EVNA Opportunities to Become Involved

A big thanks to those of you who have recently paid your dues online.  If you've not already paid your EVNA annual dues for 2016, the EVNA Treasurer is very eager and ready to collect dues before it is 2017! Annual membership dues now expire on the anniversary of your 2016 payment.  Just click the link above, get registered, fill in what personal data if any you want to share on our roster (viewable only by dues-paying members) and pay your dues with your Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover Card.  

Do you want to be more involved in your neighbhood?  The Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association (EVNA) is looking for new members for both the Planning and Land Use Committee and the Board of Directors!

Hi EVNA Members,

The EVNA Board of Directors (the Board) focuses on operation and general goals of EVNA including:

  • Protect and enhance the character of the neighborhood, its historic resources and significant topographic features and open space
  • Ensure that growth, development, and public access are compatible with and meet the needs of residents and the business community
  • Protect and improve public health and safety
  • Encourage friendly association among neighbors and businesses
  • Provide an educational forum and community outreach to community partners

The Board meets the second Tuesday of every month from 6:30 to 8:00 pm at the Chase Bank at the corner of 15th and Market Streets. We are looking for people interested in promoting the EVNA mission to “provide a public forum for the people who live, work, and play in the greater Eureka Valley area to discuss common issues and concerns and help develop solutions to improve the our neighborhood.”

The EVNA Planning & Land Use Committee (PLUC)  is looking for people knowledgeable in land use issues and the intricacies of the planning process and those who have a serious interest in learning. The committee discusses residential and commercial projects within Eureka Valley in all stages of the permitting process.  It focuses on ensuring that these projects are compatible with and meet the needs of our residential and business communities.  The committee meets the first Wednesday of every month from 7:00 to 8:30 at the Chase Bank at the corner of 15th, Sanchez and Market Streets. In addition to discussing plans and permits, the committee delves into issues such as affordable housing, historic preservation, protection of green spaces and more.  

If you’re interested in either of these important volunteer opportunities, contact the EVNA president  or come to a meeting as noted above, or come to the next EVNA general membership meeting on Wednesday, September 28th, 7:00pm at Harvey Milk School at 4235 19th Street in San Francisco.

REGISTER AND PAY EVNA DUES ONLINE NOW →

2016 Castro Street Fair Volunteers

The 2016 Castro Street Fair is quickly approaching! As a beneficiary this year, the Castro/Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association needs your help to volunteer at the fair!

Please visit this link to sign up for your shift/activity preference for the Castro Street Fair on Sunday, October 2, 2016.

C/EVNA Volunteers at the 2015 Fair
EVNA Member Volunteers at the 2015 Fair

The Castro Street Fair is located in the heart of San Francisco’s Castro District, at the intersection of Market & Castro Streets and the surrounding area. The Castro Street Fair is a community street celebration that was founded by Harvey Milk in 1974. Hundreds of local artists, vendors, craftspeople, and organizations line the streets and celebrate the diversity of the neighborhood. Stages with live entertainment and dance stages can be found throughout the fairgrounds.

As a beneficiary, our neighborhood association will benefit greatly from much needed funds to continue our mission, engage our members, residents, and merchants, in addition to distributing our bi-monthly newsletter - The Eureka!

Castro/Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association (EVNA), formed in 1881 as the Eureka Valley Promotion Association (EVPA), provides a public forum for the people who live, work, and play in the greater Eureka Valley area.

Our membership meetings are open to the public and are held on the  Fourth Wednesday of the Month each January, March, May, September and November, 7pm at the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy.  Additionally, EVNA Committees and the Board of Directors meet regularly for the conduct of business.

Also, don't forget about our upcoming forum:

EUREKA VALLEY NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION SPONSORS PANEL DISCUSSION ON HOMELESSNESS IN THE CASTRO

As part of the EVNA’s mission to provide a public forum in Eureka Valley to discuss issues and concerns and help develop solutions to improve our neighborhood, EVNA is sponsoring a panel discussion on homelessness in the Castro. The panel will be made up of a diverse group of speakers including Jeff Montejano, Legislative Aide to San Francisco Supervisor Mark Farrell, Andrea Aiello, Executive Director of the Castro Community Benefits District and Michael Stoll, Executive Director of San Francisco Public Press. The panel discussion will take place at the next EVNA General Membership meeting:

Wednesday, September 28th, 2016, 7:00 pm to 8:30pm
Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy
4235 19th Street (at Collingwood)

Feel free to contact Gary McCoy if you have any questions related to the Castro Street Fair, we hope to see you there!

The July-August Eureka! Published for your Reading Pleasure

Hi EVNA Members,

The July-August Eureka! is out of the editing room and on its way to the printer for our door to door distribution.  You can read it online now!  Some highlights of this issue are:

  • The Pros and Cons of Jane Warner Plaza
  • An Historical Essay of SF Farmer's Markets
  • The President's Column
  • Words from Supervisor Scott Weiner
  • Neighborhood Faves
  • Castro Hoodies

Please support our sponsoring advertisers  who make the newsletter publication and distribution so possible.

READ THE JULY-AUGUST Eureka! ONLINE NOW →

If you haven't visited us at EVNA.org recently, you'll see significant style and functionality changes as our volunteer leadership team has transitioned our site onto a WordPress content management system.  We've installed new membership management tools, including options for membership dues payment and renewals and keeping of our membership list and rosters.  Our Eureka! Announcement List has also been migrated to this new integrated system, that's how we know you got this email!  

The EVNA Treasurer is very eager and ready to collect your 2016 annual dues, which will now expire 365 days after payment.  Just click the link below, get registered, fill in what personal data if any you want to share on our roster (viewable only by dues-paying members) and pay your dues with your Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover Card.  

If you previously paid your 2016 C/EVNA dues by cash or check, please register on the website, too.  Pay-by-cash & check members need to be registered so you are included in the treasurer's official legal records of members, necessary for participation as a board member or one of our standing committees.

REGISTER AND PAY EVNA DUES ONLINE NOW →

The EVNA Website is Waiting For You

If you haven’t checked out our website at https://evna.org recently, we’ve undergone a major transformation.  Our 2008 website was running on the Drupal Content Management System (CMS) and has served us well.  But as our version of Drupal 6 was coming to an end of life, we had a choice to upgrade to Drupal 7 or to transition over to WordPress.  WordPress has made leaps and bounds in the years since 2008, and it was a no brainer that making the move to WordPress would far better serve our membership and the neighborhood.  The WordPress User Interface (U/I) is far more intuitive to anyone who has ever created or read a digital document.  We still have some updating to do on the site, but with the significantly facilitated U/I, maintaining our website current will be a much easier task for the EVNA leadership team.

As part of our website upgrade to WordPress, new membership management tools have been installed on our website, including integrated announcements and managing our membership dues and renewals.  Announce list emails for all members of the Board and members of the PLUC have been transfered to this new integrated website system.  That's how you got this email!  We will transfer the remaining 245 people on our subscription list once we see the system is working as well as it has been working in testing.

The Treasurer is very eager and ready to collect the annual dues from our members.  Just click the link below, get registered, fill in what personal data if any you want to share on our roster (viewable only by dues-paying members) and pay your dues with your Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover Card.  If there is really a need for PayPal®, then let us know and the functionality can be installed.

If you previously paid your 2016 C/EVNA dues by check, please register on the website, too.  Pay-by-check members need to be registered so you are included in the treasurer's official legal records of members.

What else can you do? -- If you closely look at our site, some pages need updating.  We can use some new neighborhood specific banner photographs.  Ask to become a site editor, and your efforts to put a better web face on the EVNA would be appreciated.

Please feedback your website registration experiences, good, bad, recommended minor wording changes via the site contact form.

REGISTER AND PAY EVNA DUES ONLINE NOW →

Events of Interest to EVNA Members 6/15 & 6/22

 

 

[mepr-membership-link id="685"] DOn't Click Yet - but soon Jon the EVNA now as an Individual Member [/mepr-membership-link]
EVNA Members, please read below of several events of interest that we have just learned about. Some are very short fused: EVNA Community Quality of Life Meeting 6/15 Please join Mayor Lee's Fix-It Director Sandra Zuniga and other City officials to discuss Quality of Life concerns in our neighborhood. Eureka Valley Recreation Center 100 Collingwood Street, San Francisco Wednesday, June 15th, 6:30pm to 8pm This meeting is called to gather our neighborhood concerns and create a Castro/Market area action plan that several City agencies can address. Participating agencies include: - San Francisco Police Department - Public Health - Public Works - Public Utilities Commission - Recreation and Parks and the Municipal Transit Agency. Please see the flyer for this event at evna.org/2016/06/14/774/ — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Just prior to the Qualify of Life meeting above, the CBD is holding the first ever Castro Bazaar featuring local artists from 4-6pm in Jane Warner Plaza. Please read more about this event on our website at evna.org/2016/06/14/6152016-castro-bazaar/ — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — 6/22/2016 - SFMTA Community Input Session. Muni wants your input to better communicate with all riders. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is updating its Public Participation Plan, which guides SFMTA’s efforts in reaching out to the public and providing opportunities for gathering input on its services, projects and programs. Castro Merchants and the Upper Market Alliance are assisting SFMTA by organizing a Community Input Session to collect feedback from our members that are: 1) San Francisco residents 2) Ride or are familiar with Muni If this describes you, please consider participating in the Community Input Session to provide input to ensure SFMTA is using the most effective methods possible to reach and engage the public. The Community Input Session is scheduled for: June 22nd from 6:30PM-7:30PM
Castro Community Meeting Room
501 Castro at 18th Street, 2nd Floor above Bank of America Members who attend the Community Input Session can enter a drawing to receive a $50 Clipper Card if they complete a separate survey. If you are interested in attending, please contact Annie Dulka at (510)637-8690 or dulka@barcoast.com. Read more/updated info about this event on our website at evna.org/2016/06/14/6222016-sfmta-community-input-session/ ................................................................ Too much stuff in your email? We can understand - visit evna.org/ciao if you really want off our Eureka announcement list.

6/22/2016 – SFMTA Community Input Session

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is updating its Public Participation Plan, which guides SFMTA’s efforts in reaching out to the public and providing opportunities for gathering input on its services, projects and programs.

Castro Merchants and the Upper Market Alliance are assisting SFMTA by organizing a Community Input Session to collect feedback from our members that are:

1) San Francisco residents

2) Ride or are familiar with Muni

If this describes you, please consider participating in the Community Input Session to provide input to ensure SFMTA is using the most effective methods possible to reach and engage the public.

The Community Input Session is scheduled for:

June 22nd from 6:30PM-7:30PM
Castro Community Meeting Room
501 Castro at 18th Street, 2nd Floor above Bank of America

Members who attend the Community Input Session can enter a drawing to receive a $50 Clipper Card if they complete a separate survey.

If you are interested in attending, please contact Annie Dulka at (510)637-8690 or dulka@barcoast.com.

Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association Endorses Proposition C

Dear --name, The board of directors of the Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association has voted to endorse Proposition C. If approved by San Francisco voters on June 7, 2016, Proposition C will: 1. Increase the affordable housing requirement for private housing developers. 2. Require for the first time the creation of middle-income housing as a portion of inclusionary units. 3. Restore authority to adjust future affordable housing requirements to the Board of Supervisors and Mayor. Here are additional details for those interested in reading further: Proposition C increases the on-site affordable housing requirement for projects of 25 or more units: 1. Increases on-site affordable housing requirements from 12% to 25%. Prop C returns the on-site requirement to 15% affordable for low-income households, and adds a new 10% affordable to moderate/middle-income households. 2. Establishes the first-ever requirement for affordable housing for middle-income households. Prop C mandates that at least 10% of on-site units be affordable to moderate/middle-income households, allowing San Franciscans earning salaries in the range of public service workers, clerical workers, school teachers, and bus drivers, to find stable long-term housing in the City. 3. Encourages developers to opt for on-site mixed-income housing. For those developers who elect not to provide mixed-income affordable housing on-site, Prop C increases the amounts for an “in-lieu” fee and an off-site development alternative from 20 to 33 percent. Proposition C also amends the City Charter, restoring the ability of the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor to change affordable housing requirements by ordinance. This is an essential “good government” provision that lets the city match housing requirements with future economic conditions; determine need and household income levels by neighborhood; and ensure that the maximum number of affordable units are built. ................................................................ Too much stuff in your email? We can understand - visit evna.org/ciao if you really want off our Eureka announcement list.

Working to Improve Life in Eureka Valley Since 1881