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Community sup coming up

Northside Planning Council
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Community sup coming up

By the NCS Committee

We are excited to begin the fourth year of Northside Community Suppers Sunday, March 29, at the Warner Park Community Recreation Center. The time of the suppers is changing this year. We will start at 4 pm and end at 6 pm. The supper is a free meal of simple comfort food, an open gym for children of all ages, and an opportunity to meet other Northsiders in a relaxed atmosphere. The menu for March 29 will be Irish stew, and there will be pies made by Community GroundWorks volunteers in a community pie-baking event the day before. Contact Shelly Strom at shelly@communitygroundworks.org or 310-8846 to get involved with that.

Looking ahead, the guest host for the May 31 supper will be the North/Eastside Senior Coalition. The Aug. 30 supper will be an outdoor picnic, and the Nov. 29 supper will cap off the Thanksgiving weekend.

Guest sponsor opportunities are still available for August and November. Duties include helping to promote the event and rounding up a few volunteers to help serve and clean up. Call 230-1221 ext. 1 if your organization would like to sponsor a future supper or if you want to personally volunteer.

The Northside Community Suppers Committee includes Boomerangs Resale Store, Madison School & Community Recreation, the Northside Farmers Market, the Northside Planning Council and the Warner Park Community Recreation Center.

NPC Executive Director: February/March 2015

Northside News
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NPC Executive Director: February/March 2015

In this month of Valentine’s Day, I find myself musing, “Northside, how do I love thee?” (with apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning). A refrain I hear over and over from Northsiders is “and then I fell in love with the Northside and never left.”

How do we love our community? We love the natural resources and beauty, our community engagement, positive leaders and enthusiastic cheerleaders for our part of the city, the award-winning teachers and leaders at our schools, and the diversity of ages, races, incomes and ethnicities that makes this such a rich landscape. The degree of passion of those who live, work, learn and play here is unmatched elsewhere in Madison.

So why is the Northside still unknown to so many other Madisonians? What can we do to share the tremendous benefits we enjoy, to introduce people to our parks and schools and businesses?

The Northside Economic Development Coalition (NEDC) has created two new tools to help share our story outside our borders. On www.northsidemadison.org, there is now an online, searchable map of amenities — a visual picture of our wealth of resources that is constantly growing as we add new businesses and organizations to the menu. You can search restaurants, auto repair shops, churches and retail locations at http://northsidemadison.org/
northside-assets.

The NEDC has also created and printed a new marketing booklet describing the benefits of locating a business or finding a home here. This beautiful, high-quality brochure has been sent to real estate brokers and developers throughout Dane County to introduce them to our quality of life. If you would like to share why you love it here, pick up a copy of the brochure at the Northside Planning Council office and give it to friends and co-workers.

With recent public art projects, we’ve started to bring some attention to the beauty of our community. Look for more community art in 2015 to highlight our attractive neighborhoods, parks and schools.

Let’s do more this year to showcase what we have to offer — to bring new people to our businesses, to take part in our activities, to join our organizations and churches. Our Valentine to the Northside is sharing our love for it with others.

Editor’s Column: February/March 2015

Martee Mikalson
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Editor’s Column: February/March 2015

In 2014, the Milken Institute named Madison one of the top five “Best Cities for Successful Aging” based on access to health care, job opportunities and lifestyle factors. After developing this special edition of the Northside News on seniors and aging, I am not surprised.

The following pages reveal a remarkable array of services, resources and dedicated professionals who spend every day working to improve the quality of life of the seniors living in our community: helping them remain safely independent for as long as they choose; helping them live active, healthy lifestyles; combatting the social isolation that can accompany aging. We are very lucky on the Northside to have such a compassionate, attentive place to grow old together.

Along with stories of the ways we assist our seniors are the stories of what seniors have to offer us. People like Sandy Schmidt and Barbara Arnold  who take their life experiences and apply them to helping others are just two examples of the many seniors who give back to their community long after retirement. Our youth edition always has stories about the importance of seniors as mentors and tutors in the lives of our children.

The Northside of Madison traditionally has had a higher than average concentration of seniors compared to the rest of the city. This provides us with a treasure trove of wisdom and experience, especially when we can provide a mutually supportive community for all to live in.

Thank an Advertiser Today
I have spent a lot of time thinking about our advertisers this month. January is the month when most of our annual advertising contracts come due, and, usually, most are renewed. Each year at this time, we enter into a new agreement with many of our advertisers to print the next six issues of the Northside News for our mutual benefit. By advertising with us, they support their community newspaper, and by extension, I hope, the Northside. And, in return, their advertising dollars are an investment in their business and the local economy. Many of these are small, locally owned businesses, and I know that they spend a significant portion of their advertising budget on the Northside News.

As we prepare for our 20th Anniversary edition of the Northside News in April/May, I am struck by how lucky we are to be mostly self-sustaining in this era of declining print media. In case our advertisers are not aware, I want them to know that we don’t take this granted. We are grateful for the strong relationship we have with our business community and strive to honor that by producing a quality publication that we hope makes their jobs easier and the Northside proud.

Swing and slide funding no longer teetering for Gompers, Black Hawk

Northside News
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Swing and slide funding no longer teetering for Gompers, Black Hawk

By Melissa McGraw
Great Lakes Higher Education Guaranty Corp.

The Parent Teacher Organizations of Gompers Elementary School and Black Hawk Middle School started the Growing Together Initiative in 2010 with a mission to enhance the environment and play space at the schools. In the past four years, they have successfully raised funds to create a community garden and install a playground in front of the building. New playground equipment for the grounds behind both schools was a bigger, multiyear project; and many community donors stepped up to help make it happen.

Just before Thanksgiving, Black Hawk and Gompers students, teachers and staff gathered at a special assembly where a major gift from Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation & Affiliates was announced. Cheers rang out when Great Lakes employees presented a check for $68,000, the final amount needed to make the back playground a reality.

“We are thrilled to be in a position to install ew playground equipment at our schools,” said Sean Storch, principal of Black Hawk Middle School. “It is an asset for our children and our community that will be used for decades, and an important piece of our continued facilities improvement.”

The new playground will feature a top-of-the-line design by Gerber Leisure and will be installed during a one-day community build Saturday, May 9. Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) will remove the existing playground and Vogel Bros. Building Co. is donating equipment and labor to prepare the grounds for placement of the new playground after the spring thaw. MMSD also will provide landscaping following the playground build.

“This will be a community project, built by families for families,” said Sarah Chaja, principal of Gompers Elementary School. “A great big thank you goes out to all of you who have contributed to our new playground.”

The Great Lakes gift was made possible by the generosity of its employees. Donations to the company’s Unite for Our Communities campaign were matched with corporate dollars to benefit the Madison office’s adopted schools.

“Being able to top off the fundraising campaign and make this playground possible was the most exciting thing to happen in our Adopt-A-School program,” said Amy Kerwin, vice president of community investments at Great Lakes. “Together we are building a stronger Northside.”

Great Lakes is located just 2.5 miles from Black Hawk and Gompers and formed a partnership with them through the Foundation for Madison’s Public Schools Adopt-A-School program. Employees give generously throughout the year to help improve educational opportunities at Gompers and Black Hawk and provide lasting benefits to the community.

Options shrink as ash disease spreads

Sheri Gasser
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Options shrink as ash disease spreads

By Sheri Gasser
Northside News

Since its appearance was first confirmed in November 2013 near Warner Park, the emerald ash borer (EAB) infestation has spread to the east side of Madison and to Middleton. At stake are tens of thousands of ash trees on private and city property.

Ash trees make up a high percentage of our urban forest largely due to previous diseases that decimated other species. When Dutch elm disease hit in the 1950s, ash was a popular replacement species. This lack of species biodiversity will leave many of our streets looking bare.

The spread of EAB has been exacerbated by the transportation of firewood. Ash is a brittle wood and, unlike other types of wood, will burn right after being cut down. Dane County, along with most of southern Wisconsin, has been under quarantine for firewood transportation.

Despite efforts to slow the spread, area ash trees will soon show signs of the disease. During a Nov. 24 community meeting, city forester Marla Eddy said, “Our community has the opportunity to make some choices in dealing with this natural catastrophe.” She explained that the goal is to not remove all affected trees at the same time, adding, “We want to control how we’ll lose our trees.” Waiting for the affected trees to die, however, would be a public safety hazard.

There are approximately 21,000 ash street trees in the city of Madison, and about one-third of them will receive chemical treatment injections every two years. Street trees less than 10 inches in diameter won’t receive treatment because multiple drill points could destabilize the tree. Trees that are under power lines with clearance pruning and trees in poor condition that won’t effectively absorb the treatment also will not be treated.

Street trees that are to be cut down are marked with a yellow dot. City crews are currently making the rounds on the Northside. Once the ash trees are removed, the goal is to replant as many trees as possible as soon as possible. Eddy said the replacement rate is at about 80 percent, and the goal is to plant new trees within three growing seasons. The city will be using 20 different replacement species, and the goal is to have three different species on each block. Having more diversity will help protect against future diseases and pests.

For homeowners, the first step is to identify any ash trees on their property. There are two main options — treatment or removal. With the confirmed presence of EAB on the Northside, all ash trees are in danger and now is the time for homeowners to do their research. For more information, check out the City of Madison EAB webpage at www.cityofmadison.com/parks/services/forestry/pests/EAB.

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