Sustainable Gardening Meeting on Thursday, May 22, 2014!

May 22, Provo Library at 7 Pm

"The Joaquin Improvement Association will be hosting a presentation on how to make Gardens in Provo more sustainable. Subjects will include:

Making sustainable beauty.
Eating cheaply from your own property.
Taking care of bees.
Sustaining the local park.


The presenter will be Alex Grover, owner of Utah Sustainable Gardening. Alex graduated from BYU with a degree in Urban Horticulture and has worked in many different aspects of plants and landscapes.

There will be no cost to this presentation and the Joaquin Improvement Association has invited all Provo residents."

Joaquin Neighborhood Meeting Report from May 15, 2014

Wow! There was great turnout at the meeting!

We started out with a report from Councilman Sewell on BRT, Bus Rapid Transit. He said the city has resolved concerns and is moving ahead. Of course, there were still concerns from residents at the meeting, but some of those we won't know if they are valid until BRT is actually implemented. The idea is to be close to the speed and reliability of light rail. If the city really wants to move forward environmentally, in PR, etc., it needs to have this. We need realistic options to get around the city, so I think this will be a good thing.

Special thanks to Stephen Hales for his nice show of support in showing up.

Unfortunately, we did not discuss one of the items on the agenda--the new development on 900 E. Apparently no one contacted the developer...hmm. On the other hand, the meeting would have gone another hour if the developer had been there, so it may have been a blessing in disguise.

Lastly, we discussed the Joaquin Neighborhood Plan. Thanks to Bill Peperone for his work with the neighborhood on this. I liked what he said about cities usually telling people what they can't do rather than providing a vision for the future. The Joaquin Neighborhood Plan is definitely a vision for the future. We talked about the zoning in the plan, again with the main emphasis on bunching student housing north of 500 East. Parking was a contentious issue as usual, especially since we are one of the neighborhoods close to campus. Apparently the city is hiring a consultant to finally address the city parking problem once and for all. I know this is a major concern of Mayor Curtis so hopefully something will actually happen. Still, I wish we could not get so hung up on parking that we miss the big picture--making our neighborhood an awesome place to live!

I thought a good point was brought up that Utah is growing (read this article about the predicted population explosion) and is going to continue growing. We can shape that growth and make our neighborhood one that people want to move to!

*Random note: Go to code.provo.org and then to Chapter 14 for zoning definitions and descriptions.
 *Favorite thing brought up in meeting: "Can I still have chickens?" And... "Will the BYU students bother the chickens?" We love the BYU students!

Important Last Minute Meeting Coming Up Thursday, May 15th

Time to meet the official Joaquin Neighborhood Chair! This is the first time he's called a meeting in a while, so it should be interesting!

 

"Dear Neighbors:

There will be a Neighborhood meeting this Thursday May 15th at the Provo City Library in the Brimhall Room at 6:30pm. The Agenda will be as follows:

1. Bus Rapid Transit update. I have asked Council member Sewell to give us a quick update on what the council just voted on. We will need to excuse Councilman Sewell at 6:50 because he has another meeting at 7pm.

2. The Developer of the Pacific Heights Apartments located at 743 N 900 E will give a presentation of the final product. This project has changed hands and a new architect was brought in. I thought you might like to see what will be built.

3. Bill Peperone from the office of Community Development will give an official report of the latest draft of the "Joaquin Neighborhood Plan"


Leo Lines
Joaquin Neighborhood Chair
801-636-0268

Ladies' Night With the Mayor!

On Tuesday, May 27th, from 7--8 p.m., Mayor John Curtis is coming to my house to have dessert with a group of women and do a question and answer session. We will talk about getting women more involved in the city, offer suggestions on how to be a women-friendly city, and ask the mayor any questions we might have. Share this with any local women you know who like to have their voices heard! Email me if you want to come. And if you want to come and bring kids, just let me know so I can have activities set up for them—this is an all-women friendly event!

For the Bicycle Riders in Joaquin Neighborhood

We used to live in Draper, Utah, where almost every day, rain or shine, I would see person after person either sweating or freezing to death in skintight clothes as they toiled up one of the largest hills I have ever had the privilege to live on. Who were these crazy people (with amazing calf muscles)? Bikers, of course!

At our last neighborhood meeting we had Aaron Skabelund from the Provo Bicycle Committee chat with us for a few minutes about the new Provo Bicycle Plan and it's impact it would have on our neighborhood. Take a minute to read it! I'm excited about it because it will not only connect bike lanes in the city so bikers can get where they need to go safely, but it will make certain streets in our neighborhood more pedestrian-friendly for those of us who like to walk.

I also learned about two fun weekly events that start at Joaquin Park here in our neighborhood:

Monday Night: Night Ride, starts at 9 p.m.: a moonlit jaunt around our fair city, and

Thursday Food Truck Ride, starts at 7: a family-friendly bike ride to the Food Truck Roundup at 560 S. 100 W.

If you want more specifics, search for bikeprovo.org on Facebook, or contact Aaron Skabelund at a.skabelund@gmail.com. He is chairman of the Provo Bicycle Committee and can get you connected with other bikers in our community!

Joaquin Neighborhood Meeting Report from April 26, 2014

It was a rainy Saturday, but I braved the weather and went to the Joaquin Improvement Association meeting at the library anyway. It turned out to be a good decision! I met some new and interesting people and got some great ideas to get involved in the neighborhood. I liked being able to walk around and see the different aspects of the neighborhood that the Neighborhood Plan focuses on. Remember to take a look, especially at pages 19, 24, 27, and 33. That should give you a good idea of the zoning issues here and proposed changes to make the neighborhood more friendly for walkers and bikers.

 

A quick recap from Bill Graff on our Facebook group:

 

"At the meeting of the Joaquin Improvement Association today we:

 

1. Set our goal to be to improve the livability of Joaquin for everyone.

2. Endorsed submittal of the Joaquin plan to the City Planning Committee.

3. Set the date for our first neighborhood festival for June 12....
4. Obtained a volunteer treasurer.
5. Established the need for a service committee with possible projects identified and a potential chairperson.
6. Established weekly meetings of the executive committee and expanded membership from 3 to 5."

In respects to number 5, I'm not a big fan of the word "service," thanks to all the mandatory "service" projects I was forced to do growing up, but I'm planning on starting on a Clean and Green neighborhood group to get involved in our neighborhood at a smaller level and get younger families involved in our neighborhood. More details to follow as I work them out.... Let me know if you have a project idea to clean up the neighborhood or make it look better!

The next monthly meeting is Thursday, May 22 at 7 p.m. Don't miss it!

Provo Peaks Elementary School

 

What about the elementary school in Joaquin Neighborhood? I have a kindergartner that goes to Provo Peaks, and it was very hard to find any information about it. Add to that trying to figure out the whole school thing for the first time and you get one stressed out mom. I figured it out, but it took a while.

This week I talked to the principal, Alex Judd, and got some interesting information about the school to share here. Hopefully I wrote everything down correctly, but of course if you have questions you can ask the neighborhood on Facebook, email me, or go visit and chat with him yourself!

Provo Peaks hosts the most gifted students in the district  and the most severely disabled students in the district. Starting this year, all the gifted students from the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades will come to a CAS (Center for Accelerated Studies) at Provo Peaks. Added to that, the special programs and classrooms for disabled students are really amazing.

There is a lot of diversity in our school, both economically and culturally. Over half my daughter's classmates are Hispanic, and school-wide about 40 percent are English language learners. This diversity is probably my favorite thing about the school.

I asked the principal about bringing a dual immersion program to the school--so many of the moms I talk to really want that for their kids. The problem is, there are two teachers for each grade right now, and with a dual immersion program one of them has to be English and the other one Spanish (or whatever language). This means that if they switched to a dual immersion program, every child would have to do it. I'm okay with that, but I can see that a parent might want their child in an English-only classroom. So until there are more students at the school, it won't support a dual immersion program. And it's going to be hard to get more parents to send their students here unless there is a dual immersion program. I think it's an interesting problem.

I feel like there needs to be something extra here to draw parents in. That's why I was excited when Principal Judd talked about his goal to become a STEM school. (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). In May, he and a few other school administrators in the district are going to Denver to check out some successful STEM schools. I know that to become a STEM school there is a lot of teacher training that has to go on first, so it might be a ways down the road, but I think it would be a good choice for Provo Peaks.

Provo Peaks is a Title 1 school, which means there are a lot of lower-income families that live within the boundaries. The school gets extra funding to make up for this and has done some neat things with it, including hiring 7 support para-professionals that are there to help kids that need some one-on-one attention with a particular subject.

Attached to the elementary school is Sunrise Preschool, which is for developmentally delayed students or students from lower income families. It looks really amazing.

Also, FYI, kindergarten has a full day and a half day class. (The half day class was really important to me).

Feel free to email me with any questions, or visit the Provo Peaks website.