AGO, The Fox Canyon Neighborhood Association has been destined to be one of a kind. Since our formative years, we have gathered the STRENGHT, LOYALTY, DEDICATION, DETERMINATION, and VOLUNTEER LABOR of our members, who relentlessly continue to work hard to physically, esthetically, physiologically, and morally improve our neighborhood, its quality-of-life and its peace-and-quiet.

We can't do all of what we have done, this past year, without our member's activism, commitment and support. In addition, to the support of our friends and partners in the community-at-large, who continue to help us improve and invest in our neighborhood.

2001 was a very EVENTFUL year, in deed. From Fox Canyon to New York and worldwide to Pakistan, we strongly support our military. 2001 was a year of sorrow but also of happiness, accomplishments and lots, lots of work. Today, I am proud and happy to report our past activities and set the goals for our future endeavors, following closely the path and guiding light set by our vision and mission statements.

 We are extremely proud that Fox Canyon is a neighborhood that was at the Crossroads of REDISTRICTING. Today, there is the reality that Fox Canyon is at the Crossroads of three Council Districts. Tomorrow, Fox Canyon will be at the crossroads of CROSSROADS. As we strongly support the formation of the Crossroads Project Area Committee (C-pac) and intend to take a strong proactive and leadership roll in it. Our decisions, time and support will make the C-PAC an effective and important tool to revitalize our neighborhood.

 We are extremely proud to have left the incorporation care-taking status to become a full pledged democratic institution. Last October, neighborhood elections were held to vote for half the Board of Directors and the president. Democracy start here and there is NO more grassroots than we are.

 With the help of CD7, this neighborhood organization was the CATALYST to the successful completion of thousands of dollars in PUBLIC WORKS, throughout our service area. In 2001, the residents have seen the completion of the following works: City Projects 605 and 605A (the water and wastewater projects). The installation of 37, 150 watts streetlights. The paving of Lantana, Dwight, Castle, Reno, Estrella and lower Auburn Drive (from Wightman to Loris). Today, About 2,000 feet of NEW SIDEWALKS span the Westside at the bend of upper Auburn and lower Auburn (from Wightman to Loris) and 29 curb cuts were built to provide access to wheelchair users. The ONE-WAY loop Auburn/Wightman has been completed way before schedule.

 With the hard work of our neighbors, friends and our partner CD7, Councilmember JIM MADAFFER came to Fox Canyon and volunteered to help in the cleaning of our streets. We were the catalysts behind the removal of 68.53 tons of junk, trash and debris and the sweeping of Euclid Avenue. In a huge clean up that placed our neighborhood on the map and right in the middle of Channel 10 Evening News, in June 16, 2001.

 With the hard work of our volunteers, we launched our WEBSITE in early 2001.

 With the help of our neighbors who attend The Police Problem Solving meetings and our partner the Police Department, we were capable of reducing our crime rate dramatically. Officer DAVID TOS, CRO, City Heights, East, received our PARTER OF THE YEAR Award for his dedication and effectiveness in fighting crime.

 With the support of our members, we proposed, petition and now have a HALF of a minibus route 965.

 We are happy and proud to have endorsed THE MID-CITY COMMUNITY COURT and The PROSTITUTION TASK FORCE from the get-go. Now such institutions are realities that benefit our entire community.

 The Association is honor and proud to have hosted Councilmember JIM MADAFFER, CD7, on Tuesday, June 12, 2001.

 This organization is all-inclusive, lends a hand and is extremely proud to have provided the support of our members to witness the foundation of the CHOLLAS CREEK Neighborhood Association.

 In a show of partnership and strong political support, the Field Representatives to many of our elected officials sat among our members: Mr. Tim Ryan, from Governor GRAY DAVIS' office, Mr. Manuel Delgado from Assemblymember CHRISTINE KEHOE'S Office, Mr. Robert Young, Ms. Asca?±o and now, Mr. Englund from The City of San Diego's Mayor DICK MURPHY'S Office, Ms. Kim Craig and now, Ms. Araceli 'Cheli' Mohamed from CD3, Councilmember TONI ATKINS' Office, and our OWN, Ms. Ellen Agey from CD7, Councilmember JIM MADAFFER'S Office.

 Department Directors, organizations and community leaders, included but not limited to Faith Web-Callaway, Shukri Adam, Karen Henry, Jim Varnadore, Lt. Rodrigues, Police Officer Cimmarrusti, Curtis Hassey, Paul Henderson, Chandani Sil Flinn, Gary De Busschere, Tracy Reed, Ramon Espinal, Marco Anguiano and Trouble Shooter Marti Emerald, Channel 10 News, came to visit the association. Our many thanks to you all for your strong support and for finding the time and interest to attend our community's meetings.

 We leave 2001 with an interesting note. We lost funding for our Fox Canyon Voice Newsletter. Since, we have tried to publish to the best of our ability and to great expense and hardship to our general fund.

The past has been very successful, full of excitement, and full of progress, as well. But our vision is greater and our goals target the future. As we are well on the road to make Fox Canyon the community of choice within City Heights.

To fulfill the quest of our MISION, I will solemnly ask the honorable Board of Director to help me seek, pursue and strongly support the following goals in the year 2002.

1. To best decide the future of our city, we need to develop closer and better partnerships with the greater community, with religious leaders, the public/private sectors, and our elected officials. The great effort to build the City of our dreams begins right here. Our civic duty is to labor building the Neighborhood of our Dreams! This body is the beginning of Democracy in its purest form and it is the gathering of the involved. Here we make the decisions that affect the whole City. By changing our neighborhood, we change and improve our world!

2. To labor in building the neighborhood of our dreams, we desperately need Neighborhood Code Enforcement to work diligently and effectively for the betterment of our neighborhood. To accomplish so, we will go back and rekindle our partnership with Department Director Marcia Samuels and will ask our Councilmember JIM MADAFFER to support our CDBG Code Enforcement Grant application.

3. To labor in building the neighborhood of our dreams, we need to pursuit the development and implementation of the Fox Canyon System of Parks. So our children would play in set apart and developed parks, with green grass, secure and protected. And not in storm-drain ditches, mud, clouds of dust, and seas of garbage and trash, risking their health and lives, as they do now. To accomplish this, we ask our friends: California Governor Gray Davis, Assemblywoman Christine Kehoe, SD City Mayor Dick Murphy, Councilmember Toni Atkins, and our own Councilmember Jim Madaffer to support us in petition for the State of California Murray-Hayden Urban Parks grants.

4. To labor in building the neighborhood of our dreams, is our goal to put all our energies and those of our members behind the building of our own Fox Canyon Recreation and Community Center. To accomplish this, we will ask Habitat for Humanities, Price Charities, Urban Corps San Diego, Studio E, the San Diego Chapter of Landscape Architects, The City Heights Area and Crossroads Redevelopment Projects, CD7, our DONORS and many others to share our vision, to partner and join with us in our petition to the Murray-hayden Grants.

5. To labor in building the neighborhood of our dreams, We will work to accomplish the Fox Canyon HOUSING element of Crossroads. As we ASKED to be included in it, are part of the proponents and strong supporters of the CROSSROADS REDEVELOPMENT Project. With this, we intend to accomplish the rehab of our aging and blighted single family housing stock and the building and redevelopment of the multifamily units throughout our service area, especially on lower Auburn Drive and around Ontario Park. To accomplish this, we will ask the Housing Commission for grants and rehab low interest rate loans and CD7 for their strong support of CROSSROADS.

6. To labor in building the neighborhood of our dreams, we need to be an active force in the opening and extension of Ontario Avenue and Landis Street to integrate, rehabilitate and revitalized the border area between Fox Canyon and Chollas Creek. This capital improvement project will help to decongest the corners of Auburn/Euclid/University and Altadena/Euclid. Key player to the reality of this dream is our Councilmember Jim Madaffer and his support of Crossroads.

7. To labor in building the neighborhood of our dreams, we will ask CD7 to placed our neighborhood of Fox Canyon on a first priority list for Utilities Undergrounding.

8. To labor in building the neighborhood of our dreams, we propose that the Euclid Avenue RAP, Our Front Door, be returned to the control of all the local residents that live along the Euclid Avenue corridor. To accomplish this, we will ask Jim Varnadore, Chair, City Heights Area Planning Committee to establish a formal subcommittee and Patty Vacariello to chair the subcommittee. With so much work at hand, it is imperative that the Euclid RAP subcommittee meet monthly to be effective and far-reaching. In addition, to bring home the full-force and promise of the RAP. Here in this forum, tonight, we strongly endorse and support the RAP's grants petition for sidewalks along Euclid Avenue. We will enlist the support of Councilmembers TONI ATKINS, CD3 and JIM MADAFFER, CD7 to see such reality.

9. To labor in building the neighborhood of our dreams, we most speak and defend those who can not do it themselves, our pet population! We will seek the help and support of those who are deeply concerned that our neighborhood's dog population is getting out of control and are the speechless victims of human irresponsibility and abuse. Again we will enlist the help of our State Assemblymembers, Board of Supervisor's Chairman, Ron Roberts, our Councilmembers, The Department of Animal Control and the Humane Society to bring forth legislation declaring owning a dog to be a matter of PRIVILEDGE and not a Right. We will enlist the help of Lt. Ward to bring back to our neighborhood the provisions and privileges of the Pet 2000 Project.

10. To labor in building the neighborhood of our dreams, We will join the THINK BLUE program by stopping dog owners from letting their pets run loose and defecating on the streets. Actively, we will point out those who pollute! We will enlist the help of Animal Control, Code Enforcement and the Police Department to bring such activities under control.

11. To labor in building the neighborhood of our dreams, we join the proponents and are the supporters of the CHOLLAS CREEK Restoration Plan, which intends to restore our finger canyons as outlined in the Plan.

12. To labor in building the neighborhood of our dreams, we will invite and support the efforts of Rebuilding Together With CHRISTMAS IN APRIL to help homeowners who qualify, repair their homes.

13. To labor in building the neighborhood of our dreams, we will engaged in a joint venture with First Residential Mortgage to council pre-bankruptcy cases.

14. To labor in building the neighborhood of our dreams, we will ask the appropriate agencies to help our neighborhood in WEED CONTROL. It is very traumatic and risky to have to go through two or three canyon fires a year, each year. To the endangerment of our housing stock and lives. We will enlist the help of our partner the ALPHA PROJECT to help us with this.

15. To labor in building the neighborhood of our dreams, we will put all our energies and effort, for the next six months, to extend minibus route 965 to University Avenue, even if this represents a bit of service overlap along University. This will ensure the total success of route 965 and fulfill the needs and comfort of our residents who ride it. We will ask Paul Davis, Transportation Planer for the Metropolitan Transit Development Board to study such extension and will ask ALL our friends and residents to write email and letters of support explaining why such extension is urgently needed and wanted.

"The future of a City Worthy of Our Affection" as Mayor Murphy envisions it, is the reality of a Fox Canyon, as I envision it. ALL of YOU have a bested interest in see it come true, to see it a tangible reality. As members of this neighborhood organization, we all need to lend our hand in support and spend our energies volunteering to see success in our corporate programs like "Neat Neighborhood, Paint The 'Hoods Blight Out, The Tool Box, and The Mural Program". We urgently need to arrest the spread of blight, slum conditions, garbage, and trash, quickly! With our volunteer labor, we can accomplish the renewal of our neighborhood and a brighter future for Fox Canyon.

There is a sense of great urgency in the need to stop polluting our environment, beginning with our streets, our storm drains, our canyons, our bay and ocean. We strongly and seriously need to contain the rivers of trash, garbage, and debris running from our houses through our streets. The sea of trash is drowning us, in an alarming rate. Pollution starts with our homes our pets, our streets, and US and ends up in the water we swim in. We may be poor but that fact is no excuse to live in squalor and seated on mountains of trash.

From the path of the future, we go walk again the reality of our finances. In fiscal year 2001, the Association mailed out tax-exempt receipts totaling $10,212.00 in cash and in-kind Donations. The Booth Family was our biggest contributor. For four years in a row, the Association finishes its fiscal year with a surplus. This year's General Fund ended up $268.13 in the black and in the bank. Our Mural Fund has $78,00 and the Neat Neighborhood Fund has $16.00. Funds that are committed to specific and special purpose, in addition to our General Fund.

In lending a hand, we have offered to be the fiscal agent and will institute the Chollas Creek Neighborhood Association Fund, if they win the grant award from the San Diego Foundation.

The Newsletter continues to be our deepest concern. Not publishing the Newsletter is like a man making wonderful deeds and works in the dark. He knows what he is doing but no one else does. Therefore, there is no knowledge, support or appreciation for his work, which is NOT inclusive. It is like he is not there at all.

Our CDBG grants report is as follow:

 Let's Paint the Hood's Blight Out received 20% of the total awarded monies on November 2001, the rest of the money is in trust with the Housing Commission. The identified houses will be painted on late spring under the deminimous clause of the Lead Paint Legislation. Please enlist yourself and your family to volunteer painting.
 The Neighborhood Toolbox received 20% of the total awarded monies, on November 2001; the rest of the money is in trust with the Housing Commission. The Toolbox will be fully operational this summer.

In the quest to pursue and implement our mission, 2002 has seen the following applications for grants:

 For The Fox Canyon Voice, We have submitted an application to the San Diego Foundation for $5,000.00 to continue publishing the newsletter. We need to match $500.00 of this amount. Your tax-deductible donations are urgently needed and appreciated to get this fund established.

 We have submitted six applications for CDBG grants for Fiscal 2003, as follow:

Code Enforcement, Lead-based Paint Abatement, Sidewalks Construction, Sidewalks Repairs, Neighborhood ID Signs, and The Toolbox.

In general, the state of our Association is solid and one of a kind, in every aspect. We passed our yearly physical with flying colors.

Above all, I want to honor our Board Members, tonight. They provide the legislative, if you will, and are the rock solid foundation upon which we build… I nearly execute their guidance. I am grateful for the dedication, time, and effort that this group of residents provides to our neighborhood organization, on behalf of their neighbors.

The CORE of our purpose and reality revolves around our volunteers, who have contributed hundreds of hours in labor to our community, from our heart, we thank you!

Before closing, I want to recognize some of our members without whom we could not be here at all, those whom support our organization from the very beginning and are still going strong. Mrs. Catherine Burger at her 92 has missed only six monthly meetings in four years.

Our deepest appreciation and gratitude goes to our partners in community revitalization for their efforts to invest energy and resources in Fox Canyon. Tonight, we honor: State Farm Insurance, Mark Kassab of Murphy's Market, Project Clean, CRASH, Urban Corps, Viva Properties, Pip Printing, Alpha Project, Teen Challenge, Price Charities, Catholic Charities, The Tucker Family, Mission Trails Regional Park, The Allied Gardens Optimist Club, Christ Church Unity Youth Group (Youth of Unity), Christine Liquor Store, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 4th Ward, and the Bandar Salaam Somali Community.

In closing, I wand to express our sincere THANKS and deep gratitude to our host and recipient of the Member of the Year Award, Elder Pastor and Mrs. Clenel Williams, Sr., of Bible-way Temple Apostolic Church. For their kindness in allowing us to meet here and use the Church's Cultural Hall as our house. We really could not do all this without their help.

Thank you for your attendance, the refreshments enjoy and have a good night.

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