4th Quarter WGNA Meeting Summary 10/24/14 K.Agee

Our 4th quarter WGNA meeting was held on 10/23/14 at the Walnut Creek Branch Library (3319 Edgewood) featuring Dianne Dupont, Branch Manager of the Garland Library system. Following are some highlights:

Ø Treasurer Robert Vera reported that our cash reserve increased from $551 to $601 with no expenditures since the 7/24/14 meeting.

Ø President Ricardo Rocha led renewed discussion about the need for a garage sale, with the proceeds going into the WGNA cash account. The consensus is that we will hold it sometime after the 1^st quarter meeting, which would set the timeframe to sometime in February or early March. There was talk about having it in front of the Tax Building (140 N. Garland Ave @ Main St), but further details were tabled as “New Business” for the Jan 22 quarterly meeting. Advice to WGNA members is to consider holding back items you’d like to contribute to the sale.

Ø There was a good discussion about the fact that the City is in the process of revising Chapter 32 of the Code of Ordinances (Property Sanitation & Housing Services). A common complaint was that our residential streets are being clogged by an excess of cars. Advice was given that there is no ordinance specifically covering the ratio of cars per house, but calling Code Compliance to report unusual home business activities is a better way to approach the problem. For example, it’s illegal to repair & re-sell cars without a zoning exception…

Ø Mrs. Dupont had an impressive presentation about not only our local library, but the entire Garland library system, and how it can interact with other library systems. For example, did you know that you don’t need to subscribe to Ancestry.com to use that tool? All you need is an account with the library to log in and use their subscription. Same goes for many other services. They not only keep many shelves full of books & periodicals, but if there is something they don’t have right there, it is possible that they can arrange to have it delivered for no additional charge to you! Is your computer fouled up so you can’t get your email? If you get an account with them, you can go there and use one of their computers (they are somewhat limited in the number, but the newly renovated main library is now getting close to 75 computers).

Ø The library system’s budget is historically one of the first to be cut when times get tough, and it’s a real treasure for folks living in our (high-density) apartment building area there south of Walnut between Jupiter & Shiloh. We talked about a couple of ways to help them out: One is to logon to them first before going to Amazon.com to buy anything. When that happens, Amazon pays the Library system a referral-fee for directing purchases to them. Also, you can donate old books. Chances are, they won’t end up on the shelves, but they can resell the books and kick the profits back into the system.

Ø Before we adjourned, Ricardo reminded us that this year’s Mosaic festival will be held on Saturday 11/1 at the downtown square. Fran Brown pointed out that Garland’s fall Trash Off has been rescheduled for 11/15, because it rained on the original date. Fran also mentioned that the next UNIDOS community outreach to the Hispanic community will be in November as well. Details can be found at: http://www.programaunidos.org/.

Ø The next quarterly WGNA meeting will be held on Thursday evening at 7pm on January 22^nd. We will return to our normal meeting place: the back of the Church at Jupiter & Lawler (3525 Lawler).