9:00 am - Meet at Davis Park.  Coffee and snack provided.
9:15 am  – Register, get assignment and t-shirt (first 125 volunteers).
10: 00 am – With ‘group leaders’, depart to project location
12:00 noon – Finish up.  Lunch will be provided at Davis Park.

Our projects include painting the concession stand, bleachers and benches, and cleaning up Davis Park and cleaning certain areas of Elmhurst and Smith Hill.   Unfortunately we cannot complete the tasks that we had scheduled for Fargnoli Park as it is opening day for baseball, but hope to do so in the near future.

Come join in the fun and community spirit and help make our neighborhoods a better place to live and work!  If you have any questions, feel free to ‘Contact Us’ through our web site.  See you at the Park!

Topics of discussion will include:

Earth Day event 4/24

Update on:

Farmers’ Market, Community Garden, Merchant’s Association. 

Pleasant Valley Parkway projects

Hope to see you there!  

If you have any questions, are interested in joining EC&G or volunteering, please ‘Contact Us’ via this web site.

We’ll be cleaning up sections of some of the major streets such as Smith, Oakland, Chalkstone and Convent, priming the concession stand at Davis Park and planting some shrubs, trees and flowers.

If you can’t make it this time, please consider going out on your own at some point to pick up some trash or whatever else you can do to improve our parks and neighborhood!

Thank you very much everyone and please let us know if you have any questions.  More info to follow soon….keep checking our web site!

Bob McMahon/Parks Dept. have started construction of the new walking path and ballfield at Davis Park.  Coming soon, solar lighting and black iron fence along Chalkstone. 

Christine, President of PC’s student environmental group recruited about 15 students who finished painting the front fence at Fargnoli Park.  Looks great and thanks so much to the student volunteers!

A few of us met with Amintha Cinotti from the Providence Planning & Development department and will soon have information to pass along to Elmhurst businesses regarding the benefits of establishing a merchant’s association. 

A beautiful new ‘Elmhurst’ sign for the Eaton/Smith island has been designed and will be made by our member, Larry Pavese.   It will be installed early next spring.  Anna and I planted some tulips and daffodils around the monument so it should look nice!  More landscaping in the spring as well.

Several people questioned why trees were cut down on the Parkway.  We have found out that they were diseased.  Heidi is working on applications for obtaining free trees from the City.  We will be looking for volunteers in the spring to help plant them.  

Speaking of free trees, Dec. 1 is the deadline to submit applications for free trees for neighborhood streets.  All that is needed is 5 neighbors per street to agree to have trees planted in front of their homes and to help plant and water them.  If you are interested, you still have time!    Please visit the Providence Neighborhood Planting Program’s web site for more info at www.pnpp.org.  Folks, these are beautiful, tall, mature trees of many different varieties…not little saplings!

We will soon start planning next season’s farmers’ market.  It will be much bigger and even better than our first.  If you’d like to be on the sub- committee, please let us know at contact@elmhurstcleanandgreen.org.

We would like to see some holiday/winter decorations on Smith St.   If you have any ideas or contributions or can volunteer, please also let us know at our contact address.

Our next EC&G meeting will be held on Tuesday, December 8 at 7:00pm at PC’s Feinstein Center, Room 405, 4th floor.  Please see our map of PC for location.

As always, thank you for your support, and best wishes to all for a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanks as well to the EC&G volunteers and PC students who braved the rain to help plant trees the weekend before.  Over 30 trees were planted throughout Elmhurst. 

We’d like to keep up the momentum with tree planting and are looking for volunteers for this Spring to assist with planting on Pleasant Valley Parkway.  The more volunteers we have, the more trees we will request.  Please ‘contact us’ if you are interested.  Thank you.

For more information on obtaining trees free of charge from the City of Providence, please visit the Providence Neighborhood Planting Program’s web site, www.pnpp.org.  All you need are 5 residents per street to ’sign on’ in order to be considered.  The deadline for Spring planting is Dec. 1.

Our last farmers market and fall community fair went very well yesterday.  The weather was just beautiful and everyone enjoyed being outdoors, shopping, hearing about services from local organizations, meeting new friends and visiting with neighbors.  We were extremely pleased to have join us Mayor David Cicilline, State Representative Joanne Giannini and Councilman Terry Hassett.   It was a great day and great first season!  Thank you so much to all of the volunteers who helped yesterday and throughout.   Thank you as well to Mark Sweeney from The 02908 Club, Anthony from Big Tony’s and to the vendors who donated gift certificates and items for our raffle.  We appreciate your support!

A few EC&G folks and PC students braved the rain on Saturday to help Valentina and others plant trees throughout Elmhurst.  You can see some of the trees on River Ave…they look great.

Lastly, we have re-scheduled our clean up and Fargnoli Park fence painting for this Saturday, 10/31 from 11:00am-1:00pm.  Please let us know if you can help - contact@elmhurstcleanandgreen.org.  Thank you!

Agenda

-Introduction New Members

-Update from Bob McMahon, Parks Department – Davis Park, Fargnoli Park

-Update from Lt. Daniel Gannon, Providence Police Department – PC area, general information

- Discuss plans for Saturday, October 24^th Neighborhood Improvement Day.  Outline projects, locations, times, project leaders, supplies, meeting locations. Update from Christine/PC on volunteers.

-Discuss plans for Fall Community Fair Sunday, October 25^th at Davis Park (in conjunction with Farmer’s Market). Update from LeeAnn/Neighborhood Day.  Parking, set up, kid’s activities, supplies

- Update on Elmhurst business/merchant’s association.

-Open to group – new issues, suggestions, concerns

Additional business time allowing:

-Farmers Market

-Community Garden

-EC&G future meetings/organization

-501c3 status

We had a great meeting and are all very excited about working together to improve the area. We hope to have a project scheduled at least every other week to include clean ups, plantings, pruning, and weed removal as needed. They are also very interested in the community garden outreach program for next summer.

On Saturday, October 24 from 11am-1pm, we will hold a neighborhood improvement and clean up together. We encourage anyone interested to contact us… the more the merrier. Further details to follow soon.

Someone from their Club will attend our meetings each month as well. We are very happy to have them on board!

Lt. Daniel Gannon will be at the meeting to answer questions and provide updates from the police department. Also attending will be representatives from three of our local schools – Providence College, Rhode Island College, and Johnson & Wales.

As many of you know, one of the reasons that we started EC&G was to address the amount of trash generated in the neighborhood, particularly by the students. As a matter of fact, this was an agenda item for our last meeting but we decided to hold the discussion until October. We have held numerous clean ups in the past two years, several of which were in conjunction with a great group of students from PC. We have also approached two of the colleges to ask for their support by providing trash barrels, dealing with specific ‘problem’ tenants, etc.

So it is fantastic to hear that Councilman Michael Solomon, the police, and the colleges are working together on ways to control the “party zone”, from adding police foot patrols to having the three colleges take responsibility for weekly neighborhood cleanups. In addition, Councilman Solomon is drafting an ordinance focusing on landlords who rent to troublesome tenants.

I just had the pleasure of speaking with Lt. Daniel Gannon, the district commander for the area, who is responsible for this “Operation Red Cup”. He has already met with representatives from Providence College and some of the landlords in the area and is next meeting with officials from Johnson & Wales and Rhode Island College. The Lieutenant is pro-active in his approach to crime prevention and has implemented several programs in an effort to curb crime and make our community a better place to live. I am very pleased that Lt. Gannon will be joining us at our next EC&G meeting on October 20.