President's Page

---

Soon it will be what I can only describe as summer with a vengeance. The 90+ degree days with high humidity and biting mosquitoes are right around the corner. It is a good time to make sure your cooling system is serviced and ready for use. Don’t forget to change those air filters.

The Easter Egg Hunt event in early April was very successful. The weather cooperated and the turnout of children was tremendous. The hunt for those 2,000 candy filled eggs was over in about ten minutes. Next year there needs to be 3,000 eggs. The special prizes were all claimed by children finding the eggs with gold coins. We are thankful for all those who worked to fill the eggs and “hide” them in the park. A

special thanks goes out to KC Cook, our outstanding Easter Bunny.

This year, we will be having a spring cookout in the park on Sunday, May 17th from 12:30 PM to 2:20 PM. This time here will not be a big tent, inflatables, petting zoo, face painters, fire trucks, or Blue Angel flyovers – just good fellowship and good food. Come out and have an enjoyable time with your friends and neighbors in the relaxed setting of our neighborhood park. Details are on the front page.

Our final Civic League meeting before the summer break will be on Tuesday, May 19th. This month the featured speaker will be from the American Red Cross, and the topic is Summer Safety. No matter how many summers you have lived through, I suspect you can still learn something at this meeting. This is also the meeting that we award our annual scholarship to a deserving high school senior going on to higher

education. Our scholarship committee will review the submitted applications and ultimately select a single winner. That is not an easy task in a neighborhood with so many outstanding young people. Put the date on your calendar to come out and spend an hour with your friends and neighbors. You won’t be disappointed.

The main outstanding issue for the summer is the pending traffic signal installation at the Independence – Paul Revere intersection. We believe the light is a $1.1M waste of money that will ultimately cause harm to our neighborhood through the introduction of increased cut-through traffic. This is not only a safety issue - it is a quality-of-life issue. The project was shelved by the urging of the late Vice Mayor Louis Jones.

His replacement, a Thoroughgood resident, brought it back to life. We, and our friends in the Northwest Beach Partnership, need to make a better choice at the polls in November.

This will be the final edition of the Ripples before the summer break. Each year, we publish a monthly newsletter from September to May. Editions are commercially printed and hand delivered to each of the 905 homes in our great neighborhood. I hope you find the newsletter useful, and that you receive each edition - usually by the fifth day of the month. If you ever encounter a problem with delivery, please contact yourneighborhood watch block captain.

I pray everyone has a safe and enjoyable summer.

John Eason, President