Group now has community Web site, newsletter

by Bill Gates

    The Colgate Improvement Association is back up and running after a brief period of dormancy – now moving so fast its feet are barely touching the ground.
    A full slate of officers, the debut of a community Web site and print newsletter, plans to start a program of block captains ... one of Dundalk’s smallest communities is taking some big strides.
    “All of us are constantly brainstorming to see what can be done to improve the community,” CIA members David and Michelle Hyland said on the new web site. “We are implementing several ways to get and give information, from a new Web site, to fliers, to a CIA phone line.”
  

The association also has a new home for its monthly meetings, moving from the Colgate Elementary School library to the auditorium in St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church.
    In addition to David (code enforcement representative) and Michelle (secretary) Hyland, the association officers are Jonathan Cecil (president), Kathy Thomas (vice president), and Joyce Meyers (treasurer).
    The officers – all of them new except Meyers, who has been the treasurer for three years – hosted their first community meeting in August.
    It was the first meeting since last fall, when the previous president,  Vanessa Kerwath, stepped down.
    The Hylands also created and maintain the association’s Web site (http://www.mysite.verizon.net/vze11jras/.)
 as well as putting together the newsletter.
    The site includes a calendar of community events, an online community “mall,” minutes from the association meetings and information on Baltimore County code enforcement, local merchants and the Colgate Citizens on Patrol.
    It also describes how to join the CIA, and will allow residents to post their profiles on the site.
    “Our goal with the Web site is to get people involved in helping everyone else out,” David Hyland said. “There are a lot of elderly in this community, a lot of disabled people. If they can’t meet the code requirements, we’ll help them out.”
    The first issue of the newsletter is to be released in November.
    It will include tips on crime awareness, details on county code enforcement (featuring that familiar Colgate problem, the rat) and information on the association.
    “I’m personally handing them out to every home in the community,” Hyland said.
    The October CIA meeting featured a turnout of over two dozen people.
    “It was a very nice turnout,” Meyers said. “I was so glad to see so many people there. We’re getting back on track again, supporting the neighborhood. But we definitely need some help in improving Colgate.”
   
Recent issues
    Colgate residents found guilty of code violations will be issued citations without warnings from county code enforcement and will be fined $500.
    The CIA was able to get the county to hold off on this until residents could be warned through the newsletter, Hyland said.
    One recurring problem has been missing garbage cans and cans without lids. Anyone putting out trash bags without a can, or in a can without a lid, will be fined $500.
    But some Colgate residents have complained of garbage cans, and particularly lids, being lost after sanitation crews collect the trash.
    One resident said she has purchased nearly 15 garbage cans since 2001. Of the two new cans she bought this past summer, she said, one already is missing its lid.
    Lids can be chained to the owner’s back yard fence so they don’t go anywhere after falling off the can. Instructions on one way to do this are in the November newsletter.
    Block captains are being recruited for each street in Colgate. They will have the responsibility of checking yards in their block for county code compliance (free of trash, pet droppings, etc.) and reporting problems to David Hyland.
    Residents are also reminded that letting dogs bark throughout the night violates the county code regarding excessive noise and is subject to a citation without a warning.
    Other issues the CIA intends to address are the repair of a section of damaged sidewalk on Eastdale Road, requesting a new traffic study in order to get traffic-calming devices placed in the community, and the possible rezoning of the neighborhood.
    “The Web site has been a really big help,” Hyland said. “We’re already getting some responses from it.”