Community Consultation - January 26 from 1-4

2013 is upon us in a big way and we want to make this one of the best years for the Community yet! We need your help to do it.

We will have a day of input on January 26 from 1 - 4 at Win Gardner Place (363 McGregor Street). We will have a wide array of poster boards asking for your ideas on everything from Financial Sustainability ideas to meeting locations to workshop ideas and more! We will also have various committees and groups to sign up for.

We would really love to expand our online base and be able to send you information on upcoming St. John's Resident Association events, meetings, Community events and initiatives. Our email is stjohnsra@gmail.com and we would love to hear from you!

Not only will the day be one that we will use to plan our 2013 year, but we will also have information for you. We will have what we have done over the past year, what we have planned this year so far, our board on hand to meet you and answer any questions you may have, Service Canada will have information on pensions, student loans/bonds and EI/maternity leave information.

To top it off, we will be having food and prizes. Not just any food but perogies, bannock, cabbage rolls and desert. Best of all, its local! Prizes and food will be held nearer to 3 and everyone is invited.

We will have paper copies available of both our business and resident surveys, but in case you missed the links the resident survey can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QRR765S and the business survey can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QRST886.

Community Consultation - Community Response

St. John's Residents Association is holding a Community Consultation at Win Gardner Place (363 McGregor Street) on Saturday January 26 from 1 - 4 p.m. Keep watch for more information about the consultation.

First off however, for our consultation to be successful, we need the Communities response. We are going to be planning our next year on the results that we from the consultation.

If you would like to see something offered in the Community or want your voice to be heard, we need to hear from you!

Please fill out our easy, confidential survey to help your Residents Association make 2013 a great year for the neighbourhood.

Our survey can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QRR765S. Please see free to share the link!

Newsletter and Gardening

Our first 2012 Newsletter issue will be going to the printers on Monday! We are hoping to have them back within a business week and then into your mailboxes! We will be utilizing youth from the area who are offering to help out the St. John's Residents Association to perform the delivery. We have articles on everything from COPP (Citizens On Patrol Program) to a spotlight article for a business in the area.

We had an overwhelming response to gardening and beautification in St. John's. Workshops and planning of gardens will be taking place *very* soon. If you would like help with your garden, help with getting started, joining a group or coming to a meeting, let us know!

Voices heard

This Sunday we held our Community Consultation at Win Gardner (363 McGregor) and we had an awesome turnout. We had 120 residents come out to enjoy food, company and share their opinions, stories, concerns and hopes.

We will be processing all of the feedback and making it available. As the new President of the Residents Association I would like to make it my personal goal that everything we do is transparent and available to all residents. All of our meetings are open to all and we are all here to help, answer any questions, address any concerns and make our Community the best place we can.

We had an hour and a half put aside for gathering information. I will say it over and over again; our Residents Association can do a lot. We can sit around a table, discuss concerns that we have, come up with a neat idea to try and get done, and most times, we will get it done and get it done well. This is great, but, if it is not what our Community wants, we are only doing it for ourselves. The only way we will find out what our Community wants is by asking our Community what it wants.

The online surveys had a great response with over 15 being received. This survey is open year round and will be updated and responses will be worked towards. We had several sheets up on the wall open to anyone that wanted to comment on topics like Recreation, Housing, Newsletters, Gardens and Safety. We had a few responses on these sheets.

We shared food with everyone that was mainly from our neighbourhood. We served bannock from Neechi Foods (325 Dufferin Avenue), pies from The Donut House (500 Selkirk Avenue), chili (made by moi) and cabbage rolls, perogies and perishky were brought in.

We had prizes for the children who were there, prizes for the homes in the area who were entered in our "Winter Wonderland" contest and door prizes. Overall, the event was a great way to meet neighbours and friends, enjoy food and, most of all, to be heard on what is important to you.

Thank you to everyone who came out!

Community Consultation x 2

The weekend is almost upon us where the Community is going to let us know what they want! We are finalizing all of our entertainment, prizes, food and information that we have received so far.

We have also held a beautification meeting where we discussed several plans to make our neighbourhood's uniqueness shine and improve areas. Plans include (possibly) curb painting, planting at Machray Park, large scale boulevard beautification, area wide tree banding and Community gardens plus balcony and yard garden boxes.

Feel free to come down and share your thoughts, comments, suggestions and concerns with us this weekend from 2 - 5 at Win Gardner.

Community Consultation

Each year St. John's Residents Association has an event that is open to our community that welcomes feedback. We are here to serve our residents and help us achieve what our neighbourhood is asking for.

On Sunday, January 29, 2012, from 2-5 pm we will be having a feast at Win Gardner Place (363 McGregor St.)  with opportunity for community to give further input to the St. John’s Resident’s Association. If you live, work, own property or utilize services in the St. John’s Neighbourhood, we invite you to participate in this survey. The event is open to all.

There will be prizes, activities for children and adults and great food for everyone. Everyone is welcome!

The activities and events will be held between 2 pm and 3:30 p.m. - 4 p.m. when we will then serve food from 4 - 4:30 and end our event with voting on our nominated Winter Wonderland homes from within the Community.

Our Online Survey that we will be using for our Community Consultation is located here.

If you have any questions please leave a comment or send us an email at stjohnsra@gmail.com.

Winter Wonderland Contest

Though Christmas is now over, the St. Johns Residents Association is still on the look out for wonderful decorations. They don't need to be Christmas decorations; just decorations making your home and/or yard look festive.

If you see a home in the neighbourhood that has put that extra effort into their outdoor decorations, please let us know. We will be going through the entire neighbourhood handing out nomination forms to each home letting them know they are entered in the contest.

The voting for our contest will be at our Community Consultation on January 29 closer to 5 p.m. (The event starts at 2 p.m.) There will be prizes for the top 3 and for the runners up!