Five residents of Greater Golden Hill stood outside the clubhouse at the Balboa Park Golf Course on July 21. Some held green mailers with handwritten notes scribbled on both sides of the page. Resident Jim St. Laurent was one of them. He fussed about the abandoned house and fallen fence next door to his house on A Street. A few weeks earlier, he called Alia Kanani, program manager of MAD (maintenance assessment district), to inform her about the eyesore. He's had no response, no action. St. Laurent decided he would raise the issue at MAD's July meeting. Along with four others, he stood outside the clubhouse on the third Monday of the month and discussed the disaster that has become Greater Golden Hill's MAD.
For the MAD committee, having just five people discuss the program's inefficacy at one of their meetings would have been an improvement -- at the last meeting, infighting and fist-pounding took up most of the scheduled time.
There was one small problem last Monday: no meeting. No one from the MAD committee, or the Greater Golden Hill CDC, showed. The meeting was apparently canceled with no notification sent to the community or posted on the corkboard at the clubhouse. So the five residents held their own "mad" meeting in the parking lot of the Balboa Park Golf Course.
"I just want to know how much of our money was budgeted for this meeting," said South Park resident Rosemary Kelly. "I wonder where they are having dinner, on our dime. I was against this from the start because I didn't know where my tax dollars would go, and I guess I was right."
The disgruntled denizens called program manager Kanani, but there was no answer.
This reporter also left a message for Kanani, though didn’t receive an answer until the next day.
The website for Greater Golden Hill's CDC and MAD (goldenhillcdc.org/CGSMAD) included no mention of rescheduling the meeting.
Five residents of Greater Golden Hill stood outside the clubhouse at the Balboa Park Golf Course on July 21. Some held green mailers with handwritten notes scribbled on both sides of the page. Resident Jim St. Laurent was one of them. He fussed about the abandoned house and fallen fence next door to his house on A Street. A few weeks earlier, he called Alia Kanani, program manager of MAD (maintenance assessment district), to inform her about the eyesore. He's had no response, no action. St. Laurent decided he would raise the issue at MAD's July meeting. Along with four others, he stood outside the clubhouse on the third Monday of the month and discussed the disaster that has become Greater Golden Hill's MAD.
For the MAD committee, having just five people discuss the program's inefficacy at one of their meetings would have been an improvement -- at the last meeting, infighting and fist-pounding took up most of the scheduled time.
There was one small problem last Monday: no meeting. No one from the MAD committee, or the Greater Golden Hill CDC, showed. The meeting was apparently canceled with no notification sent to the community or posted on the corkboard at the clubhouse. So the five residents held their own "mad" meeting in the parking lot of the Balboa Park Golf Course.
"I just want to know how much of our money was budgeted for this meeting," said South Park resident Rosemary Kelly. "I wonder where they are having dinner, on our dime. I was against this from the start because I didn't know where my tax dollars would go, and I guess I was right."
The disgruntled denizens called program manager Kanani, but there was no answer.
This reporter also left a message for Kanani, though didn’t receive an answer until the next day.
The website for Greater Golden Hill's CDC and MAD (goldenhillcdc.org/CGSMAD) included no mention of rescheduling the meeting.
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