Dear Junius Heights Neighbors and Friends,

I’m deeply grateful to you for electing me as the new president of our neighborhood association. The first thing to say is a sincere “thank you” for this trust. We appear to have had a nearly record turnout —some eighty individuals listening in— at our annual neighbor meeting on Zoom Tuesday night.

Before saying anything else, I want to give heartfelt thanks to both Rene Schmidt and Martha Heimberg. While not continuing as lead officers for the coming year, they will continue as At Large members of the board. In Rene’s case a new and special board position of Historian is being created. Both publicly and privately I and others have made it clear that Rene’s knowledge-base and contacts within the city will continue to be deeply important to us all as neighbors. There seems to be broad agreement by all on this point, and the vote to create the new position was unanimous. In his knowledge of historic preservation, Rene is irreplaceable. You should know that there is also serious conversation about how we will further honor these two neighbor-leaders for their many years of service to us all.

Toward the end of the meeting, a flood of new (and some, returning) persons volunteered to be a part of our board. I was very encouraged by the many new volunteers who stepped forward to become members of the board. Much of it was apparently spontaneous, and speaks to an excitement about where our board is going. However we feel about the elections, I hope we can see this as an encouraging and welcome development. A major goal of our new board, of course, will be to incorporate and retain these newly elected members with the hard-working current members who continue into 2021.

But I am also aware that this election was contested. On our streets today, there are no doubt folks who are pleased and happy with the voting results, and those who are grieving and perhaps even hurting. All this is to say, I am personally very aware of this dynamic. I will do all in my power to be sensitive to it as we move forward, and I would invite every neighbor, however they feel about the result, to do the same.

As the roughly 80 of you who listened in on the call heard me say, my hope as leader of our association is to bring my 30 years of experience in non-profit leadership (both professional and as a volunteer board member for numerous non-profits) to our neighborhood group. I hope for us to adopt policies that reflect the “best practices” of most non-profit boards today, with the stated goal of increasing neighbor involvement and connection. I hope to help move our board into a healthy longterm future, that also honors and sustains our past.

Nothing about our commitment to our historic preservation issues will change. (I do hope you will hear and believe this).

I hope to use my non-profit experience to lead the board to several ways:

Transparency

I will work such that meeting dates, meeting minutes, and association financials are easily accessible at our website, and via email and social media links. We will make sure that our meetings are as well publicized as they can be, at least one month in advance. (Especially the annual meeting…)

Structure and Board Rotation

I will ask the board to create a system of yearly-classes, such that every member commits to a three-year cycle of leadership. The goal of this is to continually leverage the extremely large numbers of new and talented neighbors that have moved to Junius Heights during the past decade. Everyone should understand that previous boards have mightily tried to get more board involvement for years.

My sense is that for many years this was because there simply was not a very large potential pool of new volunteers. That has not been the case for some time now, as I believe the surge of “at large” members shows us this. Let’s hope we will retain and expand our leadership. That must be a major focus. Moving to a board of rotating classes will force the board to be more laser focused on leadership development in all that it does.

Communication

My sense is that we are awash in information today. So many messages come at us, in so many ways, that it’s hard to hear the ones we want to hear, and filter out the noise. I believe the board has been working hard on communication, and that especially Mark Reeves is to be commended for his serious commitment to communications issues.

Given the saturation of information we all experience, the only real solution is to OVER communicate, such that hopefully the number of people who feel like they miss information decreases. We will never be able to get that number to zero, but we’ll try to leverage all social and regular media tools that we can to increase the sense that communication is happening.

Public Meetings

You should know that my recommendation will be that the board divide each of its meetings into two sections: “executive” and “public.”

There will be some issues we will need to initially discuss by ourselves. But I will assume that every important vote and discussion will be able to take place in public setting, where anyone is welcome to attend. Again, this is very common in both the non-profit world and government.

Initial Organization

I will ask your indulgence that our very *first* meeting, however, will need to be board-only, so that we can introduces ourselves to each other, and have an honest discussion about how to implement many of these changes. Some of these changes, for example, may mean changing our bylaws, and if so, our board will need to become clear as to that process. Plus, with a new group of twenty-five, we will not all know each other, and we will simply need some time for personal acclimation to each other. I will ask for your patience in the next few weeks as we get our legs underneath us and find our “new normal” as a group.

In that spirit, criticism of the past —I do not believe— will be fruitful or helpful. We need each and every neighbor, longterm and brand new, to move together into a joint future. Ideas for tweaks to what we do now, and brand new ideas, are of course welcome. Just understand that job-one will be self-organizing and prioritizing our board, and we won’t be able to get to address each new idea at once.

You will notice that I have not yet mentioned any specific program of the board.

That is because my assumption in that all current programming and initiatives will continue. New programs will grow out of our new structure, listening to our neighbors, working as a group, and in leveraging the talent of all of us. We will fail mightily. And I will encourage us all to see that as good, because out of those failures will come new programs and initiatives that will take our neighborhood into a bright future.

I *love* Junius Heights, deeply. Even during the years we lived away, but still owned our home here, I always kept this neighborhood in my heart, and knew that we would one day return. I’m grateful for the deep friendship of neighbors we have known since we first moved into the neighborhood in 1994. So many challenging issues we lived through back then have changed for the better.

We owe so a deep debt to our longterm neighbors and association members, who forged the trail through some challenging years. We have much to celebrate and honor in terms of our past.

We have much to hope for, in terms of our future. My primary goal is to leave our association stronger, healthier, and ready for the future, when my time of leadership is finished under our new rotating schedule. Thank you again for the trust of giving me the chance.

Sincerely,

Eric Folkerth
President, Junius Heights Historic District