The annual Barton Hills July 4th Parade will go forward, rain or shine, on Monday, July 4th. Our very special theme this year will be a celebration of the children in our community, and all those young at heart. Our very own singer/songwriter Sara Hickman will lead the parade in a joyous sing-along with a chorus of children. Wells Fargo and Rockin' Tomato are our generous sponsors.

The parade will assemble as usual at Barton Hills Market on Barton Hills Drive at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, July 4th. At 9 a.m. the procession will be led by off-duty police officers, followed by participants on foot and in every conceivable conveyance, and finally by Fire Engine Number 11. The route ends at Barton Hills Elementary School, where the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts will lead the Pledge of Allegiance, and Pulitzer-prize winning historian, Dr. Bill Brands, will inspire the day with a historical perspective on the Declaration of Independence.

Festivities will follow and include such time-honored favorites as a watermelon seed spitting contest, sack races, egg toss, face painting, pinatas, and the judges' awards to the best parade entries in various categories. Refreshments will be served at the playground as well. All friends and neighbors are welcome to attend.

Upcoming Work Day: Saturday, July 9, 8:00 a.m. to noon, at Homedale Trail

For our mid-summer work day, we are planning a shorter work day that starts earlier, and will be planning for most of our tasks to take place in the shaded areas of the trail. We wore ourselves out last year, and want to be gentler on ourselves this time!

We will have on site: cold drinks, energy bars, sun screen lotion, and poison ivy protection. There are also a few free t-shirts from our last work day available. Our volunteers need to be sure to: wear protective clothing and a hat, proper work shoes, bring work gloves and their own water bottle to keep close at hand.

We will be doing weed control, some trail edging with cedar logs, continuing the repairs of the rock retaining walls for our bridge, and some trail resurfacing work. We will also be sending out ?scouts? into the woods to tag with bright colored ribbon the very large ligustrum trees that are responsible for the continuous re-seeding of this invasive species. Rene Barrera, of the City?s Land Preserve Division, has agreed to partner with us and have his crew cut down or ?girdle? these larger specimen trees, and treat them so they are less likely to resprout. That will be a great boon in reducing the future populations.

We hope to have a good showing of volunteers for this event. If you haven?t joined us yet, it?s a community adventure. Come add to the great collaborative spirit that has emerged around this wonderful place. Please RSVP to: gleeful@earthlink.net so we can plan appropriately.


Recent Work Day Report

On April 23, the BHNA-Greenbelt Guardians participated in the city-wide ?It?s My Park Day!? sponsored by the Austin Parks Foundation. On that day, 33 parks around town received the caretaking attention of some 940 volunteers.

We had a total of 60 volunteers show up to donate some 210 hours of time on our Greenbelt trails! The trails were crowded with the traffic of busy volunteers. Our neighbors turned out in generous numbers, plus the Community Service kids from Travis County Juvenile Probation, an enthusiastic group of Cub Scouts, and some Community Service students from U.T.

Because we were receiving help from the Austin Parks Foundation in recruiting for volunteers, we got more ambitious in our scope of work this time. For the first time, we worked both trail heads, Gus Fruh and Homedale, on the same day, which required more elaborate planning and participation by our expanding leadership team.

We completed the ambitious trail renovation project that we had started on our last work day at Gus Fruh. The remainder of the cross-drain swales were excavated and packed; stone & gravel cachement basins were constructed; and the entire trail was resurfaced with decomposed granite and then compacted. Lots of muscle power and endurance went into the effort. The results are spectacular and transformative. Peace, safety, and aesthetics reign on the once rutted and eroded trail.

The overgrown Homedale trail entry was opened up and cleared and widened, yielding a much more expansive trail entry. The large natural stone steps and retaining wall at the bottom of the trail onto the ?rock flats? by the creek, were completed, and the retaining walls in the arroyo supporting our new bridge were repaired.

Both trails got cleared of sticker weeds and invasive grass, and rock borders were straightened and repaired. The invasive ligustrum and nandina plants got our enthusiastic weed wrench treatment at both trail sites. And sacks of weeds and garbage were hauled away.

Special thanks go to the dedicated contributions of our neighborhood Greenbelt Guardian Team Leaders for this work day: Stan Ostrum, Robbin Trusty, Tim Steckler, Scott and Janet Byers, Robin McKeever, Kay Kennedy, Nancy Koch, and Ken and Rosalie Russell. And of course, our PARD Partner, John Cook, can?t be recognized enough times for his dedication and knowledge and true partnership in this endeavor.

Glee Ingram

For those of you who are avid readers of the BHNA Newsletter, occasional or regular participants in the BHNA Listserv, and even those bold enough to come to BHNA meetings, you know that BHNA over the last two years has made neighborhood planning its highest priority. Our goal has been to energize and educate our entire community about the ?upcoming? City of Austin (COA)-sponsored neighborhood planning (NP) process.

We have undertaken a number of activities to get ?in front of the neighborhood planning process by starting our own larger discussion of what are the values of our community, what is the nature of this special place that we seek not just to preserve but to enhance for the future? (President?s Message, January 2004). These activities included the formation of the NP Committee to research and identify key issues, resources, strategies, and needs; numerous Newsletter articles and Listserv discussion; a variety of speakers at BHNA meetings; and the culminating interviews, trainings, and House Meetings last fall, facilitated by graduate students in the Regional and Community Planning program at the UT School of Architecture.

This activity has been purposeful and deliberative in order to engage our community as fully informed citizens in this process. With both ?hard? empirical data and ?soft? wings for your own imagination and generosity of spirit, you could discuss and decide NP matters as members of a vital body politic, not just isolated homeowners or renters. We intended to provide a larger context so that you could meaningfully understand the component parts or single issues such as zoning and land use, deed restrictions, development on the Aquifer, greater density along the South Lamar Corridor, transportation, etc. etc.

We found, unfortunately, that to continue this quest and to carry the momentum forward from last fall required more volunteer time and effort than was immediately forthcoming. The recent discussion on the Listserv concerning deed restrictions was at once exhilarating in terms of the interest evident in NP issues. But it was also a disappointing reminder of our yet unmet dream, as it seemed many were discovering this issue for the first time. Clearly, we have not done a good enough job in sharing all the information and findings we have gathered over the last two years.

All that is changing now!! First, Glenn Chase, our incredible webmaster, is placing all the key NP documents and resources, including all those from the House Meetings, on the BHNA website. Just go to www.bhna.net and click on Neighborhood Planning in the navigation bar on the left. For those of you without Internet access, we will have all of these key documents at every Neighborhood Meeting for the foreseeable future.

Second, with reckless abandon to the fates of our work, family, and personal pursuits, we have again embarked on completing the ambitious journey begun last year. The next step will be conducting over the summer a comprehensive NP survey of our entire community, not just members, that will be designed by us, not the COA. We will have several drafts to share at the June 28th BHNA meeting, and seek volunteers for a survey design and administration team. Zilker NA has designed an excellent survey, which we will use as a model; it is posted on the BHNA Neighborhood Planning website (Go to far right of NP website page). Please review in advance of our meeting. We will identify tasks and people; so all who have already volunteered and/or have a specific interest (e.g., Deed Restrictions), here is your chance to act on this in a productive and meaningful way. We envision questions designed to probe around key topics and issues, supported by corresponding resources for background and education on the website.

In October, we will have an extraordinary and memorable Town Hall meeting, called ?Celebrations of Community,? where we can discuss survey results and craft our own BHNA NP Charter (vision, goals, values, projects). We will make this a fund-raiser with corporate and local business sponsorship to support a worthy project to be defined by you. And look for an announcement of a very special guest to headline this event!!

Are you ready to continue this grand journey?! I hope so! Remember, the more we do as a community, with a well-documented democratic process, the more our voices will matter in the COA process. The more we are educated before the COA process, the more likely we will reflect our beliefs and desires in that process.

Don Long
President
Barton Hills Neighborhood Association

The June edition of the Barton Hills News is now online and waiting for your eager perusal. Edited by Howie Richey, this issue includes information about recent graffiti found in our neighborhood, regional water quality planning, the fate of HB 2833, plans for new sidewalks, information about the upcoming July 4 Parade, and much more.

If you've lived in the neighborhood at least a year, you know that the 4th of July Parade is a big to-do, but it can't happen without YOU!

Volunteers are needed for these tasks:

• Running the games after the parade (watermelon seed spitting, sack race, etc.)
• Bringing 2 filled piñatas and supervising their destruction (one for little kids, one for big)
• Making about 6 posters to advertise the big event and setting them up at key intersections in the neighborhood about a week before the parade. (This one is great for tween kids with too much summer looming before them.)
• Set up and decorations the morning of the parade (8:00 am)
• Take down and clean up after the festivities
• Bringing cookies or donating a watermelon (or both!)
• Donating about 200 cups and napkins
• Letting us use your large Igloo water cooler

Please contact Cindy Bogard (912-9770) if you can help with any of these!

Lisa Farenkamp has volunteered to coordinate cookies again this year (thanks Lisa). Please contact her at 444-3211 to arrange for a cookie donation in advance or to let her know that you'll bring them the morning of the parade.

The parade will be on Monday the 4th. We will gather at the Barton Hills Market at 8:30 and will march to the school where there will be judging for the best decorated wagons, stroller, walkers, etc., patriotic music and brief speeches, cookies and watermelon, and games. A lot of fun, but only if everyone joins in.