November 15, 2008 Update

Hello Everyone.
We're very pleased to report that we reached our goal of recruiting 100 charter members of our group by September 30. As of mid-October, we have about 125. Thank you so much!

Our mission is "to protect and enhance the parks, trails, open space and natural areas in the City of Scandia." We plan to work closely with the city's Parks and Recreation Committee and with other groups having complementary missions, but we will be organizing ourselves as an independent nonprofit.

First meeting:
To get the ball rolling, we're holding an organizational meeting on Wednesday, October 30 at 7pm in the Scandia Community Center. Attendance at our meetings is by no means a requirement of membership in the Friends, but we hope many of you will come, consider being on our founding board of directors, and participate in our very important early decision-making.

Communications:
We will be providing you with periodic communications on Friends activities and other important news affecting our parks, trails and open spaces. We prefer to use emails for this. For those of you who received a paper copy of this letter in the mail, we do not have your email address. If you don't have one, that's OK - we'll continue to send you hard copies. But if you have an email address, please send us a note at friendsofscandiaparksandtrails@yahoo.com so that we may keep your contact info up-to-date. We will, of course, keep that information internal to the organization.

Dues;
When you signed up as a charter member, we asked for a pledge of $20 per person, payable only if we met the membership goal. We would very much appreciate your sending a check (larger donations will be gratefully accepted!) made out to Parks and Trails Council of Minnesota. Please write "Scandia" on the note line to be sure your donation is properly applied. We will be working closely with the Council on matters like the Gateway Trail extension, and they have graciously offered to serve as our fiscal agent until we have our own tax-exempt status. Checks should be mailed by October 30 to Tom Triplett, 19420 Newgate Ave N, Marine 55047, and he will forward them to the Council.

Questions or advice?
For now, please direct them to Tom Triplett (651-433-4749) or Karen Schik (651-433-5254). Thanks again for your commitment to Scandia's outdoors, and please urge your friends and neighbors to sign up too.