While spring is the season most often associated with “renewal,” fall-to-winter is no less revivifying, with academics and inter-school competitions underway in earnest, Rip City mania gathering steam, and outreach programs extending helping hands to the needy during the family holidays of Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas. It’s also the season when a reinvigorated BWNA ramps up efforts to get activities planned and projects launched by year’s end, assisted by our newsletter as conduit to over 2600 residences and businesses!
The interconnection between the newsletter and the BWNA Board of Directors could be characterized as “seamlessly symbiotic”—i.e., the newsletter team dutifully attentive to board suggestions and dependably compliant with directives, the board in turn generously accommodating regarding choice of content, journalistic style, creative layout design, and distribution procedure. In short, it’s a mutually beneficial relationship that functions comfortably all the way around. (Of course it doesn’t hurt that several on our newsletter team, including yours truly, also serve on the board!).
The October/November push by the BWNA Board to get the ball rolling on organizing activities and projects is a reminder that board members are, in effect, the vanguard of the association, duly elected by neighbors and empowered via bylaw to make decisions for the betterment of the neighborhood as well as responsible for implementation. In a sense, it’s as close as B-W residents come to having their own little representative democracy. Accordingly, the newsletter facilitates communication between residents and their representatives by listing board members’ names and telephone numbers in the “Officers, Board Members, & Committees” column. Additionally, over the past few years we’ve featured a series of profile interview articles about each board member, providing insights into their backgrounds, personal interests, and views on neighborhood livability issues.
Notwithstanding the essential role played by our association’s leadership cadre, the underlying foundation of BWNA (and for that matter any representative democracy) is participation by constituents—in this case, by B-W residents and business owners. I’m reminded of Benjamin Franklin’s prescient pronouncement to a clamoring crowd outside the Constitutional Convention, “You’ve a republic…if you can keep it.” And so it is with BWNA—use it, and use it wisely, or perhaps lose it. With criticism on the rise and questions raised regarding the inclusivity and efficacy of Portland’s neighborhood association system, “time has come today” for residents to send the message to our City Council, via active participation, that BWNA matters.
You can become actively involved in BWNA in any number of ways, the newsletter being one of them (always on the lookout for stories, editorials, announcements, advertisers, and especially additional route walkers). And when at-large board positions open up (two currently available to any civic-minded B-W resident or business owner), the newsletter lists those vacancies as well as publicizing various committee and project-related opportunities. For details, contact a board member…or better yet, attend a meeting! After all, ‘tis the season of renewal and appreciation.