March 2014 Newsletter
Dear Friends of Five Points,
We trust that you are enjoying the Spring Break in Athens and enthusiastically awaiting the return of the students. The Friends of Five Points Board has been busy this month! Here are the highlights.
First, we welcome Kevin Florence, pharmacist and owner of Add Drugs, as the Five Points Business Association Representative on our Board. Kevin, along with the entire Five Points business community, can count on our support for anything that will help that community to continue to thrive.
Recently, the Board approved a new Listserv policy. Many thanks go to Board member Jill Gambill, who serves as listserv administrator, for developing this policy with Board input. Over the years, the listserv has worked very well for the overwhelming majority of the folks who participate in this forum. While the listserv is largely a self-governing community, the Board does define policies to keep it the great resource that it is. In addition, we stop spam and inappropriate advertising attempts on a regular basis. All in all, our members have self-regulated so that what is expressed is done so in a respectful way, and we hope that continues. This self-regulation depends on common sense and a little give and take. As we all know, a perfect policy cannot be construed for public listserv, but we hope the new one provides appropriate guidelines. It is important to note that this policy is subject to revision, if we see that more detail or clarification is needed.
Another project that the Board is working on is to gather materials that are pertinent to the history of FOFP. Board member Susan Field is spearheading this effort. If anyone has copies of past minutes from FOFP committee meetings or reports done by a committee, please contact Susan. The purpose of this effort is to make these documents available for future use or research. Once the inventory is complete, Susan will contact the Heritage Room in the Athens Regional Library to see if these materials could be housed in its archives.
As everyone knows, we are in an election year, and we can expect that issues important to FOFP will be discussed by candidates seeking office at every level. FOFP will support all efforts by the Federation of Neighborhoods to hold forums and debates for candidates for the various elected offices that are up for election. We thank Susan Field, our liaison with the Federation, for keeping our membership informed about these events on all related activities.
The Board is always working to improve communications within the FOFP community. To this end, Board member John Weatherford has recently repaired some broken links at our website, www.friendsoffivepoints.org. If you experience any problems with our website, please let us know so that we can fix them.
Finally, we shall be holding our Annual meeting in late Spring, with the date to be announced soon. At this time, I would like to urge each of you to consider serving on one of the Committees: Government and Community Relations, Business Relations, Membership, Listserv, and Website. Each committee is chaired by a Board member, and you can visit www.friendsoffivepoints.org for more information about each Board member’s role. We are specifically looking for folks who have expertise in the following areas: bookkeeping, updating the website, and managing the listserv. If you are interested in joining us in any of the areas where our Board members serve, please contact us. We would be delighted to have you join us. An organization such as ours can only thrive if we have broad participation from our members. We have a hard-working Board, but it would be comforting to know that we have folks to back up each position.
We thank each of you in participating in our listserv and adding to the dialogue.
Hank Qadir
FOFP Board Chair