Related items:

• Don Brown Letter of 4/9/04
• Mission Statement, Margate Park Safety Committee
• Don Brown Letter of 1/12/04

01/12/04
Subject: Formation of Margate Park Safety Committee

Dear neighbors:

Last October a group of concerned friends and neighbors met to discuss a problem in our neighborhood. This group included representatives from the Carmen/Winona Block Club, the Margate Park Block Club, the Castlewood Terrace Association, the Gunnison Block Club, the Margate Park Advisory Council, the Uptown Chicago Commission, Alderman Smith's office, the Salvation Army and local business owners and concerned neighbors. The problem we met to discuss was the ongoing and increasing illegal activities that occur in the lakefront parks adjacent to our neighborhood.

We met because after years of trying to resolve these problems as individuals or individual block clubs, we all have been unable to get anywhere near solving the problem of illegal activities in the park. We spent a long evening discussing what each of us believed what the illegal activities in the park were, what could be their possible causes and why it seemed so hard for any of us to get the problem addressed and resolved, by anyone.

At the end of the evening we had come to two conclusions. The first being that we needed to come together as a group and form a committee to address the problem of illegal activities in the parks adjacent to our neighborhood. Thus, the Margate Park Safety Committee was formed. The second conclusion was that we needed to develop a mission statement that clearly defined what we believed the problems to be and how we believe they could begin to be resolved. We spent the past several months developing the mission statement and I have attached it for your review.

I have done this because, at this meeting it was brought to our attention that the neighborhoods between Montrose and Lawrence and Foster and Bryn Mawr along the lakefront parks have also been dealing with the problems of illegal activities in the parks. Please take a few minutes to read the statement. We are hoping that as the representative of your organization or block club you would like to meet with us and join us on working to solve these problems. We would like to set a meeting date to meet again to decide what our next step should be and we are hoping that you will join us. Please e-mail or call me back to let me know if you or your group or organization would be interested in joining us.

Thank you.

Don Brown
President, Carmen-Winona Block Club
e-mail: donaldbashore@hotmail.com
phone: 773 784 6398