JANUARY 2008
Community Paper

COLLEGE PARK NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION
PRESIDENT DAVID E. ROSE

On December 3rd I assumed the job of President of the College Park Neighborhood Association. I have been an active member of this organization since its beginning over twenty years ago and am both honored and humbled to once again serve as its President.

We started our existence as an advocacy group, the original issue was the Princeton extension and a development at the new intersection of Princeton and John Young. While maintaining a strong basis as an advocacy group we quickly added a community service aspect to our agenda. In the past twenty years we have been involved in being a part of keeping College Park a strong and viable neighborhood. CPNA has a long list of accomplishments that it is rightly proud of, so I have big shoes to fill this coming year.

Two thousand and eight promises to be a year in which we will call upon all of the strength and resources that we have managed to accumulate.

On the advocacy front we have a number of issues on our agenda, and the year has yet to begin.

We have worked hand in hand with the Edgewater High School Task Force in encouraging the Orange County Public Schools to rebuild Edgewater High School as a functional and aesthetic equivalent of every other High School in Orange County. Under the leadership of first David Holbrook and now Kathleen Skambis it appears the Task Force has accomplished that goal, as the year progresses we will continue our vigilance to be certain that the current plans for Edgewater move forward.

The City of Orlando has begun a Visioning process for Edgewater Drive and appointed an “Edgewater Drive Visioning Task Force” to guide this task. The last time an extensive study was done of Edgewater Drive was during my tenure as President of the College Park Merchants Association, now named the Downtown College Park Partnership, which was over twenty years ago. There is no doubt that this visioning exercise is well overdue. There is also no doubt of it importance and potential for errors that could be detrimental to our way of life. The CPNA has two of our current Directors serving on the Task Force and I had personally committed to attending all the meetings and staying involved as the process moves forward. Needless to say this will be another priority for us during the coming year.

The last time I served as President of the CPNA, 1997, it fell upon my term to finish up a five year Public Safety Initiative in South College Park. You may have seen on television or read in the local daily that we have some public safety issues on our western boundary. I have already committed to that neighborhood that working with them will be a top priority for CPNA this year and until that issue is fully resolved. We have already begun work on this with the Directors passing a resolution at the December meeting stating a zero tolerance for criminal activity within our boundaries. I have also met with City officials, including our new Police Chief, Val Demmings who I had worked with back in 1997 and of whom I gladly admit to being a fan.

Any one of the three above would be a full year for most Neighborhood Associations but thanks to the activism that exists here in College Park I am quite comfortable that CPNA can commit to working on all of them and at look back at the end of the year and be proud of what we have accomplished.

On the Community Service front we will also be busy. Fortunately on this front we are less at the mercy of circumstance and more driven by our own desires and decisions. However we do have a rich history and two annual signature events.

Our first signature event, first in terms of where it falls on the calendar, is Sunday in the Park. Sunday in the Park is basically a sunday afternoon picnic in Dartmouth Park for the entire College Park community. We have games for the small children, entertainment for the tweens, teens and adults and of course food and fellowship for all. Sounds simple but requires over two hundred volunteers to put together and manage each year. It is held in the spring usually a few weeks prior to Easter.

Our other signature event is the Historic Homes Tour which happens in the fall of each year, we just completed this years last month. This event is also held on a Sunday afternoon and is exactly what it sounds like. CPNA has been fortunate to have among its members and serving on the Board people with a deep respect for and knowledge of historic homes. Each year these professionals choose a theme or an area and then select specific homes and convince their owners to open them up on a Sunday afternoon to hundreds of neighbors. Typically we have five or six hundred people take the tour of homes. As you can imagine this task is also labor intensive as each home requires volunteers during the entire event.

CPNA also has ongoing Community Service projects, such as maintaining the four gateway signs that we have built for College Park.

We meet at the College Park Community Center, which we advocated for, on the first Monday of each month at 7:00pm. We hold “Open Board Meetings,” which means that all members are welcome to attend and participate even though any official action must be taken by the Board of Directors, each month except November which is our general meeting. Visit our website at www.CollegeParkOrlando.org.

Please come out and be a part of the College Park Neighborhood Association. We need not just your help but your knowledge and opinions. College Park is a great place to live, work, and play. Largely because people exactly like you get involved and make a difference.